Inkscape

This year's Keil Hackfest was one of the best yet, thanks in no small part to Maren Hachmann, who is coordinator for Inkscape's translation team.The following is a summary of what went on at the Hackfest... Facilities and Amenities Hosted at the ... [More] Kitz (www.kitz-kiel.de), our team were treated to a conference room full of snacks, including hand-picked apples from Maren's apple trees, wifi, and high-speed LAN ethernet connections, as well as a multitude of outlets and a delivery lunch service. This allowed hackfest attendees to set up quickly and get right to it without any problems. Espresso machine and recyclable pods were provided by C.Rogers, as a convenient source of hackfest fuel for those hackers keen on the bean.   What Happened at the Hackfest? The team worked on a variety of issues, here's a breakdown: Extensions Repository Martin (doctormo) fixed some bugs in and answered questions on the new Extensions repository, moved it to a sub-module. Jürgen Weigert began research into API options for better connecting extensions in Inkscape as well as lots of cleanup and learning about signals. Layers/Objects/Selectors Dialogue Design The whole team talked about how the Layers/Objects/Selectors Dialogue can be made simpler. A tabbed solution was developed and is being fleshed out by Doctormo. XML Editor Refactoring doctormo Worked heavily on refactoring the XML Editor Using Inkscape for CAD and 3D printing - Inkscape Mocha! Jürgen Weigert fixed issues and merging patches with his paths2openscad (3D printer stuff) extension. This was used to print the first-ever Inkscape mocha with some product design collaboration from C.Rogers  Centerline trace extension fixed Jürgen Weigert assisted Marc (Mc) with the fix Inkscape for laser cutters (CNC machines) Jürgen Weigert gave a presentation & workshop on how to replace proprietary software used for laser cutters. Slides here: https://oc.fablab-nuernberg.de/index.php/s/yYNM8IQs7YHCahj External SVG linking with real-time changeable DPI Jabier has made it possible to link in external svg files and set the DPI in which the item appears on canvas (and in exported pdfs). Bug fixes for LPEs clippath, powerclip, and powermask Jabier fixed a bug in the LPE system that rendered clippaths incorrectly. Windows Inkscape build fixes Patrick Storz fixed a scrolling and zooming bug in the Windows version of Inkscape Smooth scrolling and zooming enhancements Patrick Storz added smooth scrolling capabilities (i.e. on supported hardware there is now continuous scrolling and zooming without discrete steps) Inkscape CI translations and translation statistics Patrick Storz did this and some preliminary work on preparing the bundled documentation for the 1.0 release. Inkscape Extension System Was a major topic of the hackfest, and was worked on by everyone in various ways after a group discussion. (video coming soon). On day zero of the extension API 1.0 Patrick Storz adjusted the Scour extension (Optimized SVG output) to be compatible with the new API and wrote his first extension test to ensure it stays that way! Thomas Holder worked on extensions repository to get most tests passing. Hackfest maintainence Maren did a superb job running around to make sure everyone had what they needed to be able to work on Inkscape without needing to worry about the rest. This included things like shopping for food, making arrangements with the Kitz, plucking apples, baking pretzels, dealing out keys and access chips,translating menus (food), buying tickets, watching weather forecasts and answering surprising text messages. She also took care of a couple of external visitors to the hackfest and on Wednesday, she herded the Inkscapers through Kiel, to the computer museum and back. So much work! Thanks again Maren! Inkscape documentation Along with making the Hackfest run smoothly, Maren did a bunch of work on the documentation for the 1.0 release as well. Daily summaries of the Hackfest Posted by Maren in the Inkscape forums. SVG Text GUI enhancements Tav has made it possible to wrap a one-line text object with an adjustable handle. This greatly simplifies text handling and has the added advantage of having no hidden overflow like textboxes do, which solves a variety of other problems. He also worked on converting text to objects and objects back to text for SVG export (SVG 2 Text GUI). A fix for Inkscape's coordinate issues Thomas Holder inverted y-axis desktop coordinate to match a top-down coordinate system expected my most professional users (and most other graphics applications), fixing a persistent sore-spot for Inkscape adoption. Inkscape Hackfest Video (still being worked