Inkscape 0.42: The Ultimate Answer 577
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.
Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
Geez, I need to get a life.
-Scott
much more detailed analysis (Score:5, Funny)
Re:much more detailed analysis (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A mink, not a ferret (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A mink, not a ferret (Score:4, Funny)
Replacing? (Score:3, Interesting)
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)
Re:Replacing? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Replacing? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Replacing? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Replacing? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Replacing? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Replacing? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Replacing? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Replacing? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Replacing? (Score:4, Funny)
It just gets a lot of flack from people from IDE-land who can't visualize an enterprise-scale application without their UML diagrams and runtime debugger.
It's not assembly language's fault you can't handle a few registers, folks. People who complain about assembly language's difficulty level are usually the sort of people who think automatic garbage collection is a good programming idea.
Yeah... automatic garbage collection. Duh.
Still funny? (Score:3, Informative)
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)
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:3, Insightful)
Apart from that, each one of these programs has an interesting interface that is worth learning how to use.
The thing that annoys me about both Inkscape and the Gimp is that there are no floating palettes. This is irritating because each program is essentially a creative to
Re:Replacing? (Score:3, Interesting)
Um, isn't the usual complaint about GIMP that it is nothing but floating palettes? I mean really, in GIMP just about everything can be spawned as a palette, and you can dock them or leave them as separate windows (hence floating) however you like. Brushes, colors/palettes, tools, tool options, layers, channels, history, patterns, gradients, paths, font selections, selection editors, image navigators, image l
Re:Replacing? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Replacing? (Score:3, Informative)
Before you ask why this isn't the default: it's because they received tons and tons of bug reports from people with broken window managers that don't support utility windows.
Re:Replacing? (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, that would be Blender...
Re:Replacing? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Replacing? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm with you. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Replacing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Replacing? (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
Re:Replacing? (Score:5, Funny)
Hopefully the Inkscape team are working on finding the ultimate question as we speak.
Jedidiah.
Re:Replacing? (Score:5, Informative)
BTW, I don't mean that in a condescending way; it's just a consequence of specialization and it's human nature to assume everyone has some passing interest in the stuff that fascinates or occupies us. I'm sure the proteomics folks here could rattle off half a dozen names of very cool molecular modeling apps, but as someone who spends his days writing Java web applications, not one of those names would ring any kind of bell for me. In return I expect most of the proteomics crowd has never heard of Tapestry or Wicket or the JSP Standard Template Library.
Now if only we could get the editors to realize they ought to include descriptions of the stuff they're posting about. It would not have been so much burden, I think, to add the words "vector illustration tool" right before the name of the program, especially since the editor edited the story anyway to add a comment to the end.
Re:Replacing? (Score:3, Informative)
> add a comment to the end.
yeah, but the editor is Timothy. he's responsible for most of the sensationalist/biased/irrelevant articles on
Already using it (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Already using it (Score:3, Funny)
Mind you maybe I should move the mouse and do something.
I'll be back in 5!
Why is the version number apt? (Score:2, Insightful)
Is there some unexplained significance to the number 0.42 in reference to this program?
Re:Why is the version number apt? (Score:3, Informative)
You might want to disregard this comment. It only makes me want to wince. You were better off not knowing, probably.
Re:Why is the version number apt? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why is the version number apt? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why is the version number apt? (Score:2, Funny)
I'm not sure, but this version must mean everything to the developers.
Re:Why is the version number apt? (Score:2)
Don't you hate it (Score:5, Informative)
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).
Re:Don't you hate it (Score:3, Insightful)
"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
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)
"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.
Have you checked which site your reading? (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Re:Don't you hate it (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah. Any fool can see that Inkscape is a program that automatically inks scanned comic book scetches. Just as obvious that Firefox is a firefighting program that calculates how the fire will spread and devises countermeasures with the cunning of the fox. Or Thunderbird, which is either a bird migration monitor, an emergency rescure crew communication tool or a weather prediction program.
But while this is painfully obvious to me, not all reading Slashdot are blessed with my intelligence, so it might still be a good idea to tell what the program does in the summary.
Re:Don't you hate it (Score:3, Informative)
You laugh, actually that is within the range of functionality we would ultimately like to have... comic work was the reason I got involved.
We already have bitmap tracing, but it's not refined enough for auto-inking yet. I do already use it for tracing scanned, hand-inked pages, at sufficiently high DPI.
Of course, yes, that's hardly the sole purpose of Inkscape.
Developers. Did it all free too. (Score:2, Insightful)
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)
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)
Re:Keep in mind (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
Whoa! Now wait a mo' (Score:5, Funny)
I just don't go around grabbing other guy's packages. Let us leave that to your *.so and S.O.
Re:Whoa! Now wait a mo' (Score:2, Funny)
I would hazard a guess that it's some strange form of cheer equivalent to the more common form of clapping one's hand. Perhaps it's symbolic of male fertility.
What I don't understand is why we're cheering for Windows, unless it's actually an insult not unlike the middle finger, in which case I'd wonder if this was not written by a BSD fan.
Re:Whoa! Now wait a mo' (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Whoa! Now wait a mo' (Score:5, Funny)
I was wondering what SVG was (Score:2, Informative)
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)
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.
Re:I was wondering what SVG was (Score:5, Informative)
To give a more concrete example of what the other folks are saying:
If you're designing graphics for a print brocure or (as in my case recently) wedding invitation, and you're not trying to do photographs, a vector graphics program is just the thing: You can edit your work easily, and the final result can be rendered at whatever resolution it's going to be printed at. Many effects which are a PITA if possible at all via raster software (such as shaped text) are standard features in good vector editors.
