8. Installing Inkscape on a Win machine (David Christian Berg)

Message: 8 From: David Christian Berg <david.berg@...240...> Reply-To: david@...139... To: inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Organization: SIP Solutions Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2004 15:37:17 +0200 Subject: [Inkscape-devel] Installing Inkscape on a Win machine

Hi guys,

since I'm working with Linux, I'll never have to personally, but inkscape has become my favorite graphics tool, and I need to share files with win users. Now since svg isn't supported that much, I thought, the easiest solution might be to just have the win users install inkscape... how hard is this? I mean including installing gtk. I hope this is real simple and you can point me at some howto.

The current packaging works great IMO: a. download b. unzip

Also I wonder if there'll be work done on the ps export soon. Though I really am looking forward to pangoisation being finished, I really need a proper export of transparency for ps, to make pdfs for sharing, instead of pngs, since pngs are huge, for A3 or A4 posters since I need at least 300 dpi.

Any chances, I will see something like that soon?

David

PS: The Scribus import filter isn't good enough for my posters... so using Scribus for export is ruled out.

Have you updated to Scribus 1.1.7, which has a bunch of new gradient support ? The other variable is the version of Ghostscript installed. Using a 8.1x version has better results overall.

Text handling on SVG import is the next issue to tackle, but IMO most text work can be done in Scribus more effectively - not a knock on Inkscape, it is just that SVG and PS/PDF text models are a bit different and easier to translate into reliable PDF via Scribus.

I wrote a howto for installing parallel GS's, so you do not need to remove the existing patched GS which most distros supply:

http://ahnews.music.salford.ac.uk/scribus/documentation/gsadv.html

I hate to sound like a broken record, but exporting transparency in PS is not a trivial task. In pre-press, I would think it is safer and really much better to use PDF 1.4 for handling transparency downstream with printers etc. PDF 1.4 spec supports this capably.

Moreover, even if Inkscape were to do this (export transparency) in PS, few printers or print setups on typical Linux distros can fully support advanced PS3 printing. I know - I've tested with Suse 9.x and Fedora with a Fiery PS3/PDF1.4 RIP. It took some tweaking to get this working properly. I basically rebuilt all the CUPS rpms to enable PS3, which is turned off by default. Otherwise, Inkscape would need to add a flattener to the exported PS - again not trivial.

Peter