[HN Gopher] Inkscape 1.4
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Inkscape 1.4
        
       Author : s1291
       Score  : 504 points
       Date   : 2024-10-13 19:14 UTC (5 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (inkscape.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (inkscape.org)
        
       | omoikane wrote:
       | The one new feature in 1.4 that I appreciated the most is the
       | ability to disable anti-aliasing when exporting from the command
       | line:
       | 
       | https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape/-/merge_requests/5167
       | 
       | Before this option appeared in Inkscape nightly builds, I had no
       | way of automating a pipeline to rasterize SVGs into black&white
       | PNGs in a pixel perfect way.
        
       | billfruit wrote:
       | Have they added any method of setting a tool style before
       | drawing, rather than adjusting style after drawing?
        
         | ants_everywhere wrote:
         | It's always fun to set up your font, then write some text and
         | realize it's in the wrong font and all your work was lost
        
           | fourteenfour wrote:
           | I just installed 1.4 to check and it now appears to keep the
           | font you've chosen.
        
             | billfruit wrote:
             | What about line style etc? Is is possible to define the
             | style of line you want and then create lines of that style.
             | 
             | Presently one workflow to work around it is to consider a
             | small area of the canvas as a palette area and create
             | lines/objects in them and apply the desires styles on them.
             | Then duplicate these palette objects into your main
             | drawing.
        
             | ants_everywhere wrote:
             | that's great, thank you for checking!
        
       | msarnoff wrote:
       | I love Inkscape. I've been using it for 20 years. But it boggles
       | my mind how it's still so horribly laggy on macOS. At least they
       | got rid of the Xquartz dependency though.
        
         | thot_experiment wrote:
         | Is there an OS it's not horribly laggy on? Last time I used it
         | you couldn't even get previews of things when you dragged them
         | around, it would just degrade to a bounding box. Heaven forbid
         | you have a scene with any complexity.
         | 
         | Every time I see an Inkscape update I skim it for "massive
         | performance upgrades" and am invariably disappointed. Inkscape
         | doesn't need features, it needs to not lag for 5 seconds when I
         | open a menu, it needs to run at 100+fps when I'm editing paths.
         | 
         | EDIT: I installed the latest version (under W10) and while it
         | doesn't degrade to bounding boxes it's still like 10fps and it
         | leaves trailing copies of the item being dragged around the
         | canvas while I'm dragging. Really disappointing.
        
           | wg0 wrote:
           | Can't say about Windows but on Linux - it works flawlessly
           | since ages.
        
             | thot_experiment wrote:
             | Just installed under Arch and while performance _is_ better
             | and there are no solitaire style copy-trails when I drag
             | stuff it 's still like 15-20fps when I'm dragging even a
             | simple shape around while Illustrator manages 170fps
             | without issue even with complex nested groups.
        
               | wg0 wrote:
               | Illustrator is on Linux too? Could this low frame rate be
               | related to missing drivers? Very less likely though.
               | 
               | I think Inkspace probably should have its own UI kit
               | rendered directly on GPU. That's lot of work however.
        
               | whywhywhywhy wrote:
               | > should have its own UI kit rendered directly on GPU.
               | That's lot of work however.
               | 
               | It's more like that's the minimum that's expected.
        
             | janci wrote:
             | It's laggy on windows. On linux it works great.
        
           | exe34 wrote:
           | $ nix-shell -p inkscape
           | 
           | [nix-shell:~]$ inkscape --version Inkscape 1.3.2 (091e20ef0f,
           | 2023-11-25)
           | 
           | [nix-shell:~]$ nixos-version 24.05.3787.a781ff33ae25 (Uakari)
           | 
           | Seems flawless for me. simple example I made:
           | https://imgur.com/a/wi0kXbm
        
           | __mharrison__ wrote:
           | Never had issues on Linux...
        
           | fourteenfour wrote:
           | Strange. I've been using Inkscape to make vector art on
           | Windows and Ubuntu with various hardware for years and while
           | I don't think it's ever running at 100+ fps it's totally
           | usable and hasn't been laggy. [edit: unless you are using
           | filters or editing a very complex file, it does bog down
           | then.]
        
           | inferiorhuman wrote:
           | 1.3.2 works fine on MacOS (M2 Pro) for me. There's a bit of
           | lag following the mouse cursor especially when moving stuff
           | quickly but the UI widgets are performant and there are no
           | visual artifacts.
        
