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Automating Inkscape
by ilya y. rostovtsev 15 Nov '06

15 Nov '06

Hello: I've been working on a number of things in Inkscape, a lot of which deal with tracing of many frames of 2D animation. Since I generally apply the same settings to a multitude of files, I was wondering if there is a way to do command-line access of "Trace Bitmap" command that could still utilize my settings... I only ask because most characters are extremely low-res to begin with and require being cut into a number of parts to create a good final composite. If there was a way to convert large amounts of bitmap data to SVG based on a specific setting I've set, and perhaps a way to cleverly automate coloring of the parts as well (if I can trace, I can figure out the rest), I could save a monumental amount of time. Any information is greatly appreciated. -ilya.

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Wanting to understand issue with transparent GIF export
by Andrew S. Townley 15 Nov '06

15 Nov '06

Hi, I know there's an entry in the FAQ on the wiki about this, but I was wondering if anyone could shed more light on why this isn't working if you export to GIF rather than PNG. I know IE doesn't support PNG (which is what the FAQ entry is about), but if I create a transparent GIF with the Gimp, I get a transparent GIF (albeit with much worse-looking text) than if I do it with Inkscape. It's been a while since I looked at image formats in detail, but if it is simply a matter of massaging the color of the "background" pixels in the GIF, is there a tool that can do this? I changed the document properties from #ffffff00 to #00000000 wondering if that may make a difference, but it doesn't. Why I care: I'm trying to create some white text to be composed over a colored background, but I want to be able to control the color of the background via CSS in a web page rather than have to create a separate image for each color I want. Any ideas/suggestions/information would be appreciated. Thanks in advance, ast -- Andrew S. Townley <ast@...2044...> http://atownley.org

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Re: [Inkscape-user] [RE] Wanting to understand issue with transparent GIF export
by Andrew S. Townley 15 Nov '06

15 Nov '06

On Tue, 2006-11-14 at 19:44, Black Fire wrote: > Your message isn't clear how you tried to use GIMP. Did you use it to > convert at PNG made with Inkscape? > If not, then try exporting your Inkscape drawing as a PNG, then use > GIMP to convert it to a GIF. I was actually just pointing out that if I did something similar with GIMP, e.g. new bitmap with transparent background, white text, that it did what I expected. I actually did what you suggested, but I gave up after I discovered that I was really dealing with a PNG anyway (see earlier message) and that I couldn't figure out in under 20 min how to get the image converted from PNG to GIF and still keep the anti-aliasing so the text looked presentable. I finally took the original PNG, pulled it into GIMP and added the background color as a new layer to save as a GIF. Isn't what I wanted, but the visual effect is the same as long as I don't change the colors. ast -- Andrew S. Townley <ast@...2044...> http://atownley.org

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wiggly lines, springs & coils
by Kasper Peeters 14 Nov '06

14 Nov '06

Is there a way to draw wiggly lines with Inkscape? (I don't mean hand-drawn wiggles, those are never regular; I need wiggles which have the same size everywhere on the path). A related question: is there a way to draw paths with a "spring" or "coil" shape superposed on it? Thanks, Kasper

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Assign hot keys to specific actions?
by Thorsten 14 Nov '06

14 Nov '06

Hi, is there a way to assign hot keys to specific actions in Inkscape instead of specific menu entries? I often need to center objects horizontally and vertically and it would be a massive timesaver if I could simply use hot keys, maybe even one hot key for both actions (applied successively)? I checked through the keybindings settings and the wiki, but failed to find an info. Keep up the good wirk, - Stellaris

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Joining two paths.
by Thetargos 13 Nov '06

13 Nov '06

Hello list, I use Inkscape 0.44.1 on Fedora Core 6 Linux, and I would like to know how could I sort of "join" two paths together. I'm not necessarily talking about grouping them, but rather like what happens in Blender, where you can have a mesh and then start molding another mesh separate from the first, but sill be the two part of the same "object". I don't know if I make any sense with this. Particularly what I want to do is have the two objects be as one. The reason I want this is because I'm trying to prototype a font style, so I need to have characters such as 'ñ', 'á', 'é', 'í', 'ó', 'ú', 'à', 'è', 'ì', 'ò', 'ù', 'ä', 'ë', 'ï', 'ö', 'ü', 'â', 'ê', 'î', 'ô', 'û', etc. From what I have been gathering, these have to be treated as a single entity so that the font renderer can "pick" the right character. I'm trying to make this and hopefully turn it into a TTF (would be my first). I'm not sure if I could then "import" the individual characters into a program such as FontForge and have the font made. Any suggestions? Thanks!

