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Native MacOSX Support!! "Inkscape is now a first-rate native macOS application, and no longer requires XQuartz to operate. The minimum required operating system

Native MacOSX Support!! "Inkscape is now a first-rate native macOS application, and no longer requires XQuartz to operate. The minimum required operating system version is OS X El Capitan 10.11. It has a standard Mac-style menu bar (rather than a menu bar within the window). Keyboard shortcuts now use the command (⌘) key rather than the control key. Retina display screen resolution is now supported. The build is now cleanly 64-bit, a prerequisite for macOS Catalina 10.15 and beyond. It comes bundled with Python 3 to power Inkscape extensions. "

dchest 6y ago
Unfortunately, this native version is quite laggy compared to the previous XQuartz releases. I wonder how it compares with a Linux version in a VM; my previous experience suggests it may work better.
- joeberon 6y ago
  Yeah same issue here, much worse performance than the XQuartz releases. Dragging objects, especially arrows, is extremely laggy and awful. I've moved to Affinity Designer for now, which is better in almost every way except that unfortunately it is not easy at all to add LaTeX equations. Also the UI looks somehow feels less native macOS-like than the XQuartz versions, they're still not even using NSOpenPanel which is a huge pet peeve for me
  - Vinnl 6y ago
    Apparently they're aware of it: https://mastodon.art/@inkscape/103993588384088165 https://mastodon.art/@inkscape/103993588384088165 > Yes. This is related to GTK and is holding the macOS release back while Win/Linux graduate from beta. If you want to connect with the developers they can be found at: https://chat.inkscape.org/channel/team https://chat.inkscape.org/channel/team So if you want to help resolve it, perhaps check there :)
- ken 6y ago
  Hopefully removing a whole extra layer will make it easier to profile and improve, both for Mac tools and for Mac developers. One of my main complaints about Firefox is that everything is so completely custom (even the parts that look 'native') that all my years of Mac development knowledge are useless. I see that, for better or worse, Inkscape is still fully GTK+ even on macOS. It uses the slightly improved native features of that toolkit, but all the controls still look like they're ripped from an X11 app. The text labels don't even use Mac naming conventions. I wonder if GTK+ is architected in a way that's going to be easy to optimize on the Mac graphics architecture.
- fvdessen 6y ago
  It is not "quite laggy", it is unusably slow ... big disappointment because Inkscape is otherwise an excellent software
- ryangorley 6y ago
  The developers for the Mac build are aware of this issue and trying to determine how we can resolve it. As far as I understand it may be an upstream GTK problem, but if you'd like to know more (or even better, you have the skills to help) you can chat with them at: https://chat.inkscape.org/channel/team_devel_mac https://chat.inkscape.org/channel/team_devel_mac
drivingmenuts 6y ago
It also doesn’t look or feel at all like an OSX application. I won’t say it’s unusable, but two minutes in and I don’t care for it much.
- taywrobel 6y ago
  That’s a common theme with OSS applications, unfortunately. It’s rare to get UX engineers to help, and even more rare for anyone to lead “product direction” from a UX perspective. So a lot of them make use of rudimentary UI toolkits, with admittedly sub-par interfaces that stink of design-by-committee, since the focus is more on the “substance” of the application than the presentation. But with a lot of these tools, design tools in particular, the presentation is such an integral part of the experience, it’s unfortunate to see it be the part that gets the least care or attention. Not to say that this shortcoming is universal; blender version 2.50 made huge improvements to UX, and Ubuntu showed the importance of good UI in open source. But Inkscape, GIMP, openlibre and others are still notably behind the curve.
  - ken 6y ago
    You don't need a rare "UX engineer". The issues here are much more fundamental. On a Core i7 with 16 GB of RAM, dragging one object on an otherwise empty canvas gives me about 1 fps. You don't need any special "product direction" to know that needs fixing. Half of the issues would be fixed by not using GTK+. Any GTK+ app on a Mac is going to feel like "you got a Linux app to run on a Mac", not "a Mac app". Maybe someday that will no longer be true, but it's been true for the past 20 years. Inkscape doesn't even look like an old Mac app -- these UI toolkits are moving in different directions. I know that's not going to change, which is why I'm not optimistic Inkscape is ever going to be good on the Mac. My only hope is that someone will write a Mac app which uses the Inkscape engine, like Camino or IINA did in their respective categories. But good and inexpensive alternatives exist, so there's not a lot of incentive.