on) C.Rogers ran around and captured video to assemble a hackfest video, and capture some of the conversations. He also created some animations for the intro/outro and Videos will be available soon! Extra-Hackfest Activities After hours group activities are key to a successful hackfest. While some of our developers were keen to work into the wee hours of the morning, we were able to get everyone out for a few official, and some unofficial group activities. Hackfest Dinner Maren booked us in at the eclectic TraumGmbH Restaurant, where the crew was served a variety of excellent pizza, pasta, beer, and a variety of visually stunning and tasty deserts. A Guided Tour of Kiel Our local guide, Maren prepared a walking tour of Kiel from the central bus station through over the bridge (featured in the hackfest sticker), and to a variety of local landmarks, explaining the history of Kiel, past, present and plans for the future of the city. The Computer Museum Maren's tour took us to the ferry terminal, where we took a short cruise across the river to the historic Computer Museum. There some of our team were able to reconnect with pieces of their own history, and others able to witness first-hand the original computer systems which started the technological revolution, and the first graphical vector computer systems. The Kitz Barbecue Burgers, bratwurst and OpenSUSE beer were favourites at the bbq. Food was served up hot, and just the treat for the rainy weather. Pizza @ POI Several self-funded outtings to local establishments including the POI authentic Italian Pizza restaurant. That Hackfest Vibe The entire team gave glowing commendations to the event (and each other), and the vibe was pleasantly motivating with new participants commenting that the event had increased their sense of connection to the project, the community and boosted motivation to work on Inkscape after the event. Post-Hackfest Activities Video processing as well as some work started during the hackfest are ongoing even now. Stay tuned for the latest news from our dedicated team, and a possible Inkscape Podcast with interviews and discussions about the project. Happy hacking! [Less]

Kitz meetup space for the Hackfest Traditionally, the Inkscape project organizes an annual hackfest for developers to meet and tackle organizational issues and hard programming problems that require the expertise of multiple people. This year, as ... [More] Inkscape developers have decided to call the next major Inkscape version the much-anticipated magical version 1.0, the community has decided to hold a second hackfest (after the successful one in Boston), for working towards making the internally refactored Inkscape shine for the next big, feature-packed release (sneak peek here). They are going to meet up in the Kieler Innovations- und Technologiezentrum startup center (Kitz) in Kiel, a town by the Baltic Sea in Germany. Core developers and community members are planning for 5 days of thorough testing, vigorous bug-squashing and improvement of documentation, translations, text features and the extension API, from September 9th to 13th, during Digitale Woche Kiel and right before Kieler Open Source und Linux Tage. As a user, being a part of the world-wide Inkscape community, you can contribute to the development of your favorite vector editor, too! Support Inkscape by donating to the Hackfest fund, so the Hackfest attendees' travel expenses can be covered. If you happen to be near Kiel in September, you're welcome to drop by and say hello! If this isn't possible for you, don't fear! We are planning to keep you updated by posting videos to our Youtube channel. [Less]

  Kitz meetup space for the Hackfest Traditionally, the Inkscape project organizes an annual hackfest for developers to meet and tackle organizational issues and hard programming problems that require the expertise of multiple people. This ... [More] year, as Inkscape developers have decided to call the next major Inkscape version the much-anticipated magical version 1.0, the community has decided to hold a second hackfest (after the successful one in Boston), for working towards making the internally refactored Inkscape shine for the next big, feature-packed release (sneak peek here). They are going to meet up in the Kieler Innovations- und Technologiezentrum startup center (Kitz) in Kiel, a town by the Baltic Sea in Germany. Core developers and community members are planning for 5 days of thorough testing, vigorous bug-squashing and improvement of documentation, translations, text features and the extension API, from September 9th to 13th, during Digitale Woche Kiel and right before Kieler Open Source und Linux Tage. As a user, being a part of the world-wide Inkscape community, you can contribute to the development of your favorite vector editor, too! Support Inkscape by donating to the Hackfest fund, so the Hackfest attendees' travel expenses can be covered. If you happen to be near Kiel in September, you're welcome to drop by and say hello! If this isn't possible for you, don't fear! We are planning to keep you updated by posting videos to our Youtube channel. [Less]

