May 2006 - Inkscape Users - Inkscape Mailman

Inkscape on Windows
by Peter Hillier-Brook 26 May '06

26 May '06

I recently had to remove a virus (actually hundreds) from a friend's machine by kicking his hard disc back to the stone age. As I'm not yet able to convince him of the merits of Linux, I had to re-install Windows ME and I thought it would be good to introduce him to Inkscape. As is probably well known to everyone other than me, this is apparently not possible because of GTK+ requirements and the installation failed. However it didn't fail tidily and the first indication that something was wrong was when I tried to start the apparently installed application. Obviously I needed to un-install the package, but couldn't do it easily because there was no entry in the Control Panel|Add or Remove Programs table. In consequence I had to clear the Inkscape components manually, including the Registry. If some versions of Windows are not supported I would have expected the Windows installer to check its environment before creating directories, Registry entries, Icons etc.? Do I need to raise a bug, or is this issue already known? Peter HB

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Re: Grid questions.
by unknown＠example.com 25 May '06

25 May '06

> I've not quite grasped how the grid works (it helps a lot!), but I'm drawing > some schematics and I need millimetric precision (literally), so I need each > square to be precisely 1mm2 and the nodes to snap to them... Now the > "problem" I have is that I don't quite understand what the "adjust distance" > attribute of the grid does and to what value set that. Any help will be > appreciated. I've recently been using Inkscape for schematics / block diagrams, which involved a lot of grid work. It sounds like you are referring to the "Snap distance" field on the "Grid" tab of the Document Preferences. As far as I have found, this value is the maximum distance the cursor must be from a grid point before it will snap there. e.g. if you have a 1x1mm grid, and snap distance is set to 0.25mm, then if you have the cursor in the centre of that grid square, it will not snap anywhere. To make sure the cursor will always snap to the nearest grid point, snap distance should be at half of the grid spacing value. (It doesn't seem to make any difference if it is larger, so I just set all three values to the same). Also, for schematic work, I have found that it is best to turn off the "Snap bounding boxes to grid" option, because with this on, horizontal and vertical lines will snap in three ways: first one edge will snap to the grid, then its centre line, and then the other edge. Ken

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batch command using potrace
by unknown＠example.com 25 May '06

25 May '06

hi there. I would like to convert a batch of bitmaps into vector graphics using a set potrace command. Any help in identifying the switches would be really appreciated. I am using inkscape v.41 thanks steve

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Re-download SVN stuff I broke?
by Michael Moore 25 May '06

25 May '06

Slightly OT perhaps, I downloaded the Inkscape SVN a few days ago, and have been poking at it to try to understand it, and managed to break some stuff. I'd like to download the latest version again, and just overwrite my changes. Is there an easy way to do that? I'd rather not download the whole thing again. Thanks, -- Michael Moore ------------------------------- www.stuporglue.org -- Donate your used computer to a student that needs it. www.ubuntu-utah.org -- In Utah? Interested in Ubuntu? Come join us.

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Grid questions.
by Thetargos 25 May '06

25 May '06

I've not quite grasped how the grid works (it helps a lot!), but I'm drawing some schematics and I need millimetric precision (literally), so I need each square to be precisely 1mm2 and the nodes to snap to them... Now the "problem" I have is that I don't quite understand what the "adjust distance" attribute of the grid does and to what value set that. Any help will be appreciated.

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output filter not recognized
by Black Fire 25 May '06

25 May '06

I'm running Inkscape 0.43 on Windows XP SP2 I have attempred to find whatever log file Inkscape might be writing, but can not find any such log files, so I do not know what is happening. Is there a command line option that turns on logging relavent to extensions? I am trying to write a custom SVG output filter. I started by making a copy of the svgz_output.inx extension. My extension just does nott not appear in the Save As dialog. I do have Perl installed. I use it for other purposes. It is in the PATH by default, so any application should be able to find it. I have paired down my INX file to a very simple test: <inkscape-extension> <name>Extension Test Output</name> <id>org.inkscape.output.test</id> <dependency type="extension">org.inkscape.output.svg.inkscape</dependency> <dependency type="executable">perl.exe</dependency> <output> <extension>.test</extension> <mimetype>text/x.test</mimetype> <filetypename>Extension Test(*.test)</filetypename> <filetypetooltip>Extension Test</filetypetooltip> <dataloss>FALSE</dataloss> </output> <script> <command reldir="path">perl -e "print join(' ',@ARGV)"</command> <helper_extension>org.inkscape.output.svg.inkscape</helper_extension> </script> </inkscape-extension> Any idea why this isn't even appearing? Or at least how I can get usable error messages to help me find out? -- _______________________________________________ Search for businesses by name, location, or phone number. -Lycos Yellow Pages http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.as…

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export to svg?
by j michaelson 25 May '06

25 May '06

hello, can anyone recommend any svg to dxf converters? i'm having trouble finding any. i need recommendations for both linux and windows. open source if possible. thanks. john michaelson.

