Inkscape 0.44 - Faster, Bigger, Better 226
bbyakk writes "After 6 months of development, Inkscape 0.44 is out. This version of the
SVG-based vector graphics editor brings improved performance and tons of new features:
Layers dialog, docked color palette, clipping and masking, native PDF export with
transparency, configurable keyboard (including Xara emulation), Outline mode for
complex drawings, innovative 'node sculpting' and lots more. Check out the full
release notes, enjoy the screenshots, or download your
package for Windows, Linux or Mac OS X."
No Packages yet (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Oops (Score:2)
You must be new here. Have a nice first day.
i dunno (Score:5, Funny)
Re:i dunno (Score:3, Informative)
Firefox Users (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Firefox Users (Score:2, Informative)
But since SVG needs the Adobe SVG plugin on IE, i usually draw my clipart in Inkscape or Sodipodi (i forgot which has better Japanese support) then export it to PNG.
Re:Firefox Users (Score:5, Funny)
I might just code this up. It's been bugging me for years. With 3 Ghz machines, there's really no excuse.
Re:Firefox Users (Score:5, Funny)
All they need to do is a Gaussian averaging kernel around the fractional pixel position they want to estimate the value of. It's not really hard.
I wasn't joking, this is exactly how you'd do it correctly. Is this gobbeldygook to your average Slashdotter? Have I been hiding in the lab too much? Is this what grad school does to you?
I need to get out more, apparently.
Re:Firefox Users (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Firefox Users (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Firefox Users (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Firefox Users (Score:2)
Re:Firefox Users (Score:2)
I think they didn't
Re:Firefox Users (Score:2)
Re:Firefox Users (Score:2)
I suggest optimizing Your approach for speed. After all, not everybody has a 3GHz machine (granted, outside the USA).
Have a look at gdk-pixbuf: they have implemented a "Tiles" scaling algorithm that seems ideal for this task: it's faster than bilinear interpolation, and the result is similar to bilinear when reducing the size.
It looks like nearest neighbor
Re:Firefox Users (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Firefox Users (Score:2)
Or, if the image scaling bothers you, just disable the "Resize large images to fit in the browser window" setting in the Advanced tab in Options.
Re:Firefox Users (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Firefox Users (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Firefox Users (Score:2)
Re:Firefox Users (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Firefox Users (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Firefox Users (Score:3, Informative)
Packages only availible on SourceForge (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Packages only availible on SourceForge (Score:4, Informative)
Zero Install link (Score:2)
http://0install.net/tests/Inkscape.xml [0install.net]
It uses the RPM, which works on Ubuntu/5.10 and Debian/testing if you have the appropriate libraries installed:
You don't need to be root to install this way. Make sure you tick 'Help test new versions', though, or you'll get the previous 0.43 version.
Who's the genius? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want to try it out and you don't like compiling, wait another day for the official binaries, then give it a whirl - this Inkscape release really is that good. Very fast, excellent illustration tool. Congratulations to the dev team.
I like plants (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I like plants (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I like plants (Score:2)
And of course there's the ultimate power tool: XML editor. Being able to directly hack the image source and see the results immediately is the Real Ultimate Power.
Whoever decided to include that was brilliant, and not as in Paula Bean.
Excellent. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've really enjoyed watching the progress of this app, along with Scribus and the GIMP. Inkscape has become one of the tools I use day in and day out (especially in conjunction with Scribus) and even though I can run older versions of CorelDraw and Illustrator on my FC5 box, I've really come to value Inkscape even though it doesn't have the collection of power tools that the Windows vector apps have (in all honesty, some of the "power tools" in those other guys are just imagesetter-chokers and you're better off leaving them be).
Now that Krita supports CMYK tiff files (with color management) the day has pretty much dawned in which I no longer have to jump over to my lone remaining Windows box to do some sort of previously-necessary file format conversion.
Re:Excellent. (Score:2)
I was looking for comparisons, and this serves me well. From somebody in the trenches it's comparable to older versions of CorelDraw and Illustrator. I wish the creators of these packages had more time and resources to push them up front into the running. I would like to see Inkscape burst out and be w
Screenshot of .44 in action (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.friendlyskies.net.nyud.net:8080/inks
Sorry it's in KDE, seeing how Inkscape is GTK...at the moment Skype isn't working in Gnome, so...
Re:Screenshot of .44 in action (Score:3, Funny)
I have already contacted the seGregation ans Kapartheid teams. Their thug squads will arrive soon to make an example for why one should never, ever mix KDE and GTK apps of you.
Did anyone see this?!?! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Did anyone see this?!?! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Did anyone see this?!?! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Did anyone see this?!?! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Did anyone see this?!?! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Did anyone see this?!?! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Did anyone see this?!?! (Score:2)
Re:Did anyone see this?!?! (Score:3, Interesting)
When they (Inkscape) implement proper PDF and eps support, Adobe should really start to either fear open source, or embrace open source operating systems and port their creative suite to Linux before people start retraining themselves in other applications. Heck, they're starting to lose their competitive
Red arrows? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Red arrows? (Score:4, Informative)
1. Create normal arrow
2. Select the curve with the arrow point on it
3. Ctrl+Alt+C or Path --> Stroke to Path
4. Select the arrow tip in node selection mode and color it (both stroke and fill can be colored)
5. Thank you, drive through please.
Re:Red arrows? (Score:3, Interesting)
Nope! The problem here is really the SVG spec, though, in that markers can't exactly inherit useful properties from the line they're being marked on.
