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Comments: 225 +- News: Inkscape 0.47 Released on Wednesday November 25, @02:10AM
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by
kdawson
on Wednesday November 25, @02:10AM
from the drawing-not-quartering dept.
from the drawing-not-quartering dept.
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derrida writes "After over a year of intensive development and refactoring, Inkscape 0.47 is out. This version of the SVG-based vector graphics editor brings improved performance and tons of new features, including: timed autosave, Spiro splines, auto-smooth nodes, Eraser tool, new modes in Tweak tool, snapping options toolbar & greater snapping abilities, new live path effects (including Envelope), over 200 preset SVG filters, new Cairo-based PS and EPS export, spell checker, many new extensions, optimized SVG code options, and much more. Additionally, it would be wrong to not mention the hundreds of bug fixes. Check out the full release notes for more information about what has changed, enjoy the screenshots, or just jump right to downloading your package for Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X." We've been following the progress of Inkscape for years (2006, 2005, 2004).
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Brilliant piece of software (Score:5, Interesting)
As a person who uses vector drawing programs from time to time, this program was a great find. Having pirated Corel Draw installed, mostly for rubbish reasons, was also bad - for bloat reasons, law reasons - and sanity reasons. I remember that Corel then (>5 years ago) had so much bugs, slow and unresponsible, bad support for local fonts, unstable. For all my purposes Inkscape is by far better program - compact, standards compliant, fully functional, and frankly I enjoy using it much better than Corel Draw. Couple bugs yes, but brilliantly reliable compared to horrible nightmare that is (was?) Corel Draw.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Its far from standards compliant, unless you think Word is HTML compliant when you use it as an HTML editor.
Re:Brilliant piece of software (Score:4, Insightful)
It does not cover all of SVG, that does not mean it's not compliant with the standard.
Parent
Re:Brilliant piece of software (Score:5, Insightful)
Your argument is invalid. Yes, it might not be 100% draft compatible, but at least its SVG files are perfectly readable in all the software I ever tried... from Firefox, Opera, to Photoshop and whatnot. As far as I know, Word HTML is actually readable mostly in IE. It does so on purpose - 1. Get monopoly 2. Break standards 3. Get people to use your proprietary formats / equipment 4. Profit!
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Actually it’s not. That’s GP’s point. The extensions are simply not shown in Firefox & co. Just as with Word HTML.
Re:Brilliant piece of software (Score:4, Informative)
If you think Firefox renders SVGs correctly, you aren't doing much with your SVGs.
Neither gecko (Firefox) nor Webkit have SVG rendering thats useful for more than basic shapes. They lack support for large swaths of the standard.
You're response is only valid if you use Inkscape to draw basic flowcharts and smiley faces, do anything complex, Inkscape, Firefox and Webkit are severely lacking.
They claim test suite compliance, if so than thats a major step to not sucking, but only if it actually saves standard SVGs. It traditionally hasn't. Its default format uses its own extensions, and its standard svg format lacked features for no apparent reason. Hell, the Inkscape extended SVG format just seems to give you some of the standard SVG features, but using custom extensions.
So great, Inkscape SVGs are renderable in Inkscape, and really simple ones will work in Firefox and Opera. Whoopdee-doo.
Do you accept a web browser with HTML 2.0 support now days? I don't.
Photoshop has a real SVG rendering engine built in, it will load files that Inkscape doesn't have a chance in hell of loading.
If you're argument is that Inkscape's lack of standard support is OK because its trying to embrace and extend the format and break compatibility with other software (again, not some extremely simple drawing) just so it can be 'the one to rule them all', then Inkscape can go fuck itself. I use SVG because it IS A STANDARD that IS SUPPORTED PROPERLY by at least SOME software. I'm not complaining about not supporting the ENTIRE standard, no one does. What it does support and how it saves on the other hand, I expect to be proper.
Again, if you think Word HTML is acceptable, you and I have completely definitions of standard. I like my 'standard' files to actually follow the definition of the standard, not someone elses own variation.
