15 ms·

Inkscape Version 0.92 is Released

402 points by p4bl0 10y ago

struppi 10y ago
Sorry to be that guy, but I always had the impression that Inkscape is way more cumbersome and difficult than it should be. And it seems to me that there is very little progress. I don't use/need vector graphics editors very much, but I now bought affinity designer. It seems to be way more professional, and is quite affordable (basically in the same price category as Inkscape, at least for me).
- saycheese 10y ago
  Inkscape is free, so unless you mean using stolen property, which is not free, there is no comparable vector image editor on the market for that price.
  - struppi 10y ago
    No, I am not talking about stolen property. But a one-time payment of 40€ is close enough to free for me to give it a try. That's why I said basically the same price category, not "the same price".
  - Doctor_Fegg 10y ago
    Or unless you include your time in the total cost of ownership, at which point an efficiently designed UI becomes crucial.
- greenspot 10y ago
  How is Affinity Designer, do you run it on Windows?
  - struppi 10y ago
    I'm running it on windows, only had one quick try yet. Looks promising, but didn't do any serious work with it yet.
- mojuba 10y ago
  I don't know why you are downvoted for your opinion, but totally agree that Inkscape is pretty low quality and buggy as well. On the Mac specifically the experience is so 1990s and un-macOS (yeah I know, it's an X app) I used it for a while for generating SVG files, ended up writing a script that would optimize the crappy files it generated and reduce them 10 to 20 times in some cases. Oh and then there are these odd floating point drifts (coordinate 10 becomes 10.035 etc.). Seems like one of those pieces of software that would be very difficult or impossible to fix.
  - struppi 10y ago
    Yes, I also had to create some SVG files during a project for a client and used Inkscape on Windows for that. Then hand-edited all of them, because I wanted to get rid of all the crap before importing them. I basically just bought Affinity Designer as a knee-jerk reaction because I disliked Inkscape so much.
    - mojuba 10y ago
      I find that the latest Adobe Illustrator does a pretty decent job with SVG's but of course Adobe stuff is a matter of taste (and is overpriced too).
    - tkp 10y ago
      Inkscape adds a bunch of metadata to it's svg's, but also has a "Simple SVG" save-as option, did you try it ?
      - mojuba 10y ago
        I did try it. Apart from metadata there are two other major problems: it generates a lot of unnecessary attributes with their default values, and also the floating point errors I mentioned. The latter can affect the appearance of your graphics on your screen unfortunately, i.e. a vertical line with X=10 is one thing but X=10.035 is another.
        10y ago
- rubber_duck 10y ago
  Not to mention it's really really slow when you start editing stuff with even simple effects like drop shadow, it's good for some things (like say you get an SVG file and you need to convert fonts to curves with a free app or something like that) but it's very limited and the UI is ghastly (the side panels that open when you edit effects and stuff in particular - huge controls with so much padding and ugly layout). GTK+ is just the worst for these kinds of feature packed UI (it can be OK for material design style UIs where you have few elements and don't mind the empty space, but not densely packed stuff like graphics effect panels and dialogs), GIMP and Inkscape suffer because of it.
- rleigh 10y ago
  It's a GTK+ X11 application on MacOS X. Last time I tried it, it was completely unusable--copy-paste totally non-functional (would paste vector selections as bitmaps). On Linux, it's vastly more usable, and quite polished for a GTK+ application.
  - mc- 10y ago
    Ther's a faq item about this issue: https://inkscape.org/en/learn/faq/#copypaste-rasterizes-objects https://inkscape.org/en/learn/faq/#copypaste-rasterizes-obje...
  - mandioca 10y ago
    There is no such thing as a polished GTK app. GTK widgets are really bad designed take for instance the `open` or `save` dialogues, only somebody how does not care about usability could come with that. Any application (no exceptions) made in GTK+ can be done better, faster in Qt through a much more polished and robust API. it's ashamed that inkscape is tied with such bad widget toolkit.
- Ralfp 10y ago
  After trying to use Inkscape for few days to draw myself vector logo in few versions for my OS projects, I've decided to bite it and get Affinity Designer while it was 20% off at App Store. I've had logo I was pleased in few versions and setup to export in all formats and sizes I've required in two hours. Its not even complex stuff, its basic things like making square with each corner having different radius.
- taivare 10y ago
  I have been using Gravit.io and their Twitter(template)for custom Tweets it's fast,online & convenient.
anilgulecha 10y ago
Inkscape is amazing -- I've used it on and off for over 6 years, and it's never let me down. Protip: It's PDF import is amazing.. try it. The only thing I miss is a workable layers functionality.
- saycheese 10y ago
  PDF import is really useful if you want to avoid hand writing on forms and save an editable copy of what you've typed.
cutler 10y ago
Looks great but not available for Mac users.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- tempodox 10y ago
  Yes, it is: https://inkscape.org/en/download/mac-os/ https://inkscape.org/en/download/mac-os/ Uses XQuartz, the platform's X11 emulation.
  - ak1394 10y ago
    They didn't release new 0.92 packages for Mac and apparently don't plan to.
    - dr_hooo 10y ago
      Noooo! are you aware of any third party binaries?
      - 2ion 10y ago
        There's an inkscape cask for homebrew. You should be able to compile it on your own too.
        LyndsySimon 10y ago
        The cask is 0.91, and uses the .dmg file. I'll subscribe to their dev mailing list and see about volunteering to get the macOS version out.
      - mc- 10y ago
        .92pre4 is available on macports, so they'll probably make .92 available soon.
  - gpvos 10y ago
rhaps0dy 10y ago
Inkscape is great! Its PDF+Latex exporting functionality makes it perfect for diagrams in papers, exams, and whatnot. The editing tools are also very nice. It also edits PDFs, which I found pretty cool! I use it to make airline tickets not take up a full sheet of paper. To be honest, if you export the PDF back out, it jumbles some of the fonts a little, but that's mostly OK.
- anilgulecha 10y ago
  When you export fonts, convert them to vector (it's a checkbox in the export). That way you never have to worry about font rendering.
- 2ion 10y ago
