Inkscape 0.47 Released 225
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).
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.
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!
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?
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:2)
Its far from standards compliant, unless you think Word is HTML compliant when you use it as an HTML editor.
Word HTML isn't that different than normal html, just use tidy HTML and some sed rules to strip out the non-standard tags and you're golden!
Re: (Score:2)
Those of us that can use sed to strip out the tags are highly unlikely to be using Word to create HTML documents! We do it in vi and we like it.
Re: (Score:2)
Most people who do graphics for a living use Adobe Illustrator, not Corel Draw, and they generally use it on a Mac.
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)
Re: (Score:2)
Adobe has had years and plenty of notice about the 64 bit API and languages. Their fucking problem for digging in their heals, cruising on name recognition and lack of competition.
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
Re: (Score:2)
see that? [google.com]
That drop is you not buying Adobe products. Are you happy now?
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 ...
Text flows! (Score:2)
YAY! flowRoot seems to be supported!
Now ... if only it would let you use SVG fonts ...
Maybe in another year.
Re: (Score:2)
Apache Batik [lmgtfy.com]
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
You should continue using IE also, you'll never miss viewing web pages properly.
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.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Well reality is that what the SVG export of a vector graphics program does is completely irrelevant to most users. Peer reviewed journals typically take .eps, .tif, .pdf and maybe .png. Who cares what the intermediate representation looks like? Only crazy people would say MS-Word is useless software because the HTML-export sucks. Same thing here.
PS: The ad-hominem at the end of your post makes *me* feel sorry for *you*. Not the other way round.
Batik fanboy? (Score:2, Informative)
You, sir, have apparently never seen a Frontpage 2000 output, otherwise you wouldnt draw such a nonsense parallel to inkscape.
I saw a lot of frontpage HTML output and i work with Inkscape too, and the comparison does NOT fit in any meaningfull way.
The most visible difference being Frontpage using custom markup IN ADDITION to standard HTML that was crucial to render the page as seen in Frontpage.
Inkscape uses a SUBSET of standard SVG and its output is does not contain markup needed to convey the visual infor
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".
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)
So you are saying everyone should do as Microsoft does? Yeah, they should do half-assed debugging and design. What a wonderful idea.
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?
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
Some suggestions (Score:2)
As someone who works with these kinds of tools regularly, I'd like to blurt this out to the graphical tools people in the open source world:
- Merge vector drawing into the gimp. Make it a layer like thing. Then add paging. Now you can produce a book.
- Barring that, please make all these vector-drawing tools (inkscape, skencil) multi-page and when you do: try not to hold the whole document in memory. Please. I make books that hold images in 300 dpi. Anymore than twenty such pages and you're beginning t
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
seconded :D
Re: (Score:2)
seconded :D
Thirded. Inkscape does right virtually everything that the GIMP does wrong. It even has a proper name.
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, 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:2)
Please don't say merge!
If they could add a plug-in interface to dynamically load Inkscape functionality into the GIMP, that'd be great for GIMP users. But please don't change anything in Inkscape to do it. To curse Inkscape with the GIMP interface would kill it dead.
Merge Inkscape and Gimp, are you mad? (Score:2)
Gimp can import svg files, that's enough.
If you wish to mix vector graphics and bitmaps, best do it in a vector package where it makes sense, not the other way round where it doesn't.
Re: (Score:2)
- Merge vector drawing into the gimp. Make it a layer like thing. Then add paging. Now you can produce a book.
Why would merging it with the gimp be beneficial?
Barring that, please make all these vector-drawing tools (inkscape, skencil) multi-page and when you do: try not to hold the whole document in memory.
You are making books wrong. First, there is no benefit to having your entire all-graphical book in one document. Save each page or pair of pages as a separate document, and combine them into a single PDF for the printer. Second, if you need additional formatting, you use a desktop publishing package; you could use TeX, or you could use Scribus, but either way you want desktop publishing software if you want to publish from your desktop. Inkscape is meant to b
Still broken... still waiting.... (Score:2)
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!
