gmane.comp.graphics.inkscape.devel

Re: Mesh tool added to trunk

Josh Andler — 2012-05-23T23:31:41

Hey Alex,

Just to throw it out there, cairo 1.11+ introduces PDF saving issues.
The introduction of 1.12.x to "stable" platforms is probably not
something we want to push currently since it will affect other apps as
well. If it would only break Inkscape, that's fine... but I recall a
conversation with Bryce Harrington saying 1.12 also introduced a
number of bugs with the open source graphics drivers too (not sure if
those were fixed in the .2 release).

https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/985206

Cheers,
Josh


On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 3:55 PM, Alex Valavanis <valavanisalex-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org> wrote:

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Re: Mesh tool added to trunk

Alex Valavanis — 2012-05-23T22:55:46

I can sort out the ppa build in the next couple of days if no one gets
there first. The only issue is that builds with mesh enabled will not work
nativity for any stable ubuntu release because cairo 12 only appears in
ubuntu 12.10. We will either need to drop support for all stable versions
of ubuntu or adopt the packaging of Cairo 12 in the ppa.

It would be possible to package two separate builds independently but it
might get a bit messy.
On May 23, 2012 7:49 PM, "Tavmjong Bah" <tavmjong-GANU6spQydw< at >public.gmane.org> wrote:

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Re: Mesh tool added to trunk

Tavmjong Bah — 2012-05-23T18:48:19

I would leave it up to the PPA users... I shouldn't hurt as long as
users realize that it is experimental. I don't suppose one can have two
builds, one with it enabled (and named inkscape_experimental) and one
not.

Tav




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Embedded inline graphics and SVG ?

Ivan Louette — 2012-05-23T14:25:00

I pick this up from the announcement of Xara Designer 8.

This is a great feature but I don't know if this is compatible with svg. Freehand had it already a long time ago, and DTP programs like QuarkXPress also (but the later can also embed bitmap images on text lines, which is a must !)


" Designer MX now allows you to embed 'inline graphics' in text using a simple Paste operation. Embedded graphics are great for really small items on the line such as symbols, icons etc, and are treated just like a 'character', in other words they flow and follow the same formatting rules as a character embedded in the text. "

ivan
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Re: Mesh tool added to trunk

Valerie — 2012-05-23T13:16:22

Please enable it! Those of us using the PPA already know that it's an
unstable build, and many of us look forward to testing this feature! :D

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Re: Mesh tool added to trunk

Alexandre Prokoudine — 2012-05-23T12:36:30

What would be your recommendation regarding PPA builds? Enable or
disable the feature?

Alexandre Prokoudine
http://libregraphicsworld.org

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Mesh tool added to trunk

Tavmjong Bah — 2012-05-23T12:17:46

Hi,

My Mesh branch suffered from serious bit rot. This is good as it shows
how fast Inkscape code is progressing. But it also required several days
of work to get the mesh branch in sync... not so good. I have thus
merged the branch with trunk so I won't have to go through this pain
again. One major change I made was to create a separate Mesh tool. The
editing mode for meshes is significantly different from that for linear
and radial gradients that I think this makes the most sense.

By default, the Mesh tool is not shown. You can enable it at compile
time by editing the file widgets/toolbox.cpp to define WITH_MESH. To
actually see meshes, you must have compiled and linked to a version of
Cairo greater to or equal to 1.11.4. Cairo version 12.0 would be
preferred as 1.11.4 has bugs that cause frequent Inkscape crashes.

Note, meshes are to be considered experimental. The SVG working group
has endorsed their inclusion in SVG2 but the exact syntax has not been
fixed. Inkscape is the only program/browser/renderer that supports the
proposed SVG mesh syntax. Also, the UI for meshes is rather primitive at
the moment.

Please play with the meshes and give your feedback. Bug fixes and
interface improvements will be greatly appreciated!

Tav



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Re: Powerstroke presentation at LGM 2012

Carlos Lopez Gonzalez — 2012-05-23T06:20:49



Don't forget the Advanced Outline layer:
http://wiki.synfig.org/wiki/Advanced_Outline_Layer

Carlos
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Re: Powerstroke presentation at LGM 2012

2012-05-21T16:33:05

What I meant is: how do other programs draw sharp joins on thick paths? Ugly with a standard miter, or perhaps nicer?

