- Inkscape Users - Inkscape Mailman

The STC Chapter Technical Communications Competitions, Washington DC
by TERRY REECE 01 Sep '07

01 Sep '07

Hi everyone, I have an announcement. Besides being an Inkscape user, I'm also a technical writer. As such, I'm also a member of the Society for Technical Communication (STC), a nonprofit organization. I belong to their Washington, DC Chapter. It just so happens that the DC Chapter of the STC is looking for submissions to their annual Technical Communications Competitions. Actually, there are three competitions in all: Online Communication Technical Art Technical Publications For each competition there are a number of categories in which you can enter your artwork (more than one if you wish). For the Technical Art Competition, there are 17 categories. They range from Mechanical Illustration to Interpretative Illustration to Promotional Materials Design. As you can see, for Inkscape users, this is right up our alley as long as the entry is technical in nature. There are three levels of awards in each category: Distinguished Technical Communication (DTC) Excellence Merit In addition, one DTC winner in each competition wins Best Of Show. So, there are many chances to win. Also, you don't have to be a member of STC or its DC chapter to enter. In fact, you don't even have to live in the US. The chapter frequently receives entries from other countries. The main deal is that they must be written in English. In any case, if you think you have a design, illustration, poster, or other artwork you think is award quality, think about submitting it. You'll get to see what others are doing and receive valuable feedback from our expert judges. You could say that this your chance to grab your fifteen minutes of fame, and have something to brag about back at the office. Entries to the STC Washington, DC Chapter Technical Communications Competitions must be submitted on or before 16 October 2007. For more details, go to the link below <http://www.stcwdc.org/compete.shtml> http://www.stcwdc.org/compete.shtml P.S. All entrants and those interested in seeing the winning entries are invited to an awards banquet on 9 February 2008 in Washington, DC. The banquet will be held at the historic DACOR-Bacon house - a beautiful example of Federalist architecture. The house is outfitted in authentic furnishings of the period when it served as hearth and home to some of the notables of US jurisprudence and politics. (see photos here: <http://www.dacorbacon.org/DACOR/DACOR_MAIN.htm> http://www.dacorbacon.org/DACOR/DACOR_MAIN.htm) See your there, Terry Reece

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Creating Outlines of Strokes Like in Illustrator
by D. Jones 01 Sep '07

01 Sep '07

In illustrator you can create outlines for text instead of stroking it, how do you do this in inkscape. Well actually you stroke the text, but then you can create an outline of the stroke which becomes an object itself is this possible. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better Heartthrob. Get better relationship answers from someone who knows. Yahoo! Answers - Check it out. http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396545433

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Inkscape integration in Mac OS X
by Victor Domingos 31 Aug '07

31 Aug '07

Hi! I just saw an interesting thing in Graphics Planet: http://gimpfoo.de/2007/08/30/using-the-mac-os-x-menubar/ It seems that a better integration between GIMP and Mac OS X is on the way! Does anyone know if this kind of integration is also being developed within Inkscape? That would be a great interface improvement to the Mac version of Inkscape... Victor Domingos (gimping from a sunny Portugal) http://lojamac.com/blog

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NEW: four more modes in Tweak tool
by bulia byak 30 Aug '07