             | keyshapegeo99 wrote:
             | Ditto, I wouldn't quite say it flies on my M1 MBA, but
             | performance is by no means frustratingly laggy. I use
             | Inkscape a lot on both my MBA and Surface Laptop and it is
             | much more frustrating on the latter device. The lack of
             | support for fractional scaling is an annoyance on my 150%
             | scaled Surface. The tiny UI has to be remedied by pinning a
             | .bat to my taskbar and disguising it as Inkscape, with the
             | following code:
             | 
             | cd <Inkscape directory>
             | 
             | set GDK_SCALE=2
             | 
             | start inkscape.exe
             | 
             | And within Inkscape using the Minwaita-Inkscape theme and
             | 80% font scaling to scale back the otherwise-now-too-big
             | UI.
             | 
             | On both my Mac and PC, the main frustration once the UI is
             | scaled correctly is that often closing pop-up windows (i.e.
             | Document Properties) simply doesn't work. Sometimes using
             | Inkscape's tab close button rather than the MacOS/Windows
             | close window button works, but other times the whole app
             | will freeze up and crash when attempting to close these
             | pop-up windows. Have had this issue for multiple Inkscape
             | versions now, hoping the devs find a way to fix it.
        
         | allenu wrote:
         | I love Inkscape as well. It took some getting used to at first,
         | but now I can sketch things rather quickly with it. The lag on
         | macOS and non-standard UI behaviors are really frustrating
         | though.
         | 
         | For example, for the longest time, if you put the cursor in a
         | text field and then hit cmd-A to select all text, it would
         | interpret that to mean select all objects in the canvas
         | instead. Another thing is that sometimes when I click and drag
         | the corner of the window to resize it, the thing just won't
         | budge. It takes several attempts before it actually works. Very
         | frustrating, but it's open source and gets the job done for the
         | most part, so it's very hard for me to move away from it.
        
           | ltlnx wrote:
           | Inkscape has a lot of additional problems on MacOS, like
           | dialogs appearing below the main window making it look like
           | it's frozen, occasional text rendering issues, interference
           | with input methods (on Windows too), and other problems that
           | cannot be reproduced on Linux. To be fair a big part of it
           | can be attributed to GTK, the underlying UI toolkit.
        
         | smitelli wrote:
         | They've historically been quite open about needing help on the
         | macOS front. For example,
         | https://inkscape.org/news/2021/06/22/seeking-macos-dev-contr...
        
           | Gigachad wrote:
           | I'd imagine there just isn't a huge group of people who work
           | on foss software, and use Mac.
           | 
           | I've noticed that just in general foss apps which work great
           | on Linux, are often broken on macOS.
        
             | pilaf wrote:
             | Yeah, happened to GIMP as well, for a while they didn't
             | have anyone in charge of macOS builds, so they just skipped
             | the platform for a few releases.
        
               | wccrawford wrote:
               | I suspect that not only relieved some of their own
               | stress, but also sent a very clear message to the
               | community that someone needed to take up that slack if
               | they wanted OSX builds.
        
             | sgdfhijfgsdfgds wrote:
             | It's not universal but some of this stuff seemingly stems
             | from the framework level -- Gtk and Qt.
             | 
             | For example, QGIS and FreeCAD are very good indeed on the
             | Mac, and the quirky problems FreeCAD has on the Mac are
             | generally Qt problems (font mapping, some window handling
             | stuff, very occasional high-DPI things).
             | 
             | Command-line/server-based FOSS stuff is usually not a great
             | challenge.
             | 
             | I guess this is kind of what one could predict, comparing
             | Linux and the Mac. Though it's also the case that Qt and
             | Gtk get more portability eyeballs on Windows, which again
             | is probably what one could predict.
        
             | skeptrune wrote:
             | +1. It's frustrating me right now, because newer members
             | onboarding to our team are having all kinds of issues with
             | Element amongst other software.
        
         | gennarro wrote:
         | Came here to say the same. The app is very useful for me (pen
         | plotters etc) but it's awful on my Mac. Barely useable despite
         | being required for some of my workflows.
        
         | pilaf wrote:
         | For me it's gotten a lot better since one or two versions ago.
         | There's still some lagginess, but it's nowhere near the horror
         | show that it used to be, and they fixed some excruciating
         | screen resolution issues as well. I used to avoid Inkscape on
         | macOS like the plague, now I can use it fairly comfortably.
        
       | sprucevoid wrote:
       | Unfortunately 1.4 does not fix command palette issues on Windows
       | (5+ seconds to show, freezes, crashes, several commands
       | accessible through UI buttons not available through palette with
       | same name phrase). Finding the name of an action and how to
       | trigger it (button somewhere or menu/submenu item) is a pain
       | point in Inkscape and a good command palette can help a lot.
        
       | tetris11 wrote:
       | The more I learn about the SVG spec, the more I understand the
       | rationale of some of the UI decisions inkscape made, and the more
       | impressed I am by how they implemented advanced techniques like
       | shape union and intersection, clipping and masking.
        