I find it amusing that your arguing that Inkscape breaking standards is acceptable because MS did it. Two wrongs don't make a right.
Why even claim the SVG file format? Just call it what it is. Why have a 'Inkscape SVG' and a 'Standard SVG' save option? Why not just call the Inkscape version the Inkscape file format and stop trying to piggy back on the SVG standard. Why introduce confusion to others?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Just out of curiosity, I opened the native Inkscape (0.47) version of a logo I'm working on in Firefox (Linux, v3.5.5). It rendered beautifully. Same with Opera v9.63. The art has ~50 paths with more than 600 nodes each (largest ones around 3000 nodes each), transparency and blur filter effects, linear color blends and I'm pretty sure I've got a couple of radial blends in there as well. So
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Congrats to the Inkscape team. I use it all the time for business and pleasure. I did join up with the developers of Inkscape for a month or two, so I could fix some layer-related bugs and get to know the internals a bit better. I drew this anime-fanart image, and made a script to make this video, while 0.47 was in the works. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nshUvuOCHtw [youtube.com] - it doesn't show but a tiny fraction of what Inkscape can do, but I found it fun to produce anyway.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Snow Leopard, finally. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
If you want to do any serious graphics work, I'd recommend using Windows instead, the majority of graphics applications "just work" on it and there is not as many backwards compatibility issues forcing you to upgrade constantly in Windows as there is in OS X. There isn't even a 64bit version of most graphics applications for OS X (this includes Photoshop) due to Apple's policies on what APIs and languages you can use to make 64bit GUIs.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
STILL NO FREAKING SUPPORT FOR CASE SENSITIVE FILESYSTEMS ON OSX FROM ADOBE. WTF. MIGHT AS WELL JUST TURN ON THE CAPSLOCK KEY.
I refuse to buy another Adobe product until they freaking fix that. Whats worse is that I'm finding that my reasons for paying a small fortune for Creative Suite is rapidly going away. Sure its nice and would make things easier, but I'm just learning alternative, although slower, methods of accomplishing the same thing with less feature rich software.
If CS5 doesn't do it, its unli
Does it actually make standard SVGs yet? (Score:5, Interesting)
Everytime I've looked at Inkscape in the past its idea of 'standard' SVGs is about like Word's idea of 'standard' HTML, even when you switch to the standard svg format rather than its extended version.
I'm grabbing it now, but I see nothing in the release notes about this particular issue. I see things about adding more extensions which is great and all, but I use SVG because its a documented standard that I can work with in my own software, I'd love to suggest Inkscape to others, but until its capable of producing version 1.2 SVGs with text flows that work with Apache Batik is useless. The font improvements look promising, as long as it isn't retarded and storing all text as curves.
Heres to hoping ...
Re:Does it actually make standard SVGs yet? (Score:5, Interesting)
Please compare
http://home.hccnet.nl/th.v.d.gronde/inkscape/ResultViewer.html [hccnet.nl]
to
http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/batik/status.html [apache.org]
My standards actually are based on some standard.
I was excited when I saw 'svg test suite compliance' in the release notes, then I looked at the test results. The omit a large portion of them and fail a massive chunk of them.
A new feature in the release notes is 'Initial SVG font support' ... Inkscape is roughly the same as using Frontpage 2000 to make web pages. Sorry I got your fanboy panties in a bunch, but reality sucks sometimes.
Parent
0.47 (Score:2)
Why still a 0.x version number?
Do the developers still consider Inkscape to be unsuitable for normal use?
Re:0.47 (Score:5, Informative)
Their roadmap [inkscape.org] states that the 1.0 milestone is "full SVG 1.1 support".
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The step from 0.46 to 0.47 has taken them over a year. They have some major architectural refactoring efforts still in the pipeline ("Separate sections of code into various libraries for use by other programs" for 0.52 -> 0.53). While it's an impressive program that I use daily (with little complaints, apart from stability issues on Windows at work), I get the impression that their roadmap is such that if they follow it, they will never get to 1.0.
