Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Graphics Software

Inkscape 0.42: The Ultimate Answer 577

Posted by timothy from the holy-maloney-that's-getting-slick dept.
bulia byak writes "After several months of frantic work by the evergrowing developer community, the aptly numbered Inkscape 0.42 is out. The amount of new features in this version is astounding. Quoting from the (gigantic!) Release Notes, "while some of the new features simply fill long-standing functionality gaps, others are truly revolutionary". Check out the screenshots and grab your package for Linux, Windows, or OSX." The screenshots are pretty mind-blowing; this isn't a 1.0 release, but I think you'll agree it's worth checking out.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Inkscape 0.42: The Ultimate Answer More

Inkscape 0.42: The Ultimate Answer

Comments Filter:

  • Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Zzyzygy ( 189883 ) * on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @11:07PM (#13173131)
    Is it just me, or did they morph a woman holding a ferret into a classic "wardrobe malfunction" [inkscape.org] by using some cool filters?

    Geez, I need to get a life.

    -Scott

    • much more detailed analysis (Score:5, Funny)

      by mshurpik ( 198339 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @02:02AM (#13173939)
      Apple was colossally dissapointed today to learn that Perl, 4th Ed. is a fun and informative way to introduce open source. A new IBook and Apple mini are expected to get a handle on Vista while also hitting the shuttle during launch. With the USA getting ready to pass its science crown to China, the Mandriva Linux 2006 Beta has gotten underway, leaving Microsoft and Google fighting for the skies. With the annual cost of the Microsoft monopoly predicted to top $10b this year, thousands and thousands of hours of PVR TV are being used to make new google homepage features the state of solid state storage. Where is the British EFF? Just around the corner, according to UEFI, formed to replace the BIOS after Microsoft began checking for piracy. With China releasing its 2nd generation MIPS chip just days after Sony agreed to stop payola, Voltron, Nerdcore, and the shuttle Discovery all will be coming to a theater near you.
         

  • Replacing? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by coop0030 ( 263345 ) * on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @11:08PM (#13173139) Homepage
    Obviously I didn't do too much research, but what does this program replace?

    The Gimp?
    Photoshop?
    Fireworks?

    Does anyone use this program? How does it perform compared to these other programs that do similar thiings? This is assuming that the programs listed are the ones being replaced.

    • Re:Replacing? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Freehand/Illustrator. It is a vector based program.

    • Re:Replacing? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @11:12PM (#13173157)
      None of the above. It's vector graphics - Illustrator, FreeHand. It's about as good for vector graphics as Gimpy is for raster, although I much prefer Inkscape's interface over The Gimp's.

      • Re:Replacing? (Score:4, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @11:15PM (#13173174)
        Bash has a better interface than The Gimp.

        • Re:Replacing? (Score:2, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward
          The article implies that the SVG can be edited (is it XML?) and so you've got your wish - you can make your documents in bash by editing the SVG files directly.

          • Re:Replacing? (Score:3, Informative)

            by jonored ( 862908 )
            Actually... yes. it's XML. Looks vaguely familiar if you've poked at postscript (which is also human-writeable - and a complete programming language for a printer-type device. Heard tale of a raytracer implemented in postscript... having poked at the language, I quite believe it, too.) - I think I might just use SVG now :) But much more convenient to run perl or vim than bash... bash is for calling other programs to do your work for you :)

        • Re:Replacing? (Score:5, Informative)

          by strider44 ( 650833 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @12:19AM (#13173507)
          If you're used to photoshop's interface then just look up GimpShop which is just a clone of photoshop's interface using Gimp. I happen to be used to Gimp's interface more now so I'll stick to how it is right now.

        • Re:Replacing? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by aussersterne ( 212916 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @12:55AM (#13173678) Homepage
          Call me a loser, but I love the interfaces of both bash and The GIMP.

          I absolutely adore filename completion, arrow-navigatable history, the heavily customizable prompts, command-line editing, and other aspects of the bash interface.

          I also absolutely adore the "per-image context menu" interface of The GIMP that makes it easy to have many image windows open and tiled at the same time in focus-follows-mouse mode without causing problems related to relating menus to images as would apply in the "one menu for the entire app, all images" interface in Photoshop.

        • Still funny? (Score:3, Informative)

          by Pac ( 9516 )
          Allright, I am no graphic artist, but I've been using Gimp 2.0.3 to draw icons, image buttons and work on images for many kinds of programs for a long time.