If you're retouching a photo, you need a raster editor. Period. So really, you can't replace one with the other. They both have their place, and both are necessary.
Re:I was wondering what SVG was (Score:3, Informative)
Not saying that Inkscape or SVG are great for photo editing, just wanted to point out that some of these things can be done.
#1 thing Inkscake is missing (Score:3, Informative)
Re:#1 thing Inkscake is missing (Score:3, Informative)
Re:#1 thing Inkscake is missing (Score:2)
Re:#1 thing Inkscake is missing (Score:5, Informative)
OS X version not Aquafied. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:OS X version not Aquafied. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:OS X version not Aquafied. (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
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.
Re:OS X version not Aquafied. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a nonsensical statement. Photoshop, and most other cross-platform apps are written in C/C++, use Aqua (of course), and have no code at all in Objective-C.
Mac OS X has two main APIs: Carbon (C/C++) and Cocoa (Objective-C). Both have full access to the GUI.
Oh sweet mistress (Score:5, Interesting)
Pressure (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Pressure (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Pressure (Score:3, Informative)
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
Why not sodipodi (Score:2)
http://www.sodipodi.com/ [sodipodi.com]
Re:Why not sodipodi (Score:5, Informative)
Oops.
What would be more revolutionary... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmm... (Score:3, Interesting)
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)
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.
Re:Kind of shortsighted on their part (Score:4, Insightful)
I've seen this very attitude ever since the start of Inkscape. It's not too frequent, but it does happen with surprising regularity. "You dare to ignore my beloved Illustrator/Freehand/whatever, you're DOOMED." I try to give them our reasons and show them _our_ way of doing it, but they just won't listen.
I think by now, Inkscape's explosive growth and the tons of comments from people who LOVE its interface are the best response to such doomsayers.
You simply _don't get it_. (Luckily you are in a minority, but the fact that you don't get it still saddens me.) We're not in the business of creating an Illustrator clone. We started this project because we want to make the best vector editor in the world. If you want to help us, you're welcome. If you just want to rant or whine without (I'm sure) reading our keyboard chart [inkscape.org] even once - then I'm simply not interested, sorry.
Re:Kind of shortsighted on their part (Score:3, Insightful)
Well said. The keyboard on Inkscape is good; I couldn't care less how Illustrator works. It's not like Illustrator cares how I work, is it? I mean, where's the Linux version?
TWW
Re:Panning tool problem (Score:3, Informative)
If even I can use it effectively... (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
Re:If even I can use it effectively... (Score:5, Funny)
If you're trying to load the images, just open a few of 'em in tabs in the background; you'll get through eventually. Sorry about that! :(
SVG rasterisation (Score:4, Informative)
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 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
Also, I still cannot find a way to export
Re:SVG rasterisation (Score:5, Informative)
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)
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)
"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)
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)
Re:If this is the "The Ultimate Answer" (Score:3, Informative)
Visio alternative? (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
Re:Grab your package.... (Score:5, Funny)
Uh.... I prefer Linux just like most of us, but I like my GF better.
With a witty sense of humour like that, i'm suprised you even have a GF
Re:Grab your package.... (Score:2, Offtopic)
The last time I grabbed my package in public I ended up getting the snot beat out of me by a couple of feminists.
Re:Grab your package.... (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, i like your GF better, too.
Re: Scribus (Score:3, Informative)
www.scribus.org.uk
Re:CAD (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:CAD (Score:5, Interesting)
Something I have wondered about as well. Can Inkscape (maybe in the future) include support for say printed circuit board (PCB) design or more importantly, electronics schematics or digital logic diagrams (with the gates etc)
We do intend to improve some of the technical drawing capabilities, such as line auto-routing, over the next couple releases.
Beyond that, well... we're quite open to patches. (I personally would love to see more technical/engineering drawing enhancements added to Inkscape.)
Re:side-to-side scrolling (Score:5, Insightful)
But seriously, when 85%+ of your audience uses a particular browser, doesn't it make sense to design pages with it in mind?
Not really. First off, I think people are going to judge Inkscape's value not by its website but by how good the application itself is.
Second, our "audience" is not just any random user, but rather those good users that are likely to also contribute to Inkscape in some way - testing, bug reports, PR, patches -- or even just helping us improve the website. People who are unable or unwilling to install a proper Open Source web browser are probably also not the type of good people that would be contributing Inkscape. Thus, IE users are probably not our target audience anyway.
Third, building a huge userbase is not really among Inkscape's principle goals. We want to be a great application that helps make Open Source successful, and we want to promote Open Standards and do what we can to help other Open Source projects. Thus, while we'd like to look good in all browsers, it's most important that we look good in the Open Source browsers, even if (especially if!) they represent only 15% of the marketshare.
Re:OSS Threats (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, I was just thinking of Adobe and Corel when I saw this piece of news. It's become obvious, to me at least, that eventually the open source model will produce worthy competition even in those fields that had always been lacking. You know, games, graphics editing, video editing and so on.
Given that most people aren't professionals, they can probably move from their [cou
Re:Looks cool, too bad it's completely useless to (Score:5, Informative)
since it assumes I want the interface to be in incomplete/poorly translated Japanese language, and doesn't seem to give me any way to change it to English.
Sounds like you want this [inkscape.org] page. First scroll down to the bottom and read "Locale Testing" to see how to set the language. Then scroll up and learn the process of making improvements to an Open Source application's translations. Remember that translations only improve when someone (such as yourself) contributes a few hours to help improve them. ;-)