
Inkscape launches versions 0.92.4 and 1.0 alpha - reddotX
https://inkscape.org/news/2019/01/17/inkscape-launches-version-0924/
======
robbrown451
I sure wish they'd make it run as a first class citizen on Mac, currently it
uses XQuartz and I'm constantly having it open a file but I can't get to the
windows: they flash, then go to some hidden desktop and you have to jump
through hoops to try to get them to actually display. Horrible user experience
and I have given up on recommending this to other because they all run into
the same thing and get frustrated and give up.

~~~
jhasse
I think Version 1.0 will drop the XQuartz requirement, have you tried it?

~~~
ngrilly
Are you sure about this?

~~~
jhasse
No, sorry. I don't have a Mac to test.

See [https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/237953/install-
ink...](https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/237953/install-inkscape-
without-xquartz/237955#237955)

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themodelplumber
Great news. What an awesome team.

Not sure if this might help anyone else but: I recently figured out a really
big performance problem here that was causing crazy amounts of lag in Inkscape
on multiple systems: "recently-used.xbel" in my home folder was about 300K and
when referenced, the system seemed to lag while attempting to reconcile some
network drives or unplugged USB drives (I wasn't sure which). I deleted it and
the lag problem completely disappeared. So I put together a cron job that
deletes the file every once in a while. I was surprised that what I thought
was a graphics issue turned out to be a convenience-related one. :-)

~~~
doubleunplussed
I remember encountering this in an app I was working on, and found an
explanation here:

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9275677/platform-
depende...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9275677/platform-dependent-
performance-issues-when-selecting-a-large-number-of-files-wit)

Ended up having to use an old style file chooser widget (as described in the
SO answer) to avoid the problem. I don't know if the issue still exists in
GTK3 (which could mean it'll be resolved in inkscape with the port to GTK3),
but I ported my app to Qt since so I don't have that issue any more. Made my
app totally unusable.

~~~
State_Of_Mind
That was a deceptively funny answer! Got quite the chuckle from me, thank you.

Could you explain a little bit more about what porting an app from GTK to QT
is like? It makes sense now that you mention it but I'd never thought of doing
that until now.

~~~
doubleunplussed
I don't remember super well, but I think GTK to Qt was pretty 1:1. The code
ended up being longer, as reproducing some of the functionality that GTK had
pre-made involved writing custom classes. But Qt allows much more digging into
the internals than GTK does, so this was almost always possible. And the
documentation is very good.

The threading model was a bit different, requiring message passing to do
anything GUI related in the main thread rather than just updating widgets from
any old thread with a lock held. But message passing is probably a better way
to do this anyway!

Working out how to package up icons into Qt resource files was also a little
trickier than just using files on disk.

It took me about two months full time to port about 6000 lines of Python from
pyGTK to PyQt4. It's not the most complex application though, and I didn't
refactor anything else, I just ported to Qt as 1:1 as possible. This sounds
like a long time now that I think about it, but it seemed necessary at the
time, I don't remember slacking off. Also I was starting from scratch with
PyQt.

But Qt is much more stable than GTK and has better cross-platform support. We
ported from Qt4 to Qt5 without much effort and I haven't regretted the switch
at all. PyQt is an excellent way to do cross-platform GUIs. We adopted it long
before electron was a thing, and I remain an electron sceptic because I don't
see much in it that I am missing in Qt.

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chrisweekly
Inkscape uses SVG as a native format. I keep meaning to make time to level up
my svg-fu.

Related tangent: This "SVG Can Do That??" presentation[1] is "old" by internet
standards but is still (to me, at least) somewhere between eye-opening and
mind-blowing:

1\. [http://slides.com/sdrasner/svg-can-do-
that#/](http://slides.com/sdrasner/svg-can-do-that#/)

~~~
wwweston
Did they ever move to SVG 2 as the native format?