          The interface may take a while to get used to, but once you get there it is very professional and very clear. I believe this kind of joke may be historically funny, but eventually everybody who one day worked with Gimp 0.8 will be retired or dead and no one will remember exactly why it is funny. As I said, even today, someone who never used another draw

        • Re:Replacing? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by typical ( 886006 )
          Bash has a better interface than The Gimp.

          Yes, but not for the reason that you're thinking. Bash is incredibly powerful. I wish that the Gimp would let me construct directed acyclic graphs of drawing operations, but it doesn't.

    • Re:Replacing? (Score:5, Informative)

      by SpikyTux ( 524666 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @11:13PM (#13173162)
      "Inkscape is an open source drawing tool with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, and CorelDraw that uses the W3C standard scalable vector graphics format (SVG)."

    • I'm with you. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by shmlco ( 594907 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @11:32PM (#13173277) Homepage
      I'm with you. The /. introduction seems to have been written by an ex-politician's speachwriter. It used lots of colorful words but, in the end, I still had no clue what the program did or who it was for. Sounds exciting though. Heck, I'll vote for 'em!!!

    • Re:Replacing? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mrchaotica ( 681592 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @11:54PM (#13173378)
      Does anyone use this program? How does it perform compared to these other programs that do similar thiings?
      Well, I showed it to my girlfriend (who is an art student) and she likes it a lot. She certainly likes it much better than the Gimp, since the interface is so much better. I'm not sure if she thinks it's better than Illustrator, but it's probably at least close.

      • Re:Replacing? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Bastian ( 66383 )
        Personally, I think Illustrator's interface is better.

        But it's not nearly $500 worth of better to my amateur senses.

        (As for the GIMP, well, it's not hard to be better than the GIMP. VI is a more intuitive photo editor than the GIMP.)

    • Re:Replacing? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Raul654 ( 453029 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @12:12AM (#13173475) Homepage
      There are two kinds of graphics - raster and vector. Raster is what you see when you use photoshop/gimp/paint, where you see a 2-dimensional grid of pixels, and each pixel is shaded a certain color. In vector graphics, everything on the page is a shape with certain properties (size, rotation, transparenecy, 'etc), and those vectors are overlayed on top of each other. As someone who creates a lot of diagrams (I'm doing a PhD in engineering and I contribute to Wikipedia a lot), I can tell you that doing it is a lot quicker using vector graphics programs than raster graphics programs.

    • Re:Replacing? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Coryoth ( 254751 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @01:33AM (#13173830) Homepage Journal
      Well, you see, Inkscape 0.42 is the ultimate answer, your problem is that you have not yet worked out what the question is. Once you know what the question is then I'm sure everythign will be apparent.

      Hopefully the Inkscape team are working on finding the ultimate question as we speak.

      Jedidiah.

  • Already using it (Score:5, Informative)

    by Achromus ( 810984 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @11:11PM (#13173150)
    By some weird coincidence, I downloaded this two hours ago. It hasn't crashed on my yet during this time, so I can say that it is sure seems more stable than the 0.41 release.
    • I've had this running all night now...perhaps 7 hours altogether and no crashes!

      Mind you maybe I should move the mouse and do something.

      I'll be back in 5!
  • After several months of frantic work by the evergrowing developer community, the aptly numbered Inkscape 0.42 is out.

    Is there some unexplained significance to the number 0.42 in reference to this program?

  • Don't you hate it (Score:5, Informative)

    by TCM ( 130219 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @11:14PM (#13173170)
    Don't you hate it when some application gets into "news" and you are supposed to already know what it does?

    Just including this blurb from the homepage would have been enough:

    Inkscape is an open source drawing tool with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, and CorelDraw that uses the W3C standard scalable vector graphics format (SVG).
    • What I could figure out from the article:

      "There is a new version of something, and it is really cool. Something is probably software or just possibly hardware (as if it being reported on /. wasn't enough to figure that out anyhow)."

      Fortunately we have editors to filter the submissions so we don't have to see incomprehensible ones.

    • Re:Don't you hate it (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Zobeid ( 314469 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @12:42AM (#13173623)
      All it would have taken was three more words.

      "vector drawing program"

      If the poster could have fit those three words into the article, it would have saved me a fair bit of bother. And yes, this sort of thing does happen all the time on Slashdot.
    • Look at the white on green logo at the top of the page. Check the URL. Yes, this is Slashdot.