30 Aug '07

Of the four new modes, two are for editing path shapes (Attract and Repel) and two are for coloring objects (Color Paint and Color Jitter) . I also renamed Melt to Shrink and Inflate to Grow as discussed before. * The Attract and Repel modes work by moving each affected point on a path towards (Attract) or from (Repel) the cursor point. In some cases this may look similar to Shrink and Grow, but the difference is that shrinking/growing moves paths perpendicularly to the path in each point, whereas attracting/repelling moves them to or from the cursor regardless of the path shape. These modes are similar to the Pinch effect in ; you can use them for various central-symmetric distortions in parts of your paths. Color-changing modes The Color Paint and Color Jitter modes, unlike the path editing modes, change the colors of objects instead of their shapes. Yet they share enough common features with the path-changing modes to be part of the same tool: These modes also use a circular soft-edged brush controlled by the Width and Force parameters on the Controls bar and affected by the pen pressure (if you have a pressure-sensitive tablet). * Color Paint applies the style of the tool to the selected objects under the brush. The style of the tool is visible in the style swatch at the rightmost end of the tool's control bar; it can be changed by clicking on the color palette or by any other style assignment command, such as Fill and Stroke dialog. (Note: unlike all other tools, in Tweak tool in Color Paint mode you cannot assign style directly to selected objects; any style-setting command changes the tool's style instead.) The fill from the tool's style applies to the fills of the painted objects, and the stroke applies to the strokes. If the tool's style has no fill or no stroke, it won't affect fills or strokes, correspondingly. For example, if you want to color the fills of objects blue but leave their strokes untouched, assign blue fill to the tool's style (just click blue on the palette) but set its stroke to None (middle-click the Stroke swatch in the statusbar). Similarly, master opacity in the tool's style This mode allows you to literally paint over objects, shifting their colors towards the target style of the tool. For example, if you paint with yellow fill over a blue-filled object, the object will become greenish blue, then green, then yellowish green, and end up being exactly the green color you're painting with. This speed of this gradual transition depends on the Force and pen pressure; also, objects touched by the periphery of the brush are less affected than those hit by the brush center. Overall, using this tool is very similar to a soft brush in a raster editor such as Gimp or Photoshop. * Color Jitter mode does not apply any color, but instead jitters (randomizes) the colors of the objects it touches. The force of the action determines how strong is the randomization, i.e. how far the colors deviate from the original values. This mode does not use the tool's style. Both modes work on flat fills and gradients; for gradients, the tool takes into account not only the position of the entire object with gradient, but also the position of each gradient stop relative to the brush. This means that, for example, you can change the blue color only in an object filled with blue-red gradient simply by painting over its blue end with a brush small enough to not touch the red. Channels Color Paint and Color Jitter honor the Channels control. This control comprises the four buttons: H, S, L, and O, which allow you to turn on and off the tool's action on the object's hue, saturation, lightness, and opacity, correspondingly. For example, if you want to raise the saturation of some part of your drawing without changing the hue, select some maximum-saturation color (e.g. pure red) and turn off all Channels buttons except S. Similarly, you can replace the hues without affecting saturation or lightness (only H pressed), or lighten/darken all colors without changing their hues and saturation (only L pressed). Pressing O allows you to apply the master opacity from the tool's style to the master opacity of objects (but not fill or stroke opacity). Usage notes Color painting with Tweak tool is similar, but not exactly analogous to bitmap painting. Even though the tool itself works as a soft brush, it still applies its color to vector objects, which behave as vector objects usually do. For example, if you want to change the tint of the face in your drawing, and if a hand in the drawing is part of the same object as the face, that hand will change its tint too even if it's located far from the point you are painting. (We foresee a "fracture" command in one of the next versions of Inkscape which will help you turn a monolithic object into a mosaic of small fragments that will be then easy to paint with Tweak tool.) Still, even with this limitation, color painting is a novel way of dealing with vector drawings which allows you to quickly and intuitively make adjustments which would be awkward and slow with traditional approach. Drawings containing patterns or scatterings of small independent objects are best suited for color painting with Tweak tool. Examples include: * freehand drawings with Calligraphy pen, consisting of many separate strokes; * gradient meshes imported from Adobe Illustrator files (Inkscape renders these meshes as lattices of small polygons; while there's no direct support for gradient meshes in Inkscape yet, color painting on such lattices is almost as good); * text converted to paths and with Break Apart command applied so that each letter is a separate path; * patterns made with the Tile Clones command; note that you need to unset the fill and/or stroke on the original object and use the Color tab to assign some initial color to the clones - this will make them paintable with the Tweak tool without unlinking. Moreover, color tweaking can be useful for compositions with a few objects or even for single objects. Unlike all other color selection methods, painting with the Tweak tool implements the color mixing metaphor which is much more familiar to traditional artists than RGB sliders or even the color wheel. For example, start with a rectagle of pure blue color; then, pick different colors by Color Paint and apply light touches with minimum Force and minimum pen pressure: add a little green, a little brown, a little yellow, etc. until you have the exact hue you need. Similarly, you can whiten or blacken any hue by admixing white or black. You can also use color tweaking to add a tint, darken/lighten, saturate/desaturate, or color jitter your entire drawing. Just select all in all layers, zoom out, choose a large brush width so it covers all of the drawing, and apply a little color tweaking (with minimum Force) that will therefore affect all visible objects. -- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org

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Another newbie question
by David Gressett 30 Aug '07

30 Aug '07

Situation: I draw a circle, then draw a smaller object superimposed on the circle. Is there a way to move the center of rotation of the smaller object so that it will snap to the center of the circle?

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Newbie question about tiled clones
by David Gressett 30 Aug '07

30 Aug '07

I'm trying to do what should be a simple cloning job and I don't understand the tiled clones dialogue. I need to do something similar to the twelve-stars-in-a-circle described in the Tricks subsection of the Tiling section of the user manual. I need to do the following: I have a circle. Inside the circle I draw an arrow, with the blunt end of the arrow just below the center of the circle and the pointed end of the arrow near the perimeter of the circle, so that the arrow is pointing straight down. I need to clone the arrow twice, so that the final result is three arrows radiating from the center of the circle, evenly spaced at 120 degrees.

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Inkscape is a staff pick at Apple downloads
by jiho 30 Aug '07

30 Aug '07

Hello everyone, Looking for something else I just passed cross this on Apple's site: Inkscape is marked as staff pick by Apple currently. http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/unix_open_source/index_sp.html I don't remember that it was before so that's great news, given that the interface is X11 (which Mac users typically don't like), and not very pretty by default (which mac users usually care much about). However it seems to be a little lower in the most downloaded counts: it was in top 10 and is now 17. http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/unix_open_source/index_top.html But no doubt that the 0.46 release will bring all that up. Congratulations anyway. I've some GTK themes which look OK when integrated with OS X. Now if someone could tell me how to use GTK2_RC_FILES I'll be glad to try and use them in Inkscape. Cheers, JiHO --- http://jo.irisson.free.fr/

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Text Anti-aliasing
by Joseph Pender 29 Aug '07

29 Aug '07

Hello! In Adobe Photoshop, you are able to adjust the text anti-aliasing level (strong, smooth, crisp, none). Useful for simulating web page designs (in which live text is not AAed). Does something like that exsist in Inkscape now or under construction in any future build? (if GIMP or other programs can do it, feel free to mention that to me) Thank you!

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Linux system for Inkscape
by John Culleton 29 Aug '07

29 Aug '07

I use Slackware but Slack doesn't come with certain necessary libraries. So I am going to set up another partition just for Inkscape, Scribus etc. I can go Debian, Ubuntu, Mandriva, whatever. What distribution would be best for Inkscape 46, considering library requirements? -- John Culleton http://wexfordpress.com http://wexfordpress.com/tex/shortlist.pdf

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Ruler Preferences
by Rob Lowe 29 Aug '07

29 Aug '07

By default, the rulers on an Inkscape document have an origin in the lower-left hand corner. Is there a setting or pref or config line I can change to move the origin to the upper left-hand corner?

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