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opacity and blur: 0.15 or 15%?
by bulia byak 12 Nov '06

12 Nov '06

Here's a usability question that I'd like to get some feedback on. Myself, I'm undecided. How to display and input values of opacity and blur? 1. As percent, 0 to 100, or 0.0 to 100.0. Pro: easier to pronounce; more common in "real life"; spinbutton can be shorter by one character (dot). Contra: requires a "%" label after the spinbutton; if the label is not there (as e.g. in the statusbar there's little room for it), it may be more difficult to guess, when you see e.g. "15", that the maximum is 100; requires a change from the Inkscape status quo. 2. As numbers from 0.0 to 1.0 (with two or three significant digits). Pro: no need for a % label; easier to guess what the maximum is (though still not entirely obvious, unless you have a slider too); no need to change the status quo. Contra: slightly more "geeky", more cumbersome to type and pronounce, requires slightly wider spinbutton. Opinions? -- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org

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new screenshots
by bulia byak 10 Nov '06

10 Nov '06

Those without an SVN build of Inkscape are invited to visit the recently updated gallery of 0.45 screenshots: http://inkscape.org/screenshots/ The exhibits demonstrate the two photorealistic car renditions, a demo of the proposed gradient mesh approach, and a mini-tutorial on creating life-like shading for arbitrary rope-like shapes. All examples use Gaussian blur, and the source files of all examples are in share/examples in SVN. Enjoy! -- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org

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Clones align different than originals
by Lars Behrens 10 Nov '06

10 Nov '06

Hi there, when working with clone objects I noticed that they align different than their originals: - create a path, e.g. a square, with nodes fitting into the grid - create a clone: it has no nodes, thus it does align to the grid with its shape. Is that a supposed behavior, or should I file a bug report or RFE? And for a quick solution now: Does anyone have an idea to work around this? TIA Cheerz Lars

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My recent experience with Inkscape
by Michael Grosberg 09 Nov '06

09 Nov '06

I've been working with Inkscape a lot lately, and while it was mostly a lot of fun, I could think of a number of small changes that could make Inkscape even better. Most of them seem to not be so difficult to implement as far as I can tell. I'm not sure if this is the right place, but I didn't want to just post a bunch of enhancement requests - I'd rather get some user and developer feedback first. So, here's my list: The layer window icons are not identical to those on the layer menu. While this makes Inkscape similar to Gimp, it also makes its own visual language inconsistent! I think Inkscape should be consistent with itself first. Plus, the layer icons on the menu are so much better looking. I'd like to see menu items and keyboard shortcuts to globally turn snap on and off. Ideally, they should be similar to Adobe's (with the same keyboard shortcut), and placed in the "View" menu. Yes, these all exist in the document preferences, but I find I turn snap on and off a lot, even while working on a single path (imagine wanting to snap just one or two nodes here and there), and I see a need for something more useable than having a large floating dialog that takes a lot of screen space. Similarly, I'd also like to have menu items to toggle different snap modes on and off. They should be placed in a sub-menu right after the "snap" toggle, and the sub-menu labeled as "Snap To...". If the "global snap" mentioned above is turned off, then (as in Adobe products) these have no effect. Hiding and locking is not very easy right now. For example, I don't see a way to hide or lock multiple selections. There's a need for "Hide selected", "Lock selected", "Unhide All", "Unlock All" menu items in the "Object" menu. Possibly also "Hide" and "Lock" as right-click menu items. Inkscape should remember all floating dialogs' show/hide status on exit so that if they were visible when Inkscape terminates, they are visible in the next session. "Swatches" should probably move from the "Object" menu to the "view" menu as they are not related to objects. I don't think the "Export Bitmap" dialog should switch between "Page", "Drawing" or "selection" when the selection is changed. In my experience, sometimes you export the entire page a number of times, while making small changes here and there. All the while, the export dialog automatically switches to "selection" whenever you do something and then switches back to "drawing". You have to return it to "drawing" all the time. I can see how the current setup is useful - when exporting multiple selections as multiple files - but I think the earlier use pattern I mentioned is more common. At least, a method to turn this behavior off should be supplied. When copying and pasting objects between files, stops in gradients should be automatically renamed so that objects don't accidentally receive the wrong gradient because of two different gradients in the two files having the same name. Yes, this happened to me a number of times! The last one is an important bug fix for us Windows users: make all dialogs and tool windows float above the canvas. I remember this was done in Gimp about a year ago. I think it had something to do with the version of GTK used. I also remember seeing it as an open bug in some previous Inkscape version prior to release - what happened with that? Were there no volounteers found to fix it? I'd like to hear your feedback, especially developers! Michael

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