      Fear the day they make a clear announcement about an application or gadget, one you don't actually have to click through the link to decide if you are interested. On this day Stallman will have sold FSF to Gates, Microsoft will have open-sourced all their code and a new company, Hell Inc., will have cornered the ice-cream market for good.
  • If anybody has hacked windows api then you know what these guys have done. Good stuff.

    Developer Username Role/Position Email Skills
    Arpad Biro a_b Translator (I18N/L10N) a_b at users.sourceforge.net Private
    Aaron C. Spike acspike Developer acspike at users.sourceforge.net Private
    Andrew Fitzsimon andyfitz Graphic/Other Designer andyfitz at users.sourceforge.net Private
    Artemiy Pavlov artemiopabla Web Designer artemiopabla at users.

  • Keep in mind (Score:5, Informative)

    by JonN ( 895435 ) * on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @11:17PM (#13173185) Homepage
    That in the FAQ [inkscape.org] it says:

    Q: Is Inkscape ready for regular users to use?

    Yes, while it's far from being a replacement for commercialware, the codebase provides for a large portion of basic vector editing capabilities.

    • Re:Keep in mind (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ProfaneBaby ( 821276 )
      The fact that it's really for SVG will hold you back, too - many commercial printers are tied to Illustrator versions (and those that aren't still prefer EPS to SVG), that this isn't going to find its way onto any professional graphic artists standard list of tools anytime soon.

      • Re:Keep in mind (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Tet ( 2721 )
        The fact that it's really for SVG will hold you back, too - many commercial printers are tied to Illustrator

        Not a problem. I've been doing all of my vector work in Inkscape for a while now. I export it to EPSF, which I hand to my printer, who opens it in Illustrator and takes it from there.

    • Re:Keep in mind (Score:5, Informative)

      by bbyakk ( 815167 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @12:07AM (#13173445)
      This FAQ is somewhat obsolete. It's not a replacement for commercialware in ALL situations, that's true. But it's not as far from it as it used to be just a few releases back.

  • Whoa! Now wait a mo' (Score:5, Funny)

    by whovian ( 107062 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @11:17PM (#13173186)
    Check out the screenshots and grab your package for Linux, Windows, or OSX."

    I just don't go around grabbing other guy's packages. Let us leave that to your *.so and S.O.
  • Inkscape's FAQ describes the software package as a way to create SVGs. So I was curious as to what exactly "SVG" means. It turns out that it is a type of graphic that is Scalable because it is based on Vectors (Scalable Vector Graphics, heh). Like TrueType fonts, the graphics itself is described in a data file and the rasterization engine figures out how to plot each line and curve.

    Another common type of graphic is the raster bitmap in which the data file describes the absolute positioning of pixels in

    • Re:I was wondering what SVG was (Score:5, Insightful)

      by steelfood ( 895457 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @11:55PM (#13173388)
      I can't help but note a strange karma whoring smell. I don't mean to encourage these types of posts (which, while related, only provide superficial information an a subject that almost everyone knows about), I do wish to point out one thing with which I cannot come to terms.

      Vector graphics is not an alternative to raster graphics. Raster graphics and vector graphics have two mutually exclusive applications, even though both offer visual sensory input as an end result.

      Using only the Adobe product names for the two different digital graphic forms, it is not difficult to recognize this. Photoshop's specialty is manipulating raster images, and the main application would be photos. For example, PS is great for doing things like white balancing and color filtering, i.e. post processing of captured images. Illustrator, on the other hand, is great for creating scaleable and animated visual medium (cartoon-like illustrations like clipart, or flash movies).

      The tradeoff is realism. BTW, one subset of vector graphics is in fact 3D modeling, and this relation becomes especially apparent with NURBS. 3D models aren't very realistic plainly rendered, even with simple materials. They require textures, which are bitmaps (rasters), to create the illusion of continuity.

      Finally, on a tangent, it should be noted that vector graphics are mathematically intensive to render, whereas raster graphics tend to be memory intensive to render.

  • #1 thing Inkscake is missing (Score:3, Informative)

    by Raul654 ( 453029 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @11:28PM (#13173250) Homepage
    Stability. Inkscape is good a good program, but it crashes all the time. In fact, someone noticed that when installing it on windows, the *very first* file it copied was gdb.exe.

  • OS X version not Aquafied. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Yaztromo ( 655250 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @11:33PM (#13173284) Homepage Journal

    For anyone who is thinking of grabbing the OS X version, please note that like OpenOffice, InkScape is using X11 to render its display.