  Not to mention using Inkscape for filling in broken PDF forms…it's a major part of my workflow whenever I have to deal with such PDF files.
- probably_wrong 10y ago
  It's even better when you combine it with the command line tools. You can design a template on the GUI, and then customize it and export it via a script.
  - mixmastamyk 10y ago
    Which command-line tools?
    - rhaps0dy 10y ago
      type "inkscape --help" on your command line. It exports things to formats, and you can query information from files.
greenspot 10y ago
Anyone knows if v0.92 now supports hi-dpi screens? Last version didn't and I couldn't find anything in the release notes. Otherwise a superb product, in particular if you are on Windows or Linux and you can't run Sketch.
- bkor 10y ago
  That'll require GTK+3 at least. They're still using GTK+2. According to the roadmap it's scheduled for Inkscape 1.4. At the current pace it'll take years to reach 1.4 IMO. See http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Roadmap http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Roadmap
  - mc- 10y ago
    Actually, we plan to release 0.93 with gtk3. The current devel version (trunk) already dropped all gtk2 code.
  - phkahler 10y ago
    GTK+3 and then Wayland... I thought these were both making good progress on branches, but I can't find the developer roadmap anymore.
new299 10y ago
I've always found Inkscape surprisingly easy to use in comparison to other open source tools (like for Gimp for example). I use it for almost all my diagramming needs (scientific publications/documentation). Closed source tools are almost certainly better in one or more respects. But it's certainly good enough for me, and it makes me feel happy and secure to be using an open source tool.
- Al-Khwarizmi 10y ago
  Same here. As a quite graphically-challenged person, Inkscape is the only tool I feel reasonably comfortable using, and can produce passable results with. Most of the other graphics tools I have tried confused me to no end. In Inkscape, maybe the UI isn't as beautiful and flashy as in other tools, but it's very understandable and the amount and arrangement of tools feels logical to me. I can't speak for people who don't suck at design, probably for them Inkscape falls quite short, but for me it was a godsend (despite the presence of some bugs, namely copying and pasting to/from different instances used to be a lottery, let's see if it's better in this version). Kudos to the team.
  - TuringTest 10y ago
    My experience is with Inkscape is quite different; it certainly doesn't feel intuitive to me. I find myself unable to grasp the way all the avaialbe tools are expected to be used together, even after following the basic shapes tutorials; and I always seem to have the wrong thing selected, or the wrong tool active, or the wrong properties panel opened. And I still can't make sense of the differences between "object" and "path". Maybe you can help me. When I want to change the way the current selected tool works, how do I know whether I have to change the options in the above contextual menu bar, or those in one of those dozens of hidden panels (that I can't manage to open again when I dismiss them)? How does one change more than one color in a gradient? And how does one create a shape with radial symmetries? (I found about tiling and the symmetry tab, but I couldn't make sense of it) I've been unable to complete any of those tasks.
    - bostand 10y ago
saycheese 10y ago
Any suggestions for finding free/non-pirated vector images online?
- anilgulecha 10y ago
  I end up using images.google.com with the query: <keyword> ext:svg This usually finds me good options, many from wikimedia etc, which are under a open license. Many times, if you only can find free and open images, but in raster format, use something like vector magic to convert them to SVG.. VM usually does an excellent job with basic handholding.
  - saycheese 10y ago
    Here's an an example search: https://www.google.com/search?q=site:wikimedia.org+ext:svg+-map+-graph&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=site:wikimedia.org+ext:svg+-...
- me_bx 10y ago
  Perhaps one of these? * Openclipart - https://openclipart.org/ https://openclipart.org/ * Iconfinder - https://www.iconfinder.com/ https://www.iconfinder.com/
- Signez 10y ago
  For simple objects (that can be a good start for designing stuff around), The Noun Project is great: https://thenounproject.com/ https://thenounproject.com/
- Freak_NL 10y ago
  From within Inkscape you can use Import Clip Art… from the File menu to search SVG's on https://openclipart.org https://openclipart.org.
- e98cuenc 10y ago
  You can use those http://www.freepik.com/ http://www.freepik.com/ and its sister site http://www.flaticon.com/ http://www.flaticon.com/
duiker101 10y ago
Inkscape is amazing. So is Gimp, Blender and many other. All amazing software. I have just one thing that I wonder, why do they all seem to be lacking in the UI department? They all have UIs that look and feel way more clunky than even the cheaper proprietary alternatives. Not complaining, I like them anyway but maybe a more user friendly UI would open up this amazing tool to a broader audience?
- segf4ult 10y ago
  It's mostly because good UX testing costs a ton of money and these projects are mostly created by pure developers and not designers.
  - bborud 10y ago
    I'll bite. The same could be said for programming: it costs a lot to produce code. In fact, if you run sloccount on Inkscape you end up with about 470.000 lines of code. Whatever way you slice it: that's a considerable effort. Yet people have contributed that for free. Does this mean that UX-designers aren't interested in working on open source projects? Or does it mean that it is hard for them to collaborate with open source developers? If so: what are those problems? The reason I'm wondering this is that if I were a UX designer wanting to make a name for myself, making some piece of open source software UX really good would seem like the best possible way to promote myself.
    - robin_reala 10y ago
      Two things: - Consistency. A good UI requires consistency throughout, which requires a good understanding of the entirety of a piece of software, and a willingness to work at a high level. For open source packages there’s rarely a UI standard to hold individual problems up against. - User testing. UX design doesn’t work in a vacuum, it requires user testing to be effective. This costs a lot of time and effort to organise, and isn’t something you can hack on for a few nights. It’s possible to to A/B testing to gain data of course, but then you have to persuade your friendly developers to implement a testing framework and have some place to store data while waiting for the results to analyse.
