Hello all,

The Summer of Code has offically finished up. I've since caught up on some sleep and a few non-SoC things. I've also fixed up the obvious bugs, so this seems like a good time to announce what I actually achieved with the connector tool.

Autorouting polyline connectors are in CVS and work well. However you manipulate them, they will avoid objects marked as 'avoided'. Objects can be marked as 'avoided' or 'ignored' via the connector context toolbar buttons. Tricky to explain, but easy to see and understand... just have to play with it.

The following wiki page has instructions and further discussion: http://wiki.inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?UsingTheConnectorTool

There are a couple of obvious problems: * Connectors are drawn to object's bounding boxes, rather than edges. I have a couple of ideas and some code to address this, so it shouldn't be too long till this is in the codebase. * Bounding boxes are used for the avoidance code, i.e., lines will route around a diamond as if it was a rectagle. The routing code deals with polygons so it's just a matter of me or someone else properly implementing the NR::ConvexHull class.

There are plenty of other features I plan to add, some that have been requested by people already. Toolbar marker (arrow head) controls being one of these. See my TODO list on the wiki or in connector-context.cpp.

Please have a look at the wiki page, and try out the connectors. Then add to the wiki page with ideas/problems or open bugs/RFEs.

I've really enjoyed working on Inkscape the past two months, and as I said in an earlier mail, I feel like this time has got me over the initial hurdle of learning the codebase. I feel much better placed to comfortably contribute in the future. Basically, expect me to become a regular on the mailing list and Jabber. :-)

Also, one of the things I've noticed as a result of the Summer of Code time is the real community aspect of the Inkscape project. It's a really open, welcoming community. I'd heard of students working for other projects who really didn't have much contact with their mentoring organisation, and were still waiting for accounts for CVS etc at the end of August. With Inkscape on the other hand, developers and users were always helpful and friendly. Just wanted to thank everyone for that!

Cheers, Michael