    I'm a bit disappointed, as this does make it somewhat less nice to use on OS X, however it isn't v1.0 yet, so I'll remain hopefully optimistic.

    Yaz.

    • This brings up something I've been wondering. If GTK had an Aqua version, Inkscape as well as a LOT of useful programs could run natively in Aqua. Hey, it's been ported to Windows, porting to Aqua shouldn't be too much harder... But then again I have no experience with developing for Aqua so I guess I can't really talk.

    • I have been using Inkscape on OS X a lot lately, and it works pretty well; there is an Inkscape.app so when you open an SVG file in the Finder, it will open X11 and then open the file with Inkscape.

      The unix binary is somewhere inside the .app (which is really just a special type of directory) so you can call it from the command line. This is useful because you can convert SVG files to PNG or PS via the command line with Inkscape. This is really nice for me since I have been making a lot of technical illu

    • Note: OpenOffice vs. NeoOffice/J on the Mac (Score:5, Informative)

      by Nice2Cats ( 557310 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @03:24AM (#13174242)
      For anyone who is thinking of grabbing the OS X version, please note that like OpenOffice, InkScape is using X11 to render its display.

      Just so there are no misunderstandings here: Though there is an OpenOffice version for the Mac that is in fact only accessable via X11, everybody uses NeoOffice/J [planamesa.com] instead because it is aquafied to the point where it runs normally. Oh, and it is GPL.

      And now back to your scheduled program.

  • Oh sweet mistress (Score:5, Interesting)

    by azdruid ( 893225 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @11:37PM (#13173300)
    As an avid user of Inkscape, I have followed the Inkscape development process closely throughout all the betas released leading up to this version. This is probably the OSS application I use the most, aside from Linux and Firefox of course. Inkscape's original base code was from the Sodipodi vector editor, which had an interface resembling that of the GIMP. The primary goal of the Inkscape project was to take that codebase and write a GTK interface conforming to the GNOME standards, as well as adding many new features. Even though the early releases were notoriously unstable, the feel of 0.42 is significantly improved over past builds. Even if you are remotely interested in drawing or vector graphics, I recommend you take a look at Inkscape. It still doesn't have any of the fancy features in Fireworks, which I do hope will someday be added, but right now its probably the best FOSS vector editor. And it uses SVG too, a nice opensource XML standard. Downloads are available for Linux and Windows.

  • Pressure (Score:2, Informative)

    by Solder Fumes ( 797270 )
    Yeah, that's great and all, lots of work, but I'm still not that interested while the application continues to not support pressure sensitivity for my tablet.

    • Re:Pressure (Score:3, Interesting)

      by temojen ( 678985 )
      Why do you need pressure sensitivity for a vector graphics package?

      • Re:Pressure (Score:3, Informative)

        by maxmg ( 555112 )
        Easy - the "Calligraphy" tool. With pressure sensitivity (or some of the more advanced angle/tilt stuff found in high-end graphics tablets), this allows you to vary the width/angle of the stroke.

        Look at any comic book - the ink lines (which are normally drawn with a brush) vary a lot in width to give the drawing a much more dynamic feel.

        This is something that can be very useful for a vector-based drawing program.

        That said, I have been using Inkscape for quite a while and am extremely happy with it. I wasn't
  • One wonders why inkscape was started when we already have sodipodi which is a pretty good GPLd SVG drawing package already.

    http://www.sodipodi.com/ [sodipodi.com]

    • Re:Why not sodipodi (Score:5, Informative)

      by Bitsy Boffin ( 110334 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @11:42PM (#13173333) Homepage
      Guess I should have RTFWebsite...


      Q: Why the split from Sodipodi?

      Mainly just differences in objectives and in development approach. Inkscape's objective is to be a fully compliant SVG editor, whereas for Sodipodi SVG is more a means-to-an-end of being a powerful vector illustration tool. Inkscape's development approach emphasizes open developer access to the codebase, as well as to use and contribute back to 3rd party libraries and standards such as HIG, CSS, etc. in preference to custom solutions.

      For background, it may also be worth reviewing Lauris' Sodipodi direction post from Oct 2003, and his thoughts on SVG, licensing, and the value of splitting the project into two independent branches.


      Oops.

  • What would be more revolutionary... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kuzb ( 724081 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @12:07AM (#13173448)
    ...is the poster actually letting people know what inkscape is so we don't have to click on the link to figure that out.