mandioca 10y ago
First of all I love this app <3 But it has a few problems in terms of usability the major one that would be nice to get addressed at some point is GTK. Getting inkscape to run on macos for instance, requires X11 which creates a really bad integration with MacOs itself. The solution is Qt, probably this is one of those initial decisions that Inkscape devs regret everyday. Gradients is another example about bad usability, try by yourself to add a new step to the gradient without smashing your keyboard/mouse. Turns out the solution is googling it which gives a solution for that, however you will eventually forget about that since it's non-sense (then repeating the same cycle again).
- simonbyrne 10y ago
  Check out https://code.launchpad.net/~suv-lp/inkscape/osxmenu https://code.launchpad.net/~suv-lp/inkscape/osxmenu, it gives a fairly nice interface on OS X (though it seems it hasn't been updated to the latest version yet)
- marcoms 10y ago
  Gtk3 supports macOS natively
  - mc- 10y ago
    The next version (0.93) will use gtk3 and, hopefully, should feel more "native" in mac os x.
deleted 10y ago
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deleted 10y ago
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Freak_NL 10y ago
You can write your own plugins¹ for Inkscape as well. Last year I've had a lot of fun writing a plugin that skews, scales, and rotates objects in Inkscape to create (simple) drawings in the isometric perspective² — have a look at the write-up if you want to find out about basic linear algebraic SVG transformations in Inkscape. SVG is extremely well-suited for such tasks. 1: https://inkscape.org/en/gallery/%3Dextension/ https://inkscape.org/en/gallery/%3Dextension/ 2: http://jeroenhoek.nl/articles/svg-and-isometric-projection.html http://jeroenhoek.nl/articles/svg-and-isometric-projection.h...
hrnnnnnn 10y ago
I once used inkscape to draw collision geometry for a game! Versatile!
saycheese 10y ago
This graphic of the Inkscape keyboard layout is useful: https://openclipart.org/detail/188861/inkscape-keyboard-layout-v0484 https://openclipart.org/detail/188861/inkscape-keyboard-layo...
- Freak_NL 10y ago
  It could use an update though. I like Ⓜ for the on-screen ruler. It's quite useful if you are drawing plans using physical units of measurement (millimetres etc.).
andrewclunn 10y ago
Is it still only 32 bit? The 4 gig ram limitation made some complex processes much slower than they needed to be.
buovjaga 10y ago
Inkscape is used in every Finnish gymnasium (high school). This is due to the new computerized matriculation exams: https://digabi.fi/tekniikka/ohjelmistot/inkscape/ https://digabi.fi/tekniikka/ohjelmistot/inkscape/
- Freak_NL 10y ago
  Always refreshing to see schools using free software to teach. Students can keep using Inkscape legally for free after graduation.
  - Sylos 10y ago
    Similarly when they actually get interested in something and want to play around with it at home. It's just kind of shit when students are pretty much forced to piracy, if they want to learn more about something than is taught in their classes.
    - Vinkekatten 10y ago
      I love what Autodesk have done with Fusion 360, they made it free for students and tinkerers. It's a brilliant tool and I wish more software manufacturers got on board with programs like this.
leojg 10y ago
I recently began to use inkscape again. I am getting into 3d printing and Inkscape is great for creating .stl/.svg files of text fonts or 2d images.
bbayer 10y ago
Inkscape is amazing and I mostly used it for creating 2D graphics for game UI. One of the downsides is X server dependency in MacOS. Look and feel don't match the MacOS' standart look and feel. Keyboard handling and focus issues can be annoying time to time. Also some long awaiting issues like disabling antialiasing for exports are considered as low priority[1]. This prevents designer to export crisp images for 8bit style games. [1] : https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/947660 https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/947660
- mc- 10y ago
  https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/180612 https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/180612 you mean^^ The "bug importance" field is detailed here: https://inkscape.org/en/develop/bug-management/#Bug_importance https://inkscape.org/en/develop/bug-management/#Bug_importan... Also, .93 will have more options in png export; so it's not impossible that antialiasing options makes it, that bug being in my shortlist of "bugs with potentially easy solutions to try". No promises, though.
- tannhaeuser 10y ago
  There's inkscape-osxmenu for MacOS[1] (though it was not 100% stable back when I used it a couple years ago). [1]: https://code.launchpad.net/~suv-lp/inkscape/osxmenu https://code.launchpad.net/~suv-lp/inkscape/osxmenu
  - szhu 10y ago
    https://inkscape.org/en/~su_v/%E2%98%85inkscape-osxmenu-r12922-gtk2 https://inkscape.org/en/~su_v/%E2%98%85inkscape-osxmenu-r129... https://inkscape.org/en/~su_v/%E2%98%85inkscape-osxmenu-r12922-gtk3-demo https://inkscape.org/en/~su_v/%E2%98%85inkscape-osxmenu-r129... The GTK2 and GTK3 versions work about the same for me. The main issue is that double-clicking and/or select-all in certain text boxes will crash the app. Fortunately, Inkscape saves a backup of your work before crashing.
hernandipietro 10y ago
I will see if stability improved. At least in Win32, I got pissed off so many times with crashes and hangs.
tksh 10y ago
https://github.com/tksh/Pure-Stroke-SVG-Portrait https://github.com/tksh/Pure-Stroke-SVG-Portrait I’m an analog illustrator. This is my first digital artwork made with Inkscape 0.91. Drawing with Inkscape is very interesting for me. If Michelangelo lives in our time, his sketches are made with Inkscape I think.
Brakenshire 10y ago
This seems like a good opportunity to ask, is there a clear way to export an svg from inkscape for the web? In a lot of applications (for instance with logos on the web) you want to be able to make a selection, reduce it down to a single path represented by a single d attribute, and then be able to copy that off, or save as a file. I did manage to do it by fiddling around by combining/intersecting different shapes, until the output svg got into the right form, then normalizing that with an online tool. But is there a way to do this more easily in Inkscape? Ideally you could make a selection, and then go to file > export for web, and get a graphical dialogue to allow you to play around with viewBox and other display attributes. Or is there another open-source program that handles this well? Now that SVG seems to be becoming more and more a first class part of the web, this kind of thing would be very useful.
