Inkscape 0.48 Essentials for Web Designers

Packt Publishing have just released a new book on Inkscape by Bethany Hiitola called "Inkscape 0.48 Essentials for Web Designers". Surprisingly this book is the first to cover features of our August release and definitely first to focus exclusively on web design. The book covers a wide range of topics from creating impressive web site designs to drawing various graphics elements, such as icons, charts, maps etc. "Inkscape 0.48 Essentials for Web Designers" is available as both hard copy and eBook.

0.48.1 is delayed

As you probably have already noticed, release of the first planned point release is delayed. The reason behind this is that we discovered a number of regressions over 0.47 and a number of bugs in new functionality, so we had to take some extra time fixing them. There are still some bugs left that we consider critical for user experience. We will keep you informed on progress.

Free Graphics Software at Argentina Gráfica 2010

This week at Argentina Gráfica 2010 conference in Buenos Aires a long time Inkscape contributor Guillermo Espertino will be talking about use of free software in graphic design. The round of talks devoted to digital technology in printing industry is organized by Gutenberg Foundation Argentina, a well-known and respected organization that does professional press and pre-press training in the country. Matías Alli, one of the teachers at Gutenberg, will be talking along Gez. The presentation and workshop will be on Friday 22th, from 19:00 to 20:45.

Inkscape befriends G-code

Not many people remember this, perhaps, but one of the first extensions ever written for Inkscape was an assistant tool for designing guitar fingerboards, written by Aaron Spike. Over time more people found even more interesting uses for Inkscape. We already reported on Egg-bot recently, but another very interesting project made its way to upstream collection of extensions just few days ago.

Since revision 9818 Inkscape comes with GCodetools — a plug-in that prepares and converts paths from Inkscape to G-code using biarc interpolation. From now on you will be able to use default Inkscape for all kinds of fun things like cutting, engraving etc. This feature will be available in the next version, 0.49. Until that you can either use unstable builds or just download the extension and install it for your current copy of 0.48.

New Italian community

As you very well know, we encourage local community to organize themselves. This is why we are glad to tell you there is an Italian community shaping up now at Inkscape Italia. This young website has an active news section, over a dozen of tutorials, including video tutorials, and a forum.

Inkscape is finalist of Open Source Awards 2010

Packt Publishing announced finalists of the Open Source Awards 2010, and Inkscape is among them in the Open Source Graphics Software category! Voting for the winner among finalists started this Monday and will last till November 5.

Eggbot, and Inkscape powered art robot

We'be been tracking all kinds of fancy uses of Inkscape for quite a while, and this one deserves Fancy with a capital F: Eggbot. Quoting the official website:

The Eggbot is an open-source art robot that can draw on spherical or egg-shaped objects from the size of a ping pong ball size to that of a small grapefruit — roughly 1.25 to 4.25 inches in diameter (4-10 cm). Super adjustable; designed to draw on all kinds of things that are normally "impossible" to print on. Not just eggs but golf balls, light bulbs, mini pumpkins, and even things like wine glasses — with a bit of work.

The Eggbot software allows you to control the 'bot from within Inkscape — a superb freeware illustration program — on Mac, Windows, or Linux computers. You can draw an image directly, trace a photograph, or import designs from other programs.

Stay tuned for more news on using Inkscape in production.

Inkscape in a computer orientation class

On September 2, 2010, Carl Symons led a one-day beginner's computer orientation class for a Native American community. He was very pleased with the response to Inkscape:

"They all wanted Inkscape loaded on their new computers. It is a wonder-full, wonderful application. This Native American nation's (Coastal Salish) heritage and culture is loaded with arts, in particular totem-like images where Inkscape excels. These students were already making exceptional images after just a few hours.

"One girl did a piece with one star, Ctrl-D-ing, tweaking and arranging the copies. She was gone into the timelessness of creativity. I think that she started with the star tool immediately after launching Inkscape. I showed her a couple of things and she was on her way. This girl is also a bead artist, and was excited about using Inkscape to envision some beadwork.

"One student got a big kick out of Inkscaping the tutorials… Another guy was drawing caricatures with the calligraphic tool.

"Inkscape is such a great way for new digital artists to get amazing results quickly. There's something valuable about people being able to get a good result quickly with Inkscape that makes it a nice tool for artists. They don't have to fight with the technical learning curve."

Plans for 0.48.1

We have discussed possibility of releasing the first point version, 0.48.1, with bugfixes and translation updates, and agreed to do it around October 25. That gives you, our dear community, over a month to report issues and update translation to have them in the next stable release. We already have fixed a number of bugs, including a couple of crashers, and there are likely to be some improvements to the new input devices configuration dialog.

