October 2007 - Inkscape Users

Inkscape and digitizers
by Alex 09 Oct '07

09 Oct '07

Hello everyone, I have been using Inkscape for quite some time, and I admire this tool. I am not a professional artist, but I often use it for small charts or simple drawings; and to extend my capabilities, I purchased a digitizer. On the Windows version of Inkscape, the digitizer is detected, everything works as expected, except one detail: I cannot use my mouse to do anything but select a new tool or change options in the GUI. I am unable to edit the image itself using the mouse, unless I disable the digitizer. For instance, if I press F1, the selector tool is becoming active, but when I click on an object on the canvas itself - nothing happens; I can only select objects with the digitizer's pen. I haven't found a setting in Inkscape to alter this behaviour (v.0.45.1, built in March 2007). Is this normal behaviour? I find it quite counter-intuitive, because I became quite efficient with using my laptop's touchpad to manipulate objects - and now I cannot do that anymore. Can someone shed some light on the subject? I am also running Inkscape on a Fedora Linux desktop; in that case the digitizer is not detected by Inkscape (nor GIMP), although the driver seems to be installed properly and I can see events coming from the digitizer when I press something on it. The device in question is a Genius MousePen 8x6, with this driver: http://www.stud.fit.vutbr.cz/~xhorak28/index.php?page=WizardPen_Driver Can someone provide any advice about this matter? Alex

4 4

Re: [Inkscape-user] [Inkscape-devel] contribute to graphics research!
by bulia byak 08 Oct '07

08 Oct '07

On 10/7/07, Joshua Blocher <verbalshadow@...155...> wrote: > Almlost all I have to say is it looks awesome! > Unfortunately, since i don't have Windows installed i can't test this. > Since Inkscape is multi-platform program, is there any chance of > getting the source posted on your web page? Actually, as far as I understand it, GPL obliges them to post the source for their version. But I think what we are most interested in is not simply getting the source but getting new active contributors to the development :) -- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org

2 1

Problems with query on texts
by Alexander Bonivento 08 Oct '07

08 Oct '07

Hello. I need to get the geomtery of a text element. Please cosider the following code: ------------ <svg width="26in" height="16in" viewBox="0 0 26 16" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xml:space="preserve" shape-rendering="geometricPrecision" text-rendering="geometricPrecision" image-rendering="optimizeQuality" fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <rect id="textbbox_2_check" x="5.3733333333333" y="11.31" width="15.773333333333" height="2.2966666666667" style="fill: none; stroke: #000000; stroke-width: 0.01" /> <text id="text_2_check" transform="translate(0,0)" style=" text-anchor:start; font-size: 1; font-family: Arial; fill: #000000; fill-opacity: 1; stroke: none;">Text Line 1</text> </svg> ------------ As you can see, there is a simple text and a rect. What i need to do is "fit" the text inside that rect. To do this, i use this file (which is a temp file) to query width and height in order to obtain values to apply the correct scale transforms over it. The problem is that it seems texts are not parsed correctly at all. As far as i know, SVG user units should be 90 for 1 inch. So, doing [query-result]/90 gives me the inches value. Here, the list of query commands performed on both text and rect elements. Below each command, i wrote 3 numbers: [query-result] - [query-result]/90 - inkscape (gui) shown inches value inkscape -I "text_2_check" -W test.svg 419.81271 - 4.6645856666666666666666666666667 - 5.042 /usr/bin/inkscape -I "text_2_check" -H test.svg 87.39 - 0.971 - 0.730 /usr/bin/inkscape -I "textbbox_2_check" -W test.svg 1420.5 - 15.783333333333333333333333333333 - 15.783 /usr/bin/inkscape -I "textbbox_2_check" -H test.svg 207.6 - 2.3066666666666666666666666666667 - 2.307 As you can see, the "textbbox_2_check" values are correct, and query/gui values are equal. But "text_2_check" values are completely different... Why? Is there a way to get the correct width/height of a text element? I really need this in order to make the correct "fitting" scaleratio, but i'm completely lost here. Can anyone help? Thanx in advance. Alex

3 5

contribute to graphics research!
by Sara Su 07 Oct '07

07 Oct '07

Hello inkscape-users, I am a graduate student in the Computer Graphics Group at MIT, and we are researching ways to visualize the editing history of graphical documents. We want to test our software prototype (built on Inkscape) on a diverse sample of illustrations, and we need your help! Please see our webpage for details: http://csail.mit.edu/~sarasu/history If you could spare 10 minutes, we would be grateful for your help. Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions regarding this work. We will keep you posted on cool features (e.g. selective undo) that grow out of it. Thanks in advance! Sara