Re: (Score:2)
What’s wrong with that?
Think of 1.0 as perfection. And just as with a mathematical limit, you will never reach it.
You will only get to a certain level of closeness to perfection, that in “good enough”.
Then (or even in parallel), you write a new roadmap for 2.0, (the second generation) that is not possible with the 1.0 architecture, and requires a major redesign. And until that one gets to “good enough” for you, it’s still 0.x/1.0 for you.
I think the major misconception is
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What's wrong with that?
The problem is that the version number is something that has semantic relevance to most users, and the vast majority of programs don't think of version 1.0 as 'perfection', they think of it as (usually) the first reasonably feature-full, stable, release. Giving a program a version of 1 makes it sound like a beta or worse, which gives at least some users the impression that it may not be stable or acceptably solid.
Re: (Score:2)
Inkscape is great (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyone with a need to create simple vector-based drawings should check out Inkscape. I use it for figures in presentations and for box diagrams in academic documents and have found nothing better. The finished product looks great.
It's also handy for editing PDFs after they are exported from R (Statistical Package). Often something you can't easily tweak in R can be fixed very quickly in Inkscape.
The best thing about it is the interface: very easy to pick-up, yet extremely flexible. A lot of thought has clearly gone into the UI design.
RS
Re:Inkscape is great (Score:4, Funny)
Often something you can't easily tweak in R can be fixed very quickly in Inkscape.
Do you per chance work for the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia?
Parent
Excellent news. (Score:3, Interesting)
As others have said, this is a real gem of an opensource program. I've been using it for years (skencil previously), mostly in designing dials for wrist watches.
Best wishes,
Bob
As a old RiscOS users (Score:3, Informative)
It's kind of in the family.....
!Draw -> ArtWorks -> Xara -> Inkscape (interface heavily influenced by Xara)
Pushing it I know, but nice to think of it like that, so I do!
For those that scrolled to the bottom (Score:5, Funny)
Let me summarise the thread:
* beelsebob quite rightly pointed out PDF should be under Export and not Save, since Inkscape can't load PDFs
* BitZstream wrote many rambling pieces about how it wasn't compliant with the full SVG standard, most other people found it a jolly useful piece of software and were quite happy using it
* people were generally unimpressed with bytesex's idea of merging Inkscape into GIMP
* a few lamented the demise of Artworks/Xara
Phillip.
Re:Hurrah! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Hurrah! (Score:5, Insightful)
But you forgot to say why!
Many times, developers will have a list of features that they figure are "1.0". They may not have reached all the features yet, but the features developed thusfar may be very stable.
A case in point is my own set of backup scripts (this is not) Backup Buddy [effortlessis.com]. I've been using them for years, they work very well, stable even with very large sets of data. (Well into the TBs currently, managing over 100 backup sources in 24 hour rotation)
But I don't consider them "1.0" yet because I always envisioned a handy-dandy web interface for managing backup rotations, verifying backups (currently working) and recovering files 1-by-1 securely. So, I edit config files. (aw shucks)
Parent
The closed circle (Score:5, Insightful)
As a general rule, "1.0" doesn't really hold a lot of significance in the open source community with regard to actual usefulness.
It's rather a pity that so many projects like Inkscape might be overlooked by all those folks living outside the open source community.
Where Rev. 0.x = Beta state, maybe, and Alpha, more than likely. Immature. Unstable. Basic features missing or unusable.
Think of it as another handicap, like naming your premier photo editing program The GIMP - which to the outsider translates simply as "crippled" and "sexually perverse."
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Where Rev. 0.x = Beta state, maybe, and Alpha, more than likely. Immature. Unstable. Basic features missing or unusable.
You mean, exactly like inkscape is? No disrespect to it – it's an awesome project... but it's by no means a mature editor.
