Exploring Inkscape

[Grafixman]

Finally got around to playing with Inkscape. The current release has a few bugs, so it's not rock stable. I was checking the site frequently for the promised patch, but none yet, as of now. However, I clicked the screenshots and user examples links in the Inkscape site and was rewarded with pictures of nifty things you can do with it. I tried the Tile clone with trace option. Could get it to tile in various ways, but the trace tab eluded me until I discovered you have to set the fill type to undefined (?) first. After that, it just worked perfectly. Corel Draw can read Inkscape svg alright, so I added some dropshadow in Draw. Inkscape has several pretty advanced options. I'll be exploring them and probably post results if I can.
The pic below is the result of the Tile Clone with the trace option on. Placed on top of a large star with a gradient filled square below, it resulted in the tile with individual stars colored according to the part directly below each. You might think the same thing could be done with clipview or powerclip, but that would place bitmaps inside each star which would bloat up the file size. It's more like using the eyedropper to sample colors below each star, except that Inkscape does this automatically for you...
http://home.pchome.com.tw/art/grafix...clonetrace.gif

Funny thing. Just after I posted this topic, I scrolled down and found Jens' reply to the Inkscape topic at the Xara Forum... True, Inkscape still has a lot of growing up to do before it would be able to play with the big guys, and stability has always been a problem, at least for those versions that I tried...But a lot of clever features are being added to it. I'd keep it as a supplementary program in my toolbox...

[bbyak]

Hi, glad you liked the clone tiler. I am the author of that feature in Inkscape and I value user feedback. I'm especially interested to hear what you did NOT like in Inkscape, as well as any bugs you encountered.

Finally got around to playing with Inkscape. The current release has a few bugs, so it's not rock stable.

So can you please give more info on these bugs?

I was checking the site frequently for the promised patch, but none yet, as of now.

If you mean the 0.42.2 bugfix release, it's just out:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showf...group_id=93438

[Grafixman]

Hello, bbyak. Welcome to TG.
The file browser was a bit slow (I'm on Win98SE, yet...) and I had it hang on me a few times when trying to navigate the folders to find a particular file. Getting the effects and scripts working is a bit of a challenge, too, since you also need to have Python and ActivePerl installed. For the Python part, I'm not sure how to go about it properly since I already have Python 2.3 installed for Blender. Does Inkscape use another version? If then, how would I go about installing it without affecting Blender? It would be nice if the effects and scripts could be run as is without installing additional programs...
Support for oriental fonts (Traditional Chinese fonts) is also not good. The characters don't display properly. I haven't checked out other fancy symbols and fonts, yet... Will post more as I play around with the latest download some more.
I will download the latest build from the link you gave me. I'll check it out more carefully and post problems I find later.
(BTW.... not a good idea stirring up the Xara crowd.... they're fiercely loyal .... don't say I didn't warn you....)
Other than that, keep up the good work. Nice to see open source alive and growing.

[John Rayner]

Most of us are loyal to xara but not to windoze. If we xara could be ported to linux... then bye-bye windoze... and microsux!

[accessD]

Inkscape redraw engine is TOO slow.
Inkscape SVG isn't fully compatible with Adobe SVG Viewer.
Inkscape isn't so intuitive as Xara. I have never find 'twirl extention???' listed in feature list. Thought, I had only first look.

[Grafixman]

Everything is slow compared to Xara...
But I agree, Inkscape is on the slow side. Even Draw has a faster response time than Inkscape. As for compatibility or incompatibility issues, the same thing could be said to ALL programs. Even Adobe has incompatibilities with various programs they produce themselves... Twirl is still under development. Maybe in the next version?
I'm not saying Inkscape is THE alternative to Xara, or any other program we might use. I just find it interesting, with some novel features and ideas. True, open source programs might be viewed as undermining commercial ones, but that's a topic I would rather not go into.
And why is the Xara vs the world outlook so prevalent here ? (OK, it's a Xara funded site, but still...) I would have expected creative people here to view new things as challenges and incentive for future improvements...

[John Rayner]

Mainly because xar is the best there is, but there are so many stupid artists who like to use crayons only(PS)...

[Grafixman]

Did you check out the Romero Britto link in Christopher's topic? The guy doesn't even need a computer for his artwork. And he doesn't strike me as the stupid type...
Best is a relative word. Depends on what you're doing or even how you're feeling... If Xara tried to do everything that Illustrator, Photoshop or Draw can, it would end up like those monster apps, too... so some things are sacrificed, I'm sure. How would you define best, then?

[John Rayner]

When it is fun to pway wif... the others are a chore...

[Grafixman]

"Fun" is a relative term, too.
Coders writes programs and viruses for fun, pranksters torch poodles for fun, I use Draw for fun. It's a weird world we're living in... I know....