Bill Peel wrote:
Perhaps everyone knows about this already but I have found the free potrace program very useful for tracing bitmap line-art into svg format. The resulting svg file can then be imported into Inkscape for further manipulation. I have also produced diagrams using various LaTeX drawing macro packages in eps format, converted them to pbm format using Ghostscript and then to svg using potrace. This could be a way of converting suitable public domain clipart from bitmap format into svg format for use with Inkscape.
This is a very good suggestion! So good (and so easy to hook up to Inkscape) that we added Potrace to Inkscape this weekend. :) It is in CVS now, in a limited fashion. Just select the image, and choose the "Trace bitmap" menu item. A dialog for adjusting parameters will be added later. But this simple implementation, with a hardcoded 50% brightness threshold seems to work fairly well.
Thanks for the idea!
Bob