- Inkscape Users - Inkscape Mailman

inkscape covered in PCWorld.com blog post
by Phil Shapiro 14 Aug '07

14 Aug '07

hi inkscape enthusiasts, last week i started blogging for PCWorld.com under their new Community Voices group blog. this afternoon i blogged i about why inkscape is the best thing since sliced bread. see http://tinyurl.com/25ysyy i hope this blog posting brings inkscape joy into more people's lives. phil shapiro washington dc i'll be adding a link to the digg submission at the end of the blog posting -- after someone else submits this to digg. -- Phil Shapiro pshapiro@...2324... http://www.his.com/pshapiro/briefbio.html http://philsrssfeed.blogspot.com http://www.his.com/pshapiro/stories.menu.html "Wisdom starts with wonder." - Socrates "Learning happens through gentleness."

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[resolved] Problem saving a file in a "usable" format
by Colin Wilson 13 Aug '07

13 Aug '07

I managed to find someone with an old version of Adobe Illustrator, and simply loaded "my" EPS file and saved as EPS again - in the process turning it from a 70k file to a 770k file... Thanks again for all the help, it was very much appreciated ! :-)

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Win32 Builds
by Docsonic 13 Aug '07

13 Aug '07

My apologies in advance if this is not the correct mailing list for this question- Is there an alternative download location for the Win32 builds? The last 2 builds have been empty and I am dying to check out the new tweak tool! I have tried (unsuccessfully) to build on WinXP, Debian Linux and cross-compile for Win32 so I have been eagerly waiting all weekend for the new nightly builds and the suspense is killing me :-) Thanks, Tony

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Problem saving a file in a "usable" format
by Colin Wilson 13 Aug '07

13 Aug '07

Not sure if anyone can help with this (and apologies if it's been covered elsewhere, i'm not sure where to start looking), but... I need to get some simple artwork (vectorised silhouette of a tree, with "flowed" text in a circle around it) off to a printer for an event in about 3 weeks time - they're supposed to take EPS or PDF files according to their site. A PDF of it exported fine, and can zoom without loss of quality, but they say they can't use it for some reason - their exact wording is "what he needs is a vectorised, editable eps file in black" The EPS I exported won't open again in Inkscape :-} but does open in Photoshop - but upon zooming, it appears to have turned into a bitmap rather than a vector image. Can anyone advise of a way to do what they're asking for ? (i'm an absolute newbie with gfx apps unfortunately) I've uploaded the image as-is to: http://www.phoenixbbs.co.uk/fodp.svg ...just in case someone has a flash of inspiration and fancies doing me a real big favour and emailing a "corrected" image :-} inkscape at phoenixbbs.co.uk would do nicely ! Thanks :-)

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Re: [Inkscape-user] disappearing gradients when moving/scaling
by Carl 11 Aug '07

11 Aug '07

On Friday 10 August 2007 10:40 pm, inkscape-user-request@...2326...net wrote: > > Gradients work fine. However when they are moved or scaled, they > > disappear. I see nothing on the bug tracker about this. > --------------------------- > You just have the "transform gradients" button toggled off in the > selector toolbar. That's the mode in which transforming an object does > not affect the gradients - they stay in the original place. Toggle it > back on and it will work as you expect. > -- > bulia byak > > --------------------------- > Any ideas for reducing this problem? It's becoming a huge FAQ because > people toggle it absent-mindedly and then don't remember doing it > because they don't think it did anything. I don't really have a better > UI idea than what we currently have, though... > -mental I looked for a solution before I posted. I really did. But I didn't see anything in FAQ. It has now been added. This was not a UI flaw for me, mental. I just didn't know what I was doing; Google and Inkscape UI didn't seem to have anything. I don't recall messing with this button. Perhaps it could be defaulted to "on", if it's not already. The fish image is part of the logo for LinuxFest Northwest (linuxfestnorthwest.org), which has been produced by the Bellingham (WA) LUG for 8 years. I gave a presentation on Inkscape to the Bellingham LUG a few weeks ago. It was scheduled 7 - 9, but questions kept it going for another 40 minutes. Excellent application, thanks to the developers and the rest of the community. Carl

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disappearing gradients when moving/scaling
by Carl 11 Aug '07