Kitz meetup space for the Hackfest Traditionally, the Inkscape project organizes an annual hackfest for developers to meet and tackle organizational issues and hard programming problems that require the expertise of multiple people. This year, as ... [More] Inkscape developers have decided to call the next major Inkscape version the much-anticipated magical version 1.0, the community has decided to hold a second hackfest (after the successful one in Boston), for working towards making the internally refactored Inkscape shine for the next big, feature-packed release (sneak peek here). They are going to meet up in the Kieler Innovations- und Technologiezentrum startup center (Kitz) in Kiel, a town by the Baltic Sea in Germany. Core developers and community members are planning for 5 days of thorough testing, vigorous bug-squashing and improvement of documentation, translations, text features and the extension API, from September 9th to 13th, during Digitale Woche Kiel and right before Kieler Open Source und Linux Tage. As a user, being a part of the world-wide Inkscape community, you can contribute to the development of your favorite vector editor, too! Support Inkscape by donating to the Hackfest fund, so the Hackfest attendees' travel expenses can be covered. If you happen to be near Kiel in September, you're welcome to drop by and say hello! If this isn't possible for you, don't fear! We are planning to keep you updated by posting videos to our Youtube channel. [Less]

We're back from Boston! Thanks to the generous donations of our community and the hospitality of Red Hat, project contributors from around the world were able to meet to make Inkscape better and more accessible. Attendees included Bryce Harrington ... [More] , Martin Owens, Tavmjong Bah, Alex Valavanis, Máirín Duffy, Felipe Sanches, Ryan Gorley, Matthias Clasen, Valessio Brito, and David Cantrell. Areas of focus included: Variable Fonts. This exciting new font format allows for unparalleled control over the appearance of fonts. Enabling variable fonts to be used and customized within Inkscape was a large part of the work of Tavmjong and Felipe. Migration to GTK+ 3. GTK+ governs much of what can (and cannot) be done with the user interface of Inkscape. Replacing the current GTK+ 2 code with GTK+ 3 is a massive task, with significant promises. This was the focus of Alex, with the generous help of Red Hat employee and GTK+ maintainer Matthias. Refactoring of Extensions. Extensions are an important and accessible way for developers to contribute to Inkscape. Housekeeping and refactoring of extensions allows them to continue to serve their many uses as Inkscape improves. Work in this area was a focus of Martin Owens. Website Revisions. Recent efforts have been made through the Inkscape Vectors to help more people recognize the creative opportunities available to them through Inkscape. Ryan, the organizer of this effort, worked with Máirín, Felipe, and Martin to explore how the website could serve this cause by telling the story of the project and its users better. Project Infrastructure. Inkscape cannot serve its users if the website is inaccessible or contributions cannot be made. For this reason, Bryce Harrington and Martin Owens dedicated a good share of time addressing core infrastructural needs for the project. Many of these improvements are made possible because of the generous donation of computing resources by CloudScale.ch. 1.0 and Beyond. Planning and prioritization went into the forthcoming 1.0 release, but the vision of the future didn't stop there. Early work has already started on exciting new features such as multi-page support, laying the groundwork for future development during and between Hackfests. Much more could be said about the work performed during these days. Fortunately, this article is just the beginning. Get a closeup view of the event by watching the three video recordings taken during the event: Day 1 Summary - https://youtu.be/4stNumKreTc Day 4 Summary - https://youtu.be/IqQI2Y1PR38 Day 5 Roadmap Discussion - https://youtu.be/Gl2gvvBNJ10 Our gratitude goes out to those who made the effort and sacrifices to attend, to Chris Rogers for designing the event sticker, to Red Hat for hosting the event, and to the incredibly generous community of users who funded this event. Because of you all Inkscape will continue to enrich the lives of artists, designers, makers, and others around the world. [Less]

