Embed objects as links?
Hi,
First, I'm a new and very impressed user of Inkscape. I'm no drawing application expert (far from it), but to me it seems that a lot of careful and creative thinking has gone into designing the user interface, and the result is very enabling.
An issue has arisen that I bet has been asked before; if so, my apologies (I did search for it). My daughter and I are are using Inkscape to try drawing a new set of icons for an open-source educational game (Tuxmath). These icons contain a number of distinct objects (penguins, igloos) that can be mixed-and-matched, and the individual ingredients can change (the penguin can flap its wings, part of the igloo can melt, etc.) We're now to the stage where we're trying to combine these ingredients into whole icons; however, we're noticing that as we improve as artists we'd like to, for example, go back and fix up our igloo a bit more---but then we find ourselves making the same changes (or delete, copy, paste) in all the "derived" files that use the igloo + other ingredients. I'd like to find out if there's a way that these improvements can be propagated to all of our combined icons without having to manually copy-and-paste. Basically, is there a way to embed an object as a link? And then have future edits build from there?
Thanks for taking the time to read and answer this, and, most importantly, for a terrific application!
--Tim
I'd like to find out if there's a way that these improvements can be propagated to all of our combined icons without having to manually copy-and-paste. Basically, is there a way to embed an object as a link? And then have future edits build from there?
Hi. What you are asking about reminds me of 'symbols' in Flash when I used to develop with that software. It was very useful and very powerful. I think the closest you can get in Inkscape is to use a clone of a thing. It will only work within a file, so you must do all your common icons in one file. Draw your penguin, make a clone and then incorporate that clone into other designs. Changing the original penguin (say off-canvas someplace) will change all the clones.
HTH
/d
That looks very workable---I had somehow thought clones were mostly for tiling, but now I see their other virtues. Many thanks!
Hey - no problem. Good luck with your project.
You might find some drawbacks with them. I have odd situation sometimes with fills and whatnot. If I move a clone around, sometimes the gradient fills sort-of "lag" behind. When it happens, it's obvious. Also, you should do some experiments with cloning a grouped object and whether you can edit the original group -- I have had some trouble in the past. I am not in Inkscape right now, so can't test as I type.
/d
Is there any plans for Inkscape to have something more analogous to 'symbols' and a 'library' to organize them in?
As a Flash developer, I tend to miss these things.
-axiom
On 1/23/07, Donn <donn.ingle@...155...> wrote:
That looks very workable---I had somehow thought clones were mostly for tiling, but now I see their other virtues. Many thanks!
Hey - no problem. Good luck with your project.
You might find some drawbacks with them. I have odd situation sometimes with fills and whatnot. If I move a clone around, sometimes the gradient fills sort-of "lag" behind. When it happens, it's obvious. Also, you should do some experiments with cloning a grouped object and whether you can edit the original group -- I have had some trouble in the past. I am not in Inkscape right now, so can't test as I type.
/d
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On 1/23/07, Donn <donn.ingle@...155...> wrote:
You might find some drawbacks with them. I have odd situation sometimes with fills and whatnot. If I move a clone around, sometimes the gradient fills sort-of "lag" behind. When it happens, it's obvious.
A simple rule is, do not use clones-of-clones. Use multiple clones of a single object. This fixes most if not all of such problems.
Also, you should do some experiments with cloning a grouped object and whether you can edit the original group -- I have had some trouble in the past. I am not in Inkscape right now, so can't test as I type.
Yes you can edit inside a group and all clones of that group are updated automatically. If you encounter any reproducible problem with this, please file a bug with full details.
Axiom X11 wrote:
Is there any plans for Inkscape to have something more analogous to 'symbols' and a 'library' to organize them in?
As a Flash developer, I tend to miss these things.
There are requests for this feature, so yes it will eventually be implement provided someone wants to work on it. Do you do any programming by chance? I'm sure some developers would be willing to give guidance on how to go about it.
-Josh
On 1/23/07, Axiom X11 <axiomx11@...155...> wrote:
Is there any plans for Inkscape to have something more analogous to 'symbols' and a 'library' to organize them in?
Yes there have been such plans. All they (plans) need is a developer interested in working on them :)
On Tue, Jan 23, 2007 at 11:16:21AM -0500, Axiom X11 wrote:
Is there any plans for Inkscape to have something more analogous to 'symbols' and a 'library' to organize them in?
As a Flash developer, I tend to miss these things.
SVG (which is half of what we are really talking about) has very good support for having external links for parts of the drawing. I haven't seen any support in Inkscape for using it though (except partially through clones). You should also be able to get symbols loaded from a different file, although I have never tried to make it work.
http://broggs.org/~mcbeth/svg/foo.svg
Jeff
participants (6)
-
Axiom X11 -
bulia byak -
Donn -
Jeffrey Brent McBeth -
Joshua A. Andler -
Tim Holy