In the mean time we restored broken LiveJournal syndication of news from inkscape.org, so if you are a LiveJournal user, you can add this feed to your friends list

Google Summer of Code 2010 is over

Google Summer of Code is over now, and we have mixed results. Unfortunately we lost two students at midterm evaluation in July, and another student at final evaluation in August. On the other hand, we have two very successful projects.

The first project, by Krzysztof Kosiński, was about porting the whole rendering to Cairo, which resulted in a considerable performance boost itself. But Krzysztof also implemented support for multiple cores/processors to use multiple threads for rendering SVG filters. He is also planning to implement SVG filters in OpenCL, so that rendering could be delegated to GPU where available. The second project, by Abhishek Sharma, was about C++ification of SPLayer and privatization of XML nodes which is also going to help parallel processing.

The other good news is that one of the projects that failed at midterm evaluation, PowerStroke live path effect, was picked by the student's mentor, Johan Engelen. Initial implementation is already available in development tree, but currently disabled by default. It is quite possible that this LPE will be available in 0.49, as well as both successful GSoC projects.

Interview with Inkscape team, progress of the project

Libre Graphics World published an interview with Inkscape developers and contributors who worked on release of 0.48, Google Summer of Code 2010 projects and participated at Libre Graphics Meeting earlier this year.

In the mean time some new features have already found their way to development tree for the next version. Thanks to Roland Meuband exchanging position of objects is now possible in Inkscape (via "Align and Distribute" dialog). Johan Engelen also started work on PowerStroke live path effect that will beyond all doubt attract type designers.

The Inkscape Community Announces 0.48 Release

After 9 months of development, Inkscape 0.48 is out. This version of the SVG-based vector graphics editor brings a new Spray tool, multipath editing, superscripts and subscripts in text, as well as numeric control of text kerning, tracking, rotation and more, several new extensions for web developers and first take at adaptive user interface. Check out the full release notes for more information about new exciting features and improvements, enjoy the screenshots, or just jump right to downloading your package for Windows, Linux or Mac OS X.

First shot at Open Source Fashion extensions

During Libre Graphics Meeting 2010 Susan Spencer gave an interesting talk called "Open Source project to enable fashion design using open data formats". Having spoken to various community members during the conference, Susan then dived into Python programming and finally came up with proof-of-concept extensions for Inkscape that allow creating clothes pattern blocks.

If you are interested in this further development of this project or maybe wish to participate, keep an eye on the blog. The project now has a new name, TMTP (tau meta tau physica), and there is a dedicated website in works.

SVG Open 2010 in two weeks

While release preparations are full-steam (at packaging stage), we'd like to remind you that annual SVG Open conference is taking place in Paris (France) in just two weeks: August 30 to September 1.

The conference traditionally attracts software and web developers, graphic designers, GIS specialists and creators of visualization solutions. This year Inkscape project will be represented by Tavmjong Bah who will demonstrate both upcoming v0.48 and some of Google Summer of Code 2010 projects. For the full list of talks please have a look here.

GSoC2010 and release news

The midterm evaluation is long past. Unfortunately we lost two out of five students, and that leaves us two projects focusing on performance and one project focusing on rewriting internals. On the other hand the PowerStroke project was picked by Johan Engelen, mentor of the student we lost. Overall progress of projects is quite exciting, more on that soon.

In the mean time we are tracking down the very last crashers to release a new version that won't disappoint you. By the way, we are still missing a person who could take care of a native Mac build (that involves Quartz based port of GTK+). If you are willing to help, please join developers mailing list and tell us you are ready to work on this.

0.48 release preparations

We are quickly approaching release of final 0.48 version. The plan is to make sure everything unfinished we wanted disabled is already disabled and most nasty bugs are gone. Then we shall release tarballs with source code and start working on binary builds for Windows and Mac.

In the mean time we are just a week away from midterm evaluations for our Google Summer of Code students. As a quick reminder, this year we have five students: two working on performance, one implementing PowerStroke live path effect, one reworking the way Inkscape makes difference between saving and exporting, and another student rewriting internals. We'll let you know how respective projects progress after the evaluations.

UniConvertor 1.1.5

sK1 team released new version of UniConvertor — a universal vector graphics conversion tool that Inkscape uses to open documents like CDR (Corel DRAW), WMF (Windows Metafiles) and so on.

The new version features file managers integration on Windows and Linux, a simple user interface, support for embroidery files formats (just importing). Other changes involve major internal refactoring, better fonts handling and better color management.

The Windows version contains a script that can be used to patch an existing installation of Inkscape to use new external version of UniConvertor. You can download an MSI installer for Windows or binary packages for various Linux distributions, as well as source code, right here.