Re:The closed circle (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm no artist, but I do like to create things, so I use many tools to do just about anything. But I don't want to spend many hours learning a tool, as I just want to create something quick and easy.
Now, in my years I've come across many tools. Closed source/open source, free/payed. I've used anything from mspaint to photoshop, from milkshape to 3D studio max. I've tried GIMP, Blender and Inkscape as open source tools. And quickly dumped GIMP and Blender, they are not userfriendly for entry level at all. Blender doesn't allow you to do anything unless you spend a few hours just configuring things and doing tutorials, which is a pain in the ass compared to 3D studio max (yes, you get what you pay for, 3DS Max is not cheap). Milkshape is also much easier to use then Blender, but has much less features, still I think Blender could learn from it.
About the same goes for GIMP vs Photoshop, but in that respect GIMP is much friendlier then Blender. However, photoshop still seems to have an edge in entry level usage.
And then we had Inkscape, installed, started, and go. No problems at all, didn't need to look for any alternatives. Now, I only use 10% of the features of these programs. But for everything I used I think Inkscape is the only that really should get the 1.x version stamp.
Parent
Check Blender 2.5 - big redesign (Score:3, Interesting)
Interesting you (and those who replied to you) should mention Blender's difficult interface, because that's one of the main things they're working on improving right now. Just yesterday they released the first Alpha of a the new 2.5 series, with an extensively (completely?) redesigned GUI meant to be easier and more logical to beginners, and both the GUI as well as keyboard shortcuts are now completely customizable.
Here is the page with info on it: http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-250 [blender.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Nah. It’s a mental handicap to pre-judge software that way. And besides: What kind of needy loser lets others dominate how he wants to build his software? Someone with no own sense of reality and system of values? Well then he won’t become much of a leader, or innovator will he? ^^
Especially, if you work for free anyway.
Maybe you should not assume, that you can demand special treatment from someone who gives you things for free. :)
I, for example, have only one reason I write most of my software:
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
gimp is a rasterized graphics editor. Inkscape do vector graphics.
Re:how it is different from.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Saving SVGs from GIMP is like saving PDFs from Photoshop.
Sure, it outputs a SVG file, but the editor is focused on editing bitmap images. Most people will get a PNG or JPG embedded in an SVG when saving an SVG from GIMP.
In the past (Its been a while since I've used GIMP so this could be completely different now), saving an SVG from GIMP would first render most everything too a raster image format, then just embed a single or multiple raster images in the SVG, turning the SVG into basically a wrapper around the layers of rasterized images.
Inkscape is intended to work on shapes and not rasterized images. Text doesn't get rasterized before saving, it gets written to the file as texts using a specific font or as curves. A rectangle is stored as a rectangle object with which a border style, fill style, and maybe a filter. Circles, and other polygons are the same.
Later when you want to resize an object stored as a shape rather than a rasterized image, you just scale the shape, there is 0 quality loss. Resize a rasterized image in GIMP to something larger and you'll start seeing artifacts rather quickly. Changing the border color on a rectangle in GIMP would require you to select the area around the rectangle with manually, with a magic wand tool, or maybe a script, then change the color of the individual pixels, overlaying the existing pixels. With antialiasing turned on this can quickly turn into a mess as it blends in with the existing colors or the background. Changing the border color in Inkscape will result in a final image without the mixing of colors associated with rasterized images as the file is really a set of instructions for drawing shapes. Instead of changing the individual pixels directly, you change the command that creates those pixels in the first place.
Inkscape is to GIMP what Flash is to Photoshop or GIMP.
SVGs also allow for animation and scripting in the file itself. Not scripting like you normally use with GIMP, but scripting like producing animation, allowing for interactivity kind of like a web page. With SVGs you can create user interfaces and applications and use them in an SVG viewer with proper support. At one point I was working on (just for fun) a clone of the Evony Flash game written in SVG and javascript. You could open it with Apache Batik or Webkit and 'play' the game. Clicking on various 'buttons' would call javascript functions to do the backend work, talk to the server, ect.