- aargh_aargh 10y ago
  It's even simpler than that. Ctrl-A (select all), Ctrl-K (Path->Combine). The catch is that if you're using objects, they will be converted to paths (curves) and you'll lose useful things like fill, rounded corners, gradients... If you think about it, what you're asking only makes sense for very simple drawings - only those can be represented by a single path.
  - Brakenshire 10y ago
    Ah, thanks for confirming, pretty certain that is what I ended up doing. If I recall, this did still have other issues, for instance handling scaling and origin was difficult, and also I think all the points had 10 decimal places unnecessarily. I needed to use web tools to get it into the right shape, although part of this may be that I was getting my head around the difficulties of how SVG works on the web, using viewBox rather than height/width attributes and so on.
aargh_aargh 10y ago
Inkscape 0.92 Release Notes: http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Release_notes/0.92 http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Release_notes/0.92
ziotom78 10y ago
Inkscape is one of my favorite tools when I am creating slideshows. Sometimes I rely on Jessyink, when I want to use some zooming slides (like Prezi does), sometimes I use it to create visually complex slides that I include in presentations created with other tools (e.g. title slides to include in beamer, out diagrams in LibreOffice Impress - the later works, but it's so ugly I prefer Inkscape). What I like most is the abundance of alignment tools Inkscape provides: it is really easy to produce slides that use the space in a well balanced way!
facepalm 10y ago
I've given up on using Inkscape on my Mac, but I am stuck with OS X for a while. Are there any other vector graphics programs that are cross platform and not too expensive? I don't want to invest in learning an OS X only tool.
- egypturnash 10y ago
  Affinity Designer. I've played with it some but I can't get past a few UI choices that are Just Plain Wrong to someone like me who's spent about fifteen years using Illustrator.
  - facepalm 10y ago
    Thanks, I will check that out.
ravenstine 10y ago
Inkscape is a gem! I'm glad more people seem to know of it than did even 5 years ago. I haven't tried 0.92 yet, but the one problem I have had with it is the macOS version, which requires X11 and has more problems with the window manager than even GIMP. Realistically, it's better to run these programs in a VM on macOS, sadly. On Linux & Windows, it is awesome and I have yet to encounter a circumstance where I couldn't achieve something that could be done in Illustrator. I find it interesting how people still don't like GIMP. I always suspect people want it to be like Photoshop, but now I don't know. With single window mode, I have virtually no complaints. (beyond the continual lack of CMYK support, which prevents wider adoption) For those developing Inkscape, I hope you realize that your efforts have helped me professionally, as I have regularly used it to design graphics and icons for web development at my work. Thank you!
- gcr 10y ago
  There is an unofficial build floating around somewhere of a native MacOS Inkscape written against the Cocoa framework rather than X11. That's the one I use. It's an old version though.
  - szhu 10y ago
    Here it is: https://inkscape.org/en/~su_v/%E2%98%85inkscape-osxmenu-r12922-gtk2 https://inkscape.org/en/~su_v/%E2%98%85inkscape-osxmenu-r129... https://inkscape.org/en/~su_v/%E2%98%85inkscape-osxmenu-r12922-gtk3-demo https://inkscape.org/en/~su_v/%E2%98%85inkscape-osxmenu-r129... The GTK2 and GTK3 versions work about the same for me. The main issue is that double-clicking and/or select-all in certain text boxes will crash the app. Fortunately, Inkscape saves a backup of your work before crashing.
taivare 10y ago
While on the topic of Inkscape. I've been wanting to post this for the programmer/gamer crowd. At one point I was able to do vector scans & then go in an fill them. I had a lot of interest from German gamer crowd, whom liked the backdrops. However, Inkscape no longer allowed this. Adobe followed with something similar (plug-in)- D3.js(code).Do to heavy memory use this would make a good isolated app. Here is an example . . http://i.imgur.com/20W2UBd.png?1 http://i.imgur.com/20W2UBd.png?1
megiddo 10y ago
Sometime between 0.42 and 0.91 the PDF export for very narrow lines ceased to function correctly. I have to keep old versions around in order to produce cut lines for my laser. Very disappoint. Perhaps 0.92 fixes.
1024core 10y ago
Are there any open-source Inkscape "libraries" of, what can only be said to be, clipart out there? I'm looking for ways to diagram Neural Networks. It would be great if there were some 'NN clipart' from which I could just drag-n-drop stuff.
- themodelplumber 10y ago
  Search wikipedia.org and openclipart.org.
  - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
    There's an openclipart.org browser built in, File > Import Clip Art ..., but I'd use your web browser, it's much better UX.
fulldecent 10y ago
Here is discussion on the effort to move Inkscape to GitHub: https://github.com/inkscape/inkscape/wiki/Migrate-Launchpad-to-GitHub-%5BDRAFT%5D https://github.com/inkscape/inkscape/wiki/Migrate-Launchpad-...
themodelplumber 10y ago
There's a handy YouTube video covering various improvements: https://youtu.be/EI1hxXt9U4c https://youtu.be/EI1hxXt9U4c I had to pause it quite a bit, but the demonstrations are nice to skim.
smd686s 10y ago
If you're looking fantastic Inkscape tutorials, check out Nick Saporito's YouTube channel. Really great stuff for beginners and pros. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEQXp_fcqwPcqrzNtWJ1w9w https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEQXp_fcqwPcqrzNtWJ1w9w
comments_db 10y ago
Love Inkscape
RUG3Y 10y ago
As an impoverished freelancer I've used Inkscape to create lots of illustration that helped put food on the table. I found it easy to use, only occasionally did I need tutorials for a specific task. I don't really understand the complaints about Inkscape being unintuitive - tools that have lots of options and do complex things will by nature be less intuitive than tools that do simple things. Sometimes you've just got to learn the software to make use of it. I have lots of experience with both Inkscape and Illustrator and I actually like Inkscape more. Illustrator was perfect to me at one point, and it seems like Adobe just kept tweaking endlessly in ways that were detrimental to the product, rather than enhancing it.
skynode 10y ago
Having used Inkscape and Adobe Illustrator at different times, I'd stick with illustrator any day.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

