On Sun, Aug 27, 2006 at 12:56:33PM -0700, Redefined Horizons wrote:
That has changed, since I'm now using a Linux box at home and work, in addition to my MS Windows boxes. I've been learning some C programming, and even bought a 900 page book on C++ programming. :]
I volunteer as one of the project admins for an open source GIS/Mapping program. I was planning on creating a map drafting and printing extension for the program from scratch. However, someone wrote a plug-in for our program that allows us to export the data in SVG, and one of the users began producing cartographic quality maps in Inkscape!
Ooh, nice - screenshots?
That really got my wheels turning. I am considering the possibility as using Inkscpape and perhaps Scribus as the main cartographic map production tools for our program. If this works out, I'd like to begin contributing to Inkscape as a developer.
Excellent, we will love to welcome you to the project. :-)
It's funny, I first got into Inkscape (Sodipodi at the time) due to an interest in using the software for cartographic map making (for games). It would be awesome to see new inkscape features suited for technical drawing / mapping added to the code.
My primary areas of interest are object snapping and precision drafting/drawing tools. I'd also be interested in some advanced labeling tools, DXF import/export, layer management, and sheet layout for printing/plotting.
By labeling tools do you mean like dimensioning? I have looked into this a bit myself (it intersects a little with the markers stuff) so could share some ideas there.
There has been a lot of work in the area of layer management; I can imagine that for cartography/CAD purposes it may need some slightly different capabilities, so perhaps folks would be interested in hearing your thoughts on how it could be improved. Possibly Inkscape already does those things, but the UI or tutorials simply need to cover that usage better.
Could you describe what you mean by 'sheet management'?
I saw Matthew Squires was working on DXF support for Inkscape as part of Google's Summer of Code, but I didn't see any files on his SourceForge site yet. Is that project still ongoing?
That was last year, actually, and unfortunately he had some school work that unexpectedly required his time for most of the summer; he only had a chance to get to the DXF stuff for the final week or two of the summer of code project, so the converter only covered a subset of the DXF format.
VectorSection has SVG and DXF support, although I don't know if it is able to convert between them 100%.
Also, tt appears that there are some other GPL'd programs that are able to import/export both SVG and DXF, so a thought would be to extract that code from one of those programs and use it to create a simple pair of dxf2svg / svg2dxf converters.
If you would be willing to put up with my questions, I'd be willing to help implement some of these features. :] I must warn you ahead of time, I do have a good knowledge of programming and XML, and even own a couple of textbooks on SVG, but I am a C++ rookie.
Certainly! A lot of the inkscape developers are quite open to answering questions. We love to see more people coding on Inkscape, and providing pointers to new C++ers is more than a fair exchange. ;-)
A good C++ book we often recommend is 'Thinking in C++' by Eckel. It's available for free online as well as for purchase in print.
I'm going to read over the Inkscape Developer's Manual posted on the wiki tonight. I'd look forward to some advice on how to get started. I think I'd like to start with the object snaps tools first.
Carl Hetherington would be good to touch base with, as this has been an area he's done much work in.
You'll probably find the files in inkscape/src/*snap* of interest to review, to see how the various forms of snapping work currently. I'm not familiar with this code, but it looks like there is an abstracted general purpose snap management system provided by snap.cpp that may be a good starting point.
As you've probably read, new developers can gain SVN access after having two patches accepted. Once you've submitted a couple patches, let me or one of the other project admins know and we can hook you up.
At any rate, I look forward to hearing from you guys about this, and hope I'll have the chance to improve a great open source tool I've been using for a long time.
Scott Huey
Welcome to the team Scott!
Bryce