October 2007 - Inkscape Users

Re: [Inkscape-user] [Inkscape-devel] Non-programming tasks
by Joshua A. Andler 30 Oct '07

30 Oct '07

Joshua Facemyer / Impressus Art wrote: > Joshua A. Andler wrote: >> The website: >> Realistically, we should probably have 2 or 3 volunteers that will agree >> to submit at least 1 news item per month. Bryce shouldn't be the only >> one. ;) It seems like it should be a fairly minimal commitment. >> > I've been planning on helping with this, I guess now's a good time to > start :) Great to hear! > I've just reviewed website editing on the wiki - anything else I should > know? Not really. Perhaps for now, submitting news blurbs to Bryce (as he mentioned) is a good way to get rolling with it. > Also, are there any standards for what is considered Inkscape news? Well, it involving Inkscape is a good start. ;) Honestly, if you see any inkscape related articles anywhere, anything interesting going on in inkscape development, etc. > Finally, if anyone is interested in passing an idea along to me, I'll be > happy to write it up and post it. I have a few. Quickly though, to address your question to Bulia. Writing a summary about any of the new features he implemented is good, but copying from the release notes isn't the way to achieve it... that's partly due to you being able to directly link to that part of the release notes. :) I'd say the new color modification with click-dragging is news worthy, the refinements to the gradient tool are news worthy, and honestly there is a ton of stuff that hasn't been touched on via the website. If you've followed development, I'm sure you have your own list going. As I mentioned earlier, I plan on doing up a summary of the persistent undo work going on. Additionally, today we got official word that we will have a booth at SCaLE again this year, so I will write up an announcement on that as well. -Josh

1 0

NEW: color gestures
by bulia byak 30 Oct '07

30 Oct '07

Color gestures A new method for quick and precise adjustment of colors is added in this version: color gestures. It works on the selected objects by grabbing the fill or stroke color swatch in the selected style indicator (on the left of the statusbar) and dragging it in various directions as described below. Note that this only works when the swatch displays a flat color; it does not work for a swatch showing "None", "N/A", or displaying a gradient (although you can select one or more gradient stops in Gradient tool and color-adjust them by color gestures just as you would do for objects). Color gestures can work on fill or stroke, depending on which swatch in the selected color indicator you drag. Color gestures work in HSL color space. Dragging without any keyboard modifiers adjusts the hue channel, dragging with Shift adjusts saturation, and dragging with Ctrl adjusts lightness. The adjustment is done by rotating the color swatch away from the original direction which is assumed to be NE at 45 degrees (i.e. from the swatch into the document window). That is, once you click and drag the color swatch, imagine a line going from the point where you clicked in the NE direction, across the entire Inkscape window. By dragging below or to the right of that line, you decrease the corresponding color channel, to the minimum at the lower edge of the window; by dragging it above or to the left, you increase it, to the maximum at the left edge of the window. If you hover your mouse exactly over the 45 degrees line, the change will be zero. Note that you can easily vary the precision of your adjustment. If you drag close enough to the swatch, each small movement results in a big change of the color. If you need a finer adjustment, just drag farther away from the swatch, towards the center of the Inkscape window or even to its upper right corner, where minute movements will produce very small changes in the color. In fact, this method gives you more color precision than even the color wheel in the Fill and Stroke dialog, unless you expand that dialog to fill the entire screen which is rarely practical. Watch the statusbar which will indicate, as you drag, the channel you are adjusting, the original value of that channel, and the new value. You can switch channels while you drag. That is, you don't need to restart dragging from the swatch if you want to adjust all three channels - you can do it in one drag, pressing and releasing Ctrl and Shift as necessary. Note that when you change the keyboard modifiers during drag, the position of the zero-change line is temporarily set to the current position of the mouse; this is done so that there are no sudden changes in color if you are switching modifiers away from the original 45-degree line. For example, you can select a green rectangle and first turn it into greenish-blue by dragging away from the Fill swatch and slightly above the 45 degrees line; then, without releasing the mouse, press Ctrl and drag a bit to the right to darken the color; then press Shift, release Ctrl, and adjust saturation. You can press or release Ctrl and Shift as many times as necessary during a single drag; when you are finally satisfied with your color, release the mouse to commit the change. Apart from precise adjustments, you can use color gestures to quickly perform common color transformations: * Ctrl+drag the swatch to the right and down to color all selected objects black. * Ctrl+drag the swatch upwards and to the left to color all selected objects white. * Shift+drag the swatch to the right and down to desaturate the color of selected objects. * Shift+drag the swatch upwards and to the left to maximize saturation of the color of selected objects. Note that when several objects or gradient stops with different colors are selected, the selected style indicator shows their averaged color. If you adjust that color by gesturing, the changed color will be assigned back to all selected objects/stops, in effect eliminating any difference between them. If you want to adjust many different-colored objects preserving their relative differences, use the color modes of the Tweak tool or color adjustment extension effects. This new technique requires some getting used to, but once you get the idea it is quite convenient, fast, and precise. -- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org