         | urban_alien wrote:
         | Care to elaborate? I'm curious.
        
         | AlienRobot wrote:
         | From the little I know about SVG, I wish there was an open
         | source alternative to Inkscape that didn't support standard SVG
         | but used a proprietary format instead.
         | 
         | Almost everything you need to create vector art, SVG doesn't
         | support.
         | 
         | Multiple outlines in a single shape? No. Varying thickness in
         | an outline? No. Rounded corners on arbitrary vertices? No. Non-
         | destructive boolean operations? No. I'm not even sure SVG
         | supports paragraphs.
         | 
         | Many of these Inkscape implements as live filters, which are
         | saved as SVG extensions in the XML .svg file that nobody but
         | Inkscape can properly load.
         | 
         | SVG is ridiculously bad as a creation format. It's a good
         | format to export to, but as a backend and it's just insane.
         | It's like using a single PNG file as a backend for your multi-
         | layer 128bpp raster project.
         | 
         | I use Inkscape a lot but I can't help but notice that the best
         | vector art illustration come from Affinity Designer, Corel
         | Draw, and Adobe Illustrator. If you compare the quality of
         | artwork made with proprietary tools to those made with
         | Inkscape, it's very clear that Inkscape severely limits what
         | artists can achieve. You can easily create complex
         | illustrations in other tools that would be a nightmare to
         | manage in Inkscape. Just compare how you clip something in
         | Inkscape to how you do it in Affinity. It's ridiculous how
         | different the two workflows are.
        
           | n3storm wrote:
           | Are you creatively crippled by not being able to create
           | multiple outlines on a single shape on a file format that can
           | be viewed in almost any device from here to eternity at no
           | cost? Cause you know Michelangelo didn't use procreate in a
           | iPad...do you?
        
             | MindSpunk wrote:
             | And the cavemen drawing on walls before Michelangelo didn't
             | have paintbrushes, complex pigments and cathedrals to paint
             | on? Heaven forbid we make better tools.
             | 
             | Considering those operations are available in other vector
             | art tools that aren't constrained by directly using SVG as
             | the fundamental editing format it seems like a reasonable
             | complaint.
        
               | hinkley wrote:
               | This is my complaint about the current state of developer
               | tools. You can buy beautiful tools to make a beautiful
               | chest of drawers or a chair. We are, or at least were,
               | trying to paint the Sistine Chapel with finger paints.
               | 
               | Maybe if we surrounded ourselves with beautiful and
               | sensible tools it would be easier for us to write
               | beautiful or sensible applications. Maybe there would be
               | fewer dancing bears.
        
           | WillAdams wrote:
           | There is Cenon:
           | 
           | https://cenon.info/
           | 
           | which runs well in Mac OS and Linux and for the basics has
           | the basic vector editing capabilities which folks would
           | expect.
        
             | AlienRobot wrote:
             | That's interesting but what can it do better than Inkscape?
        
               | WillAdams wrote:
               | It handles the basics of:
               | 
               | >shape union and intersection, clipping and masking.
               | 
               | in a fashion which most folks will find more familiar.
        
           | anthk wrote:
           | Use Krita for art.
        
             | HKH2 wrote:
             | Krita is not for vector art.
        
           | bbkane wrote:
           | You might look into https://graphite.rs/ . MS Paint is about
           | my digital art interface complexity limit, but I do read
           | Graphite's blog posts and their app sounds really attractive
           | for more serious artists
        
             | agnishom wrote:
             | In what ways are they different from Inkscape? (My
             | knowledge of Vector Editors is quite limited)
        
               | pilaf wrote:
               | I haven't used Graphite, but from what I've seen it
               | allows for non-destructive procedural editing using nodes
               | (a la Blender), which Inkscape mostly doesn't do.
        
           | sourcepluck wrote:
           | I'm very ignorant in these areas, but if you don't mind me
           | asking - how would using a proprietary format solve issues
           | for Inkscape, or an imagined alternative to Inkscape?
           | 
           | Do all the others (AD, CD, AI) use some proprietary format
           | that makes their life easier? Is there no better alternative
           | to SVG on the open source side of things?
        
             | insane_dreamer wrote:
             | Illustrator uses its own proprietary .ai format (which
             | Inkscape can load IIRC)
        
             | Gigachad wrote:
             | A proprietary format would allow doing anything, without
             | having to worry about how other programs will support it.
             | 
             | There's a conflict between what is needed to simply display
             | images, and what is needed for an ideal editable document.
             | 
             | A web browser doesn't need the complexity of non
             | destructive Boolean operations, but an editor program does.
             | It can all be exported to SVG at the end once it doesn't
             | need to be edited anymore. Things like variable thickness
             | outlines can just be turned in to filled Bezier curve
             | shapes that happen to be the shape of the outline.
        