402 points by p4bl0 10y ago

Sorry to be that guy, but I always had the impression that Inkscape is way more cumbersome and difficult than it should be. And it seems to me that there is very little progress. I don't use/need vector graphics editors very much, but I now bought affinity designer. It seems to be way more professional, and is quite affordable (basically in the same price category as Inkscape, at least for me).

saycheese 10y ago
Inkscape is free, so unless you mean using stolen property, which is not free, there is no comparable vector image editor on the market for that price.
- struppi 10y ago
  No, I am not talking about stolen property. But a one-time payment of 40€ is close enough to free for me to give it a try. That's why I said basically the same price category, not "the same price".
- Doctor_Fegg 10y ago
  Or unless you include your time in the total cost of ownership, at which point an efficiently designed UI becomes crucial.
greenspot 10y ago
How is Affinity Designer, do you run it on Windows?
- struppi 10y ago
  I'm running it on windows, only had one quick try yet. Looks promising, but didn't do any serious work with it yet.
mojuba 10y ago
I don't know why you are downvoted for your opinion, but totally agree that Inkscape is pretty low quality and buggy as well. On the Mac specifically the experience is so 1990s and un-macOS (yeah I know, it's an X app) I used it for a while for generating SVG files, ended up writing a script that would optimize the crappy files it generated and reduce them 10 to 20 times in some cases. Oh and then there are these odd floating point drifts (coordinate 10 becomes 10.035 etc.). Seems like one of those pieces of software that would be very difficult or impossible to fix.
- struppi 10y ago
  Yes, I also had to create some SVG files during a project for a client and used Inkscape on Windows for that. Then hand-edited all of them, because I wanted to get rid of all the crap before importing them. I basically just bought Affinity Designer as a knee-jerk reaction because I disliked Inkscape so much.
  - mojuba 10y ago
    I find that the latest Adobe Illustrator does a pretty decent job with SVG's but of course Adobe stuff is a matter of taste (and is overpriced too).
  - tkp 10y ago
    Inkscape adds a bunch of metadata to it's svg's, but also has a "Simple SVG" save-as option, did you try it ?
    - mojuba 10y ago
      I did try it. Apart from metadata there are two other major problems: it generates a lot of unnecessary attributes with their default values, and also the floating point errors I mentioned. The latter can affect the appearance of your graphics on your screen unfortunately, i.e. a vertical line with X=10 is one thing but X=10.035 is another.
      - 10y ago
rubber_duck 10y ago
Not to mention it's really really slow when you start editing stuff with even simple effects like drop shadow, it's good for some things (like say you get an SVG file and you need to convert fonts to curves with a free app or something like that) but it's very limited and the UI is ghastly (the side panels that open when you edit effects and stuff in particular - huge controls with so much padding and ugly layout). GTK+ is just the worst for these kinds of feature packed UI (it can be OK for material design style UIs where you have few elements and don't mind the empty space, but not densely packed stuff like graphics effect panels and dialogs), GIMP and Inkscape suffer because of it.
rleigh 10y ago
It's a GTK+ X11 application on MacOS X. Last time I tried it, it was completely unusable--copy-paste totally non-functional (would paste vector selections as bitmaps). On Linux, it's vastly more usable, and quite polished for a GTK+ application.
- mc- 10y ago
  Ther's a faq item about this issue: https://inkscape.org/en/learn/faq/#copypaste-rasterizes-objects https://inkscape.org/en/learn/faq/#copypaste-rasterizes-obje...
- mandioca 10y ago
  There is no such thing as a polished GTK app. GTK widgets are really bad designed take for instance the `open` or `save` dialogues, only somebody how does not care about usability could come with that. Any application (no exceptions) made in GTK+ can be done better, faster in Qt through a much more polished and robust API. it's ashamed that inkscape is tied with such bad widget toolkit.
Ralfp 10y ago
After trying to use Inkscape for few days to draw myself vector logo in few versions for my OS projects, I've decided to bite it and get Affinity Designer while it was 20% off at App Store. I've had logo I was pleased in few versions and setup to export in all formats and sizes I've required in two hours. Its not even complex stuff, its basic things like making square with each corner having different radius.
taivare 10y ago
I have been using Gravit.io and their Twitter(template)for custom Tweets it's fast,online & convenient.

anilgulecha 10y ago

Inkscape is amazing -- I've used it on and off for over 6 years, and it's never let me down. Protip: It's PDF import is amazing.. try it. The only thing I miss is a workable layers functionality.

saycheese 10y ago
PDF import is really useful if you want to avoid hand writing on forms and save an editable copy of what you've typed.

cutler 10y ago

Looks great but not available for Mac users.

deleted 10y ago
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tempodox 10y ago
Yes, it is: https://inkscape.org/en/download/mac-os/ https://inkscape.org/en/download/mac-os/ Uses XQuartz, the platform's X11 emulation.
- ak1394 10y ago
  They didn't release new 0.92 packages for Mac and apparently don't plan to.
  - dr_hooo 10y ago
    Noooo! are you aware of any third party binaries?
    - 2ion 10y ago
      There's an inkscape cask for homebrew. You should be able to compile it on your own too.
      - LyndsySimon 10y ago
        The cask is 0.91, and uses the .dmg file. I'll subscribe to their dev mailing list and see about volunteering to get the macOS version out.
    - mc- 10y ago
      .92pre4 is available on macports, so they'll probably make .92 available soon.
- gpvos 10y ago

rhaps0dy 10y ago

Inkscape is great! Its PDF+Latex exporting functionality makes it perfect for diagrams in papers, exams, and whatnot. The editing tools are also very nice. It also edits PDFs, which I found pretty cool! I use it to make airline tickets not take up a full sheet of paper. To be honest, if you export the PDF back out, it jumbles some of the fonts a little, but that's mostly OK.