-Johan

----- Reply message -----
Van: "Valerie" <valerie_vk< at >yahoo.com>
Datum: ma, mei 21, 2012 10:56
Onderwerp: [Inkscape-devel] Powerstroke presentation at LGM 2012
Aan: "inkscape-devel< at >lists.sourceforge.net" <inkscape-devel< at >lists.sourceforge.net>

Well, Synfig also has thick line drawing:
http://wiki.synfig.org/wiki/Outline_Layer

Illustrator 5 also has a line thickness feature:
http://www.video2brain.com/en/lessons/variable-width-strokes

I'm not sure about the algorithms they use though.

By the way, more feedback on Powerstrokes:
- Closed-paths powerstrokes will often render strangely until you fiddle a
bit with them.
- Is it possible to either:
a. Save the relative positions of the widths controls (to save the shape of
the powerstroke) or
b. Define the starting distance between the control point and the line
center at least (basically when drawing very thin powerstrokes, the starting
thickness can be a bit distracting)?

I'm trying to come up with a mock-up for line style management, to easily
save and access all sorts of presets collections:
- Powerstrokes
- Pattern along Path (I'm finishing a mock-up proposal for on-canvas Pattern
along Path editing)
- Graph lines (a few arrowed and dotted lines. They're such a pain to set
and unset right now)
- Calligraphy (save presets as now, but with visual previews!)
- [insert custom collections. Maybe presets from other tools]

They'll be accessed just like brush presets in MyPaint and Krita from a
dialogue, except with longer previews.

For Powerstrokes, presets would allow the user to access various settings
easily. But I'm hoping that it would also be possible to save and access
preset Powerstrokes shapes, or at least of varying widths.

For example, suppose you're drawing eyelashes or hair highlights. You
don't need to control the exact width of every line, but they do all need
to be thin. See?

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Re: Powerstroke presentation at LGM 2012

Valerie — 2012-05-21T08:56:06

Well, Synfig also has thick line drawing:
http://wiki.synfig.org/wiki/Outline_Layer

Illustrator 5 also has a line thickness feature:
http://www.video2brain.com/en/lessons/variable-width-strokes

I'm not sure about the algorithms they use though. 

By the way, more feedback on Powerstrokes: 
- Closed-paths powerstrokes will often render strangely until you fiddle a 
bit with them.
- Is it possible to either:
a. Save the relative positions of the widths controls (to save the shape of 
the powerstroke) or
b. Define the starting distance between the control point and the line
center  at least (basically when drawing very thin powerstrokes, the starting
thickness can be a bit distracting)?

I'm trying to come up with a mock-up for line style management, to easily
save and access all sorts of presets collections:
- Powerstrokes
- Pattern along Path (I'm finishing a mock-up proposal for on-canvas Pattern
along Path editing)
- Graph lines (a few arrowed and dotted lines. They're such a pain to set
and unset right now)
- Calligraphy (save presets as now, but with visual previews!)
- [insert custom collections. Maybe presets from other tools]

They'll be accessed just like brush presets in MyPaint and Krita from a
dialogue, except with longer previews.

For Powerstrokes, presets would allow the user to access various settings
easily. But I'm hoping that it would also be possible to save and access
preset Powerstrokes shapes, or at least of varying widths. 

For example, suppose you're drawing eyelashes or hair highlights. You 
don't need to control the exact width of every line, but they do all need
to be thin. See?

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Re: Recursive Drawing

Valerie — 2012-05-21T08:05:14

That's true. In any case, I'll explore the UI concept of on-canvas
templates some more, and see where it leads.


Of course! :) 


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Re: SVG Path contains vertical bar |

Ogla Sungutay — 2012-05-20T15:51:01

OK, mystery is resolved. This was not an inkscape problem. Paths were being
processed by another program apparently and it was putting pipes in the
generated string.
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Re: SVG Path contains vertical bar |

alvinpenner — 2012-05-20T15:33:23

could you attach an example?
is it a | or a l, which might be a line-to relative command

--
View this message in context: http://inkscape.13.n6.nabble.com/SVG-Path-contains-vertical-bar-tp4964517p4964518.html
Sent from the Inkscape - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

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SVG Path contains vertical bar |

Ogla Sungutay — 2012-05-20T12:57:16

Hi guys,

The path d attribute in Inkscape often contains a | character followed by
one or two point coordinates. Does anyone know what this is used for?

