September 2004 - Inkscape Users

Fill/Gradient changes since .39?
by Joshua A. Andler 09 Sep '04

09 Sep '04

I have a drawing that I've been working on and it's slowly coming together (done 100% in inkscape baby!), however if I open it in any of the newer builds since .39 (the autobuilds by Daniel) some of the places where I have some gradients and transparency are being "rendered" differently. I don't want to say they're displaying "wrong" (given I don't know what modifications have been made to source and it may have always done it wrong before and now it's fixed), but it's definitely not the same as it used to be... Here's a link showing a comparison of old & new, so perhaps someone can help me to understand what's different. http://scislac.com/ink/inkprob.jpg As you can see, the one on left is the way I intended, and the right is just "rendering" things much differently. The translucent part of her shirt appears to just be mostly clear... the gradient objects I have on the midriff area (skin shading) are also not looking the same... and the biggest change of all is all the stuff with the skirt. There are many objects that are used to achieve the effects needed (lighting/shading mostly), and when it shows them, it displays how truly crude my work is... but hey it's faster & easier. Back on topic... so does anyone know if this is because of a permanent change that was made? Or is it a temporary thing? My main concern at this point is that some of the objects showing through the skirt are at a lower # in the z-order than the actual skirt, and I can't seem to get them "behind" it. So fixing it isn't working too well and it's not worth my time if this is a temporary issue (plus I'm curious as to what causes it). And this is a little OT, and probably belongs in another list... but... Does anyone know if there are plans to have better "node manipulation" tools? Meaning, the current way of being able to add nodes is ok... (a pain to work with for the most part... but can be VERY handy at other times) but are there plans to add a way to directly add nodes wherever you want on a line (versus the "in the middle" method)? I guess something akin to Illustrator's node tools where you directly work with them is what I'm looking for... Thanks! -Josh

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Re : Various publications about Inkscape.
by Gazal, Geraud (MED) 09 Sep '04

09 Sep '04

Hi all, here is the sum up of the article I've read in Linux+ (French edition, Number 2, September/October 2004) Title : Inkscape, où vas-tu ? (Inkscape, where are you going ?) Author : unknown Sum-up : The article presents Inkscape as a drawing application, forked from Sodipodi (due to divergent goals and opinions about development-process) aiming at offering a free & SVG compliant software. The author points out that : Inkscape is undergoing a Gtkmm'ification' and that its development process is very open, allowing fast and efficient integration of new features (interface, booleans, autopackage) and in line with developers and users (even beginners) needs. He also notes that a clear Roadmap is identified. Open clipart is mentionned as a fast evoluting sister project. Apart from a few small mistakes (example Gtkmm'ification' is not finished) it provides a very positive feedback about the application If some of you can have an access to / afford buying another edition (English, German, Spanish, Polish...) it might be intersting to compare the different versions/translations I can scan and mail the French article to anyone asking for it. Regards, Matiphas PS : I've added a link about the linuxgraphix tutorial in the wiki. I can add this small review if you want.

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Re: Printing Oddities
by Crispin Veall 09 Sep '04

09 Sep '04

>I"ll start with a couple of stupid questions: Good idea, I can never think of all the information people might want :-) >* Can you print from other applications? Yes. >* If so, which ones? Gimp, OpenOffice, a2ps (when printing out code, text etc). > * What printing interface are you using (e.g. CUPS, lprng)? CUPS, but in inkscape I just "| lp" >* Can you export to PS / PNG, then import and print from the GIMP[0]? I can export to png, open in gimp and print. Exporting to ps then opening in gimp results in just one layer/object showing - but this could be a transparency issue. I was trying to get further last night, and tried to print a png via a2ps. This was delegated to ImageMagick, which then proceeded to print nothing. I tried opening the png directly into IMageMagick. This showed up, but still wouldn't print (or rather this time printed a blank sheet of paper). I'm not sure if this helps... Thanks for your time, Crispin

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OS/X problem: dialogs *above* tool tips and pop-up menus!
by Michel Schinz 08 Sep '04

08 Sep '04

Hi, I have recently installed inkscape on my Mac through Fink, and I have the following problem: the dialogs appear in front of all the other (X11) windows created by Inkscape, including tool tips and pop-up menus. This means that when I open the preferences dialog (for example), the tool-tips for the dialog's buttons appear *behind* the dialog itself, and the same goes for pop-up menus! This makes inkscape pretty hard to use, to say the least :-). I found out that I'm able to cycle through the various values of a pop-up menu using the mouse wheel, and therefore tried to change the value for "dialogs on top" (or something like this) from "None" to "Normal" and then "Aggressive", but this didn't solve my problem. I also tried to disable the "focus follows mouse" policy of my window manager (Apple's WM), without success either. Is there any Mac user out there with the same problem? Does anyone have an idea of how to fix it? (I must say that I have several other X11 applications on my Mac [OpenOffice, Gimp, XEphem and Scribus], and they don't have this problem). Apart from that, thanks to all the developers for the wonderful work on Inkscape! Michel.

