Inkscape

Lucas Vieites writes: "I usually create a few draft designs to see what the customers really wants. After that I try to imagine how to convert that design to a web-friendly format (slicing it into pieces is not always a good idea). Then I start breaking up the design into components, export them in PNG and retouch them a bit in the Gimp, if necessary. Next step is mounting all the pieces back together. I use my favourite text editor for this (Nedit) and my (d)html-fu comes in handy too."

The artists in the Tango Project community use Inkscape extensively in their work flow. For large resolution icons, an SVG version is created. The complete sample implementation of the style guidelines has been created in Inkscape and GIMP. Apart from a vast library of drawing aids Inkscape also provides a useful meta-data editor enabling future categorization and easy searching of the icon library.

This screenshot by ScislaC illustrates the new Node tool capabilities. Now you can add a new node at any point of a path by either Ctrl+Alt+click or double clicking on the desired location. It is also possible to reshape a path segment by dragging it by any point (and not only by dragging node handles as before). As you will notice in the screenshot, where you grab a path segment from will determine which end of the segment the curve is biased toward.

Danilo Di Moia writes: I've designed my computer school's sign with Inkscape and I think result is good! Here, you can look at the final product: http://www.ipercollege.org/inkscape/insegna.jpg

Inkscape supports the use of external programs or script (in Python, Perl, and Ruby) to extend its drawing capabilities. While available in the previous release of Inkscape, they are enabled by default (under the Effects menu) for the first time in 0.43. The effects included with Inkscape are documented in A Guide to Inkscape by Tavmjong Bah. Additional documentation and information on writing scripts can be found on the website of Aaron Spike, the author of many of the scripts.

Alexandre Prokoudine writes: "The new Connector tool was used for a preliminary design of these flowcharts, when it was critical to keep items connected all the time while looking for the best layout. The flowchart lines were then edited with the Node tool."

As a result of Michael Wybrow's work for Google Summer of Code, Inkscape has a new Connector tool. Diagrammers everywhere will find this tool invaluable. Connectors stay attached and automatically route to avoid marked objects as the drawing is updated. After the layout work is finished, connectors can be adjusted with the node tool.