First prerelease of 0.48 is out

First prelease of upcoming Inkscape 0.48 is out. Please fetch source code or a build for your system, test and report all the issues you run into. There are just a few blocker issues left. After fixing those we will release last prerelease and, if all is well, it will be the time for 0.48 final to be out.

SVG Open 2010

The annual SVG Open conference is taking place from August 30 to September 1 in Paris. If you live close to the venue and are willing to represent Inkscape as either developer or designer, please register and submit a short abstract of your talk till June 9.

Inkscape project at Libre Graphics Meeting 2010

On May 27-30 annual Libre Graphics Meeting conference has taken place in Brussels. After several years of being underrepresented at the event Inkscape project finally featured many of its superheroes and rock stars: Johan Engelen, Jasper van de Gronde, Felipe Sanches, Tavmjong Bah, Elisa de Castro Guerra, Ivan Louette, Jon Philips, Jakub Steiner, Cedric Gemy and Andy Fitzsimon. Unfortunately, two other very important contributors, Jon Cruz and Donna Benjamin, couldn't make it.

There were three talks covering Inkscape: "Diffusion curves" by Jasper van de Gronde, "Icon Workflows with Inkscape" by Jakub Steiner and "Inkscape for everybody" by Andy Fitzsimon. An exceptionally well organized workshop for Inkscape beginners by Elisa de Castro Guerra nicely complemented the talks.

Videos of all the LGM talks are currently being uploaded to river-valley.tv who filmed them. You can also read Tavmjong's notes on the event here.

Alpha version of Inkscape 0.48 is out

A while ago we released alpha verison of the coming Inkscape 0.48. You can download the files here. This alpha version features all things we told you about before plus recent work by Tavmjong Bah on the text tool options: numerical input for kerning, baseline shift, word spacing, character rotation and so on. There will be a number of last minute changes before we announce feature freeze and finally move to the next stage.

Update on state of affairs

There's been several news piling up for last couple of weeks.

First of all, About screen contest. The winner is theartcontinuum with this entry. We thank all participants of the contest for their invaluable creative contributions!

The next news is about bug hunt. We did reach 300 points goal for this stage of release cycle indeed, so now we only need to disable some features that are not going to make it into 0.48 and release an alpha version.

And the last news is a reminder that next week, May 27-30, there will be Libre Graphics Meeting conference in Brussels. The program has finally settled down. There will be two Inkscape related talks: on May 28 Jasper van de Gronde will talk about diffusion curves in Inkscape, and on May 29 Novell's designer Jakub "Jimmac" Steiner will talk about icon workflows with Inkscape. If you are seriously interested in free design software, this is THE event to attend.

Bug Hunt Update

As of today we've gained 285 out of 300 points for fixing bugs. 15 more and we will be quite ready to proceed to the next stage of the release cycle for 0.48!

Google Summer of Code projects announced

We are delighted to inform you that five students will be working on Inkscape this summer to bring a lot of significant improvements, both user visible and under-the-hood ones.

• Evangelos Katsikaros, mentored by Nathan Hurst, will implement spatiotemporal indexing which will improve perfomance of Inkscape.
• Krzysztof Kosinski, mentored by bulia byak, will implement Cairo-based rendering. Inkscape already uses Cairo for things like wireframe mode rendering, so the rest of it is going to use Cairo now.
• Zhenfeng Zhao, mentored by Johan Engelen, will implement Power Stroke LPE for Inkscape. Zhenfeng already did a successful brush related GSoC project for GIMP last year.
• Alex Trujillo. mentored by Ted Gould, will rework existing Save/Export implementation and improve the Export pane.
• Abhishek Sharma, mentored by Jon Cruz, will C++ify the SP layer and make XML nodes private.

We wish all our students and mentors to succeed at the respective projects and have a lot of fun while doing so!

Bug hunt, third week

Another week later we have gained 216 out of 300 points which means still almost 1/3 to go. Apart from fixing bugs you can report the ones you discovered by testing preliminary builds.

Please support Libre Graphics Meeting 2010

Libre Graphics Meeting is an annual working conference for the free software graphics application community. Developers from the full spectrum of graphics applications — image editors, photography, 3-D and 2-D animation, vector art, graphic design, typography — collaborate with each other on interoperability, push the state of the art in application functionality and user experience, and get important face-to-face interaction with users.

Attendance at LGM is free for developers and users alike — so the conference counts on the generosity of the open source graphics community to help underwrite the costs of putting on the conference and to help make it possible for individual open source developers to attend.

Please make a donation to the community fundraising campaign at http://pledgie.com/campaigns/8926 — and help a free graphics software developer benefit from the in-person collaboration at this year's LGM. Any amount, no matter how small, is helpful; many developers in Europe need only a small stipend for rail travel to make the trip a possibility. All donations are tax deductible for US taxpayers. For larger donations from corporations and individuals, contact us directly at lgm(at)gnome.org

Some of Inkscape developers are planning to attend the conference, and Jimmac (Novell design team, Tango project) is going to give a talk on icon design. To find out more about the conference please read this article.