My reading of the marker section in the SVG spec [w3.org] says that "fill: inherit" and "stroke: inherit" should be cause the colors to inherit off the parent element.
However: With arrow-heads, the arrow is being filled with a color, and the line is being stroked with a color. Even if Inkscape allowed markers to inherit stroke/fill properties from their parent, th
Illustrator (Score:4, Interesting)
Which features are still missing (aside from PDF capabilities)?
Re:Illustrator (Score:2)
Re:Illustrator (Score:4, Insightful)
Next major feature is an effects stack which is needed in GIMP too. Both GIMP and Inkscape have really suffered from the lack of any dynamic non-destructive editing features and separation of various effects and styles from content - these are the way forward and things Photoshop and Illustrator users have had for years, you just cant seriously live without them and its a shame because non-destructive editing and separating content from style is really something the OS world embraces - obviously these two projects feel they have more important things to do, which is why no-one seriously uses either of them.
Just to give you an idea, Photoshop drop-shadow has single-handidly changed the entire web and graphic design fashion for nearly a decade, you can take any layer and add drop shadow - tweak the settings and then go back and change it any time you want, this combines with other effects to make an effects stack that is dynamically applied to layers and objects - this is a very simple principle and is so so incredibly vital I cant even begin to stress how much.
Re:Illustrator (Score:4, Informative)
Non-destructive intersection is now possible, it's called clipping. Other types are not supported by SVG.
> Next major feature is an effects stack
We're working on that. Hopefully 0.45 will have this.
Re:Illustrator (Score:2)
Re:Illustrator (Score:4, Informative)
Another possibility is to implement something on top of SVG but in SVG-compatible way. For example, this is how we implement star shapes missing in SVG. This is not always possible, and even when it is, we do this only if it's something simple and limited (i.e. would not require pervasive changes across all of our codebase) or when the need for the feature is really very urgent. I may be wrong but to me, non-destructive unions or intersections do not seem to fall into any of these categories.
On the other hand, we have plans to implement "path effects" (non-destructive effects on shapes and paths) on top of SVG. This is relatively easy to do. Plus, in 0.45 we should have support for SVG filters, thanks to Google SoC.
Re:Illustrator (Score:4, Interesting)
I am not exactly an art guru, but I do use both Inkscape and Illustrator all the time. The three things that have historically bugged me most about Inkscape have been the huge difficulty of locking/unlocking objects, the poor import/export of EPS and PDF, and the inability to add custom colors and gradients onto the swatch palette (I use that in Illustrator a lot to save and reuse colors and gradients). Actually, the editing of gradients is really clunky in Inkscape, so I guess that is another thing that bugs me.
I don't want to paint an overly grim picture of Inkscape, though. It's really quite good, and I am very eager to get my hands on this new version (but I'll wait for the debs).
Re:Illustrator (Score:3, Informative)
One of our top development priorities for 0.44 was a layer dialog; hopefully this will make doing things like locking/unlocking objects somewhat easier.
According to beta testers, due to a few fixes that were submitted by users, EPS and PDF are working more re
Re:Illustrator (Score:2)
Re:Illustrator (Score:2)
AFAIK SVG format only supports rgb, so Inkscape is never going to support CMYK.
Re:Illustrator (Score:4, Informative)
SVG does support CMYK [w3.org]
It would have been a hideous omission not to include it in the standard, they'd never get anyone working in print to use SVGs without it.
Re:CMYK (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, at the moment SVG doesn't support CMYK. However it is proposed that it will at some point. What you cited there was the proposed draft requirements from over four years ago. I think they might be getting close to finally putting 1.2 out, but even in the last rounds of finalizing SVG 1.1 they dropped things, so one mustn't count one's chickens before they're hatched.
In fact, back in April of 2005 they pulled back their draft 1.2 spec and replaced it with a simple placeholder [w3.org] stating that things were in flux. So we're all now just sitting, waiting with baited breath.
Damnit, Slashdotted in the middle of the night (Score:2)
I love Inkscape. It f
Re:Damnit, Slashdotted in the middle of the night (Score:5, Informative)
Verbatim from the wiki:
Speed
In addition to the Outline mode which makes it much easier to work with complex drawings, this version of Inkscape also provides significant speed improvements in many areas.
bugfixes
Re:Damnit, Slashdotted in the middle of the night (Score:2)
Ink Question (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ink Question (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ink Question (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ink Question (Score:2)
Re: game art (Score:3, Informative)
Yes. Depends on what and how you're planning to do things. The GNOME games migrated to SVG artwork quite a while back.