2 1

Inkscape has a default theme on OS X
by jiho 04 Oct '07

04 Oct '07

Hello everyone, As of revision 16000 (yes I like round numbers, I think I also did commit number 15000!), development versions of Inkscape have a default GTK theme on OS X (no more of these ugly dark grey windows!) It is probably impossible for GTK to reproduce Aqua exactly, hence the theme does not aim at being an Aqua clone as other themes tried (and in my opinion, did not succeed). It rather tries to "fit" correctly with the rest of the interface. The theme is based on Clearlooks-Quicksilver which already features light gray colors, menu and text highlights and a smooth 3D feel. Further improvements were added such as: - aqua scroll-bars - Lucida Grande font - highlight and scroll-bars colors that use Mac OS X Appearance settings (aqua vs graphite, or blue vs grey vs graphite vs...). However you need to restart Inkscape for colors to change after you changed them in OS X preferences. In addition, Inkscape won't override the local theme preferences you may have in a ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file (so if you want to see the theme in Inkscape, temporarily move this file somewhere else). Some screenshots: - With OS X blue and blue highlights (OS X default) http://jo.irisson.free.fr/dropbox/inkscape/inkscape_blue.png - With OS X blue and orange highlights (subtle changes) http://jo.irisson.free.fr/dropbox/inkscape/inkscape_blue_orange.png - With OS X graphite and silver highlights (my personal favorite) http://jo.irisson.free.fr/dropbox/inkscape/inkscape_graphite.png - And the old look, just to compare http://jo.irisson.free.fr/dropbox/inkscape/inkscape_old_look.png There is probably room for improvement: the scroll-bars tips are not perfect, the text and background highlight colors can be differentiated (as in OS X), the icons are still gnome defaults and so on and so forth... but well I hope that this is at least better than before. NB: there is a devel build, on modevia, for you to test this out: http://inkscape.modevia.com/macosx-snap/?C=M;O=D sorry, only for Intel... the direct link is http://inkscape.modevia.com/macosx-snap/Inkscape-16002-i386.dmg Cheers, JiHO --- http://jo.irisson.free.fr/

6 8

Styles Panel(Like Freehand)
by seth friedman 04 Oct '07

04 Oct '07

Hey everyone, Has there been any work to create a styles panel similar to what freehand has? That would be so useful. Seth

1 0

CMS display adjustment change
by Jon A. Cruz 04 Oct '07

04 Oct '07

Hi, I just checked in an update with icc color profiles and setting display calibration. Now upon startup latest SVN Inkscape will search the standard locations for profiles ~/.color/icc /usr/local/share/color/icc /usr/share/color/icc Then under the misc preferences you'll have a checkbox for enabling display calibration, along with a drop-down combo box that allows you to pick between all RGB display profiles found. Give it a rundown and let me know how it's behaving. Thanks.

2 4

Exported gradients and Adobe Reader 8
by Stéphane Mottelet 02 Oct '07

02 Oct '07

Hi all, Last year, I have used Inkscape to make a nice A0 poster with gradients. I exported the original svg to pdf and sent the file to my favorite printing shop. One year later, when I open the pdf file, I don't see the gradients any more. Of course when I open the svg file with Inkscape 0.45 the gradients are here. So my question is : if I ask them to reprint the file (I don't know what is the application they use) will the gradients be printed ? Is there a problem in the way that Inkscape export the gradients which could be broken by recent versions pdf software ? Thanks for your help S.

2 1

Keep Dialogs Open
by D. Jones 02 Oct '07

02 Oct '07

How do I make the dialogs always stay open so that when I close inkscape and then reopen inkscape the same dialogs that I was using are reopen with a new instance of inkscape. I would like to apply this to the stable and the developement version. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Need a vacation? Get great deals to amazing places on Yahoo! Travel. http://travel.yahoo.com/

2 1

Technical drawing / snapping
by A.J. Carter 01 Oct '07

01 Oct '07

I'm really pleased to have discovered inkscape recently and it's fantastic that it's free and open source. In the past I've used autodesk autosketch (a cut down version of autocad) for "non-cad" scientific/technical illustrations for publication in papers etc. One feature which I find makes drawing easier is the ability to set snapping constraints, like "endpoint", "midpoint", "centre", "tangent" when both drawing an element and selecting to transform an existing element (the cursor jumps and changes shape to indicate which snap is currently in action). I wondered if any similar feature exists in inkscape, or whether it might be considered for the roadmap? Thanks

7 13