November 2007 - Inkscape Users

Clipping?
by Jim Ford 09 Nov '07

09 Nov '07

I'm finding trouble getting to grips with clipping! Say I have two lines crossing near their ends and I want to cut the 'loose' ends off. If I then draw around a piece of line I want trimming, select the line to be trimmed and the clipping path object, and then do Object -> Clip, everything _other_ than the bit I want trimmed disappears! Is this the way it should work? I have the feeling that I'm missing the point regarding clipping (and the docs aren't very clear)! Jim Ford

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about constraining movement, rotation and scaling
by Albert Cardona 08 Nov '07

08 Nov '07

Hi Inkscapers, I read in the manual that one can make 50% and 200% scaled objects, as well as scale up and down by 2 pixels. But: can one constrain the finess of the scaling the same way one can in Blender? That is: - hold control to scale up/down modifying only the first decimal, all other decimals to zero - hold control and shift to do the same for the second decimal. Such ease in precision constraining would be very useful for CAD-like accurate graphics. Albert -- Albert Cardona http://www.mcdb.ucla.edu/Research/Hartenstein/acardona

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Online vectorizing application
by jiho 08 Nov '07

08 Nov '07

Hello everyone, I just found out about this app developed at Stanford: http://vectormagic.stanford.edu/ which offers high quality bitmap vectorization/tracing through and online interface. There is a comparison of its output with Adobe and Corel's ones. The good part is that Inkscape's trace (well Potrace one actually) is already _way_ better than those two ;) However, VectorMagic takes it even a step higher. Their output is really nice. For comparison purposes I created a file with their test images, Inkscape's trace and VectorMagic trace: http://jo.irisson.free.fr/dropbox/inkscape/VectorMagicTests.svgz Bear in mind that their second image is hand tweaked in the middle of the tracing process and that mine are probably not the best Inkscape/ Potrace can do. I tried to tweak Potrace's parameters the best I could but I am no expert. Be that as it may, their output is still superior, particularly on the first image. Since it is developed in a university lab I wonder how they would license it. Maybe getting them a bit exited about Inkscape would incline them toward putting their code under a license liberal enough for Inkscape to use it. I did not contact them but I think it would be a good thing if someone more officially involved in Inkscape contacted them and discussed a possible collaboration, or at least pointed them to the traces Inkscape/Potrace can produce. I would love to see a fifth column on their comparison page with Inkscape kicking Adobe and Corel's a.... ;) Anyway, even currently their tracing service can be very useful to Inkscape users (they export SVG!). JiHO --- http://jo.irisson.free.fr/

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Latest autopackages not working
by Matt Jordan 08 Nov '07

08 Nov '07

Hello, At the beginning of September, I decided to start trying out the autopackage bleeding edge Inkscape. Oddly, the autopackage supply immediately went dry for almost two months, but lately it's been flowing again. Only problem is that the last two packages have failed for me with this error: inkscape: error while loading shared libraries: libMagick++.so.9: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory I'm on Ubuntu Gutsy (7.10). I've rolled back to the Oct 27 autopackage to get a working copy. Matt

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KDE 4 and Inkscape
by momo 07 Nov '07

07 Nov '07

It looks like KDE 4 interface is beeing designed in Inkscape (at least some of it) Screenshot: http://www.tuxjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/cbj12.png taken from http://www.tuxjournal.net/?p=791 Nice! Molumen

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How to 'bind' a bitmap pattern into the svg file
by Richard Querin 07 Nov '07

07 Nov '07

Hi, I've imported a bitmap file into Inkscape, converted it into a pattern and deleted the original bitmap object. I then created a polygon and used the pattern as fill. No problem. But when I emailed the svg to work today the bitmapped fills were lost as they were only linked to the file (and not embedded in it). Is there a way to bind in those bitmap patterns permanently so they travel along with the svg file?

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Non-programming tasks
by Joshua A. Andler 06 Nov '07