We're back from Boston! Thanks to the generous donations of our community and the hospitality of Red Hat, project contributors from around the world were able to meet to make Inkscape better and more accessible. Attendees included Bryce Harrington ... [More] , Martin Owens, Tavmjong Bah, Alex Valavanis, Máirín Duffy, Felipe Sanches, Ryan Gorley, Matthias Clasen, Valessio Brito, and David Cantrell. Areas of focus included: Variable Fonts. This exciting new font format allows for unparalleled control over the appearance of fonts. Enabling variable fonts to be used and customized within Inkscape was a large part of the work of Tavmjong and Felipe. Migration to GTK+ 3. GTK+ governs much of what can (and cannot) be done with the user interface of Inkscape. Replacing the current GTK+ 2 code with GTK+ 3 is a massive task, with significant promises. This was the focus of Alex, with the generous help of Red Hat employee and GTK+ maintainer Matthias. Refactoring of Extensions. Extensions are an important and accessible way for developers to contribute to Inkscape. Housekeeping and refactoring of extensions allows them to continue to serve their many uses as Inkscape improves. Work in this area was a focus of Martin Owens. Website Revisions. Recent efforts have been made through the Inkscape Vectors to help more people recognize the creative opportunities available to them through Inkscape. Ryan, the organizer of this effort, worked with Máirín, Felipe, and Martin to explore how the website could serve this cause by telling the story of the project and its users better. Project Infrastructure. Inkscape cannot serve its users if the website is inaccessible or contributions cannot be made. For this reason, Bryce Harrington and Martin Owens dedicated a good share of time addressing core infrastructural needs for the project. Many of these improvements are made possible because of the generous donation of computing resources by CloudScale.ch. 1.0 and Beyond. Planning and prioritization went into the forthcoming 1.0 release, but the vision of the future didn't stop there. Early work has already started on exciting new features such as multi-page support, laying the groundwork for future development during and between Hackfests. Much more could be said about the work performed during these days. Fortunately, this article is just the beginning. Get a closeup view of the event by watching the three video recordings taken during the event: Day 1 Summary - https://youtu.be/4stNumKreTc Day 4 Summary - https://youtu.be/IqQI2Y1PR38 Day 5 Roadmap Discussion - https://youtu.be/Gl2gvvBNJ10 Our gratitude goes out to those who made the effort and sacrifices to attend, to Chris Rogers for designing the event sticker, to Red Hat for hosting the event, and to the incredibly generous community of users who funded this event. Because of you all Inkscape will continue to enrich the lives of artists, designers, makers, and others around the world. [Less]

We're back from Boston! Thanks to the generous donations of our community and the hospitality of Red Hat, project contributors from around the world were able to meet to make Inkscape better and more accessible. Attendees included Bryce Harrington ... [More] , Martin Owens, Tavmjong Bah, Alex Valavanis, Máirín Duffy, Felipe Sanches, Ryan Gorley, Matthias Clasen, Valessio Brito, and David Cantrell. Areas of focus included: Variable Fonts. This exciting new font format allows for unparalleled control over the appearance of fonts. Enabling variable fonts to be used and customized within Inkscape was a large part of the work of Tavmjong and Felipe. Migration to GTK+ 3. GTK+ governs much of what can (and cannot) be done with the user interface of Inkscape. Replacing the current GTK+ 2 code with GTK+ 3 is a massive task, with significant promises. This was the focus of Alex, with the generous help of Red Hat employee and GTK+ maintainer Matthias. Refactoring of Extensions. Extensions are an important and accessible way for developers to contribute to Inkscape. Housekeeping and refactoring of extensions allows them to continue to serve their many uses as Inkscape improves. Work in this area was a focus of Martin Owens. Website Revisions. Recent efforts have been made through the Inkscape Vectors to help more people recognize the creative opportunities available to them through Inkscape. Ryan, the organizer of this effort, worked with