11 Aug '07

Gradients work fine. However when they are moved or scaled, they disappear. I see nothing on the bug tracker about this. The gradient stop (colors/alpha) information is still available with the Stroke and Fill. The gradient control bars are gone. For an example, there's an SVG image file at www2.vaultechnology.com/CGS/TotemFish.html Thanks for an addictive application! Carl

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NEW: Tweak tool
by bulia byak 09 Aug '07

09 Aug '07

As discussed before, I moved the thinning/thickening functionality into a tool of its own, added two more modes and some controls. For one thing, you don't need Alt anymore :) Attention lib2geom hackers: please consider this a challenge! Can you switch this to using your new lib instead of livarot? Livarot sucks big time with regard to performance and memory leaking (see Known Problems below), and working with it involves way too much black magic which I don't like. What is needed is simple: convert a path to a polygon with a given tolerance, move the points of the polygon according to some simple algorithm, and convert the result back to path with some simplification. If someone switches this to lib2geom and it works good, I will consider adding more modes. Otherwise, I'm afraid I may have to remove the Roughen mode before the release because it's really not working reliably enough (often locks the path with the "directed eulerian" warning, caused by too small subpaths). Now for the official announcement: Tweak tool The Tweak tool is an exciting new way to edit paths. Unlike the Node tool, you don't need to worry about where the nodes of a path are and how to manipulate them to obtain the shape you want. Instead, you just act on any part of a path using the tool's "brush" in order to bend, twist, or stretch that part, and the path will respond smoothly and naturally regardless of where its nodes lie. While not very useful for technical applications such as schemes or diagrams, this tool will be indispensable for artistic uses of Inkscape - cartoons, drawings, sketches, anime, etc. This new functionality is somewhat similar to the "Pucker", "Bloat", and other similar tools in the latest versions of Adobe Illustrator, except that in Inkscape it works softer and is easier to control. The area of the tool's action (its "brush") is visualized as an orange-colored circular outline centered at your mouse pointer. However, that area actually has no sharp boundaries; the power of the tool's action falls off gradually, following a smooth bell-shaped profile. This makes the tool act softly and smoothly, and the paths respond as if they are made of soft jelly. The tool will work on any number of selected objects; for example, you can select all (Ctrl+A) and "smear" your entire drawing by Push. If applied to a shape or text, the tool converts them to paths automatically. You can also apply it to groups of objects. If you're trying to use it without anything selected, it will remind you to select some objects by a statusbar message. Width The width of the tool's brush can be changed by the Width control in the tool's controls bar above the canvas (in the range from 1 to 100). You can also change width by Left and Right arrow keys (same as in the Calligraphy tool) at any time (including during action). Also like in Calligraphy tool, the visible width of the brush is independent of zoom; simply zooming in or out is often easier than adjusting the width if you want to cover a smaller or larger area of the drawing. Force The next control is Force which adjusts the power of the action (in the range from 1 to 100). You can also change width by Up and Down arrow keys at any time (including during action). Think of it as the force of pressure you apply to the paths you tweak. If you have a pressure-sensitive tablet and the "Use pressure" button on the right-hand end of the controls bar is on, then the force will also depend on how hard you actually press your pen into your tablet, varying in the range from zero to whatever you set in the Force control. If all you have is a mouse, then the force will be constant but still settable by the Force control. The force of the effect also depends on zoom (or in other words, it stays the same when measured by screen pixels, same as when you move and object by Alt+arrow keys). Fidelity Any tweaking of a path slightly distorts the entire path, including even those parts that you didn't touch. These distortions are similar to those that a Simplify command produces. The Fidelity value (also in the range from 1 to 100, default is 50) allows you to control the amount of these distortions. With a higher fidelity, the distortions are less noticeable, but the path may end up having a lot of nodes which blows up the SVG size and slows down Inkscape. The best value of Fidelity depends on the nature of your artwork. If you're sculpting an amorphous blob, you can do with low fidelity of about 20. If, however, you are pushing or blowing a text string (as a single path) and want the letters outside the distorted area to remain crisp and clean, you will need to raise fidelity to 80 or more. Modes There are currently four modes in the Tweak tool: Push, Melt, Blow, and Roughen. * This default mode of the tool, Push, simply displaces the part of the path under the