
Inkscape 1.0 Beta 1 - nkoren
https://inkscape.org/news/2019/09/08/inkscape-10-beta1-available-testing/
======
cies
Inkscape is my go-to example of why FLOSS is great:

* Learn how to use it once
    
    
      * Keep using it for a life time
    
      * Not completely changing interface every major release
    

* Keeps getting better (some commercial software seems to bloat beyond repair)

* Available on many platforms

* All of the above for FREE

Now I dont need to do vector graphics every week, not even every month. But
for those couple of times a year it's good to have a tool in your box.
Inkscape is there for me, no need to buy a (subscription) license. No need to
boot into another OS. No need to relearn it. More than complete feature set
for my needs.

Congrats to the team!

~~~
Andrew_nenakhov
Unfortunately, this 'not completely changing interface' has a side effect: it
fails to evolve and become better.

I am a long-time user of Inkscape (since 2007 at least), and it is sad how
poor it looks now next to Sketch/Figma. Their vector tools are better, their
layer tools are better. It's a million little things that make drawing a
similar shape in Sketch 50x faster than in Inkscape.

~~~
rubidium
It doesn’t need to be any better to satisfy this user. I also pull it out 2-4
times a year and am happy that everything has more or less stayed the same for
8+ years.

~~~
cies
That was my point. Sure it could be better, but at a cost (design+dev'p, and
alienation of users). It seems big/commercial softwares love to take that
cost.

~~~
eXpl0it3r
Because they have paying and active customers who want improvements even if it
means that one has to relearn some things here and there.

Not enhancing UX because some users might have already gotten used to the
current setup is rather shortsighted (relevant XKCD:
[https://xkcd.com/1172/](https://xkcd.com/1172/) ). What about all the people
you don't get on board because the UX is terrible compared to all the other
tools?

~~~
tempguy9999
> they have paying and active customers who want improvements

My experience is that when software reaches a certain level of maturity, major
'improvements' to the UI are driven very much not by the users.

> Not enhancing UX because some users might have already gotten used to the
> current setup is rather shortsighted

Perhaps. It depends proportion of 'some'. 1%..99%, it depends doesn't it.
You're pushing for change with no quantification of the value of it. If it
ain't broke, don't fix it, so first find out if it's broke.

------
pugio
Inkscape is my go to image editor. The UI is reminiscent of the old Macromedia
Fireworks, with a paradigm that feels much nicer (to me) than Photoshop et al.

I downloaded the beta pessimistically thinking that they still wouldn't have
native OSX Menu support (I've been using the non-updated 0.91+devel+osmenu
fork/branch forever), but was pleasantly surprised to see full OSX integration
in this beta. Great job guys!

~~~
tmikaeld
I'm used to Affinity Designer, unfortunately Inkscape is very slow for even
just ~10 layers of medium complexity shapes on MacOS :-/

While on Affinity, I can have hundred layers without noticeable performance
issues.

~~~
bildung
I'm not on MacOS but find Inkscape pretty snappy in general, even with big
projects.

Perhaps it's not the Layers but the effects? Blur in particular is pretty
slow. Have you tried reducing the displayed filter quality? This doesn't
effect the image itself, only the display in Inkscape. It's in the render tab
in Inkscape preferences.

At View -> Display Mode you can also toggle between full display, display
without filters and only outlines. If Inkscape is significantly faster without
displayed filters, setting down the display quality will definitely help.

~~~
ken
The very first item on Affinity Designer's feature list [1] is "Pan and zoom
at 60fps". You don't generally accomplish this by accident. They apparently
wrote the engine from scratch to use hardware acceleration, and be usable on
an iPad with a very small amount of available RAM [2].

There's no reason blur, in particular, must necessarily be slow. Everybody
(and their phone) has a GPU that's more than fast enough to do that in real-
time. I wonder if the (cross-platform) interfaces that Inkscape are using on
macOS aren't hardware accelerated. Or if it's using some syscall which is
cheap on some platforms and expensive on others.

I haven't done any testing but I agree that Inkscape feels much slower than
Affinity Designer.