  - oefrha 6y ago
    > stink of design-by-committee Design-by-programmer is a more accurate phrase here.
ancarda 6y ago
Oh I'm so glad to see progress is being made in this area. Inkscape was just unusable for me on macOS. Now it's a bit more bearable. Keep up the good work!
baybal2 6y ago
GTK+ has supported MacOS natively since ancient times. The thing is that ports to MacOS of BSD/Linux software are low priority projects for opens source projects.
- irrational 6y ago
  This surprises me. I would imagine that most programmers would want to work on a unix-variant instead of Windows. But, that is probably just my bias talking.
  - jononor 6y ago
    Ports of open source software to Windows are often also severely understaffed.
    - HelloNurse 6y ago
      Both MacOS and Windows are relatively annoying platform for which the "official" programming tools are not free. Additionally, there is a network effect: GTK applications, specifically, remain on Linux because GTK on Windows doesn't work too well.
      - ygra 6y ago
        The Windows SDK is free to download. Unless you meant free, like in free software, in which case, yes, there may be an ideological barrier to entry regarding Windows development.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Narishma 6y ago
    GTK+ is not that great on Windows either.
- app4soft 6y ago
  To be honest, its much easier to port Linux software to MacOS than to Windows. Why? Because MacOS & Linux are both Unix-like OS. And not only GTK+ apps easy to port on MacOS, but X11-based Linux apps also easy to port to MacOS. For example, take a look on AzPainter painting app.[0,1] [0] https://github.com/Symbian9/azpainter https://github.com/Symbian9/azpainter [1] https://github.com/Symbian9/azpainter/wiki/Packaging-status#macos https://github.com/Symbian9/azpainter/wiki/Packaging-status#...
KingOfCoders 6y ago
First grats to the devs and hurray for high quality open source. My impression though for OS X, that with Affinity Designer a lot of need for a cheaper Illustrator has vanished (if you need it to be free/open source/on principle then Inkscape is great)
- dangom 6y ago
  As a researcher who composes a figure or two every now and then, I find Inkscape to be far more intuitive than Affinity Designer. Affinity makes simple things hard. Creating arrows was not a feature until recently, resizing multiple selections would mess text objects, and changing the size of the canvas requires copying all content to clipboard and creating a second, separate canvas. Not to mention that exports, which should be simple, are also hard to understand for beginners / non-designers, and the gazillion of menus makes it impossible to ever find what you need. After many years of waiting, I'm happy to see Inkscape jumping to MacOS too. Kudos to all devs and contributors that made this possible.
  - KingOfCoders 6y ago
    I would agree, for arrows I still use OmniGraffle.
  - tasogare 6y ago
    As a researcher who draw figures quite often... I use PowerPoint. That sounds like a joke, but the ratio features/learning curse is perfect. On the contrary I was never able to draw anything with Inkscape, and I give it a try every few years or so.
    - benibela 6y ago
      As a researcher ... I use tikz
    - lookdangerous 6y ago
      I assume you meant ‘learning curve’ but learning curse is hilarious here in the context of PowerPoint.
0xff00ffee 6y ago
Not to be redundant, but FINALLY! Been using Inkscape since 2013, and having to drag Quartz into the mix is a PITA.
hacker-asw 6y ago
hola
reaperducer 6y ago
Native MacOSX Support!! Excellent. Now I'll try it again. Native OS support and interface is important to me, and the reason I didn't jump on to Inkscape earlier. It's also the reason I no longer use or support Audacity. I don't expect every open source project to be up to date with the latest whiz-bang OS release. But Audacity has had ten years to put together a 64-bit version, and haven't been able to pull it off. No Catalina support makes it a non-starter for me.
- dchest 6y ago
  It's only native in the sense that it doesn't run in X11. The UI is still GTK+, and doesn't look like a Mac app.
  - oefrha 6y ago
    Well, with X11 out of the way at least it won’t take two minutes just to launch (hopefully).
seanwilson 6y ago
Is there a way to install the v1 release candidate with brew on Mac?
WhyNotHugo 6y ago
Amazing! Meanwhile, Inkscape still uses gtk2 on Linux, so won't support things like scaling on Wayland. :(

dchest 6y ago

Unfortunately, this native version is quite laggy compared to the previous XQuartz releases. I wonder how it compares with a Linux version in a VM; my previous experience suggests it may work better.