~~~
buovjaga
Inkscape dev Tavmjong Bah has put in a lot of work for the standard. Recently:
[https://www.patreon.com/posts/svg-2-fallbacks-23506209](https://www.patreon.com/posts/svg-2-fallbacks-23506209)

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interfixus
I'm equal parts awestruck and puzzled by these bordering-on-eternal beta
stages some projects stick to. Inkscape has been in my toolbox for the last
fifteen years or so, since around the time it forked from Sodipodi. I have
thought of it as release, production ready software for years and years.

~~~
_underfl0w_
The length of the beta is likely a function of the number of features of the
given app. I would think that most apps wanting to compete in this space would
be up against apps with insane amounts of features - think Adobe software -
which would require a certain amount of time to test/fix per "feature". The
same might be true of, for example, a Microsoft Office competitor. Lots of
legacy functions tucked away in those apps.

Just speculating since I've only personally tried fumbling around in Inkscape
<5 times in my life, but it might explain the phenomenon.

~~~
prokoudine
The original versioning was designed with SVG 1.1 compliance in mind. At some
point the figured out they aren't ever going to support 100% of SVG, so they
jumped from 0.48.x to 0.91 (it was originally intended to be 0.49), and now
they are jumping from 0.92.x to 1.0 :)

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zmmmmm
Love Inkscape. It's like vi for me - the tool I take everywhere, and I know
all the keystrokes so well I can work at twice the speed of other tools.

~~~
fxfan
Calling something vi like is either naivete or a really high praise. Can you
elaborate please how it helps you be productive?

~~~
zmmmmm
The productivity part is that it binds single keys directly (without meta keys
like control, alt etc) to actions, so working with it is extremely fluid,
almost like typing. There is almost nothing I need menus or gui buttons for,
so I never have to take my eyes off the work. I often work with one hand on
the keyboard and the other on the mouse and I just get into a flow where I
have completely forgotten the human / computer interface exists.

It's hard to describe, but certain tools are designed this way and I love
them, other tools are designed great for beginners to learn them but you can
never achieve the above.

~~~
fxfan
That sounds cool. Given that you use vim- I assume you're a programmer too-
what do you use inkscape for?

~~~
zmmmmm
I used to use it a lot for icons etc. but now I need to publish technical
diagrams, which always need to be in PDF form and often include elements that
are created programmatically as SVG. So Inkscape is ideal to work up the
finished figure for publication.

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p4bl0
Off-topic/meta but I'm curious:

This is a dupe of my recent submission (< 24h) :
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18933825](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18933825)

Why hasn't HN detected that automatically as it usually does?

~~~
Macha
I think it only cares about dupes of posts that have activity.

~~~
p4bl0
That would make sense. Thanks :).

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Birch-san
> the project needs someone who knows how to automatically package a .dmg file

Recommended reading if you wish to bundle a macOS binary for distribution:

[https://birchlabs.co.uk/blog/alex/juicysfplugin/synth/cpp/20...](https://birchlabs.co.uk/blog/alex/juicysfplugin/synth/cpp/2019/01/05/a-soundfont-
vst-for-macos.html)

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eponeponepon
Ah, awesome - Inkscape has got me out of more than a few holes in the past few
years, but it's always been juust crashy enough that I haven't truly felt
comfortable pushing it at work, so increased stability is definitely welcome!
:-)

~~~
Varcht
Never seemed that buggy to me but maybe I am jaded by years of experience
using $10k CG apps that crashed a lot more.

Congrats on Alpha!

------
umvi
I design all of my vector graphics in PowerPoint. If I want to export my
PowerPoint graphics to SVG or PNG I can simply export to PDF, import into
Inkscape, and re-export as SVG or PNG.

Used it countless times to make T-shirt designs, logos, etc. Super convenient
"free" alternative to Adobe Illustrator. (Most people have access to and know
how to make vector graphics out of shapes in PowerPoint)

~~~
fxfan
Do you have a tutorial?

~~~
umvi
[http://blog.umvirate.com/#/splash](http://blog.umvirate.com/#/splash)

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androidgirl
I use inkscape at work in part of a large-ish application.

We chose to use inkscape for part of an image generation toolkit because of
the great command line options and the easy to modify source files.

As for the UI, ever since .91 they have fixed my biggest concern, and I'm
really happy for the team. Rarely feel the pain and need to reach for
illustrator on a windows machine!