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with your notion is that you can get Xara Xtreme for Linux for free, so Inkscape is most certainly NOT in the same family — it is competition.
I'm still bummed about XaraLX's abandonment. (Score:2)
I have been a big Xara user for over a decade, and I couldn't believe my good fortune when they started (finally) developing a Linux port. It was making amazing progress, then suddenly -- the entire project fell flat. It's very definitely dead; it hasn't so much as twitched in years. I suspect it's because Xara got themselves acquired/partnered (or whatevered) again by a company that didn't see any financial incentive in a Linux version and killed it, but I don't have the proof to back that claim up.
As for
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)
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)
Re: (Score:2)
A case in point is my own set of backup scripts (this is not) Backup Buddy [effortlessis.com]
My primal instincts kicked in and I was ready to attack since I misread that as Bonzi Buddy.
Re: (Score:2)
Huh! (Score:2, Insightful)
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."
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.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
While it's true that Blender is awful in the beginning, once you get the hang of it you understand why they made it this way. And frankly, it's not beyond the reach of somebody who really wants to start 3d editing (not a very common user). You should just understand that their target audience = poeple who spend a few hours configuring things and doing tutorials.
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting you mention theese two programs.
Bitter blender experience (Cinema 4D spoiled me) and constant trouble with Gimp (so many bad concepts, usability nightmare that unlike Blender can not be overcome by learning interface) have bittered me against pretty much any graphic tool that comes from opensource, it certainly caused me to dismiss Inkspace the very instead i heard about it. But this is insteresting, OS graphics tool that actually works well?
Re: (Score:2)
Yep. I don't use it much, but from cruising through the built-in tutorial (which is actually an editable file... so the tutorial is directly interactive) I was able to make a few things. I still don't know WTF I'm doing with GIMP. I basically use it to resize and crop - anything else is a PITA to figure out (besides basic filters)
Re: (Score:2)
I've never modeled something with more than 50 polygons before. Blender was the first thing to let me make a complete complex model [imageshack.us]*, and I did it with not very much outside help.
It took me a week to figure even the basics of Maya and 3D-Studio Max.
I don't accept your argument against Blender, by my very own experience of that learning process.
* - Modeled 1016 polygons, if you include edge loops for the smoothing/subsurface modifiers. The "actual" mesh is only 400 or so.
Re: (Score:2)
Guess we have different needs, maybe I'm just trying to do something with blender it's not designed to do. Mainly very low poly models, with full control of every vertex, something which is best done with Milkshape. And conversion of model formats + fixing up some issues.
But Blender got a price for just pissing me off with the "import file" dialog, depending on the type you are trying to import the file browse and path act differently, don't remember the last path, and the import sometimes fails without any
Re: (Score:2)
I think Blenders problem of a clunky interface is because they tried to roll their own and didn't know how. Granted, I think when they started, there weren't many decent toolkits, especially ones which supported 3d, so they probably didn't have a choice.
BTW, Blender didn't begin as open source. It started as a commercial product. IIRC, the company went under, and a bunch of people got together to pay for it to be GPLed.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with propriety software is not necessarily the quality, but the cost. The price of 3DS Max may be a painful but possible one for you, but that is certainly not the case in most of the world outside of developed countries. If someone in South Africa, for instance, where the price of 3DS Max is the equivalent of 3/4 of a years salary in some cases, were to wish to do 3D, he would have to either use a pirated copy of 3DS Max, or use something like Blender.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
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).
Yes, the money makes the software to be such that it is 100% intuitive and not the UI. We all know that 3D Studio Max is very expensive and thats why it is 100% intuitive so every new users can do same kind effects as we see on the movies when they just pay the license. It is just so awesome that my 80 year old grandmother did better effects to her family movies than what we all have seen on movies like Titanic, Matrix, Final Fantasy and so on. Too bad that the movie studios are so stupid that they do not u
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)
Re: (Score:2)
It's rather a pity that so many projects like Inkscape might be overlooked by all those folks living outside the open source community.