               | prmoustache wrote:
               | You don't have to have a proprietary format to do that.
               | 
               | You are doing the mistake of associating open format with
               | standard format, which really are orthogonal concepts.
               | Open format means the format specification is published
               | under an open license. A standard format is one whose
               | specification is maintained by a standards
               | organization/body/consortium. It happens that most open
               | formats are or end up being maintained by a standard body
               | out of convenience[1] and because people often publish
               | them in the open with the hope it will also be used by
               | others but it doesn't have to be. You as developer of
               | application foo can publish the spec of your .bar format
               | on foo's website under an open license and do the fuck
               | you want with it while not being limited by the potential
               | slowness of a standard governing body.
               | 
               | [1] mostly to avoid multiple incompatible forked versions
               | of the format being used with the same name and confusing
               | others.
        
               | ltlnx wrote:
               | The problem with SVG is the different demands between
               | browser vendors and graphic editors. Browsers for example
               | don't need pages to be in SVG, but it's unavoidable for
               | proper graphic design tools. That makes the advancement
               | of an open format a lot harder, and AFAIK Inkscape devs
               | have thought of extending SVG into their own format (in a
               | talk at LGM).
        
               | jasaldivara wrote:
               | I don't think they are saying "proprietary" as in
               | "secret, closed source", but just as in "custom format"
               | that is built around one particular application.
        
               | bobajeff wrote:
               | I suspect you could achieve a similar result with a
               | standard specification format for vector graphics. You
               | just need to be open to extensions for prototyping
               | features. See open *OpenRaster.
               | 
               | The issue with using SVG is it's not meant for use as
               | data exchange in vector graphics editors but for web
               | publishing.
               | 
               | * https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenRaster
        
           | omoikane wrote:
           | > proprietary format
           | 
           | I also used CorelDraw for many years before moving on to
           | Inkscape, and there were definitely some features that I
           | still miss (e.g. better power clip behavior, blend shapes,
           | etc). But I have came to appreciate Inkscape using SVGs
           | because it allowed me to build my own tooling around it, I
           | only needed libraries that can read and write XML.
           | 
           | SVG is maybe not the best format and Inkscape has many
           | extensions that made their SVGs nonstandard (e.g. mesh
           | gradient), but it is a fairly accessible format. I am not
           | sure the gains promised by a proprietary format would be
           | worth losing out on various SVG/XML tools.
        
           | billfruit wrote:
           | How is clipping different in Affinity and in Inkskape? Having
           | used only Inkscape and not Affinity, I don't find the
           | workflow Inkskape is using problematic.
        
             | AlienRobot wrote:
             | In affinity, you have something like a layer window with
             | all your shapes, similar to layer and objects in Inkscape.
             | The "layers" work like groups, so if you drag one shape
             | into another shape, it gets clipped.
             | 
             | So say you want to make something like a wall with a
             | tunnel/cave and a road in it. You can draw a rectnagle, a
             | circle, put the circle inside the rectangle and it's
             | clipped, then use a triangle for the road and put it inside
             | the circle and it's clipped.
             | 
             | In Inkscape you need to select both shapes and use clip
             | group. Which shape clips which depends on which shape is
             | above the other. I can't tell you which one sould be above,
             | by the way, because I never remember it. If you want to
             | clip one shape by another shape that is already inside a
             | clipping group, you have another problem because you need
             | to double click the group to be able to selected the
             | clipped shape. The more layers of clipping you have, the
             | more you have to double click.
             | 
             | The layer structure is also different. In Affinity, the
             | shape itself is the group and occupies only 1 line in the
             | layers window. In Inkscape, every clipping group creates 3
             | entries in the objects window. One for the group itself,
             | one for the shape at the background, and one for the shapes
             | being clipped. So in Inkscape you have something like:
             | 
             | g277 (this is the group)
             | 
             | -> circle
             | 
             | -> Clip
             | 
             | ---> rectangle
             | 
             | In affinity you have:
             | 
             | rectangle
             | 
             | -> circle
        
           | wraptile wrote:
           | All of the things you mentioned can be done in SVG and I've
           | done all of these things before.
           | 
           | For multiple lines just duplicate your shapes and group or
           | even join them. For varying thickness you can duplicate your
           | shape and layer them. Rounded corners are supported on every
           | vertice so I'm not sure where are you geting that.
        
             | Timwi wrote:
             | I'm not the OP you're replying to but I think you missed
             | some of their points.
             | 
             | 1) multiple outlines: with your strategy, you can no longer
             | edit the shape as a single shape afterwards.
             | 
             | 2) varying thickness: it sounds like you're thinking of
             | thickness varying abruptly from one line segment to
             | another, but remaining constant throughout one segment. I
             | would like a feature where the stroke width varies
             | continuously from one vertex to another, that is, get
             | smoothly thicker or thinner.
             | 
             | 3) you can only have rounded corners on every vertex or no
             | vertex of a shape. You can't choose individually for each
             | vertex.
             | 
             | I think these are all features that SVG would benefit from
             | adding.
        