[1]: [https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/designer/full-feature-
list/](https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/designer/full-feature-list/) [2]:
[https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/18079-what...](https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/18079-what-
vector-rendering-engine-does-designer-use/)

~~~
coldcode
I use Affinity Designer and Photo and they are very fast even at huge sizes (I
do art). But they don't listen to user feedback or suggestions much if at all.
AD/P can use OpenGL Vulcan or Metal (I use Metal) and it's amazingly fast for
most operations. I also use Artrage 5 and it's abysmally slow probably not
optimized for any platform either, probably not much different from Inkscape
(though mostly bitmap drawing).

------
dragonsh
In our startup we do all our website and web app mock up in inkscape. Even
artwork for our physical banner and posters we do using inkscape, krita [1]
and then use scribus [2] to generate print quality pdf's.

We are overall very pleased with it.

We were eagerly waiting for 1.0 to have a HiDPI support and native Mac
application. They both are there besides a lot of other features.

Kudos to team to keep it alive and continuously improve it. Even though Adobe
XD,sketch and figma are preferred tools for UI and UX design, we build our
assets using inkscape. We got this inspiration from Taiga [3] project which
has an open source design repository in svg and a completed single page app
using angularjs based on those designs. It gave our team confidence we can do
it.

The added advantage is the artwork developed using inkscape can directly be
used as svg images in website and single page app and are responsive by
default.

Once again thanks to inkscape team to keep it alive and improve continuously.

[1] [https://krita.org/en/](https://krita.org/en/)

[2] [https://www.scribus.net/](https://www.scribus.net/)

[3] [https://github.com/taigaio/taiga-
design](https://github.com/taigaio/taiga-design)

~~~
plq
> The added advantage is the artwork developed using inkscape can directly be
> used as svg images in website and single page app

We had a lot of success cleaning Inkscape's svg output.

See here for solutions:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20680559](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20680559)

I'm pretty happy with svgcleaner
([https://github.com/RazrFalcon/svgcleaner](https://github.com/RazrFalcon/svgcleaner))

------
hughes
Oh wow it's finally no longer using XQuartz! This is great!

~~~
yuchi
I’m overly excited for this fact!! I’ve been an avid user of Inkscape for some
time, but abandoned it because the UI was unbearable. So so so happy

~~~
emmelaich
link to the beta download page:

[https://inkscape.org/release/inkscape-1.0/?latest=1](https://inkscape.org/release/inkscape-1.0/?latest=1)

------
romwell
My go-to graphics packages are still Gimp for raster / Inkscape for vector
graphics.

Started using Inkscape in 2007 to illustrate a math paper, and been using it
ever since whenever I needed to TeX something up.

~~~
acidburnNSA
Me too. I only recently came across TikZ which is an even more epic way to TeX
up fancy diagrams (you "program" them). Still use inkscape for most stuff
though.

~~~
chrisweekly
You and GP wrote "[to] TeX up", is this a common idiom?

~~~
Steuard
Yes? At least in some mathy/sciencey circles.

------
pbhjpbhj
Slight aside, I don't see anything in the release notes about OCAL (Open
ClipArt Library): is it still integrated?

Reason I'm asking is because there are links between the projects and OCAL has
been offline since April [1].

OCAL doesn't seem to be coming back, their official line is they are handling
a DDoS ... if it's no longer included I'd conclude that OCAL probably expired.

There was a death, of an associated dev, I believe.

1 - [https://alicious.com/openclipart-ddos-
offline/](https://alicious.com/openclipart-ddos-offline/) my blog post on the
issue.

~~~
jarek-foksa
It looks like there is currently only one person in charge of OCAL and he
works on it for free, which would explain why it takes so long to bring it
back.

It's also sad to see that Pixabay has basically copied all assets from
OpenClipart and republished them under a more restrictive license rather than
try to cooperate and support them.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Which would be no problem if that was publicly given as a reason. There have
been 2 promises for "we're just about done" to my recollection too. Moreover
the people running it aren't responding to requests to put up the torrent
files of the current library.

It's extremely bad public relations at best.

------
dngray
I am looking forward to having one less Python 2 dependency. Inkscape 1.0 only
uses Python 3.

Next up will be GIMP 3 as that will mean I no longer need GTK2 a dependency of
unmaintained PyGTK.

PyGTK also depends on python2-cairo and python2-gobject2 so I will finally be
rid of Python 2 once and for all.

------
siempreb
Inkscape is just totally awesome and very much needed. Without it the only
serious option left for vector graphics is the overly expensive Illustrator,
entering Adobe's sucking subscription model where you can only edit your own
files when a subscription is paid.

Inkscape is another great example of why we should try to support open source
if we can.

------
stupidcar
Why does Inkscape's UI feel so... sloppy? I mean, Blender is a cross-platform,
open-source design tool, and it manages to have a tight, professional looking
UI. So how does Inkscape's UI still contrive to look like the first Java AWT
application I wrote in the 90s?