~~~
dylan604
We have recently been playing with a laser cutter for protyping, and have been
using different applications to get SVGs to the cutter. Illustrator has
actually been a pain for this. Illustrator's SVG format does not retain the
dimensions correctly. After trial and error, it turns out that the Illustrator
SVG must be scaled 133%. SVGs coming out of Inkscape do not suffer from this
problem.

At this point, I have not used Inkscape as someone else has been using it (not
a power user). However, hearing about its command line options makes me want
to investigate that immediately. I have been suggesting a CLI approach would
be much better for us with all of the automation we are looking to implement.
Thanks!

~~~
rbalsdon
I was just told that Illustrator assumes 96 dpi and Glowforge assumes 76 dpi.
If you change the Illustrator doc settings to the lower dpi, dimensions will
work right. Same problem with Sketch. I haven’t tried the solution out yet to
confirm.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Why is anything being assumed. It's all determined by the viewbox.

------
fabiensanglard
I love Inkscape. I used it for all the drawings in my books and in their build
system. It was a remarkably reliable tool.

~~~
fxfan
What do you mean by using it in build system?

~~~
dflock
It has a command line interface that can be used to do operations on SVG
images - mostly rasterization in build pipelines, but it can do other stuff
too: [https://inkscape.org/doc/inkscape-
man.html](https://inkscape.org/doc/inkscape-man.html)

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mavhc
Love Inkscape, been using vector graphics on RISC OS for ages, it came with
Draw, and then upgraded to Artworks.

Loved it even more when they made an MSI installer for Windows so I could
easily put it on every computer at workschool

------
ris
I'm still desperately waiting for CMYK support (not that I've personally done
much to help the situation).

~~~
omeid2
Without CMYK support the print story with Inkscape is pretty cumbersome.

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jayalpha
Hands off to the team.

The loss of Xara was already bad. Great to have another option.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xara_Photo_%26_Graphic_Designe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xara_Photo_%26_Graphic_Designer)

~~~
Lio
I never really got into Xara but I absolutely loved ArtWorks back in the day.
That was probably my all time favourite graphic app.

For those that don't know ArtWorks was a vector graphic package RiscOS and
predecessor of Xara. It had fast anti-aliasing and was optimised for the
integer maths on the floating pointless Arm 2 and 3 chips in Acorn Archimedes
and Acorn RiscPCs.

When the parent company stopped development it convinced me to try to use FOSS
packages like Inkscape in future. It can be always with you on every platform
and it will only get better with time.

~~~
itsoggy
ArtWorks is still around, and it works on Risc OS on the Raspberry Pi.

[http://www.mw-software.com/](http://www.mw-software.com/)

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jadbox
I love using Inkscape, but to be honest, my eyes bleed when I switch from
Krita over to it. The UI, while functional, is probably the most dated looking
app on my Linux desktop. Of course, if I was REALLY bothered by it, I could
just open a PR. heh

~~~
luroc
There seems to be theming and icon set support in 1.0, that should hopefully
solve this issue.

[http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Release_notes/1.0#Us...](http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Release_notes/1.0#User_interface_customization)

~~~
prokoudine
Icon set support has been around for a long, long, LONG time :)

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seandoe
great work! I used Illustrator for so long that the transition has been a
little rough for me (I don't do graphic work too often). But with the
ridiculous CC prices, I am so thankful for a solid, free alternative to
Illustrator. Thanks again!

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mromanuk
yes! finally it was in the make for a long time, cheers to the team!

~~~
tspiteri
Although the numbers are 0.92.4 and 1.0 alpha, Inkscape has been good for a
long time. The release notes for the 1.0 alpha release
([https://inkscape.org/release/inkscape-1.0alpha0/](https://inkscape.org/release/inkscape-1.0alpha0/))
look very much like what I would expect for say a 6.0 or 8.0 version.

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luroc
I'm really happy about the upcoming measurement tools. One step further
towards making Inkscape a viable CAD program.

