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Inkscape 1.0 Beta 1

603 points by nkoren 7y ago

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
dngray 7y ago
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.
pugio 7y ago
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!
- killjoywashere 7y ago
  Thanks for this comment. I will probably download for that reason alone. That said, my goto vector editor is InkPad on an iPad Pro. It's everything I need and nothing I don't.
- Theizestooke 7y ago
  I thought Inkscape was an alternative to Illustrator and other vector drawing programs, didn't know people were using it for photo editing.
  - executesorder66 7y ago
    They said image editor, not photo editor. Vector images are still images.
    - Theizestooke 7y ago
      There's a comparison to photoshop.
      - hdfbdtbcdg 7y ago
        People use Photoshop where a vector graphics program would be more appropriate because they know and are familiar with Photoshop.
  - jarek-foksa 7y ago
    If you just want to crop a photo and add some filters to it, most vector graphics editors can do that and are good enough.
  - liziwizi 7y ago
    yeah, indeed, strange.. I always use Gimp in those situations. I'm fairly fluent in Inkscape and cropping images is not something I would use it for.
  - ChrisArchitect 7y ago
    yeah, this is super weird, it's a vector graphics editor, come on people, use GIMP or photoshop for images.
    - m-p-3 7y ago
      The program is still able to handle it, and I know its features more than GIMP or Photoshop. To me, it's still an acceptable tool.
- tmikaeld 7y ago
  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.
  - mkl 7y ago
    Sounds like it's caching things? How does the memory usage compare?
  - bildung 7y ago
    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.
    - tmikaeld 7y ago
      I'm using plain symbols and pen drawing when testing and CPU shoots up to 70% instantly, moving objects are sluggish and every move makes the CPU spike again. The more curves I have, the more sluggish it becomes.
      - bildung 7y ago
        Do you use MacOS, too?
    - ken 7y ago
      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-vector-rendering-engine-does-designer-use/ https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/18079-what...
- Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
  If you liked Fireworks, try Sketch. It looks like Fireworks, but with those little annoying bits done right. I wish Inkscape copied these interface tricks.
hughes 7y ago
Oh wow it's finally no longer using XQuartz! This is great!
- yuchi 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    link to the beta download page: https://inkscape.org/release/inkscape-1.0/?latest=1 https://inkscape.org/release/inkscape-1.0/?latest=1
- cpach 7y ago
  That’s awesome! For those wondering why this is significant, this means that it will run as a native application on macOS. Really neat!
- m-p-3 7y ago
  Ok I gotta upgrade now :o
- ris 7y ago
  This is probably the biggest news for Inkscape for a while. I can't count the number of times I've not been able to recommend it to mac-using colleagues who don't have an adobe license.
jf 7y ago
Inkscape is fantastic. I used it to convert a taster image to vector art and it exceeded my expectations.
pbhjpbhj 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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.
romwell 7y ago
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.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- acidburnNSA 7y ago
  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.
  - dngray 7y ago
    > Started using Inkscape in 2007 to illustrate a math paper, and been using it ever since whenever I needed to TeX something up. That reminds me of this series of posts I read a while back: • https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-1/ https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-1/ • https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-2/ https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-2/ • https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-3/ https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-3/ > 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. Check out link 2 in particular there.
  - chrisweekly 7y ago
    You and GP wrote "[to] TeX up", is this a common idiom?
    - Steuard 7y ago
      Yes? At least in some mathy/sciencey circles.
  - misterdoubt 7y ago
    I learned enough TikZ for a project to create a pretty wide range of generic flowcharts/diagrams. Now I'm no longer using TeX daily and kind of regret boxing myself in. I find that I'm either working with teams that are 100% "TeX all the way" or 0% "please no."
jazzyjackson 7y ago
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!
input_sh 7y ago
> 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 7y ago
  huh, what OS are you on ? I have hidpi screens since 2014 and inscape has always honored Xft.dpi
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - agurk 7y ago
    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 7y ago
      I use X11, wayland has way too many issues for me at the moment (and I test sway, plasma and GNOME every other month)
llukas 7y ago
Fantastic program.
unixhero 7y ago
That's a looong journey to reach 1.0 beta. Congrats to the team.
cies 7y ago
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!
- twelvechairs 7y ago
  Big ones for me are Firefox, Inkscape, QGIS, Blender
  - new2628 7y ago
    Firefox does tend to reshuffle the interface occasionally though.
    - mkl 7y ago
      Not nearly as significantly as Blender though!