15 35

feature request: embedded SVG fonts
by Paul Tremblay 30 Oct '07

30 Oct '07

Inkscape is a great tool that has helped me create fonts. Thanks! One feature it does lack is the ability to read files with embedded fonts. The SVG standard states that a SVG document can have fonts embedded in it. An SVG font, in XML, goes at the beginning of the document in the <defs> element. You could created the craziest font, embed it in SVG, and any SVG viewer should be able to read that font, regardless if the font exists independent of the document. As many of you have probably experienced, getting a font to appear in a document can prove a frustrating experience. Your document looks perfect on your computer, but when you send it as an email you see boxes where letters should be. Getting a font to work in TeX is virtually impossible. So, the embedding of SVG fonts strikes me as an excellent feature. Another advantage to SVG fonts besides their ability to reside in the document is their simplicity. I can open any SVG font and edit it with a text editor. I can set the kerning values manually. Overall, SVG fonts could greatly solve the font headache. The only drawback of SVG fonts is their lack of hinting. Good fonts need hinting to appear nice in small print (or so I am told). However, I have read that the next specification of SVG fonts will include hinting. Unfortunately, most viewers do not follow the standard and read embedded SVG fonts. I have read that Adobe's plugin does, but I have never been able to get this plugin to work. Inkscape also does not have this ability. It would be nice for Inscape to include this feature, so that users could see what a font looks like without having to convert it to another format (TTF) and install it on their systems. The feature would make Inscape more consistent with SVG standards. And it would perhaps push other viewers to also see embedded fonts. Paul

1 0

Problems with save / open
by Johan Vromans 29 Oct '07

29 Oct '07

Hi, I often use compressed SVG (SVGZ) as storage format. When I open drawing.svgz and do a Save As..., it shows SVG as the default format to save in. If I press Save, I get a file drawing.sgvz.svg. If I subsequently save as EPS, I get a file drawing.svgz.svg.eps, and so on. Should this be considered a minor bug? -- Johan

1 0

MacBook + Parallel + Linux = Wacom + Sensitivity?
by Alberto Simões 27 Oct '07

27 Oct '07

Hi I am still with a PowerBook G4, but I might buy a new macbook soon. My question is: we know that Apple XInput does not support sensitivity for wacom devices. My question is, anybody tried to run inkscape under parallel (linux or windows), and knows if running it that way, sensitivity works? Cheers Alberto -- Alberto Simões

3 4

What's the problem with DXF files?
by Jim Ford 27 Oct '07

27 Oct '07

I'll start by saying that I don't know much about vector graphics and the different file formats! As DXF, SVG and many other vector graphic files are ASCII text files, isn't it just a matter of parsing them with (say) Perl scripts to convert one format to another? I've seen C++ and Python mentioned in connection with creating DXF files, but isn't Perl better suited to the manipulation of text files? Obviously there are major problems that I'm not aware of! I'd be interested if anyone can briefly sketch them out for me. Jim Ford

2 1

problems with installing on Mac OS 10.39
by Paul Tremblay 27 Oct '07

27 Oct '07

I downloaded the binary of Inkscape and when I doubled clicked on it, nothing happened. I opened the binary from a terminal and got this message: dyld: /Volumes/Inkscape/Inkscape.app/Contents/Resources/bin/inkscape-bin can't open library: /usr/X11R6/lib/libXinerama.1.dylib I do have X11 installed as well as the developer tools. When I tried to build from source, I typed ./configure XML::Parser... configure: error: XML::Parser perl module is required for intltool So I downloaded the XML::Parser and tried to install that, but was told I needed expat. So I downloaded and built expat, and then tried to install XML::Parser, and had no problems. But when I tried to run ./configure again, I got the same message as before, so configure can't find the XML::Parser library. thanks Paul

2 3

Configuration file????
by Glenn, Skeeter 26 Oct '07

26 Oct '07

Excuse my ignorance please. I want my users to use the same color blue box boarder for all boxes they create. I know that I can set that color on my own machine and it will stay until I change it. What file controls that? I want to install that same file into my users inkscape so we are all creating the same blue boarder. Sometimes I just wish someone who understands me would tell me what I mean Skeeter Glenn System Administrator and Analyst for Organization - CEDRS & BCA Computer Aided Engrg Systems Group - CADDStation, EWITS/PITS, EE Standards, M&PT and PSDS/PSDD Applications Support. Contact Info: Work Cell: 206-963-0135 E-Mail: skeeter.glenn@...2319... Telecommuting Info: On Site: Wednesday and Thursday (Auburn Hotel 17-70.1) Virtual Days: Monday, Tuesday and Friday Virtual Office: 206-963-0135

7 11

lines with arrowheads lost to adobe illustrator
by Anthony Tekatch 26 Oct '07

26 Oct '07

When importing Inkscape SVG files into Adobe Illustrator, the lines that have arrowheads get brought in as arrowheads only with no lines. Is there any work-around? TIA

3 3

text to Adobe Illustrator fix
by Anthony Tekatch 25 Oct '07

25 Oct '07

I had a problem making text in Inkscape that was not imported into Adobe Illustrator as an SVG file. The text was not imported at all. My solution was to select all text in Inkscape, and then: Text:Convert to Text

2 1