           | vasvir wrote:
           | > No. I'm not even sure SVG supports paragraphs.
           | 
           | SVG 1.1 does not support wrapping (textflow). There are posts
           | in stack-overflow on how to use a foreignObject (HTML) inside
           | SVG to do the line wrapping.
           | 
           | SVG 1.2 apparently supports but I have never used it so I
           | don't know.
        
           | justinclift wrote:
           | > From the little I know about SVG, I wish there was an open
           | source alternative to Inkscape that didn't support standard
           | SVG but used a proprietary format instead.
           | 
           | Maybe Flash will become popular again at some point, so a
           | well heeled enthusiast (or group of) could buy the source for
           | the Flash Authoring tool from Adobe then release it as OSS.
           | :)
           | 
           | (not holding my breath though)
        
           | latexr wrote:
           | > I wish there was an open source alternative to Inkscape
           | that didn't support standard SVG but used a proprietary
           | format instead.
           | 
           | It didn't need be a proprietary format, it could just as well
           | be a _new_ open format. Inkscape could itself create an open
           | format that they saved to by default and supported many
           | features SVG does not. They they publish the specification
           | for it. Done.
           | 
           | A format doesn't need to be popular, in widespread use, or
           | proprietary to be useful.
        
             | graypegg wrote:
             | I also wonder if they could still base it off SVG, but just
             | append to the spec for their own new format. It's just XML
             | under the hood right? They already have all of the complex
             | parsing set up for SVG XML documents.
             | 
             | If svgx files or whatever just had some non-svg node in the
             | top level that contained all of the special inkscape-only
             | info, you might even be able to keep it totally compatible
             | with svg itself. (Just obviously, lacking the special
             | inkscape features)                   <svg>
             | <ink:inkscaperoot xmlns:ink="inkscapeschema">
             | <effect href="#x">               <border strokewidth="1"...
             | />               <border strokewidth="1"... />
             | <border strokewidth="1"... />             </effect>
             | </ink:inkscaperoot>                    <g><rect id="x"
             | />... regular svg...</g>         </svg>
        
           | lightedman wrote:
           | "Multiple outlines in a single shape? No."
           | 
           | Copy/paste/recenter/resize. No live filter needed. So good
           | even EZCad does it and it can barely do any sort of SVG
           | editing or creation.
        
         | melagonster wrote:
         | Yes, it is very important for learning Inkscape to understand
         | that Inkscape is a SVG editor, but not for common graph editor.
        
         | prmoustache wrote:
         | Speaking of SVG spec, is there a guide on how to create SVG
         | files with Inkscape that will render well on most web browsers
         | supporting SVG?
         | 
         | I have failed a number of times producing an SVG file that
         | would render the same on browsers and in Inkscape editor
         | window. This is frustrating.
        
           | mediumsmart wrote:
           | fwiw I make everything a path, make it small and edit > crop
           | to selection, then save as optimized svg - open with a
           | Webbrowser - Show source - copy - paste into html - remove
           | width and height (handled in the css) add the title etc and
           | done I think.
           | 
           |  _yay for Inkscape but please make dialog modals when
           | multiple tabs are open come to the front and show themselves
           | on macOS - don't be shy_
        
             | prmoustache wrote:
             | thanks
        
             | dudus wrote:
             | This should be an export option or at least some sort of
             | plug-in
        
       | neves wrote:
       | I've just bought a Surface Pro tablet. Does Inkscape interface
       | work well in a tablet or with a pen?
        
         | janci wrote:
         | Some operations are best with keyboard (i.e. moving, zooming,
         | panning, duplicating, acessing panels) and you need modifier
         | keys quite often. You can map one or two to the stylus buttons,
         | but that may not be sufficient
        
         | WillAdams wrote:
         | It can be a bit fussy, but works well --- unfortunately, there
         | hasn't really been a vector drawing program focused
         | specifically on stylus use since Futurewave Smartsketch (which
         | became Flash by way of Futuresplash Animator).
         | 
         | As noted elsethread:
         | 
         | Wick Editor implements some aspects of the vector drawing from
         | Flash: https://www.wickeditor.com/#/
         | 
         | If you're willing to consider a commercial option, Serif's
         | Affinity Designer may suit.
        