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  And built in opening and save as DXF! Being able rapidly and precisely build an item in 2D CAD, then do the graphic design component on Inkscape is amazing. More recently I’m moving to do the graphic design part in Affinity Designer due to a couple of irritating bugs in Inkscape... but it doesn’t have export to DXF... But Inkscape is what taught me vector graphics, and I’m still using it as my default vector graphics app in my day job as a laser cutter operator-extraordinaire.
- Freak_NL 7y ago
  IInkscape is just there for us when we need it; it's one of those staple FOSS applications that just is. I've been using it since the Sodipodi days; that's more than fifteen years ago! Inkscape is pretty extensible as well. It's not too hard to write plugins for it (in Python). I've did it myself, and love how a handful of people seem to find it of use¹. 1: https://inkscape.org/~jdhoek/%E2%98%85isometric-projection-converter https://inkscape.org/~jdhoek/%E2%98%85isometric-projection-c...
scoofy 7y ago
I... love... inkscape... to those who work on it, thank you.
jarek-foksa 7y ago
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.
- new2628 7y ago
  Why would someone look for a commercial alternative?
- emptysongglass 7y ago
  That isn't open source? Get out of here.
  - jarek-foksa 7y ago
    It's a commercial project, I have updated my comment to make it clear. I would open source it if it was a sustainable option. In the past Gravit and Xara did try to use the open source model, but there was very little interest from the community to contribute.
    - mkl 7y ago
      There was heaps of community interest in Xara, but the company kept the key rendering engine component proprietary, which killed it.
      - jarek-foksa 7y ago
        Yes, heaps of interest from people who can't code or provide financial support but who like to complain. Same with Gravit (then known as Stagestack) who failed to raise 20.000 USD from Fireworks community [1]. Or with Akira and its Kickstarter campaign [2]. [1] http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/stagestack-faces-dead-end http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/stagestack-faces-de... [2] https://youtu.be/mhDjlJk4jQc https://youtu.be/mhDjlJk4jQc
roel_v 7y ago
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.
stupidcar 7y ago
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 7y ago
  > 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.
- abcpassword 7y ago
  Like most open source end user software, the open source contributions are strictly in development. Good software needs a consistent design vision, for which I’ve found exactly 0 open source examples. This is exactly the opposite of “a good FLOSS project.” It’s comically bad compared to even the discount competitors (sketch, affinity)
- mjfisher 7y ago
  If you're just looking at the surface of the UI, the v1 release appears to include theming. There's a lot more to UI than that, but it might help it feel a bit fresher
tmbsundar 7y ago
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.
mschuetz 7y ago
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.
vkaku 7y ago
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!
- floatboth 7y ago
  1.0 beta is GTK 3, and doesn't need X because of that :)
  - vkaku 7y ago
    Oh! That's nice, I was checking out their issue tracker :) But then I'd like to point out that GIMP on macOS did not need X for a while, and they aren't on GTK 3 yet. :)
pjbk 7y ago
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.
dragonsh 7y ago
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
- cies 7y ago
  If Inkscape would have chosen Qt over GTK back then, combined with where Krita/Scribus are at right now, it could have been the KDE creative suite!
- plq 7y ago
  > 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)
amelius 7y ago
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 7y ago
  Are they patented?
marble-drink 7y ago
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.
siempreb 7y ago
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.
jmiskovic 7y ago
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 7y ago
  Yay! Always missing these since my main tool is parametric CAD background (FreeCAD). Using Inkscape is nice when output is more visual in nature.
jordache 7y ago
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
- Finnucane 7y ago
  It's too bad Affinity is probably never going to port to Linux. Esp. Affinity Publisher would be great. There's no good layout application for Linux.
- misterdoubt 7y ago
  $50 is not $50 when it also requires Windows or Mac to even function.
- bcholmes 7y ago
  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.
scalanewaccount 7y ago
What other free software is good for vector graphics? Is there only Inkscape?
einpoklum 7y ago
What is that list of changes relative to? I'm using 0.92.4 myself.
interfixus 7y ago
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.
TomMasz 7y ago
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.
cxcorp 7y ago
> 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.
billfruit 7y ago
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.
jayalpha 7y ago
Inkscape is great. I don't want to be a dick but I miss Xara XL
westurner 7y ago
`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 7y ago
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...
diyseguy 7y ago
Please please please make an IOS version!
_nato_ 7y ago
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
bovermyer 7y ago
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 7y ago
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