Another approach is to create your artwork in SVG and then render to bitmap at different sizes. This mirrors a lot of the workflow used for creating icons.
As far as libraries go, there are librsvg [sourceforge.net] and KSVG [kde.org] for a start. For other gaming needs, one can do some interesting things with
Terrible summary (Score:3, Funny)
Seriously, what's up with the summary? It explains what Inkscape is, so you don't have to go and find out, tells you what's happened, gives you information about the new features, has useful links for stuff that is relevant and that you might be interested in as a result.
This is not what I'm used to on slashdot.
Where are the editors?!
Re:Terrible summary (Score:2)
Inkscape versus Xara? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Inkscape versus Xara? (Score:2, Informative)
Inkscape is very good, especially so for pre 1.0 software. I previously used sodipodi extensively and was pretty worried about the inkscape fork, specifically the move to C++ and use of GC. Inkscape could have gone horribly wrong, fortunately the developers are delivering. Kudos and much thanks to them
Re:Inkscape versus Xara? (Score:2)
Oh, wait, Wikipdia tells me there's an APNG too. Hmm. From the looks of the links there it's still highly experimental and I don't think anyone's using it.
I call bullshit (Score:2)
You mean like the way Flash has been handling it for years?
Re:I call bullshit (Score:2)
William
(who will have to finish up his feature comparison chart of vector drawing programs)
Re:I call bullshit (Score:2)
Re:I call bullshit (Score:3, Informative)
Glow Effect? (Score:2)
Imagine a physical sign, like on a buildingwith neon behind it. You can't see the neon, but you can see the glow on the wall behind the sign.
This is the one thing I can't figure out how to do. Mostly because of courners. If I peacie it todether, the corners never look even. (Not to mention a huge hassle!)
Re:Glow Effect? (Score:3, Informative)
Donation? (Score:2, Insightful)
I have recently founded a company with a few friends and Inkscape 0.44 came just in time, to address some issues
we were having editing large SVG's in 0.43. We badly needed the optimisations to the rendering engine as well
as outline mode.
We hope to make money on our product in a few months and would like to know if you take donations?.
Giving something in return for your excellent work would be nice, but w
GIMP (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:GIMP (Score:2)
even better would be to, at some point in the future merge the two projects (after GIMP gets effects layers and other, more pressing things)
Re:Tried it. (Score:2)
Re:Tried it. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not a Microsoft "standard". You've just responded to an astroturfer.
Re:Tried it. (Score:4, Informative)
Inkscape _does_ let you manually reassign ids if you don't like the autogenerated ones, however.
Re:Tried it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Come on now, give the astro turfing a rest.
Re:Tried it. (Score:3, Insightful)
you link to an MS app that can't output to SVG in an article about an application that is for greating SVG graphics?
I've been on slashdot for 8 years, and I never truely believed in astroturfing until your post.
Re:Tried it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope. I wrote simple svg in an xml editor and previewed it in Batik [apache.org] while writing. Why? Because Inkscape produced rather odd and bloated code that made it hard to understand just by reading the xml. Maybe this new version has better output, I havn't used it for a few months. I'm not expecting perfection, but for simple stuff it's reasonable to expect Inkscape (or anything else) to produce readable output.
Re:Tried it. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Tried it. (Score:2)
You had a fairly weak case for mentioning EGD in this thread, but you made it even weaker by not giving much information about it except that you for some unspecified reason find it "awesome".
Re:PDF Support (Score:5, Informative)
You heard wrong. :)
We are going to continue to improve our PDF support, but it's not a central part of our mission. Also, whatever PDF support we have is going to be largely limited to that subset of PDF functionality which is representable in SVG.
Re:PDF Support (Score:2)
Having to export to PNG and then using Gimp or another tool to save a PDF is a pain because it does not retain the individual elements and increases the file size (obviously).
Re:PDF Support (Score:3, Informative)
Re:PDF Support (Score:4, Funny)
Re:A good program for LaTeX users... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:A good program for LaTeX users... (Score:2)
Re:Memory usage dialog (Score:5, Informative)
There's a memory leak in the memory dialog's treeview widget. I've not been able to track it down yet (it may be a gtkmm issue), but I think your guess is roughly correct.
Re:Memory usage dialog (Score:2)
I created awesome, thanks for your support!
Re:Memory usage dialog (Score:2)
"I created awesome, thanks for your support!"
I've been looking for you! I've got some patches to make "awesome" into "totally awesome" and was wondering where to send them.
Re:oh no (Score:2)
Why, here ya go: Reporting Bugs [inkscape.org].
Re:Test, crumple, throw, return to Illustrator. (Score:2)
SVG limitation, comments to W3C please
> No way to turn off the visibility of the guff that indicates the current selection so that I can tweak layout easily?
Preferences, Tools, Selector, Per-object selection cue: None
Anything else?
Re:Is the mega SVG file size solved in this releas (Score:3, Informative)
All that said, 20 MB is unusually large in my experience. What exactly do you have in mind when you say "medium-size"?