Re: How to get configure to see another library (like libavoid)

Krzysztof Kosiński — 2012-05-19T00:45:50

2012/5/18 mathog <mathog< at >caltech.edu>:

In this case it's best to submit these modifications upstream.


The presence of this library should not be required to compile
Inkscape - the autoconf script should detect whether it's available.


This will increase link time for no good reason. If you really want to
do this, just copy the approach used for libavoid, libcroco, and
lib2geom, which discards all of the original autoconf files and builds
the library as a local .a file.

Regards, Krzysztof

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Re: vector printing win32

Krzysztof Kosiński — 2012-05-19T00:31:26

2012/5/8 Jasper van de Gronde <th.v.d.gronde< at >hccnet.nl>:

Probably that's true, or the incorrect rasterizer was used.

There are actually *two* renderers in Inkscape: one is used for
interactive display and PNG export and produces bitmaps exclusively,
the other is used for e.g. PDF export, is noninteractive and can also
produce vector images. It should be fairly simple to handle printing
through a slightly modified form of the PDF exporter.

Regards, Krzysztof

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Re: How to get configure to see another library (like libavoid)

mathog — 2012-05-18T21:41:27


The problem here is that I had to modify the code in libemf somewhat to 
get it to work.
Also it isn't a very common library, so very few machines are going to 
have it installed.

Perhaps "library" really isn't the right term here.  The 10 or so files 
live in one directory, but it doesn't
need to build to a .a or .so or .dll, just to a .o (or .obj) which is 
linked into the one big inkscape library.


Or not, it seems to be triggering some sort of autoconf 
bug/incompatibility, where it thinks there are both
libemf.c and libemf.cpp, but only the latter file actually exists.

Tbanks,

David Mathog
mathog-7GExONQZ6ZKVc3sceRu5cw< at >public.gmane.org
Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech

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Re: How to get configure to see another library (like libavoid)

mathog — 2012-05-18T21:24:51

Figured out this part:


Had to change configure.ac like:

<   AC_COMPILE_IFELSE(AC_LANG_PROGRAM([]), [ink_opt_ok=yes], 
[ink_opt_ok=no])
---

and

< AC_COMPILE_IFELSE([
---
599c599
< ], [popplercolor=yes])
---

Presumably (yet another) incompatibility between autoconf version (this 
is 2.68).

That leaves:


which is really crazy because in the entire source tree there are only
libemf.cpp and libemf.h, so where it is pulling "libemf.c" from I have 
no idea.
I did try renaming libemf.h to libemf.hpp (dittof ro anything that 
referenced it)
but it made no difference.

Regards,

David Mathog
mathog-7GExONQZ6ZKVc3sceRu5cw< at >public.gmane.org
Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech

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Re: How to get configure to see another library (like libavoid)

Ted Gould — 2012-05-18T20:58:16

What's important to realize here is that we *really* don't want to
include libraries in the Inkscape codebase.  It's a bad habit that we
really need to kick :-)  The libraries that are in the Inkscape codebase
today are ones that were developed by Inkscape developers along side, or
ones that we had to patch significantly.

So what you should be doing is installing libemf in the system and then
using the system version of libemf.  I'm not familiar with libemf, but
typically libraries install a package config file in /usr/lib/pkgconfig
that is something like "emf-1.0.pc".  You can then add the name to the
list of packages we check for, similar to little CMS:

http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~inkscape.dev/inkscape/trunk/view/head:/configure.ac#L492

And that'll add all the flags and appropriate libs in.

--Ted



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How to get configure to see another library (likelibavoid)

mathog — 2012-05-18T19:33:39

Sort question:  I need to find out how to kick 
configure/autoconf/automake so that it will include
another library equivalent to libavoid.

Long form (background):

On a linux system I'm trying to get the emf stuff using with the libEMF 
library.  Then Inkscape
will support emf on all platforms - not just win32.

So far:

1.  unpacked libEMF under .../inkscape/src/libEMF
2.  built it with its own configure
3.  moved libemf.o and all the header files to .../inkscape/src/libEMF
4.  modified header file includes to look for "libEMF/header_name.h"
5.  modified the win32 emf-win32-print and emf-win32-inout to use 
libemf.
(required some modifications to the libEMF header files, and oddly, to 
style.h) until a clean compile
resulted.