603 points by nkoren 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

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.

pugio 7y ago

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!

killjoywashere 7y ago
Thanks for this comment. I will probably download for that reason alone. That said, my goto vector editor is InkPad on an iPad Pro. It's everything I need and nothing I don't.
Theizestooke 7y ago
I thought Inkscape was an alternative to Illustrator and other vector drawing programs, didn't know people were using it for photo editing.
- executesorder66 7y ago
  They said image editor, not photo editor. Vector images are still images.
  - Theizestooke 7y ago
    There's a comparison to photoshop.
    - hdfbdtbcdg 7y ago
      People use Photoshop where a vector graphics program would be more appropriate because they know and are familiar with Photoshop.
- jarek-foksa 7y ago
  If you just want to crop a photo and add some filters to it, most vector graphics editors can do that and are good enough.
- liziwizi 7y ago
  yeah, indeed, strange.. I always use Gimp in those situations. I'm fairly fluent in Inkscape and cropping images is not something I would use it for.
- ChrisArchitect 7y ago
  yeah, this is super weird, it's a vector graphics editor, come on people, use GIMP or photoshop for images.
  - m-p-3 7y ago
    The program is still able to handle it, and I know its features more than GIMP or Photoshop. To me, it's still an acceptable tool.
tmikaeld 7y ago
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.
- mkl 7y ago
  Sounds like it's caching things? How does the memory usage compare?
- bildung 7y ago
  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.
  - tmikaeld 7y ago
    I'm using plain symbols and pen drawing when testing and CPU shoots up to 70% instantly, moving objects are sluggish and every move makes the CPU spike again. The more curves I have, the more sluggish it becomes.
    - bildung 7y ago
      Do you use MacOS, too?
  - ken 7y ago
    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-vector-rendering-engine-does-designer-use/ https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/18079-what...
Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
If you liked Fireworks, try Sketch. It looks like Fireworks, but with those little annoying bits done right. I wish Inkscape copied these interface tricks.

hughes 7y ago

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

yuchi 7y ago
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 7y ago
  link to the beta download page: https://inkscape.org/release/inkscape-1.0/?latest=1 https://inkscape.org/release/inkscape-1.0/?latest=1
cpach 7y ago
That’s awesome! For those wondering why this is significant, this means that it will run as a native application on macOS. Really neat!
m-p-3 7y ago
Ok I gotta upgrade now :o
ris 7y ago
This is probably the biggest news for Inkscape for a while. I can't count the number of times I've not been able to recommend it to mac-using colleagues who don't have an adobe license.

jf 7y ago

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

pbhjpbhj 7y ago

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 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.

romwell 7y ago

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.

deleted 7y ago
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acidburnNSA 7y ago
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.
- dngray 7y ago
  > Started using Inkscape in 2007 to illustrate a math paper, and been using it ever since whenever I needed to TeX something up. That reminds me of this series of posts I read a while back: • https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-1/ https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-1/ • https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-2/ https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-2/ • https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-3/ https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-3/ > 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. Check out link 2 in particular there.
- chrisweekly 7y ago
  You and GP wrote "[to] TeX up", is this a common idiom?
  - Steuard 7y ago
    Yes? At least in some mathy/sciencey circles.
- misterdoubt 7y ago
  I learned enough TikZ for a project to create a pretty wide range of generic flowcharts/diagrams. Now I'm no longer using TeX daily and kind of regret boxing myself in. I find that I'm either working with teams that are 100% "TeX all the way" or 0% "please no."

jazzyjackson 7y ago

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!

input_sh 7y ago

> 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 7y ago
huh, what OS are you on ? I have hidpi screens since 2014 and inscape has always honored Xft.dpi
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- agurk 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    I use X11, wayland has way too many issues for me at the moment (and I test sway, plasma and GNOME every other month)

llukas 7y ago

Fantastic program.

unixhero 7y ago

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

cies 7y ago

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!