Máirín, Felipe, and Martin to explore how the website could serve this cause by telling the story of the project and its users better. Project Infrastructure. Inkscape cannot serve its users if the website is inaccessible or contributions cannot be made. For this reason, Bryce Harrington and Martin Owens dedicated a good share of time addressing core infrastructural needs for the project. Many of these improvements are made possible because of the generous donation of computing resources by CloudScale.ch. 1.0 and Beyond. Planning and prioritization went into the forthcoming 1.0 release, but the vision of the future didn't stop there. Early work has already started on exciting new futures such as multi-page support, laying the groundwork for future development during and between Hackfests. Much more could be said about the work performed during these days. Fortunately, this article is just the beginning. Get a closeup view of the event by watching the three video recordings taken during the event: Day 1 Summary - https://youtu.be/4stNumKreTc Day 4 Summary - https://youtu.be/IqQI2Y1PR38 Day 5 Roadmap Discussion - https://youtu.be/Gl2gvvBNJ10 Our gratitude goes out to those who made the effort and sacrifices to attend, to Chris Rogers for designing the event sticker, to Red Hat for hosting the event, and to the incredibly generous community of users who funded this event. Because of you all Inkscape will continue to enrich the lives of artists, designers, makers, and others around the world. [Less]

We're back from Boston! Thanks to the generous donations of our community and the hospitality of Red Hat, project contributors from around the world were able to meet to make Inkscape better and more accessible. Attendees included Bryce Harrington ... [More] , Martin Owens, Tavmjong Bah, Alex Valavanis, Máirín Duffy, Felipe Sanches, Ryan Gorley, Matthias Clasen, Valessio Brito, and David Cantrell. Areas of focus included: Variable Fonts. This exciting new font format allows for unparalleled control over the appearance of fonts. Enabling variable fonts to be used and customized within Inkscape was a large part of the work of Tavmjong and Felipe. Migration to GTK+ 3. GTK+ governs much of what can (and cannot) be done with the user interface of Inkscape. Replacing the current GTK+ 2 code with GTK+ 3 is a massive task, with significant promises. This was the focus of Alex, with the generous help of Red Hat employee and GTK+ maintainer Matthias. Refactoring of Extensions. Extensions are an important and accessible way for developers to contribute to Inkscape. Housekeeping and refactoring of extensions allows them to continue to serve their many uses as Inkscape improves. Work in this area was a focus of Martin Owens. Website Revisions. Recent efforts have been made through the Inkscape Vectors to help more people recognize the creative opportunities available to them through Inkscape. Ryan, the organizer of this effort, worked with Máirín, Felipe, and Martin to explore how the website could serve this cause by telling the story of the project and its users better. Project Infrastructure. Inkscape cannot serve its users if the website is inaccessible or contributions cannot be made. For this reason, Bryce Harrington and Martin Owens dedicated a good share of time addressing core infrastructural needs for the project. Many of these improvements are made possible because of the generous donation of computing resources by CloudScale.ch. 1.0 and Beyond. Planning and prioritization went into the forthcoming 1.0 release, but the vision of the future didn't stop there. Early work has already started on exciting new features such as multi-page support, laying the groundwork for future development during and between Hackfests. Much more could be said about the work performed during these days. Fortunately, this article is just the beginning. Get a closeup view of the event by watching the three video recordings taken during the event: Day 1 Summary - https://youtu.be/4stNumKreTc Day 4 Summary - https://youtu.be/IqQI2Y1PR38 Day 5 Roadmap Discussion - https://youtu.be/Gl2gvvBNJ10 Our gratitude goes out to those who made the effort and sacrifices to attend, to Chris Rogers for designing the event sticker, to Red Hat for hosting the event, and to the incredibly generous community of users who funded this event. Because of you all Inkscape will continue to enrich the lives of artists, designers, makers, and others around the world. [Less]