Bug hunt, second week

A week later we reached 165 out of 300 points. Come join us in fixing bugs to make Inkscape 0.48 a great experience. Or test builds and report issues you encounter.

Bug Hunt Update

It's been a little over a week since we moved to the Frost stage and started the traditional bug hunt. Reportedly we have gained 93 out of 300 points for fixing bugs. It's not so bad, but we need more. If you want to help us fixing bugs, don't hesitate to visit the tracker and pick a task.

Win32 and Mac builds are available again

Builds for Windows and Mac from Bazaar are available again. These are by no means nightly builds, but they are updated rather frequently. You can use them to test Inkscape and report bugs. When you do so, please refer to number of revision that is part of every archive's name. Thank you for your continuous support and contribution!

Inkscape 0.48 release cycle is entering Frost stage

Today we are entering Frost stage in preparation of the 0.48 release. It means that we are slowing down development of new features and start working actively on fixing bugs. End of Frost means: most new features are complete, release notes are more than 90% ready, 300 points for bugfixing are achieved and first alpha of 0.48 is released.

By the way, we are still ready to listen to your proposals for Google Summer of Code projects. Students applications started yesterday night. But before you apply, please introduce yourself in the inkscape-devel mailing list, discuss a project, find a mentor willing to work with you, and fix a couple of trivial bugs to learn Inkscape's source code a little.

Stay tuned!

Inkscape is participating at Google Summer of Code 2010

It's official now: we are in for Google Summer of Code 2010. In the past years participation at GSoC was a tremendous success for us, and we are hoping to gain no less this time. So if you are eligible for GSoC, please have a look at a list of project ideas or feel free come up with your own ideas. The primary place of contact, as usual, is our inkscape-devel mailing list.

Inkscape 0.48 About Screen Contest Has Started

Our dearest user community, we are happy to announce that a traditional About screen contest has started at DeviantArt as a part of preparations for releasing 0.48 in few months. There is no particular theme this time, so you are entirely free in your choice. Draw freely, as it were ;-)

Please read details in the DeviantArt announcement and note that the deadline for your art submission is April 15. The community judging period will be from April 16 to April 22, and the TOP3 will be turned over to the developers for their final decision. Rock on!

Nová kniha o Inkscape v nemčine

Práve bola vydaná nová kniha o Inkscape v nemčine s názvom „Inkscape: Professionelle Vektorgrafiken gestalten“, ktorú napísal Uwe Schöler. Kniha je napísaná s ohľadom na začiatočníkov aj pokročilých používateľov a pokrýva vlastnosti Inkscape 0.47. CD priložené ku knihe tiež obsahuje niekoľko videonávodov vytvorených špeciálne pre túto knihu a vzorové súbory pre praktické cvičenia z knihy.

Vývoj Inkscape 0.48 vstupuje do fázy chill

Ohlasujeme fázu chill a tým oficiálne vstupujeme do cyklu vydania 0.48. Znamená to, že by sa mal dokončovať vývoj nových vlastností a zamerať by sme sa mali na opravovanie chýb. Takže to myslíme naozaj vážne s vydaním 0.48 niekedy v máji.

Súťaž o obrazovku O aplikácii bude ohlásená samostatne. Medzitým nám môžete pomôcť hľadaním chýb a nezrovnalostí v dokumentácii.

Použitie Inkscape v školách

V školskom okrsku Los Altos v Kalifornii majú program Digitálneho dizajnu, v ktorom študentov učia o grafickom softvéri a programovaní. V kurze vektorovej grafiky učia študentov ako používať Inkscape.

Tu je galéria výtvarných prác, ktoré vytvorilo približne 175 štvrtákov zo siedmych škôl, kde sa tento kurz učí. Vedľa každého z obrázkov je odkaz na ďalšiu stránku, ktorý vedie na zodpovedajúcu podgalériu.

Plány na 0.48

Už nejakú dobu sme diskutovali sme o skrátení vývojového cyklu. Takže tentokrát pred vydaním 0.48 spomalíme vývoj nových vlastností v druhej polovici februára, celkom sa zameriame na testovanie v apríli a 0.48 vydáme niekedy v máji.

Medzitým sa pokúsime spraviť všetko pre to, aby sme vám umožnili pomôcť nám s testovaním nasledovnej verzie, takže dúfame, že každodenné zostavenia pre Windows a Mac budú opäť čoskoro dostupné. Dáme vám vedieť, keď všetko vyriešime.