I know it's just a surface thing, and there's a lot of great functionality
there. But it's still not exactly a sight that helps inspire you to create
beautiful content using it.

~~~
nineteen999
> Blender is a cross-platform, open-source design tool, and it manages to have
> a tight, professional looking UI

Well let's remember that there was HEAVY criticism of Blender's UI up until
the 2.5/2.6 releases, with some people even criticizing it now that 2.8 is
released. There was an extreme amount of work done since 2.5 to clean up the
UI.

It also has a lot more functionality than Inkscape, and so I think there is
incentive as more people start using it to make sure that all those functions
are filed away neatly and accessible without cluttering the interface too
much.

Also, just going on users subscribed to their respective subreddits, Inkscape
has around 6000 and Blender 151,000. So the size of the user base might have a
direct impact.

Personally I don't find the Inkscape UI to be all that bad, although I agree
it could do with some tightening up. I still prefer to use Adobe Illustrator
if I have it to hand, but Inkscape will always work in a pinch.

Being able to use it to create SVG that can be directly imported into Blender
as curves is something I've used it a lot for, for that kind of task they
complement each other very well.

------
input_sh
> Better HiDPI screen support

Oh finally! Haven't used it for the last two years simply because the
interface was too tiny on my laptop.

~~~
jcelerier
huh, what OS are you on ? I have hidpi screens since 2014 and inscape has
always honored Xft.dpi

~~~
agurk
Are you using Xorg or Wayland? When I looked into it last there were issues in
Wayland when you set the Xft.dpi clashing with things like GDK_SCALE.

Like the GP I've hardly been using Inkscape recently as it's such a pain with
the small icons.

~~~
jcelerier
I use X11, wayland has way too many issues for me at the moment (and I test
sway, plasma and GNOME every other month)

------
_nato_
Glad to read this. Never used inkscape beyond the CLI tools. I hope they
continue to keep this chunk of their software mature and growing, too.

Here's my all-time favorite thing to do... transform font types to paths
inside svgs (so one doesn't need to hold that font asset in CDN, ...) :

inkscape -T -A tmp-hack.pdf orig-w-custom-fonts.svg

inkscape -l final.svg tmp-hack.pdf

------
jazzyjackson
So excited to try out the native mac os support, I use inkscape for everything
but I often have to unplug my second monitor to get it to show up thanks to
XQuartz!

------
cxcorp
> Pinch-to-zoom

> On supported hardware (trackpad, touchpad, multi-touch screen), the canvas
> can be zoomed with the two-finger pinch gesture.

Thank god! As a macOS user, this is really one of my pet peeves because I'm so
used to pinch-to-zoom that I almost forget it exists until I use a program
that _doesn 't_ support it.

------
jf
Inkscape is fantastic. I used it to convert a taster image to vector art and
it exceeded my expectations.

------
billfruit
I hope a minor annoyance in the UI which has been nagging me has been fixed in
the recent versions:

To draw lines with arrows, one needs to draw a line then select the arrow
style, where as a the natural flow would be to set the style before drawing
the line. Imagine if you have 20 lines of the same style, it is painful to
draw 20 standard lines and then go back to change each of their appearance
individually. It would be better if one could define a style of line, then
create lines of that style as many number of times as required.

Having such stylesheets will for example change the width of all lines of the
given style easily later.

------
tmbsundar
This is great news. Really a gem of an open-source/ free SVG editor that can
produce high quality images.

Do they have "flatten-layers" and export as a single file (similar to
Illustrator) functionality yet?

I checked the release notes, but could not find anything around it.

This can sometimes be an issue, in the way the image is rendered especially by
different browsers. You end up with some unintended image output than you
developed in the tool because of the interaction between different layers and
opacities. Even a .png export did not help in one instance.

------
amelius
One thing I still miss in inkscape is calligraphic strokes, which is very
useful for creating a professional looking cartoon style.

EDIT: Calligraphy is available but only hand-drawn. What I meant is
calligraphy applied to a path, and the ability to transform the resulting
stroke back into a path. These are powerful operations that are available in
commercial offerings but not yet in inkscape, afaik.

~~~
yarrel
Are they patented?

------
unixhero
That's a looong journey to reach 1.0 beta. Congrats to the team.

------
scoofy
I... love... inkscape... to those who work on it, thank you.

------
jordache
Free is not free when said product results in reduction of productivity.

I've tried to make Inkscape work, after ending my Adobe subscription.
Conclusion - Inkscape is not worth it.

Just pony up $50 for Affinity Designer. Great app. Facilitates tremendous
productivity

~~~
bcholmes
Huh. My experience differs. I have both Illustrator and Inkscape, and for
certain tasks (e.g. stuff I want to be native SVG or making icons), I always
go back to Inkscape because I find it faster/easier.

------
TomMasz
As a Mac user looking to avoid Illustrator, this is a gift from the gods.
XQuartz has issues with mouse movement, making it difficult to keep the
drawing on the screen. Now it looks and acts like you'd expect.