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Re: Object group origins / anchor points, and subgrids
by unknown＠example.com 25 May '06

25 May '06

> On Wed, May 24, 2006 at 03:02:29PM +0000, Bryce Harrington wrote: > > > * You could define an origin/anchor point for a group, so > > only that point will snap to the grid....this would mean > > your circuit symbols and blocks would always line up with > > their connecting lines. > > This can't be done presently, but it would be *very* handy. I recall > writing a feature request for something like this long ago, so it's > already in the tracker. We just need someone to work on it. > > > * You could set different grid settings for groups, so that > > you can do fine detail editing to your symbols, without > > having to reduce/increase the grid settings every time. > > > > (Also some shortcuts to automatically reduce/increase the > > grid spacing x5 or x10 would probably be useful, and maybe > > they should also zoom too...........are shortcuts > > configurable enough already to be able to do this?) > > These are interesting ideas, and I don't recall seeing them proposed > before. You could check in the Request For Enhancement (RFE) tracker > through the website, and see if this has already been proposed; if so, > add your thoughts to it, or if not, add a new request for it. > Thanks for filling me in on all this. When I get a chance, I'll have a look through the RFE tracker and add/amend entries on these. > > One other cosmetic thing I noticed was that all the dialogs > > were different sizes (on my Windows Inkscape 0.43 at least). > > It would be nice if they had the same widths or heights so > > they could be lined up tidly around the sides of the main > > Inkscape window. > > I think the idea has been to keep them to the absolute minimum size so > they don't use up more screen realestate than necessary. However the > dialogs are coded to remember their height/width settings from session > to session, so I think you should be able to resize them to your > preference and they should stick that way. It's possible > this doesn't work on Windows, though (I haven't tested it there), but > that'd be considered a bug. ;-) > Yeah, it looks like it could be Windows-specific alright...I'll have to check out the Linux version to see. The problem I was having was more that the minimum size of the dialogs was very big (e.g. the document prefs dialog had a minimum width of about 1/5 the screen - this is at 1600x1200 with Windows XP "normal" font sizes). A lot of the text input fields seemed much wider than necessary, so it might be something to do with calculating the width of these text fields. Thinking about lining up the dialogs again, my motivation for this was that since all windows are rectangular, and you're most likely going to have a drawing window and more than one dialog on the screen at any one time, there's going to be "dead" space unless the dialogs share the same width or height. The picture I have is of several dialogs of the same width down one side of the screen, and optionally dialogs of the same height across the top/bottom, with the drawing window using the remainder of the screen. (Of course this wouldn't be the best for people with small screens) A nice way to offer this to the user might be to have a "Tile Dialogs" option, like the "Tile Windows" you often see in multi-document GUI apps. I'll put in an RFE for something like this too if there's nothing similar already. Some other random observations...which I'll also keep an eye out for in the RFE tracker... * Marker color really should change with that of the path to which it is attached * More control over marker size would be great * Is it right to always center the markers on the end nodes of the line? It is for circular markers, but not for arrows (think of a flow diagram with arrows connecting boxes), and sometimes not for other shapes. * The drop-down list for selecting markers is pretty cumbersome, this would be much better as a 2d grid (with the marker names left out, or else popping up as tooltips). Even better might be to have a separate dialog like the swatches dialog for markers. * If you are editing a document created elsewhere with fonts that are unavailable (e.g. editing on Windows, document created on Linux with Ghostscript fonts), the text tool will not pick up the font size, so making any edit to the text will change the font size to whatever is currently set in the text tool. * When editing baseline-adjusted text, the baseline-adjust is not maintained logically, e.g. if the text was "Vout" where "out" is baseline-adjusted, it is not possible to replace the "o" with another character without the baseline being reset for the new character. * Probably too specialised to be used very often, but a CAD-style snap-to- tangent / end-point / mid-point / center / etc. would be nice. * It should be possible to edit the stroke settings for a group (at least if the settings for all objects in the group are the same) Regards, Ken

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Text to path(?) question (ES: poner en trayecto).
by Thetargos 25 May '06

25 May '06

I have some questions about the text to path[1] tool. 1) Is there a way to control where will the text be placed after you run this tool? For instance, I draw a stroke, write my text, then select the two elements and go to menu text->text to path, then the text follows the stroke (I assume from the 'fill side'). However, if wanted to place the text in a paticular part or segment of the stroke, how would I do it? (a not so elegant solution that occurs to me is using empty spaces by placing tabs or the like with the text tool). 2) Is there a way to make the text "adapt" when I move the text element along the course of the stroke to that of the stroke? I don't know if I made much sense there, but imagine a winding line, when I place the text in the path, what it will do is place the text at the begining of the line (or strarting point, I assume), so if I move the text along the line, it retains the 'shape' of the starting segment of the line, and does not adapt to that of the other segments of the line through its course, is there a way to attain this? Is it a thought of feature or is it simply not possible to do? Thanks in advance, and thank you VERY much for this incredible app, Inkscape is, keep up the good work! [1] I am not sure that is the name in the English version of Inkscape, as I use a spanish session, my Inkscape is in Spanish, and the name of the tool in Spanish is "poner en trayecto".

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Object group origins / anchor points, and subgrids
by unknown＠example.com 24 May '06

24 May '06

Hi, I've been using Inkscape to draw some circuit and block diagrams. This has involved a lot of grid and snap use, and a few times I've thought, wouldn't it be great if I could do 'x'... I'm new to Inkscape, so there may be ways to do these things that I don't know about.....if there are, great, please let me know! So, wouldn't it be great if... * You could define an origin/anchor point for a group, so only that point will snap to the grid....this would mean your circuit symbols and blocks would always line up with their connecting lines. * You could set different grid settings for groups, so that you can do fine detail editing to your symbols, without having to reduce/increase the grid settings every time. (Also some shortcuts to automatically reduce/increase the grid spacing x5 or x10 would probably be useful, and maybe they should also zoom too...........are shortcuts configurable enough already to be able to do this?) One other cosmetic thing I noticed was that all the dialogs were different sizes (on my Windows Inkscape 0.43 at least). It would be nice if they had the same widths or heights so they could be lined up tidly around the sides of the main Inkscape window. Best regards, Ken

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