06 Nov '07

Hey all, It seems like a good time to discuss non-programming related items given the icon conversation. I figure we can get some thoughts out on the list and work from there. Basically, let's try and free the people who program from the tasks that the rest of us can do. ;) It's common for people to say "well if I could program I'd...", well, if you can't, but want more programming done on inkscape... here's your chance! 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'm willing to fill one of those spots myself. I'll throw together something before the end of the week that talks about the persistent undo history that the MIT students are working on, and link to their page. Bryce, are you even still interested? On top of that, do you have the time? Either way, it is not difficult to find a couple news worthy items per month. Any other takers? Tutorials: Ryan Lerch and myself started to do some tutorial work for this development cycle a while back. I haven't contributed to this for a couple months as it seemed like there were still a number of changes going on at that point (plus a very busy schedule on my end). Luckily, it appears things are slowing down now on both fronts, so it seems like an opportune time to pick this back up. It's good for us to have more tutorials that focus on using features of inkscape (such as the in-progress clipping/masking/patterns tutorial), rather than tutorials for doing a particular task (easter egg). Do we have any volunteers to help us with tutorial writing/updating? Current discussion and drafts can be found at: http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/TutorialUpdates-0.46 Also, as for tutorial localization and to attempt simplifying our files and the process for translators, I know there was discussion in the past about po2xml. Can anyone enlighten me on if this has change has been done? I've not updated my checkout of the tutorials in quite a while. If not, is this a huge task? Will there be any changes in formatting or the process for tutorial writers? Screenshots: Okay, do we think that artsy screenshots are in order yet? I have one that utilizes a number of filters, but a key piece of filter rendering is not correct (it's using turbulence). I also have an in-progress one that I'm using some filters on, but more importantly going to town with live path effects. Curve stitching is turning out to be my favorite feature in this dev cycle. :) The About screen: I just want to follow up on this. I know we're most likely not ready to go for it yet (as there are a number of filter bugs remaining). But I am just wondering if we think we're getting closer. Also, did Jon Phillips want to host this via ocal or create? Or are we going deviantART again? Just want to coordinate. Bugs & Feature Requests: Another area that generally needs attention is our bug and rfe trackers. It is always a big help if people can go through bug reports & feature requests and try to close duplicates, reproduce bugs, ask for more information where necessary, etc. Unfortunately, people submit items without searching the trackers first, so duplicates are quite common. Also, it's common that people will file a report and the issue is resolved in a development cycle, but they never come back to say that the issue has been fixed for them. Another common issue is anonymous bug reports. These get reported and never followed up on by the original poster as there is no way for us to contact them (these are fairly common to get fixed, but we don't get confirmation from those people). Anyone interested in helping with these that doesn't have access, please let us know. Thank you all for your time. -Josh P.S. Unrelated, is the 3d box tool not going to be activated for the next release?

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Live path effects not working?
by Denís Fernández Cabrera 05 Nov '07

05 Nov '07

Hello, people. I have just installed the lastest snapshot of Inkscape from the CVS, and it looks very promising (although I am not quite satisfied with the docked windows). I am trying to follow the steps listed in: http://inkscape.org/screenshots/gallery/inkscape-0.46-lpe-pathalongpath.png I get to the point where the fish is attached to the skeleton path, but despite the fact I can "edit on canvas" it, whenever I cease editing the fish, it disappears, only the skeleton remaining visible. The fish is still there, though, because I can edit it again. I will attach a sample SVG. -- Denís Fernández Cabrera mailto://denis@...2126... http://gatonegro.ceibes.org

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Error trying to compile current Inkscape snapshot.
by Denís Fernández Cabrera 05 Nov '07

05 Nov '07

Hello people, When I try to compile the current Inkscape snapshot, as per: http://inkscape.modevia.com/svn-snap/?M=D ...I get the following error: <begin code> (...) Making all in po make[2]: Entrando no directorio `/home/denis/src/inkscape-16424/po' file=`echo am | sed 's,.*/,,'`.gmo \ && rm -f $file && no -o $file am.po /bin/sh: line 1: no: command not found make[2]: *** [am.gmo] Erro 127 make[2]: Saíndo do directorio `/home/denis/src/inkscape-16424/po' make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Erro 1 make[1]: Saíndo do directorio `/home/denis/src/inkscape-16424' make: *** [all] Erro 2 denis@...2285...:~/src/inkscape-16424$ <end code> >From what I have seen through the files that the compilation has generated sofar, Inkscape did compile successfully, and it is even runnable locally (but, of course, not installable, because it throws out this very same error). The error seems to be something related to language files (that is what those .po files are, correct?), but I am unsure on how to fix it or avoid it. Could anyone help? Thanks in advance, Denís. -- Denís Fernández Cabrera mailto://denis@...2126... http://gatonegro.ceibes.org

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setting background to white
by Paul Tremblay 04 Nov '07

04 Nov '07

I have tried setting the background color to white in the document preferences, but when I export an SVG document to PNG (or convert it to other formats), it still prints out as one black image. I have to import the image into another program like Gimp to get rid of the background so I can print the document. How do I make a transparent background in Inkscape? Paul

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