  • Hmm... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tom7 ( 102298 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @12:14AM (#13173488) Homepage Journal
    Exactly at the moment I thought, "hey, this is pretty slick," Inkscape (win32) crashed/exited on me without warning. That was only about ten seconds after launching it. After launching again, it froze on the "open" dialog. Still, I am looking forward to using this when it becomes more stable.

    Also, what's wrong with using the standard keyset that Adobe and Macromedia apps use? For example, holding space should enable the panning tool, and holding alt (not shift) should make the zoom tool zoom out rather than in. Also, double-clicking on the zoom tool should revert to "standard" zoom--not open the preferences panel. (??) I realize that these are arbitrary choices, but there is substantial value in making the same arbitrary choices as everyone else, especially if this seeks to be a replacement for those applications.

    • Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Informative)

      by bbyakk ( 815167 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @12:28AM (#13173556)
      Please submit your crash report:

      http://inkscape.org/report_bugs.php [inkscape.org]

      with as much details as possible, ideally with a backtrace.

      > keyset that Adobe and Macromedia apps use?

      Because there are many other nice apps that we borrow from. One is Xara X. Another is (yeah) Gimp and other Gnome apps. We can't be a monkey of a single app, and sometimes we can't be a monkey of anyone because we do some original stuff too.

      > holding space should enable the panning tool

      We don't have a panning tool because we have lots of other ways to scroll. The best of them are middle-drag and ctrl+arrows. Try them, you may like them better when you get used to them.

      > holding alt (not shift) should make the zoom tool zoom out rather than in.

      That one makese sense - alt+click is currently unused in zoom tool, so i think I'll enable it to zoom out _in addition_ to shift+click.

      > Also, double-clicking on the zoom tool should revert to "standard" zoom--not open the preferences panel.

      Just press '1' to get 100% zoom. And it would be horribly inconsistent to make doubleclick work different on zoom tool than on other tools.

      To summarize, we welcome any feedback, and very often we honor it, but also quite often people just want us to imitate exactly their favorite app without realizing that (1) there are other vector apps which are just as worthy of imitation, (2) Inkscape's way of doing it may be actually better, or (3) we can't do that because that would break consistency of Inkscape behavior in unpleasant ways.

  • If even I can use it effectively... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by HorsePunchKid ( 306850 ) <sns@severinghaus.org> on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @12:38AM (#13173602) Homepage
    It's sad to me that people do not seem to know what Inkscape is yet. It's a wonderful tool. Others have already made the Inkscape:Illustrator :: Gimp:Photoshop analogy. I would point out, though, that despite my preference of Photoshop over Gimp, Inkscape is far, far easier to use than Illustrator and yet still covers all of the basic vector graphics bases.

    Even with my very minimal skill, I've managed to create some decent graphics. Here are a couple [severinghaus.org] of traces [severinghaus.org], a decent Domo-kun [severinghaus.org], some [severinghaus.org] calligraphy [severinghaus.org], and all of the non-photo graphics on this page [tesseractquartet.com] (hypercube projections) I did in Inkscape. I love it, and it's only on version 0.42!

  • SVG rasterisation (Score:4, Informative)

    by csirac ( 574795 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @12:43AM (#13173627)
    Inkscape is utterly fantastic, so is SVG.

    SVG is an XML format. You can describe arbitrary shapes using basic polylines, circles, squares, etc. and animate it too - all using XML. It's a W3C standard. You can even use CSS for your vector graphics!

    I've been working on a very complex piece of software that does some work vectorising bitmaps. It has a non-standard (but basic) intermediate file format that I needed to visualise in a hurry.

    By using Perl and installing the SVG lib from CPAN, I was able to write a program in just 3 hours that parsed this app's crazy intermediate line-vector files and turn it into industry standard SVG files that can be viewed with a web browser, or with Inkscape.

    Because every element (every line, piece of text, circle, etc.) has an object ID, and being XML you can mash your own custom properties onto things, I found Inkscape very useful for not only visualising these files but exploring other non-visual things I was able to mangle into the line segments (open .svg file in Inkscape, right-click, go look at "object properties").

    SVG and Inkscape have been invaluable for exploring how my refactoring of this application has affected the output...

    There was just one problem: For a program that uses .svg natively, it sure as hell depended on bitmap formats for exporting to alternative formats properly... I see now that postscript and .eps support has been enhanced, hopefully the transparency/gradient stuff won't bork the output too much now.

    Also, I still cannot find a way to export .SVG files to a rasterised image format such as .PNG without the lines being anti-aliased - I've even tried the "crisp lines" properties in the .xml file, and Imagemagick's "convert" program with the "-antialias" switch, but nothing seems to work... all the output is always antialiased... any ideas?

