29 Vector Drawing Programs

Ed Pegg writes "I did a survey of all available vector-based drawing programs, in anticipation of SVG in the next Firefox. I found 29 different vector drawing programs. Of these, 14 were free or open source. More than I expected. Did I miss any good ones?"

Missed TGIF

[saikatguha266]

TGIF [usc.edu] is a very nice vector drawing program. It is a very highly evolved version of xfig (but with better UI than xfig -- not gtk or qt though). It exports to a whole slew of vector formats -- my favourite being LaTeX and EPS. I don't leave home without it. ... Then again, I don't leave home much. :-p

Re:A *good* PS / EPS tutorial somewhere?

[josh42]

Short answer: It's more complex than you think.

To PostScript, a letter/word/line is just another shape that can be put on the page. You'd need to break lines manually, control line spacing yourself, etc. Want it justified? Forget it.

You'd be much better off using (La)TeX for this sort of thing.

A few of these should be counted . . .

[Brendor]

Alias Maya [alias.com]has a great vector renderer. It outputs decent AI/EPS files as well as .swf files.

Also there were previous slashdot stories about Pixar's in-house Sketch Review Tool [millimeter.com], (a hybrid vector/raster tool) and Microsoft Acryllic [microsoft.com].

I believe Studio Artist [synthetik.com] is primarily vector based.

There are also many vector programs for the sign/graphics industry to control CNC routers and plotters. FlexiSIGN [scanvecamiable.com] is one of them.

Re:SVG Icons

[akzeac]

AFAIK they are optimized directly for font rendering (black/white or black with grey tones), while SVG requires colors, gradients, multiple transparencies, textures and so on.

Metafont (mf) and MetaPost (mpost)...

[Anonymous Coward]

... from the world of TeX. They can be used to program diagrams, not just glyphs in a font. Maybe the same can be said of fontforge??

There's also the pic preprocessor for troff.

There was something called tgif from UCLA (IIRC).

TeXdraw was a nice macro package to achieve vectorized Postscript drawings within TeX.

Does nobody here use Freshmeat?

[jd]

Some of these are probably listed elsewhere, but many aren't (as of the time of this posting) and it's good to have them collected in one place, anyway.

This list is NOT comprehensive, even of what is on Freshmeat (which, in turn, is not comprehensive in what is Open Source, which in turn is not comprehensive in what exists) but it should make for a good start.

Oh, and this list was trivial to make. Once you have such a list, it is then easy to go out and try the software to see if it'll do what you want. According to the fictional character Sherlock Holmes, "it is a mistake, often made, to theorize without data". So, when you theorize as to what software you'd like to use, here is some data you can use.

• White Dune [freshmeat.net] - one of the best VRML editors - but, then, who uses VRML?
• Sodipopi [freshmeat.net] - a very respectable editor
• Vector Visuals [freshmeat.net] - looks like a nice package
• Gnu Plotutils [freshmeat.net] - long-in-the-tooth, but is pretty standard and does do SVG.
• Quantum GIS [freshmeat.net] does do some GIS-related vector work, but it is unclear as to whether you can really edit the vectors, per se
• Artstream [freshmeat.net] - not been maintained in a while, though
• Skencil [nongnu.org] is a package recommended by Artstream's developers as a good, modern alternative
• JFDraw [freshmeat.net] - Seems to be a good drawing package.
• Sketsa [freshmeat.net] - a good sketching package, looks pretty powerful
• Figurine [freshmeat.net] - doesn't look terribly maintained, but does look ggood.
• Cenon [freshmeat.net] - Not sure about this one, but seems OK
• Inkscape [freshmeat.net] - seems to be recommended by other Slashdotians.
• GDraw for gnustep [freshmeat.net] - which, of course, means you'd need to install GNUStep to be able to use it.
• Autotrace [freshmeat.net] - a vital tool if you are wanting to vectorize raster images. There are a lot of tracing programs out there, but this one seems fairly popular. Not sure if it strictly fits the definition of a "drawing program", though.
• tgif [freshmeat.net]
• Gestalter [freshmeat.net]
• KDE 2D Workbench [freshmeat.net]
• RLPlot [freshmeat.net]
• Magelan Graphics Editor [freshmeat.net]
• Geist [freshmeat.net]
• VisIt [freshmeat.net] - arguable as to whether it really counts
• X3D-Edit [freshmeat.net]
• mjbWorld [freshmeat.net]
• Dia [freshmeat.net]
• QCad [freshmeat.net]
• JGraphpad [freshmeat.net]
• Flash For Linux [freshmeat.net]
• Gaphor [freshmeat.net]
• DoubleType [freshmeat.net] - good for those doing their own fonts
• Chemtool [freshmeat.net], as molecules can be vectors too!
• Glips Graffiti SVG Editor [freshmeat.net]

QCad

[smugfunt]

TFA says QCad is $28 but it is free (and Free) for the *nix versions.
And maybe it isn't totally intuitive but it is easy to learn. I give it a thumbs up anyway.

Re:Does nobody here use Freshmeat?

[Bazzargh]

Use Inkscape rather than potrace directly - you get all the potrace goodness, plus you can edit the results. very nifty.
http://www.inkscape.org/doc/tracing/tutorial-traci ng.html [inkscape.org]