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best practices: Inkscape svg to native eps
by Joel Moxley 08 Sep '04

08 Sep '04

Hi yall. I've happily been using Inkscape since the Sodipodi fork without any problems. However, recently I attempted to prepare a few figures for publication as native eps files. I encountered the following issues, and wanted to ask for yalls input on best practices for accomplishing svg to native eps conversion. Simple example figure and inkview rendering: http://ppp250.mit.edu/jfmoxley/www/strainVerificationPCR.svg http://ppp250.mit.edu/jfmoxley/www/inkviewScreenshot.png The batik pretty print comes out a little goofy (the text is improperly placed): http://ppp250.mit.edu/jfmoxley/www/inkviewBatikScreenshot.png The adobesvg seems ok: http://ppp250.mit.edu/jfmoxley/www/adobesvgScreenshot.png But if I take the svg to Illustrator in Windows and save it as eps, it comes out goofy (the text is more slanted). http://ppp250.mit.edu/jfmoxley/www/illustratorepsScreenshot.png Also, after printing in inkscape, I lose the alpha transparency http://ppp250.mit.edu/jfmoxley/www/printedsvgScreenshot.png Anyways, I'd love any input yall had on "best practices" for postscript conversion! I use Inkscape-0.37 on a gentoo linux 2.4 platform. Thanks, J

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Various publications about Inkscape.
by Gazal, Geraud (MED) 08 Sep '04

08 Sep '04

Hi all, www.linuxgraphic.org is a French web site dedicated to graphic creation under linux (strange, isn't it ?). * Yesterday it has published a small tutorial (in French) dedicated to inkscape users (but applicable to any graphic creation app, I think) : how to have a 'mirror effect'. Quite nice. I will ask the site if they are ok if I translate this doc in English and then make it available from the inkscape website. The tutorial is there : http://linuxgraphic.org/section2d/articles/miroir_Inkscape/index.html * They've also announced the release of Open Clipart 0.06 on the main page. Linux+ (http://www.lpmagazine.org/en/modules/news/) European (Polish) magazine translated and published in French, English, German, Spanish and Czech has issued an article on Inkscape too. I have the French version. I'll produce a sum up + translation in English on mailing list. Regards, Matiphas

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Printing Oddities in Inkscape
by Crispin Veall 08 Sep '04

08 Sep '04

Hi All, I seem to be having great difficulties printing anything from inkscape onto my printer (Epson Stylus Photo 870). If I attempt to print anything, it comes out as a large grey square, with the vaguest hint of the darkest parts of the image elongated down the right-hand side. I've tried using print direct, print image as bitmap and piping through lp, and kprinter, to no avail. I can print out to a laser printer at work, but that's a raw PS one. Any suggestions on what to check, how to narrow down the culprit, or how to clarify what's wrong most welcome. I've tried to compile inkscape with --gnome-print, but that completely failed (I've raised a bug). Apart from that, I'm really impressed with Inkscape - a big thankyou to all who've helped with it. Cheers, Crispin

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installing microsoft corefonts
by Jon Phillips 08 Sep '04

08 Sep '04

An interesting page...if you are seeking that compatiability with windows-world fonts... http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/ -- Jon Phillips KOREA.PH.010.3140.7483 USA.PH.858.361.2811 jon@...87... http://www.rejon.org Inkscape (http://inkscape.org) Open Clip Art Library (www.openclipart.org) CVS Book (http://cvsbook.ucsd.edu/) Scale Journal (http://scale.ucsd.edu/)

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Line reported to be longer than I expected
by Jasper van de Gronde 07 Sep '04

07 Sep '04

When I load something like this: <svg width="200mm" height="400mm" viewBox="0 0 200 400" version="1.1"> <g fill="none" stroke="black" stroke-width="2" > <line x1="1" y1="0" x2="1" y2="400" /> </g> </svg> The line is reported to be 2mm longer than I expected (402mm), even though it touches the bottom and top of the page perfectly, the page is reported to be exactly 400mm high. Is this a bug or a feature?

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London Linux Expo 6-7 October 2004
by Plinnell 06 Sep '04

06 Sep '04

Hi all, Correction, the date is 6-7 October 2004. Cheers, Peter

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