         | ltlnx wrote:
         | I really hope it does, but for now it lacks in the basics such
         | as panning (Krita can hold down a button + move pen to pan the
         | canvas), button support (I don't think there's a way to map pen
         | buttons to specific functions, let alone switch between them),
         | and the drawing tools are still really basic. They are focusing
         | on UX for the next release though, and UX issues can be
         | discussed in the Inkscape UX Gitlab repo.
        
         | WillAdams wrote:
         | Also check out the HyVector app mentioned elsethread:
         | 
         | https://hyvector.com/
        
       | bityard wrote:
       | Inkscape has its UI quirks but is really quite a fantastic tool
       | for people who make things. It's my go-to tool for anything that
       | looks like a 2D vector image or plot. I even use it to design
       | vinyl motorcycle emblems:
       | https://blog.bityard.net/articles/2022/June/diy-vinyl-cut-mo...
        
         | prmoustache wrote:
         | I am always surprised to see people recreating the faded/worn
         | out branding of stuff they own when restoring them.
         | 
         | I mean as a consumer I see it as a mark of disrespect from the
         | manufacturer to plaster its logo everywhere. I am paying for
         | the product, not to be an advertising billboard ffs! If you
         | want me to advertise your product, let me negociate the terms
         | and my retribution. This was particularly annoying on road
         | bicycles in the early 2000's where most bike manufacturers
         | would put as many are 7 or 8 logos on the frame and every
         | single component maker would also do the same with loud bright
         | on black logos for every single other part.
         | 
         | see this example of a cannodale supersix of that era:
         | https://files.bikeindex.org/uploads/Pu/582923/large_BRD28952...
         | 
         | Bottom line: when I am restoring a bicycle, motorbike,
         | whatever, the first thing to go are usually the branding and
         | logos.
        
           | criddell wrote:
           | If you were restoring a classic Lamborghini, you wouldn't
           | keep the bull logo?
           | 
           | Most things are ugly though. The stuff people restore (like
           | classic motorcycles) often have pretty great aesthetics and
           | that's part of why they want to restore the object.
           | 
           | https://classictwowheels.com.au/1973-norton-850-commando/
        
             | prmoustache wrote:
             | I guess it would depend if I have it as an investment or to
             | drive it myself. I would certainly keep the original logos
             | in storage for future sale anyway.
        
           | bityard wrote:
           | I guess I don't consider my motorcycles to be art projects. I
           | want to experience the machine as it was originally designed,
           | as much as I can. Once I've done that with this one, I'll
           | move on to another. But I don't care to "make it mine." Car
           | nuts who restore old Mustangs or Corvettes are the same way,
           | just on a somewhat bigger scale.
           | 
           | There are of course a large number of people who do the
           | opposite. They take vintage bikes and chop them up into cafe
           | racers or whatever. And that's fine too. Just not what I'm
           | interested in.
        
       | anthk wrote:
       | Adobe might be more impressive wiht AI but wth that your data
       | will be exploited by bigger players. And, in media, in a world of
       | lawsuits, the big media corpos often have better lawyers.
       | 
       | If you want your media to be stolen to generate 'new' media,
       | choose Adobe. If you want to own your produced media, choose free
       | software, such as Inkscape, Krita, Gimp, Cinelerra-CV, KDEnlive,
       | Blender, Ardour.
        
       | jgalt212 wrote:
       | It would be nice if Inkscape supported SVG P/S. We need that for
       | BIMI, and now have to pay someone who has access to Adobe.
        
         | Cyphase wrote:
         | For anyone in a similar boat, I just heard of someone using
         | Adobe Illustrator's 7-day trial to generate their BIMI logo
         | file.
         | 
         | https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-996-notes.pdf (page 18)
         | https://twit.tv/shows/security-now/episodes/996
        
           | jgalt212 wrote:
           | Thanks, I'll give it a shot.
        
         | fractallyte wrote:
         | You could just hand-edit Inkscape's plain or optimized SVG
         | file: https://bimigroup.org/creating-bimi-svg-logo-files/
         | 
         | (It's really not too difficult.)
        
           | WillAdams wrote:
           | That sort of thing makes me wonder if Inkscape shouldn't have
           | a configurable "Post-processor" option like to that used for
           | G-code, possibly on a per-file basis (add the editing
           | commands needed after saving to a user-editable pane).
        
             | UncleEntity wrote:
             | From what I understand of Inkscape's (somewhat dodgy)
             | extensions protocol that shouldn't be too hard with a
             | little xml processing magic.
             | 
             | --edit--
             | 
             | Looking at the linked page that would be super trivial to
             | implement.
        
           | mixmastamyk wrote:
           | That site has links to tools at github.
        
       | Dwedit wrote:
       | We really need a vector editor that has some of the features of
       | Flash's UI. I haven't seen them in other programs.
        