joeberon 6y ago
Yeah same issue here, much worse performance than the XQuartz releases. Dragging objects, especially arrows, is extremely laggy and awful. I've moved to Affinity Designer for now, which is better in almost every way except that unfortunately it is not easy at all to add LaTeX equations. Also the UI looks somehow feels less native macOS-like than the XQuartz versions, they're still not even using NSOpenPanel which is a huge pet peeve for me
- Vinnl 6y ago
  Apparently they're aware of it: https://mastodon.art/@inkscape/103993588384088165 https://mastodon.art/@inkscape/103993588384088165 > Yes. This is related to GTK and is holding the macOS release back while Win/Linux graduate from beta. If you want to connect with the developers they can be found at: https://chat.inkscape.org/channel/team https://chat.inkscape.org/channel/team So if you want to help resolve it, perhaps check there :)
ken 6y ago
Hopefully removing a whole extra layer will make it easier to profile and improve, both for Mac tools and for Mac developers. One of my main complaints about Firefox is that everything is so completely custom (even the parts that look 'native') that all my years of Mac development knowledge are useless. I see that, for better or worse, Inkscape is still fully GTK+ even on macOS. It uses the slightly improved native features of that toolkit, but all the controls still look like they're ripped from an X11 app. The text labels don't even use Mac naming conventions. I wonder if GTK+ is architected in a way that's going to be easy to optimize on the Mac graphics architecture.
fvdessen 6y ago
It is not "quite laggy", it is unusably slow ... big disappointment because Inkscape is otherwise an excellent software
ryangorley 6y ago
The developers for the Mac build are aware of this issue and trying to determine how we can resolve it. As far as I understand it may be an upstream GTK problem, but if you'd like to know more (or even better, you have the skills to help) you can chat with them at: https://chat.inkscape.org/channel/team_devel_mac https://chat.inkscape.org/channel/team_devel_mac

drivingmenuts 6y ago

It also doesn’t look or feel at all like an OSX application. I won’t say it’s unusable, but two minutes in and I don’t care for it much.

taywrobel 6y ago
That’s a common theme with OSS applications, unfortunately. It’s rare to get UX engineers to help, and even more rare for anyone to lead “product direction” from a UX perspective. So a lot of them make use of rudimentary UI toolkits, with admittedly sub-par interfaces that stink of design-by-committee, since the focus is more on the “substance” of the application than the presentation. But with a lot of these tools, design tools in particular, the presentation is such an integral part of the experience, it’s unfortunate to see it be the part that gets the least care or attention. Not to say that this shortcoming is universal; blender version 2.50 made huge improvements to UX, and Ubuntu showed the importance of good UI in open source. But Inkscape, GIMP, openlibre and others are still notably behind the curve.
- ken 6y ago
  You don't need a rare "UX engineer". The issues here are much more fundamental. On a Core i7 with 16 GB of RAM, dragging one object on an otherwise empty canvas gives me about 1 fps. You don't need any special "product direction" to know that needs fixing. Half of the issues would be fixed by not using GTK+. Any GTK+ app on a Mac is going to feel like "you got a Linux app to run on a Mac", not "a Mac app". Maybe someday that will no longer be true, but it's been true for the past 20 years. Inkscape doesn't even look like an old Mac app -- these UI toolkits are moving in different directions. I know that's not going to change, which is why I'm not optimistic Inkscape is ever going to be good on the Mac. My only hope is that someone will write a Mac app which uses the Inkscape engine, like Camino or IINA did in their respective categories. But good and inexpensive alternatives exist, so there's not a lot of incentive.
- oefrha 6y ago
  > stink of design-by-committee Design-by-programmer is a more accurate phrase here.