    • Re:SVG rasterisation (Score:5, Informative)

      by bbyakk ( 815167 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @12:48AM (#13173652)
      > I see now that postscript and .eps support has been enhanced, hopefully the transparency/gradient stuff won't bork the output too much now.

      Gradients in PS/EPS export work now (with some limitations, see Release Notes). But transparency does not work simply because PS has no such thing, and "emulating" it is an enormous hassle.

      > all the output is always antialiased... any ideas?

      That's one of the problems with our renderer currently. It only has the AA mode. Hopefully this will be fixed when Inkscape is ported to use Cairo.

  • Great work ... But still "too many" palettes? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by isolationism ( 782170 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @01:31AM (#13173824) Homepage
    I still use Xara X2 for all of my drawing needs (I do web work, primarily, although it works excellent for making everything from roughs to faked screenshots) although I've been eyeing Inkscape with increasing interest as it improves. It has now far surpassed it's parent fork project, Sodipodi [sodipodi.com], in terms of capability and appearance.

    One of the main reasons I found Inkscape in the first place was because it was a branch of Sodipodi for what I felt were "the right reasons" -- Frankly, Sodipodi's interface is dialog hell. However, I still feel that Inkscape has too many dialogs that "hang around" on the screen. Why have a big dialog that takes 1/7th of the screen to handle color selection when it could be done more effectively with a temporary window that is half the size?

    I also couldn't stand the fact that Inkscape didn't have named colours (e.g. colours that you can define, use, then change later and affect the entire drawing) although maybe that's changed now. I also know all of the previous versions I have looked at in the past literally take 10-15 seconds to open a file dialog window (no hyperbole here. Seriously); while my interest in Inkscape has been primarily to get me using a package that looks and works the same on Linux (so I can finally make the switch on the desktop -- Neither Xara X / Xara X2 run on CrossOver Office, unfortunately) I can't help but notice it will save me money from upgrading Xara X every couple of years, too. As a little aside -- I even went so far as to contact Xara Corp. and ask if they had any plans to release a Linux version of their software or even contribute assistance to getting Xara X to run on Wine/CXO. Their response was "No, we're too busy, and anyway people who use Linux seem to expect everything to be free." Well, that put me in my place...

    Anyway, thanks to the original poster for pointing this new release out; it's worth taking another look to see what these guys have been up to. The new features look great; I hope stability and improved GUI design are some of the "unsung heroes" of this and future releases.

  • Nerd Erotica (Score:4, Funny)

    by KrackHouse ( 628313 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @01:53AM (#13173908) Homepage
    From the header:
    "grab your package"
    "fill long-standing functionality gaps"
    "mind-blowing... 1.0 release"

     Yeah, I peel the labels off my open source beer bottles.

  • Give Gimp a break (Score:4, Insightful)

    by symbolic ( 11752 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @02:06AM (#13173958)

    Inkscape and Gimp are designed to meet two different needs, although there may be a small amount of crossover. Gimp isn't quite Photoshop, but I've used it for quite a while now. It's not perfect, but it's very capable, and I'm encouraged by its ongoing development.

  • If this is the "The Ultimate Answer" (Score:3, Funny)

    by 1shooter ( 185361 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @03:46AM (#13174311)
    What was the question?

  • Visio alternative? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by PastaAnta ( 513349 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @05:43AM (#13174624)
    Inkscape already seems to be an impressive application for artistic drawing, but personally I mostly do technical drawing for which Visio is my currently preferred application.

    However if only a few functionalities were added, Inkscape could be used for 95% of generic technical/business drawings as well:
    - Global Grid / grid snap
    - Object connection / snap points
    - Auto routing connector lines
    - Configurable line ends (arrow heads)

    I believe some of these are addressed in the roadmap though.

  • Inkscape rocks (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ice Station Zebra ( 18124 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @08:06AM (#13175028) Homepage Journal
    I used it to de-uglify a bmp logo for a client. It looked like it had been run through Microsoft Paint with lots of jagged lines and such. Find a program called autotrace on sourceforge that converted the bitmap to svg. Edited the xml file to remove the objects that I didn't want (based on colour). Then loaded it into inkscape and cleaned it up and recolored it. Client was impressed. His graphics person had been unable to do it without recreating the whole thing. It only took me 1 hour.

Slashdot Top Deals

I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

Close