Yes, it was for testing the Cairo output.  It was part of the GSoC project to do PDF output, and was easy enough to add, so we left it in for testing Cairo rendering.  Now, is anyone using it for anything now? Bulia?  I'd imagine at this point it's cruft.

On Tue, 2010-01-19 at 12:48 -0400, bulia byak wrote: > On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 11:39 AM, Ted Gould <ted@...11...> wrote: > > Yes, it was for testing the Cairo output. It was part of the GSoC > > project to do PDF output, and was easy enough to add, so we left it in > > for testing Cairo rendering. Now, is anyone using it for anything now? > > Bulia? I'd imagine at this point it's cruft. > > It still can be useful for testing our cairo interfaces, because it > uses basically the same renderer as PS or PDF exporter, but of course > it must be hidden in the user-visible list. Is that possible? If not > then it should be removed. How would people use it then? From the command line? We could disable and reenable it for releases, but that seems kinda bad in that we'd then have developers and users using different builds.

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 1:08 AM, Joshua A. Andler <scislac@...400...> wrote: > Either way, as I understand it, if you open (rather than import) a PNG > file, draw on top of it or modify it, and hit "Save" it will save via > Cairo and not our export method. Instead it must simply refuse to save as PNG, offering a Save As dialog to save as SVG.

Are you in any way against GIMP's new behavior for 2.7/8? Basically, Save/Save As would only offer SVG options (probably only Inkscape SVG variants) and everything else must be performed via an Export operation since there is editing data losss (not like our current one, but basically a different type of "Save As" dialog which would then chain into the png, pdf, eps, jpg, tif, etc special dialogs when those exist).

Looks like the gist of the document is similar to what I proposed when a "Publish" option was discussed about a year ago (precisely, 24-02-09, the thread was called "Export, Publish and Save As"): - "Save" dialog would only save to Inkscape SVG or Compressed Inkscape SVG - "Export" dialog would save to all other formats

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 1:08 AM, Joshua A. Andler <scislac@...400...> wrote: > Either way, as I understand it, if you open (rather than import) a PNG > file, draw on top of it or modify it, and hit "Save" it will save via > Cairo and not our export method. Instead it must simply refuse to save as PNG, offering a Save As dialog to save as SVG.

*bump* On 19/1/10 17:48, bulia byak wrote: > On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 11:39 AM, Ted Gould <ted@...11...> wrote: >> On Tue, 2010-01-19 at 11:00 +0100, Jasper van de Gronde wrote: >>> Chris Lilley wrote: >>>> On Saturday, January 16, 2010, 10:32:16 PM, knowone wrote: >>>>> How can I save the file as PNG with the drop shadow intact? >>>> >>>> Make sure you are exporting as PNG. Do not 'Save As' Cairo PNG. >>>> >>>> (I came across this a couple of days ago, and the symptom was that blur filters were not being applied. Also, the pixel dimensions of the two methods differ, if the graphic bleeds over the edge of the 'page'). >>> >>> Can someone tell me why we have a non-vector format in the save as list? >>> >>> One that seems redundant and apparently with less functionality than the >>> normal export. Is this for testing purposes? >> >> Yes, it was for testing the Cairo output. It was part of the GSoC >> project to do PDF output, and was easy enough to add, so we left it in >> for testing Cairo rendering. Now, is anyone using it for anything now? >> Bulia? I'd imagine at this point it's cruft. > > It still can be useful for testing our cairo interfaces, because it > uses basically the same renderer as PS or PDF exporter, but of course > it must be hidden in the user-visible list. Is that possible? If not > then it should be removed. This has turned into a FAQ - related questions come up weekly if not daily somewhere in a user forum, in #inkscape or in the 'Answers' sections of launchpad: how to save a bitmap in Inkscape with a transparent background, or why filter effects or patterns are not visible or incorrect in exported PNG files. Yesterday it was filed as bug too: Bug #669267 “Saving file in PNG format creates incorrect file.”: <https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/669267> Any chance this can be addresses for 0.48.1? "Cairo PNG" should not be listed as file format in the 'Save/Save as/Save a copy' dialog in release versions.