ancarda 6y ago

Oh I'm so glad to see progress is being made in this area. Inkscape was just unusable for me on macOS. Now it's a bit more bearable. Keep up the good work!

baybal2 6y ago

GTK+ has supported MacOS natively since ancient times. The thing is that ports to MacOS of BSD/Linux software are low priority projects for opens source projects.

irrational 6y ago
This surprises me. I would imagine that most programmers would want to work on a unix-variant instead of Windows. But, that is probably just my bias talking.
- jononor 6y ago
  Ports of open source software to Windows are often also severely understaffed.
  - HelloNurse 6y ago
    Both MacOS and Windows are relatively annoying platform for which the "official" programming tools are not free. Additionally, there is a network effect: GTK applications, specifically, remain on Linux because GTK on Windows doesn't work too well.
    - ygra 6y ago
      The Windows SDK is free to download. Unless you meant free, like in free software, in which case, yes, there may be an ideological barrier to entry regarding Windows development.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Narishma 6y ago
  GTK+ is not that great on Windows either.
app4soft 6y ago
To be honest, its much easier to port Linux software to MacOS than to Windows. Why? Because MacOS & Linux are both Unix-like OS. And not only GTK+ apps easy to port on MacOS, but X11-based Linux apps also easy to port to MacOS. For example, take a look on AzPainter painting app.[0,1] [0] https://github.com/Symbian9/azpainter https://github.com/Symbian9/azpainter [1] https://github.com/Symbian9/azpainter/wiki/Packaging-status#macos https://github.com/Symbian9/azpainter/wiki/Packaging-status#...

KingOfCoders 6y ago

First grats to the devs and hurray for high quality open source. My impression though for OS X, that with Affinity Designer a lot of need for a cheaper Illustrator has vanished (if you need it to be free/open source/on principle then Inkscape is great)

dangom 6y ago
As a researcher who composes a figure or two every now and then, I find Inkscape to be far more intuitive than Affinity Designer. Affinity makes simple things hard. Creating arrows was not a feature until recently, resizing multiple selections would mess text objects, and changing the size of the canvas requires copying all content to clipboard and creating a second, separate canvas. Not to mention that exports, which should be simple, are also hard to understand for beginners / non-designers, and the gazillion of menus makes it impossible to ever find what you need. After many years of waiting, I'm happy to see Inkscape jumping to MacOS too. Kudos to all devs and contributors that made this possible.
- KingOfCoders 6y ago
  I would agree, for arrows I still use OmniGraffle.
- tasogare 6y ago
  As a researcher who draw figures quite often... I use PowerPoint. That sounds like a joke, but the ratio features/learning curse is perfect. On the contrary I was never able to draw anything with Inkscape, and I give it a try every few years or so.
  - benibela 6y ago
    As a researcher ... I use tikz
  - lookdangerous 6y ago
    I assume you meant ‘learning curve’ but learning curse is hilarious here in the context of PowerPoint.

0xff00ffee 6y ago

Not to be redundant, but FINALLY! Been using Inkscape since 2013, and having to drag Quartz into the mix is a PITA.

hacker-asw 6y ago

hola

reaperducer 6y ago

Native MacOSX Support!! Excellent. Now I'll try it again. Native OS support and interface is important to me, and the reason I didn't jump on to Inkscape earlier. It's also the reason I no longer use or support Audacity. I don't expect every open source project to be up to date with the latest whiz-bang OS release. But Audacity has had ten years to put together a 64-bit version, and haven't been able to pull it off. No Catalina support makes it a non-starter for me.

dchest 6y ago
It's only native in the sense that it doesn't run in X11. The UI is still GTK+, and doesn't look like a Mac app.
- oefrha 6y ago
  Well, with X11 out of the way at least it won’t take two minutes just to launch (hopefully).

seanwilson 6y ago

Is there a way to install the v1 release candidate with brew on Mac?

WhyNotHugo 6y ago

Amazing! Meanwhile, Inkscape still uses gtk2 on Linux, so won't support things like scaling on Wayland. :(