         | WillAdams wrote:
         | Wick Editor implements some aspects of the vector drawing from
         | Flash:
         | 
         | https://www.wickeditor.com/#/
        
         | wwweston wrote:
         | They were called Fireworks and Freehand. Sadly, they didn't
         | survive Adobe's acquisition of Macromedia.
        
           | WillAdams wrote:
           | Serif's Affinity Designer was consciously modeled on
           | Freehand, and Quasado became GraviT which likewise was
           | inspired by Freehand.
        
             | jansan wrote:
             | I am working on another SVG editor called Hyvector (
             | https://hyvector.com ). It is an SVG editor, but I am
             | trying to hide the strange quirks of SVG from the user.
        
             | jarek-foksa wrote:
             | I'm working on Boxy SVG which combines vector drawing and
             | animation tools: https://boxy-svg.com
        
       | sgdfhijfgsdfgds wrote:
       | It can open Affinity Designer files!? That's something of a
       | buried lede.
       | 
       | That could make the path from Designer to FreeCAD a bit easier;
       | FreeCAD still has something of a special relationship with
       | Inkscape SVG files.
        
       | Jerry2 wrote:
       | I love Inkscape so much. I use it every other week to make
       | presentations, slides or just simple graphics when I need it. I
       | illustrated my thesis with it.
       | 
       | Another piece of 2D vector software that I use and recommend is
       | Graphite [1]. It too is open source. Graphite has nodes and can
       | be procedural in nature. Have them both in your graphics toolbox.
       | 
       | [1] https://github.com/GraphiteEditor/Graphite
        
         | sirsinsalot wrote:
         | If you've not, please donate x
        
         | smartmic wrote:
         | Another gem in my graphics toolbox is edraw [1], an embedded
         | vector drawing tool for Emacs. I use it to make quick sketches
         | in Orgmode files, and it is highly recommended for any Emacs
         | enthusiast.
         | 
         | [1] https://github.com/misohena/el-easydraw
        
           | zelphirkalt wrote:
           | That is truly impressive. I have a hunch though, that it is
           | not well suitable for proper diagrams, due to all the things
           | like wrapping text that is too long for a line inside a
           | shape, inside the shape onto more lines. Dynamically wrapping
           | text when a node's size changes. Moving edges when nodes are
           | moved. All those things one takes for granted in an actual
           | diagramming tool.
        
         | weinzierl wrote:
         | Inkscape has been a staple in my toolbox for decades. The only
         | gripe I have is that it could have been a bit more stable at
         | times.
        
         | teleforce wrote:
         | Is there any open source hybrid vector and bitmap drawing tool?
         | 
         | I used to use Xara Extreme and it's very fast, intuitive and
         | handy mainly due its hybrid features. It's also used to be open
         | source but not anymore:
         | 
         | http://www.xaraxtreme.org/
        
           | stuaxo wrote:
           | Krita is the big one.
        
             | JayDustheadz wrote:
             | Krita doesn't have good vector controls, sadly.
        
           | mkl wrote:
           | Xara was never fully open source. They kept the renderer
           | proprietary, so it never really had a chance.
        
           | lavela wrote:
           | Graphite has raster editing in their roadmap[1], but afaik
           | it's not really there yet.
           | 
           | [1] https://graphite.rs/features/
        
         | bubblesnort wrote:
         | Thank you. This is the first time I've heard of the Graphite
         | editor.
         | 
         | I think it could benefit from availability in package
         | reposirories and looking at the license, it appears the program
         | itself is free under the Apache license but the artwork is non-
         | free. It cannot be modified and commercial use is prohibited.
         | 
         | When combined, Graphite as a whole is non-free so I won't be
         | compiling this until the artwork is gone. I'll look into
         | providing some dummy files and see where it goes.
         | 
         | The other packing problem is that there's already a server
         | monitoring program also named Graphite. But given the above, a
         | change of name and new icons would solve both problems.
        
           | bobajeff wrote:
           | For those who are confused I believe you're referring to the
           | application logo and branding. So basically the Firefox >
           | Iceweasel case again. While the art you create with it is
           | still yours.
        
             | bubblesnort wrote:
             | Of course anything you make yourself is yours. I'm not sure
             | how the license can confuse anyone into thinking it
             | wouldn't be. It likely wouldn't fly with the law anyway.
             | Unless it was all saas.
        
         | erellsworth wrote:
         | Graphite looks pretty cool. Thanks for sharing!
        
       | o1o1o1 wrote:
       | Inkscape is one of the best and most important tools in my
       | arsenal. From creating and editing vectors for use with a laser
       | cutter to designing icons when tools like Illustrator are too
       | expensive and alternatives like ChatGPT fall short, Inkscape
       | never ceases to amaze me with its capabilities. It's remarkable
       | how well this open-source, free application performs. Thank you,
       | Inkscape, for being one of the most reliable and impressive apps
       | I know!
        