anilgulecha 10y ago
When you export fonts, convert them to vector (it's a checkbox in the export). That way you never have to worry about font rendering.
2ion 10y ago
Not to mention using Inkscape for filling in broken PDF forms…it's a major part of my workflow whenever I have to deal with such PDF files.
probably_wrong 10y ago
It's even better when you combine it with the command line tools. You can design a template on the GUI, and then customize it and export it via a script.
- mixmastamyk 10y ago
  Which command-line tools?
  - rhaps0dy 10y ago
    type "inkscape --help" on your command line. It exports things to formats, and you can query information from files.

greenspot 10y ago

Anyone knows if v0.92 now supports hi-dpi screens? Last version didn't and I couldn't find anything in the release notes. Otherwise a superb product, in particular if you are on Windows or Linux and you can't run Sketch.

bkor 10y ago
That'll require GTK+3 at least. They're still using GTK+2. According to the roadmap it's scheduled for Inkscape 1.4. At the current pace it'll take years to reach 1.4 IMO. See http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Roadmap http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Roadmap
- mc- 10y ago
  Actually, we plan to release 0.93 with gtk3. The current devel version (trunk) already dropped all gtk2 code.
- phkahler 10y ago
  GTK+3 and then Wayland... I thought these were both making good progress on branches, but I can't find the developer roadmap anymore.

new299 10y ago

I've always found Inkscape surprisingly easy to use in comparison to other open source tools (like for Gimp for example). I use it for almost all my diagramming needs (scientific publications/documentation). Closed source tools are almost certainly better in one or more respects. But it's certainly good enough for me, and it makes me feel happy and secure to be using an open source tool.

Al-Khwarizmi 10y ago
Same here. As a quite graphically-challenged person, Inkscape is the only tool I feel reasonably comfortable using, and can produce passable results with. Most of the other graphics tools I have tried confused me to no end. In Inkscape, maybe the UI isn't as beautiful and flashy as in other tools, but it's very understandable and the amount and arrangement of tools feels logical to me. I can't speak for people who don't suck at design, probably for them Inkscape falls quite short, but for me it was a godsend (despite the presence of some bugs, namely copying and pasting to/from different instances used to be a lottery, let's see if it's better in this version). Kudos to the team.
- TuringTest 10y ago
  My experience is with Inkscape is quite different; it certainly doesn't feel intuitive to me. I find myself unable to grasp the way all the avaialbe tools are expected to be used together, even after following the basic shapes tutorials; and I always seem to have the wrong thing selected, or the wrong tool active, or the wrong properties panel opened. And I still can't make sense of the differences between "object" and "path". Maybe you can help me. When I want to change the way the current selected tool works, how do I know whether I have to change the options in the above contextual menu bar, or those in one of those dozens of hidden panels (that I can't manage to open again when I dismiss them)? How does one change more than one color in a gradient? And how does one create a shape with radial symmetries? (I found about tiling and the symmetry tab, but I couldn't make sense of it) I've been unable to complete any of those tasks.
  - bostand 10y ago

saycheese 10y ago

Any suggestions for finding free/non-pirated vector images online?

anilgulecha 10y ago
I end up using images.google.com with the query: <keyword> ext:svg This usually finds me good options, many from wikimedia etc, which are under a open license. Many times, if you only can find free and open images, but in raster format, use something like vector magic to convert them to SVG.. VM usually does an excellent job with basic handholding.
- saycheese 10y ago
  Here's an an example search: https://www.google.com/search?q=site:wikimedia.org+ext:svg+-map+-graph&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=site:wikimedia.org+ext:svg+-...
me_bx 10y ago
Perhaps one of these? * Openclipart - https://openclipart.org/ https://openclipart.org/ * Iconfinder - https://www.iconfinder.com/ https://www.iconfinder.com/
Signez 10y ago
For simple objects (that can be a good start for designing stuff around), The Noun Project is great: https://thenounproject.com/ https://thenounproject.com/
Freak_NL 10y ago
From within Inkscape you can use Import Clip Art… from the File menu to search SVG's on https://openclipart.org https://openclipart.org.
e98cuenc 10y ago
You can use those http://www.freepik.com/ http://www.freepik.com/ and its sister site http://www.flaticon.com/ http://www.flaticon.com/

duiker101 10y ago

Inkscape is amazing. So is Gimp, Blender and many other. All amazing software. I have just one thing that I wonder, why do they all seem to be lacking in the UI department? They all have UIs that look and feel way more clunky than even the cheaper proprietary alternatives. Not complaining, I like them anyway but maybe a more user friendly UI would open up this amazing tool to a broader audience?

segf4ult 10y ago
It's mostly because good UX testing costs a ton of money and these projects are mostly created by pure developers and not designers.
- bborud 10y ago
  I'll bite. The same could be said for programming: it costs a lot to produce code. In fact, if you run sloccount on Inkscape you end up with about 470.000 lines of code. Whatever way you slice it: that's a considerable effort. Yet people have contributed that for free. Does this mean that UX-designers aren't interested in working on open source projects? Or does it mean that it is hard for them to collaborate with open source developers? If so: what are those problems? The reason I'm wondering this is that if I were a UX designer wanting to make a name for myself, making some piece of open source software UX really good would seem like the best possible way to promote myself.
  - robin_reala 10y ago
    Two things: - Consistency. A good UI requires consistency throughout, which requires a good understanding of the entirety of a piece of software, and a willingness to work at a high level. For open source packages there’s rarely a UI standard to hold individual problems up against. - User testing. UX design doesn’t work in a vacuum, it requires user testing to be effective. This costs a lot of time and effort to organise, and isn’t something you can hack on for a few nights. It’s possible to to A/B testing to gain data of course, but then you have to persuade your friendly developers to implement a testing framework and have some place to store data while waiting for the results to analyse.

mandioca 10y ago

First of all I love this app <3 But it has a few problems in terms of usability the major one that would be nice to get addressed at some point is GTK. Getting inkscape to run on macos for instance, requires X11 which creates a really bad integration with MacOs itself. The solution is Qt, probably this is one of those initial decisions that Inkscape devs regret everyday. Gradients is another example about bad usability, try by yourself to add a new step to the gradient without smashing your keyboard/mouse. Turns out the solution is googling it which gives a solution for that, however you will eventually forget about that since it's non-sense (then repeating the same cycle again).

simonbyrne 10y ago
Check out https://code.launchpad.net/~suv-lp/inkscape/osxmenu https://code.launchpad.net/~suv-lp/inkscape/osxmenu, it gives a fairly nice interface on OS X (though it seems it hasn't been updated to the latest version yet)
marcoms 10y ago
Gtk3 supports macOS natively
- mc- 10y ago
  The next version (0.93) will use gtk3 and, hopefully, should feel more "native" in mac os x.