Now I'm stuck trying to get the Makefiles produced by configure for 
Inkscape to actually build libemf.a (or libemf.o) a:

6. copied this from libavoid and changed libavoid to libEMF:
   cat inkscape/src/libEMF/makefile.in
# Convenience stub makefile to call the real Makefile.

< at >SET_MAKE< at >

OBJEXT = < at >OBJEXT< at >

# Explicit so that it's the default rule.
all:
         cd .. && $(MAKE) libEMF/all

clean %.a %.$(OBJEXT):
         cd .. && $(MAKE) libEMF/$< at >

.PHONY: all clean

.SUFFIXES:
.SUFFIXES: .a .$(OBJEXT)

7.  based this on libavoid example:
cat inkscape/src/libEMF/Makefile_insert
## Makefile.am fragment sourced by src/Makefile.am.

ink_common_sources +=        \
         libEMF/libemf.cpp \
         libEMF/basetsd.h  \
         libEMF/emf.h      \
         libEMF/guiddef.h  \
         libEMF/libemf.h   \
         libEMF/poppack.h  \
         libEMF/pshpack2.h \
         libEMF/pshpack4.h \
         libEMF/w16.h      \
         libEMF/winbase.h  \
         libEMF/windef.h   \
         libEMF/winerror.h \
         libEMF/wingdi.h   \
         libEMF/winnt.h    \
         libEMF/winuser.h

8.  in src, put libEMF stuff in where libavoid is (1:1):
  diff Makefile.am Makefile.am.dist
33d32
<       libEMF/libemf.a \
131d129
< include libEMF/Makefile_insert
181d178
<       libEMF/makefile.in      \

9 in inkscape (top directory), again, put libEMF stuff in where 
libavoid is (1:1)
diff configure.ac configure.ac.dist
1035d1034
< src/libEMF/makefile

modified configure so that there was a matching line for libEMF 
everywhere there was one for libavoid

10.  ./configure runs, but no new makefile.in is created in src.  
Consequently when a build is attempted:

11.  (inkscape, top level)
make
configure.ac:68: warning: AC_LANG_CONFTEST: no AC_LANG_SOURCE call 
detected in body
../../lib/autoconf/lang.m4:194: AC_LANG_CONFTEST is expanded from...
../../lib/autoconf/general.m4:2591: _AC_COMPILE_IFELSE is expanded 
from...
../../lib/autoconf/general.m4:2607: AC_COMPILE_IFELSE is expanded 
from...
configure.ac:68: the top level
(many similar messages for different configure.ac lines)
src/Makefile.am: object `libEMF/libemf.$(OBJEXT)' created by 
`libEMF/libemf.cpp' and `libEMF/libemf.c'
make: *** [Makefile.in] Error 1

Suggestions?

Thanks,

David Mathog
mathog-7GExONQZ6ZKVc3sceRu5cw< at >public.gmane.org
Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech

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Re: Recursive Drawing

Jasper van de Gronde — 2012-05-18T17:19:56

Yes, there are always things that will take "too much" time, but 
initially it's usually a good idea to think about what you'd really 
want. If you start thinking too early about performance you often end up 
with something that might(!) be fast, but isn't really what you want... 
So ideally you start to think about what you want, then identify where 
the performance problems might lie and try to fix that. Of course it's 
never that black and white, if you know beforehand that something will 
be truely outrageously slow (taking hours, or even days or more in 
typical use cases), then yeah, just forget about it.
Sure, that's taxing, but I wouldn't say beforehand that it is impossibly 
slow. Sure, if the window is extremely complex, and the user makes 
hundreds of copies, etc., etc., then it might become too slow, but 
that's not exactly a surprise, and a simple consequence of the image 
being quite complex. Put another way, it would still be /much/ faster 
than creating the same image by hand (it might even render faster).

Also, if this kind of complicated work would become a typical use case, 
then it might pay to implement some tricks. For example, we could allow 
the user to (temporarily) limit propagation of changes to (all) 
elements. Or update the image progressively (this has its issues, but in 
some form it might make sense).

And remember, this is before we've even thought about all the ways in 
which this kind of thing could be optimized. (In many cases we could get 
by with just stamping bitmaps for example.)
Have a look at laidout (http://laidout.org/). Admittedly this is not 
exactly a main-stream application, but it has some really interesting 
features. The alignment tool was demonstrated at LGM and is in my 
opinion definitely something to have in Inkscape as well (in some form 
or other).

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