SVG is comparable to Flash in most ways except the lack of sound and video support, which are handled by other standards. Flash uses ActionScript, SVG uses Javascript.
Theres a lot of other differences and a lot of commonality between the two from an outside perspective, but you'll find that if you're editing a photo, you want to do it in GIMP. If you're drawing shapes, flowcharts, and the like, you'll want to do it with an SVG.
I read somewhere, although I can't verify it, that Southpark (The TV show, if you live under a rock) is done using SVG. Even if it isn't, Southpark would be something SVG is perfectly suited to doing, where as doing it in GIMP would surely suck ass for the guys doing the drawing and animation. It'd be relatively simple to do with SVG.
Parent
Re:Great (Score:5, Insightful)
Dunno, but what they didn't fix was the incorrect naming of save/export.
They seem to think save is anything that outputs a vector format, and export is anything that outputs a bitmap, rather than the normal definition of save being anything you can re-open with zero loss of data, and export being things you might lose data (possibly all of it) if you try to re-import.
I lost a *lot* of time when I "saved" a load of files as pdfs, and then got told inkscape couldn't reopen them.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
You seriously expected to go back from pdf to svg? My wife exports from revit to pdf and she doesn't expect the process to work in reverse.
Re:Great (Score:5, Insightful)
1) yes, illustrator works just fine reading/writing pdf as it's save format
2) yes, anything in the list of formats under "save" should allow me to open again... if it won't, it should be under "export" not "save".
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As someone who works with Illustrator a fair amount, I implicitly know that pdfs can be reopened and worked on just fine without losing any data at all. I call this function save.
Inkscape does not have this feature, and thus should put pdf export in the export section, not the save section.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that pdf is an open format that's actually remarkably simple to parse.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If it's "remarkably simple to parse" then why it is so hard to find a non-Adobe application that can easily edit pdf files?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And why is the spec almost 700 pages, and why does everybody I know who has tried to work with it cursed it up and down?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I just tried it too, it still didn't succeed in correctly importing the files (close, but no cigar).
Note the word there though – import, not open. It imports and exports pdfs (possibly with data loss), it does not save and open them (which it claims to).
Yes I filed a bug report, a long time ago, and yes, I contribute to Open Source projects.
Re: (Score:2)
I hope they solved the problem where it snapped to the panel and the edge of the screen alternately when you maximized it in Gnome with a resolution of 1024x768.
Inkscape is installed on all of our Linux PCs at home, and on the Windows PCs and VMs at work. It is one of the "must-have" applications for graphics. We all use it at home, adults & kids.
I love how you replied to someone yet said nothing related to the parent at all.
Re: (Score:2)
I love how you replied to someone yet said nothing related to the parent at all.
Why, thank you for the compliment! And I thought I was new here...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's called karma-whoring.
Re: (Score:2)
No, and unfortunately it cannot made you learn the difference in tense between "make" and "made"
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Checkout Apache FOP. The future you're looking for above is available in SVG files using flowed text.
Of course the problem is still a lack of editors with flow support. They all want to flow it themselves and manually position the text for some retarded freaking reason.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll add my voice to this. Give me applications that are focused and good at what they do, don't create some hideous hybrid that merely does everything badly. Besides, GIMP is really the wrong tool for creating books. You should be exporting graphics from whatever program you use and then importing them in a proper desktop publishing program. If you want Libre software, you can look at Scribus [scribus.net] for these purposes. (That has some notable omissions such as decent table layout, but it might be sufficient for y
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
can someone please tell me why a simple graphics editor takes 190Mb disk space?
I suppose that the Windows package includes the entire gtk+ toolkit and various support libraries, too. The Debian package of Inkscape is just 20 MB because Debian has the libs in separate packages (which are often already installed for other purposes, such as GNOME, anyway). Here's the dependency list: http://packages.debian.org/lenny/inkscape [debian.org].