       | p0w3n3d wrote:
       | I did a lot of strange things in old Inkscape to achieve the same
       | result as given by this new:                 Shape Builder
       | You can now tackle quick edits on raster (pixel) images within
       | Inkscape using the Shape Builder tool. Load an image and select
       | sections that you want to isolate.
        
       | user3939382 wrote:
       | The prospect of discarding 25 years of muscle memory in Adobe
       | Illustrator is unfathomable to me, as much as I loathe what Adobe
       | has become.
        
         | ltlnx wrote:
         | It does have Ai shortcuts to choose from in the settings, if
         | there's problems or inaccuracies with it you can also open an
         | issue at https://inkscape.org/report/ .
        
       | rullopat wrote:
       | Is it only me that, when I open Inkspace, I really cannot get
       | anything done without watching a tutorial or reading docs / blog
       | posts?
        
         | Kuinox wrote:
         | Same for me, if I want to get something done, I need
         | illustrator (which i don't know well too, but it's way more
         | intuitive)
        
         | ltlnx wrote:
         | Do you have prior experience with other vector editors? For me
         | it's pretty intuitive (save for some papercuts), but that may
         | be due to my lack of experience with other editors.
        
           | gattr wrote:
           | I like Inkscape very much and use it for all my (usually
           | quite simple) vector drawing needs. From the get go, it was
           | quite intuitive to use - my first vector editor experience
           | was with CorelDRAW 3 in the early 90s.
        
         | bubblesnort wrote:
         | There's an obscured close button in the top right corner. If
         | you want to skip the welcome dialog just click that.
         | 
         | The second time it appears, you can uncheck "Show this every
         | time" in the lower left corner and then click "New Document".
         | 
         | ...or you could click Save on the first dialog and then click "
         | Thanks!". You'll get the same dialog as above when you'd have
         | closed it with the button in the corner.
        
         | Fluorescence wrote:
         | Not too bad for me. You likely face the universal problem with
         | more complex software when you don't use them regularly. It's a
         | real skill that requires significant use over time to bed down
         | some lasting neural paths. I have much more difficulty with
         | e.g. Blender, Reaper etc. when every few years I use them. I
         | too have start from tutorials again but I still think they are
         | good tools despite not retaining anything between my rare uses.
         | I bought Affinity, learned to use it but when I returned to it
         | after some time, nothing remained in my head and I had to use
         | inkscape instead.
         | 
         | For inkscape, some of the more sophisticated generative things
         | were "use and forget" for me but they have actually improved to
         | be much more intuitive. The main thing I lose is some of the
         | natural touch that makes it so fast to use. I do love when I
         | use it regularly because it's so quick to pump about svgs at
         | the speed of thought.
         | 
         | Getting really good at a vector tool is such a valuable life
         | skill for explaining all manner of tricky things whether it's
         | for UI mockups, software architecture or graphic design stuff
         | like logos/t-shirt/marketing designs. I live for the "how on
         | earth have you done this?" reaction when I can create a quality
         | diagram while on a call with people. It can really enrich the
         | quality of interactions and reduce cycle time to create designs
         | in real time.
         | 
         | I also use it for all sorts of personal stuff like interior
         | design, DIY, scaffolding etc. I've even submitted official
         | architectural plans I made with it. It's as valuable as a
         | spreadsheet.
        
       | sylware wrote:
       | Sad it is writting in c++ and there is no svg renderer anymore
       | (written in close to plain and simple C99). I guess we have PDF
       | now (no more than version 1.4, maybe some part of 1.7 but no
       | more).
        
       | ho_schi wrote:
       | Woo-ha!                   ... bug fixes and setting the stage for
       | the arrival of GTK 4.
       | 
       | Gtk4. Meanwhile at Gimp? Puh. Maybe they will manage to port to
       | the 14 year old Gtk3 soon. I hope it at least. I'm sure the Gimp
       | developers doing their best and will benefit soon from Wayland
       | and HiDPI.
        
         | fullstop wrote:
         | The funny part is what the G in GTK initially represented.
        
           | dustypotato wrote:
           | Woah . I googled to make sure I read right. It's true!
        
       | pxoe wrote:
       | Calligraphy pen is still unusable, laggy and jaggy. Too slow, not
       | enough setting increments to fine tune it, awfully, almost
       | absurdly angular on even slightly fast motions. 0.92 remains the
       | most responsive version. Welp, i don't know what i expected,
       | since every time i'd check latest version it'd still be like
       | this. Celebrating 4 years of Inkscape breaking calligraphy tool
       | and never fixing it since.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2024-10-18 23:01 UTC)