twelvechairs 7y ago
Big ones for me are Firefox, Inkscape, QGIS, Blender
- new2628 7y ago
  Firefox does tend to reshuffle the interface occasionally though.
  - mkl 7y ago
    Not nearly as significantly as Blender though!
TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
And built in opening and save as DXF! Being able rapidly and precisely build an item in 2D CAD, then do the graphic design component on Inkscape is amazing. More recently I’m moving to do the graphic design part in Affinity Designer due to a couple of irritating bugs in Inkscape... but it doesn’t have export to DXF... But Inkscape is what taught me vector graphics, and I’m still using it as my default vector graphics app in my day job as a laser cutter operator-extraordinaire.
Freak_NL 7y ago
IInkscape is just there for us when we need it; it's one of those staple FOSS applications that just is. I've been using it since the Sodipodi days; that's more than fifteen years ago! Inkscape is pretty extensible as well. It's not too hard to write plugins for it (in Python). I've did it myself, and love how a handful of people seem to find it of use¹. 1: https://inkscape.org/~jdhoek/%E2%98%85isometric-projection-converter https://inkscape.org/~jdhoek/%E2%98%85isometric-projection-c...

scoofy 7y ago

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

jarek-foksa 7y ago

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.

new2628 7y ago
Why would someone look for a commercial alternative?
emptysongglass 7y ago
That isn't open source? Get out of here.
- jarek-foksa 7y ago
  It's a commercial project, I have updated my comment to make it clear. I would open source it if it was a sustainable option. In the past Gravit and Xara did try to use the open source model, but there was very little interest from the community to contribute.
  - mkl 7y ago
    There was heaps of community interest in Xara, but the company kept the key rendering engine component proprietary, which killed it.
    - jarek-foksa 7y ago
      Yes, heaps of interest from people who can't code or provide financial support but who like to complain. Same with Gravit (then known as Stagestack) who failed to raise 20.000 USD from Fireworks community [1]. Or with Akira and its Kickstarter campaign [2]. [1] http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/stagestack-faces-dead-end http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/stagestack-faces-de... [2] https://youtu.be/mhDjlJk4jQc https://youtu.be/mhDjlJk4jQc

roel_v 7y ago

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.

stupidcar 7y ago

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 7y ago
> 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.
abcpassword 7y ago
Like most open source end user software, the open source contributions are strictly in development. Good software needs a consistent design vision, for which I’ve found exactly 0 open source examples. This is exactly the opposite of “a good FLOSS project.” It’s comically bad compared to even the discount competitors (sketch, affinity)
mjfisher 7y ago
If you're just looking at the surface of the UI, the v1 release appears to include theming. There's a lot more to UI than that, but it might help it feel a bit fresher

tmbsundar 7y ago

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.

mschuetz 7y ago

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.

vkaku 7y ago

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!

floatboth 7y ago
1.0 beta is GTK 3, and doesn't need X because of that :)
- vkaku 7y ago
  Oh! That's nice, I was checking out their issue tracker :) But then I'd like to point out that GIMP on macOS did not need X for a while, and they aren't on GTK 3 yet. :)

pjbk 7y ago

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.

dragonsh 7y ago

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

cies 7y ago
If Inkscape would have chosen Qt over GTK back then, combined with where Krita/Scribus are at right now, it could have been the KDE creative suite!
plq 7y ago
> 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)

amelius 7y ago

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 7y ago
Are they patented?

marble-drink 7y ago

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.

siempreb 7y ago

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.

jmiskovic 7y ago

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 7y ago
Yay! Always missing these since my main tool is parametric CAD background (FreeCAD). Using Inkscape is nice when output is more visual in nature.

jordache 7y ago

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

Finnucane 7y ago
It's too bad Affinity is probably never going to port to Linux. Esp. Affinity Publisher would be great. There's no good layout application for Linux.
misterdoubt 7y ago
$50 is not $50 when it also requires Windows or Mac to even function.
bcholmes 7y ago
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.

scalanewaccount 7y ago

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

einpoklum 7y ago

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

interfixus 7y ago

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.

TomMasz 7y ago

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.

cxcorp 7y ago

> 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.

billfruit 7y ago

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.

jayalpha 7y ago

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

westurner 7y ago

`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 7y ago

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...

diyseguy 7y ago

Please please please make an IOS version!

_nato_ 7y ago

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

bovermyer 7y ago

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 7y ago

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