Software Improvements Inkscape 0.92.3 is a maintenance release resolving numerous bugs and making this the most stable release of the series. Among the most reported bugs addressed were: Blank pages being output when attempting to print multiple ... [More] copies of a document The inability to cancel during the export of large files Application crashes caused by attempting to drag a path at a cap or line join Some issues with keyboard shortcut functionality on non-Latin keyboard layouts A few performance improvements and usability enhancements that made it into the release, include: New SVG export options from the command line Support for right-to-left text Improved ellipse controls Multi-line text support for the PDF+LaTeX export New render tile preferences for performance tuning Better startup performance for many Windows users For more information about these improvements and a number of bug and regression fixes visit the full release notes. Note: A build of 0.92.3 is not currently available for MacOS. The project welcomes additional contributors with MacOS expertise. Documentation The Inkscape documentation repository, containing the man page, the keyboard shortcut list as well as the tutorials and their respective translation files, has been almost completely refactored (Java has been dropped in favor of Python), and was updated to work with git and GitLab. The man page and the keyboard shortcut list have also been updated. Continuously updated man page (for command line usage), keyboard and mouse shortcut list, tutorials and translation statistics for the various parts of the Inkscape project are available on the inkscape.org website: Man page Keyboard shortcuts Tutorials Translation statistics for Inkscape 0.92 series / development branch Contributions to the documentation translations, as well as improvements to its contents, are welcome at the inkscape-docs repository. Download 0.92.3 and Get Involved As always, Inkscape is available free of charge to professionals and hobbyists alike. To download the latest packaged version of Inkscape visit https://inkscape.org/release/0.92.3/. Inkscape is a community guided and supported project. Our many thanks go to those who have contributed their time, resources, and talent to make this release possible. Learn how you can support and help contribute to this project by visiting https://inkscape.org/support-us/ and https://inkscape.org/contribute/ [Less]

Software Improvements Inkscape 0.92.3 is a maintenance release resolving numerous bugs and making this the most stable release of the series. Among the most reported bugs addressed were: Blank pages being output when attempting to print multiple ... [More] copies of a document The inability to cancel during the export of large files Application crashes caused by attempting to drag a path at a cap or line join Some issues with keyboard shortcut functionality on non-Latin keyboard layouts A few performance improvements and usability enhancements that made it into the release, include: New SVG export options from the command line Support for right-to-left text Improved ellipse controls Multi-line text support for the PDF+LaTeX export New render tile preferences for performance tuning Better startup performance for many Windows users For more information about these improvements and a number of bug and regression fixes visit the full release notes. Note: A build of 0.92.3 is not currently available for MacOS. The project welcomes additional contributors with MacOS expertise. Documentation The Inkscape documentation repository, containing the man page, the keyboard shortcut list as well as the tutorials and their respective translation files, has been almost completely refactored (Java has been dropped in favor of Python), and was updated to work with git and GitLab. The man page and the keyboard shortcut list have also been updated. Continuously updated man page (for command line usage), keyboard and mouse shortcut list, tutorials and translation statistics for the various parts of the Inkscape project are available on the inkscape.org website: Man page Keyboard shortcuts Tutorials Translation statistics for Inkscape 0.92 series / development branch Contributions to the documentation translations, as well as improvements to its contents, are welcome at the inkscape-docs repository. Download 0.92.3 and Get Involved As always, Inkscape is available free of charge to professionals and hobbyists alike. To download the latest packaged version of Inkscape visit https://inkscape.org/release/0.92.3/. Inkscape is a community guided and supported project. Our many thanks go to those who have contributed their time, resources, and talent to make this release possible. Learn how you can support and help contribute to this project by visiting https://inkscape.org/support-us/ and https://inkscape.org/contribute/ [Less]