------
jayalpha
Inkscape is great. I don't want to be a dick but I miss Xara XL

------
vkaku
I don't know if they'll be able to get GTK 3 into 1.0, but that would be
awesome. The fact that the new builds don't need a X server kind of make it
awesome already!

------
mschuetz
Inkscape is that one Open Source app where the UI isn't utter nonsense. Could
be better but it's alright. Great to see it reaching 1.0.

------
roel_v
I wish it would have better color profile support, so that it can be used to
send graphics straight to a printer. This seems like a basic thing but I could
never get it to work. So now I have to use Scribus which has its own problems.

------
jmiskovic
Non-destructive boolean operations! This it so much easier to reuse shapes.
Great for obscured features, surface details, shadows, reflections... Too bad
they are hidden away in live effects; I will still (ab)use them to no end.

~~~
jononor
Yay! Always missing these since my main tool is parametric CAD background
(FreeCAD). Using Inkscape is nice when output is more visual in nature.

------
interfixus
Inkscape is still in beta? Yes, I _know_ it is, but I can't quite wrap my mind
around it. Have been using this awe-inspiring tool for more than a quarter of
my life. And I was born before the first human spaceflight.

------
pjbk
This is great news! Will check if they fixed the issues loading files with
autoconnectors, which was the only thing preventing me to use it for
engineering diagrams.

I just wish that Krita had the same text editing capabilities as Inkscape.

------
bovermyer
I use Affinity Designer for vector work. However, Designer doesn't support
tracing, so for that I'll fire up Inkscape. I'll do the trace, save it, then
import into Designer and continue working.

------
worg
I can't stress enough how happy I'm because Inkscape is finally getting proper
macOS support, I've been using the ~suv osxmenu build for years wondering
which OS update would render it unusable

------
westurner
`Ctrl + 4` to center view on page!

Pressure sensitive pencil for the PowerStroke Live Path Effect (LPE) "if a
pressure sensitive device is available"!

------
pier25
The performance is _really_ bad for me. It runs at like 2fps with an empty
document.

I'm on a fairly powerful 5K iMac with High Sierra...

------
scalanewaccount
What other free software is good for vector graphics? Is there only Inkscape?

------
einpoklum
What is that list of changes relative to? I'm using 0.92.4 myself.

------
llukas
Fantastic program.

------
diyseguy
Please please please make an IOS version!

------
jarek-foksa
Just in case you are looking for a commercial alternative to Inkscape with a
more modern UI and Chromium-based rendering engine, check out my project Boxy
SVG: [https://boxy-svg.com](https://boxy-svg.com)

The next version (to be released in 2-3 weeks) is going to introduce full
support for filters and color swatches. In the upcoming 12 months I expect to
reach full feature parity with Inkscape.

~~~
terragon
I'm sad to say that I judged it purely on the fact that it wasn't open source.

Then I went ahead and tried it out... mind blown. It's that good. Feels like a
native app in it's UI quality and speed. And $9/month is a very good price
point, especially for those that regularly create vector art.

I'm amazed at the quality of your app. It'll be especially incredible once
you're at Inkscape parity. How large is the team you got working full time?

~~~
michaelmrose
Only $1080 over the next decade compared to zero for inkscape! You would
probably be better off writing a check for $100 to fund improvements to same
and put the other grand in your pocket.

Everyone on earth wants to turn a sale into a recurring revenue stream for a
reason. Trivial individual costs add up substantially over time.

~~~
jarek-foksa
Boxy SVG desktop app does not and will not require recurring payments. You pay
for it once and after that you will be receiving updates for free as long as
I'm in charge of the project (i.e. I won't get hit by a bus or something along
those lines).

~~~
liziwizi
hey, you might wanna change your website a little bit then. it's not obvious
right now.

i clicked on the link of your site, and the first box i saw said "9$/month".
that's enough to click away (for me).

only after i did some more clicking and followed an external(!) link to the
store it was obvious you can do a one-time purchase.

in a normal situation i would never have gotten to that point and would have
clicked away immediately after seeing 9/month for a new product that still has
to prove itself and doesn't have a big name behind it.

~~~
mkl
Yes, it's not at all clear. If you switch away from "Web app" by clicking on
an OS, you don't get that (or any) pricing info. Going to the stores
themselves, Windows and Mac seem to have a one-time payment, and Chrome and
Snap don't seem to have a price.

------
marble-drink
One thing I love about Inkscape is its keyboard interface and specifically how
it lets you scroll up and down, left and right and in and out. This should be
standard in all two-dimensional editing applications but I find it sadly is
not. When it comes to editing speed, the keyboard is absolutely essential and
shouldn't be an afterthought.