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Freak_NL 10y ago

You can write your own plugins¹ for Inkscape as well. Last year I've had a lot of fun writing a plugin that skews, scales, and rotates objects in Inkscape to create (simple) drawings in the isometric perspective² — have a look at the write-up if you want to find out about basic linear algebraic SVG transformations in Inkscape. SVG is extremely well-suited for such tasks. 1: https://inkscape.org/en/gallery/%3Dextension/ https://inkscape.org/en/gallery/%3Dextension/ 2: http://jeroenhoek.nl/articles/svg-and-isometric-projection.html http://jeroenhoek.nl/articles/svg-and-isometric-projection.h...

hrnnnnnn 10y ago

I once used inkscape to draw collision geometry for a game! Versatile!

saycheese 10y ago

This graphic of the Inkscape keyboard layout is useful: https://openclipart.org/detail/188861/inkscape-keyboard-layout-v0484 https://openclipart.org/detail/188861/inkscape-keyboard-layo...

Freak_NL 10y ago
It could use an update though. I like Ⓜ for the on-screen ruler. It's quite useful if you are drawing plans using physical units of measurement (millimetres etc.).

andrewclunn 10y ago

Is it still only 32 bit? The 4 gig ram limitation made some complex processes much slower than they needed to be.

buovjaga 10y ago

Inkscape is used in every Finnish gymnasium (high school). This is due to the new computerized matriculation exams: https://digabi.fi/tekniikka/ohjelmistot/inkscape/ https://digabi.fi/tekniikka/ohjelmistot/inkscape/

Freak_NL 10y ago
Always refreshing to see schools using free software to teach. Students can keep using Inkscape legally for free after graduation.
- Sylos 10y ago
  Similarly when they actually get interested in something and want to play around with it at home. It's just kind of shit when students are pretty much forced to piracy, if they want to learn more about something than is taught in their classes.
  - Vinkekatten 10y ago
    I love what Autodesk have done with Fusion 360, they made it free for students and tinkerers. It's a brilliant tool and I wish more software manufacturers got on board with programs like this.

leojg 10y ago

I recently began to use inkscape again. I am getting into 3d printing and Inkscape is great for creating .stl/.svg files of text fonts or 2d images.

bbayer 10y ago

Inkscape is amazing and I mostly used it for creating 2D graphics for game UI. One of the downsides is X server dependency in MacOS. Look and feel don't match the MacOS' standart look and feel. Keyboard handling and focus issues can be annoying time to time. Also some long awaiting issues like disabling antialiasing for exports are considered as low priority[1]. This prevents designer to export crisp images for 8bit style games. [1] : https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/947660 https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/947660

mc- 10y ago
https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/180612 https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/180612 you mean^^ The "bug importance" field is detailed here: https://inkscape.org/en/develop/bug-management/#Bug_importance https://inkscape.org/en/develop/bug-management/#Bug_importan... Also, .93 will have more options in png export; so it's not impossible that antialiasing options makes it, that bug being in my shortlist of "bugs with potentially easy solutions to try". No promises, though.
tannhaeuser 10y ago
There's inkscape-osxmenu for MacOS[1] (though it was not 100% stable back when I used it a couple years ago). [1]: https://code.launchpad.net/~suv-lp/inkscape/osxmenu https://code.launchpad.net/~suv-lp/inkscape/osxmenu
- szhu 10y ago
  https://inkscape.org/en/~su_v/%E2%98%85inkscape-osxmenu-r12922-gtk2 https://inkscape.org/en/~su_v/%E2%98%85inkscape-osxmenu-r129... https://inkscape.org/en/~su_v/%E2%98%85inkscape-osxmenu-r12922-gtk3-demo https://inkscape.org/en/~su_v/%E2%98%85inkscape-osxmenu-r129... The GTK2 and GTK3 versions work about the same for me. The main issue is that double-clicking and/or select-all in certain text boxes will crash the app. Fortunately, Inkscape saves a backup of your work before crashing.

hernandipietro 10y ago

I will see if stability improved. At least in Win32, I got pissed off so many times with crashes and hangs.

tksh 10y ago

https://github.com/tksh/Pure-Stroke-SVG-Portrait https://github.com/tksh/Pure-Stroke-SVG-Portrait I’m an analog illustrator. This is my first digital artwork made with Inkscape 0.91. Drawing with Inkscape is very interesting for me. If Michelangelo lives in our time, his sketches are made with Inkscape I think.