Not really. We can't really use them before the 1.0 release because what is needed is a community that can handle filing bug reports. Most artists don't fall into this category; most artists are like my mom, who knows jack diddly shit about the computer except how to run Pagemaker, Illustrator, and Photoshop. Y'all can get your panties in a wad, but I consider myself a commercial artist, and I have known enough of them to know that tech-savviness is the exception to the rule.
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Adobe Flash is not only rudimentary vector graphics, but lots of scripting.
Re: (Score:2)
I read somewhere, although I can't verify it, that Southpark (The TV show, if you live under a rock) is done using SVG.
The reason you can't find a reference is because they never used SVG to animate the show. They currently use 3D software in production, according to their own FAQ from 2001:
http://www.southparkstudios.com/fans/faq/archives.php?month=5&year=2001#faq_732 [southparkstudios.com]
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.
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".
Re: (Score:2)
That is because Illustrator's native format is pdf. Honestly, mate, I own and use Illustrator and it is NOT the case that illustrator doesn't have gotchas or strange UI decisions.
Re: (Score:2)
1) Illustrator's native format is .ai
2) Even if it was pdf, it does not change either the fact that it's quite possible to encapsulate all this information in a pdf, or that when you select save, it saves your data... all of it, this is not true in Inkscape.
I'm not denying that illustrator has weird UI issues, but at least when you select save, it *does*. Save is one of the most critical features of any application, and to have a save option which... does not is *awful*.
Re: (Score:2)
I do it all the time. They are both standardized vector formats. We get PDFs from customers for various bits of artwork that we need to convert to SVG to use with our software.
read vector pdf back... (Score:2)
on a mac Intaglio will read vector PDFs keeping the vectorial info intact, reedit them, and export to various formats including svg...
http://www.purgatorydesign.com/Intaglio/index.html [purgatorydesign.com]
Re: (Score:2)
I just tried it. Inkscape imported the PDF I made in it. It contained text, vectors and bitmaps and it loaded them fine. Perhaps you should file a bug for your particular case. Or are you just a freeloader - using open source software without contributing any effort, even as far as bug reporting.
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: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:2)
I did, I was just pointing out that there's no implicit reason why you can't re-open a pdf. Illustrator does this just fine.
Re: (Score:2)
The difference is that illustrator is also made by the same people who make* PDFs.
* Dur, the people who make Adobe Acrobat can probably handle editing/extracting-from PDFs.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that pdf is an open format that's actually remarkably simple to parse.
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry to reply to myself, but let me add... especially when you wrote it out yourself, and can guarantee the structure of the elements in it.
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: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)
I think attaching something unrelated to put your opinion up is actually called thread-hijacking ...
oh now I see what you did there ;-)
Re: (Score:2)
I find your jump to a conclusion with insufficient evidence disturbing.
Karma-whoring is when you write something with the purpose of getting modded up and thus gaining karma. Replying to posts near the top of the page is simply because otherwise your comment ends up at the bottom of the page, where very few people will read it. Wanting your post to be read in no way implies karma-whoring; it's simply an adaptation to Slashdot-style discussion.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No, and unfortunately it cannot made you learn the difference in tense between "make" and "made"
Re: (Score:2)
I think GP meant "How do I made FLA or SWF? [knowyourmeme.com]" Granted, that's no better, but at least it's a meme.
Re: (Score:2)
It can made FLA or SWF?
No, and unfortunately it cannot made you learn the difference in tense between "make" and "made"
Alas, it has begun. The lolcatters have arrived.
He can has cheeseburger.
I can made for the hills.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
No, not even anywhere close to capable of what Illustrator is capable of.
A nice example from the release notes:
http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes047#Initial_SVG_Fonts_support [inkscape.org]
Inkscape is fine if you don't do anything complex. Drawing basic flowcharts and simple diagrams works perfectly well.
Interoperability and actual features are another story.
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].