cursor in the direction of the drag. The path behaves like soft jelly, bending and bulging smoothly and naturally. It's an easy way to produce various irregular, lifelike, handmade-looking shapes starting from something as simple as an ellipse or a calligraphic stroke. For parallel-stroke hatching (engraving) done in the Calligraphy tool, pushing is an easy way to bend, pinch, or curve the entire hatching uniformly. * The Melt and Blow are two opposite modes that move each point of a path in a direction perpendicular to the path's surface at the point, either inwards (Melt) or outwards (Blow). This is similar to the Inset and Outset commands, except that the Tweak tool can act on a part of a path instead of the whole path. For example, the visible lightness/darkness of an engraving hatching may not exactly correspond to your artistic intention. Also, the ends of strokes are often far from ideal - they may be too blunt or have unsightly bends or blobs. This is where the Tweak tool may help. Select all the strokes in a hatching pattern and apply a light Melt action where you want the lines to become thinner (and the hatching to become lighter), up until total disappearance. If you press hard, melting works as an eraser, so you can easily clean the strokes' ends in a hatching to making them thin, sharp, and uniform. Conversely, applying Blow makes strokes wider (i.e. the hatching becomes darker). Of course, melting and blowing are useful not only for calligraphic strokes. Same as with Push, with Melt and Blow you can sculpt any path, spawning smooth treacle-like appendages with Blowing and carving holes with Melting. Unlike the "node sculpting" mode in the Node tool, however, this does not require adding new nodes, selecting any nodes, or even being aware of nodes at all. * The Roughen mode does exactly this: roughens the edge of the path without changing its overall shape. Slight roughening simply makes the edge crooked and uneven; strong roughening tears and explodes the edge into random blobs and splotches. Note that this operation, especially with high Fidelity, adds a lot of nodes which increases the size of your SVG document and may slow down Inkscape considerably. In particular, pushing/melting/blowing of a roughened path becomes much slower and more difficult, so it's recommended to finalize the overall shape of a path first and roughen it, if necessary, only as the final step. Keyboard shortcuts * W, Alt+F2: switch to the Tweak tool * Shift+P: switch to the Push mode * Shift+M: switch to the Melt mode * Shift+B: switch to the Blow mode * Shift+R: switch to the Roughen mode * Left, Right: change width * Up, Down: change force * mouse drag: act on selected path in the current mode * Ctrl+mouse drag: temporarily switch to Melt (while Ctrl is down) * Shift+Ctrl+mouse drag: temporarily switch to Blow (while Shift+Ctrl is down) Known problems Known problems with the Tweak tool: 1. it is rather slow; 2. it quickly eats memory; and 3. it is sometimes buggy - thin calligraphic strokes may suddenly disappear or change their shape drastically as you're melting or blowing them. For (3), it helps to increase Fidelity. Also, you can undo the bad change and try again with less pressure on the pen - if you do your thinning in several light touches instead of one heavy press, usually you will be able to get the desired result without the buggy behavior. Also, sometimes after roughening, further tweaking of a path becomes impossible with this diagnostic: WARNING **: Shape error in ConvertToShape: directedEulerian(a) == false All these problems stem from the livarot library that we use for geometric manipulation of paths. Fortunately, livarot is scheduled for replacement by lib2geom, a new library now in development, so hopefully these issues will be addressed then. -- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org

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How to make zines with open source software workshop
by Tom Lechner 09 Aug '07

09 Aug '07

In case anyone's interested, In Portland Oregon August 12, I will be giving a workshop on How to make zines with open source software, as part of the Portland Zine Symposium: http://www.pdxzines.com With demonstrations, I will cover use of such software as the Gimp, Inkscape, Scribus, Laidout, and more. I will certainly be mentioning various aspects of Inkscape, such as the cool new line tools, techniques of exporting, plus some pitfalls to beware of if one tries to import svg into various other programs. Sunday, August 12, 1-1:30pm Portland State University Ask at the Smith Center Ballroom for the specific room. Tom ------------ http://www.tomlechner.com http://www.laidout.org

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disappearing gradient system details
by Carl 09 Aug '07

09 Aug '07

Apologies for not including in the original. Inkscape 451 from source Mepis Linux 6.0 (using mostly Ubuntu repositories)

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save gradients
by heathenx 08 Aug '07

08 Aug '07

is it possible to save gradients so that when starting a new project i can use them? i figured that all i needed to do was save the gradient in my default.svg or even make a new template but perhaps there is an alternative way. heathenx

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