Brakenshire 10y ago

This seems like a good opportunity to ask, is there a clear way to export an svg from inkscape for the web? In a lot of applications (for instance with logos on the web) you want to be able to make a selection, reduce it down to a single path represented by a single d attribute, and then be able to copy that off, or save as a file. I did manage to do it by fiddling around by combining/intersecting different shapes, until the output svg got into the right form, then normalizing that with an online tool. But is there a way to do this more easily in Inkscape? Ideally you could make a selection, and then go to file > export for web, and get a graphical dialogue to allow you to play around with viewBox and other display attributes. Or is there another open-source program that handles this well? Now that SVG seems to be becoming more and more a first class part of the web, this kind of thing would be very useful.

aargh_aargh 10y ago
It's even simpler than that. Ctrl-A (select all), Ctrl-K (Path->Combine). The catch is that if you're using objects, they will be converted to paths (curves) and you'll lose useful things like fill, rounded corners, gradients... If you think about it, what you're asking only makes sense for very simple drawings - only those can be represented by a single path.
- Brakenshire 10y ago
  Ah, thanks for confirming, pretty certain that is what I ended up doing. If I recall, this did still have other issues, for instance handling scaling and origin was difficult, and also I think all the points had 10 decimal places unnecessarily. I needed to use web tools to get it into the right shape, although part of this may be that I was getting my head around the difficulties of how SVG works on the web, using viewBox rather than height/width attributes and so on.

aargh_aargh 10y ago

Inkscape 0.92 Release Notes: http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Release_notes/0.92 http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Release_notes/0.92

ziotom78 10y ago

Inkscape is one of my favorite tools when I am creating slideshows. Sometimes I rely on Jessyink, when I want to use some zooming slides (like Prezi does), sometimes I use it to create visually complex slides that I include in presentations created with other tools (e.g. title slides to include in beamer, out diagrams in LibreOffice Impress - the later works, but it's so ugly I prefer Inkscape). What I like most is the abundance of alignment tools Inkscape provides: it is really easy to produce slides that use the space in a well balanced way!

facepalm 10y ago

I've given up on using Inkscape on my Mac, but I am stuck with OS X for a while. Are there any other vector graphics programs that are cross platform and not too expensive? I don't want to invest in learning an OS X only tool.

egypturnash 10y ago
Affinity Designer. I've played with it some but I can't get past a few UI choices that are Just Plain Wrong to someone like me who's spent about fifteen years using Illustrator.
- facepalm 10y ago
  Thanks, I will check that out.

ravenstine 10y ago

Inkscape is a gem! I'm glad more people seem to know of it than did even 5 years ago. I haven't tried 0.92 yet, but the one problem I have had with it is the macOS version, which requires X11 and has more problems with the window manager than even GIMP. Realistically, it's better to run these programs in a VM on macOS, sadly. On Linux & Windows, it is awesome and I have yet to encounter a circumstance where I couldn't achieve something that could be done in Illustrator. I find it interesting how people still don't like GIMP. I always suspect people want it to be like Photoshop, but now I don't know. With single window mode, I have virtually no complaints. (beyond the continual lack of CMYK support, which prevents wider adoption) For those developing Inkscape, I hope you realize that your efforts have helped me professionally, as I have regularly used it to design graphics and icons for web development at my work. Thank you!

gcr 10y ago
There is an unofficial build floating around somewhere of a native MacOS Inkscape written against the Cocoa framework rather than X11. That's the one I use. It's an old version though.
- szhu 10y ago
  Here it is: https://inkscape.org/en/~su_v/%E2%98%85inkscape-osxmenu-r12922-gtk2 https://inkscape.org/en/~su_v/%E2%98%85inkscape-osxmenu-r129... https://inkscape.org/en/~su_v/%E2%98%85inkscape-osxmenu-r12922-gtk3-demo https://inkscape.org/en/~su_v/%E2%98%85inkscape-osxmenu-r129... The GTK2 and GTK3 versions work about the same for me. The main issue is that double-clicking and/or select-all in certain text boxes will crash the app. Fortunately, Inkscape saves a backup of your work before crashing.

taivare 10y ago

While on the topic of Inkscape. I've been wanting to post this for the programmer/gamer crowd. At one point I was able to do vector scans & then go in an fill them. I had a lot of interest from German gamer crowd, whom liked the backdrops. However, Inkscape no longer allowed this. Adobe followed with something similar (plug-in)- D3.js(code).Do to heavy memory use this would make a good isolated app. Here is an example . . http://i.imgur.com/20W2UBd.png?1 http://i.imgur.com/20W2UBd.png?1

megiddo 10y ago

Sometime between 0.42 and 0.91 the PDF export for very narrow lines ceased to function correctly. I have to keep old versions around in order to produce cut lines for my laser. Very disappoint. Perhaps 0.92 fixes.

1024core 10y ago

Are there any open-source Inkscape "libraries" of, what can only be said to be, clipart out there? I'm looking for ways to diagram Neural Networks. It would be great if there were some 'NN clipart' from which I could just drag-n-drop stuff.

themodelplumber 10y ago
Search wikipedia.org and openclipart.org.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  There's an openclipart.org browser built in, File > Import Clip Art ..., but I'd use your web browser, it's much better UX.

fulldecent 10y ago

Here is discussion on the effort to move Inkscape to GitHub: https://github.com/inkscape/inkscape/wiki/Migrate-Launchpad-to-GitHub-%5BDRAFT%5D https://github.com/inkscape/inkscape/wiki/Migrate-Launchpad-...

themodelplumber 10y ago

There's a handy YouTube video covering various improvements: https://youtu.be/EI1hxXt9U4c https://youtu.be/EI1hxXt9U4c I had to pause it quite a bit, but the demonstrations are nice to skim.

smd686s 10y ago

If you're looking fantastic Inkscape tutorials, check out Nick Saporito's YouTube channel. Really great stuff for beginners and pros. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEQXp_fcqwPcqrzNtWJ1w9w https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEQXp_fcqwPcqrzNtWJ1w9w

comments_db 10y ago

Love Inkscape

RUG3Y 10y ago

As an impoverished freelancer I've used Inkscape to create lots of illustration that helped put food on the table. I found it easy to use, only occasionally did I need tutorials for a specific task. I don't really understand the complaints about Inkscape being unintuitive - tools that have lots of options and do complex things will by nature be less intuitive than tools that do simple things. Sometimes you've just got to learn the software to make use of it. I have lots of experience with both Inkscape and Illustrator and I actually like Inkscape more. Illustrator was perfect to me at one point, and it seems like Adobe just kept tweaking endlessly in ways that were detrimental to the product, rather than enhancing it.

skynode 10y ago

Having used Inkscape and Adobe Illustrator at different times, I'd stick with illustrator any day.

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