I open a simple hand-crafted SVG and want to make a simple change. It messes up all my formatting and uses its own weird formatting, with line breaks between attributes. I'd rather it at least put newlines between elements rather than between attributes. Ideally there'd be a "save with minimal edits from the original" button.
Literally everything else about Inkscape is amazing! Congrats to the team!
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Maybe this is also the right time & place to plug my favourite SVG path editor? https://yqnn.github.io/svg-path-editor/ - free as in both beer and freedom, a tool to craft minimalistic well-behaved SVG paths.
Inkscape on the other hand almost inevitably creates really messy SVGs with a lot of transforms (why??) that make it almost impossible to see actual coordinates.
But as I said, nobody cares about how clean and nice your SVG paths are and I don't either most of the time, so I'm still a regular user of Inkscape. Thanks to the team :)
I have also had trouble with some generated SVGs, for example:
https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape/-/issues/5317
Part of the problem is that Inkscape is too good, and the file format it uses mostly conforms to standards, so I have the expectation that opening arbitrary SVGs would just work. With other programs that use proprietary formats, I wouldn't have tried to generate drawings at all. It's a bummer when I run into what seem to be corner cases of Inkscape's SVG handling, but fortunately the set of corner cases seem to be shrinking.
Are you aware of any XML parser ever which preserves the plaintext formatting of the .xml file while magically inserting and modifying an arbitrary amount of XML data anywhere within the document?
SVG is just XML. Save your file in Inkscape, and then run `tidy` on it, or whatever you like for format your XML with.
(As a fellow hand-crafted XML fan, I feel your pain. But I also know when to choose my battles!)
Running `tidy` is of not enough help. I handle the situation by saving into a new file, then copy-paste the changed bits into my hand-crafted SVG and clean them up.
Ideally I try to avoid Inkscape altogether. Which is hard, as it's just too good.
I highly recommend using SVGO (https://svgo.dev/).
1.0 and after, and it's been truly a dream. I now use it to make all my figures for my research publications and presentations. Inkscape has gone from compromise I begrudge to my tool of choice in relatively little time. This is a good reminder that I should probably send them a donation.
But their UX is getting worse with each release. I think they need another Blender-style overhaul
I'm been playing with Freehand, and the one thing that really stands out to me is the Object dialog. Current vector editors have similar designs, but none are as powerful and straightforward at the same time as Freehand's. The swatch workflow is also pretty rigid, and gives you a good imagination of what the color separations/result would look like.
The ability to do PostScript fills and strokes (and have them live-preview via Display PostScript) in Altsys Virtuoso was flat out _amazing_.
Ages ago, I once used the CMYK adjustment to get a rough preview of a multiple spot ink job à la Cerilica Truism (which you should have the person doing the CMYK stuff look into --- it allowed one to set paper stock colour options and then simulate multiple ink mixes, including spot colours --- also spot types, so there was only a single set of ink mixes, but if a spread had coated paper on one side and uncoated on the other, the appearance matched what one would have had to use two ink swatches for in other apps).
Also, Graphics Find and Replace is invaluable for working on complex files w/ many objects.
But Blender is just hard to get into. It's not just the updates, though they may not help.
What helped me most was setting aside the time to do a series of ~3 minute videos going back to the absolute basics.
IE how to: rearrange your workspace, use viewport, vertices-edges-faces, transforms-Grab, Rotate, Scale. And more.
AND THEN learning all the keyboard shortcut keys for them.
Blender is so much easier once you learn the common keyboard shortcuts that YOU use all the time. So take those notes.
Bit of exploration of the Blender documentation, which is fantastic but probably 99% used by the automated cognitive tools you asked a query of.
After THAT, you watch/do the tutorials to build basic donut/sword/gadget whatever of interest.
Then you are on your own to do what you want and then the inevitable forum/AI queries about specifics to try to solve the issue you are having.
In my early days, I spent over a week making a game model plane into something I could print. Now I understand the concepts and a few blender tools, it might take me 30 minutes.
Easy? No. It does require a concerted effort. It's not something you just "pick up on the side" like basic photo edits.
But damn, it opens up a whole new world of possibilities...
It seems to me Tikz does the same but programmatically.
It seems to me the Caterpillar does the same but with better offroad capabilities.
That’s one reason to use Inkscape. If I want to draw a design, I have a shape in mind I then try to draw by editing the points as I see them, with instant visual feedback. I don’t want to code in points and have to modify coordinates.
It’s like asking why people use a parametric CAD suite like NX if they could just use OpenSCAD. If you want to model something, seeing it and editing it in the 3D view can be much nicer than editing code.
Great news! Having to reconnect the USB cable each time is no fun.
I'm glad this project keeps going.
- Set display units to "px"
- Set scale (px per user unit) to 1.0
I have a script that converts SVGs to PNGs as part of my build process:
https://github.com/uguu-org/sor6/blob/master/data/svg_to_png...
It works surprisingly well for simple CAD tasks, too - I've used it in combination with TinkerCAD to produce some 3D-printed parts.
I just wish its CMYK handling was better. When I need CMYK or spot colour / overprint output I generally save as EPS, open in a text editor and adjust the source accordingly, but it would be nice if CMYK and Spot were first class citizens. (A friendlier workaround is to import the SVG into Scribus and modify the colours there.)
The extension is inkscape-silhouette (https://github.com/fablabnbg/inkscape-silhouette) and is apparently being maintained by a makerspace in Germany.
Secondly, how does being OSS justify significant regressions?
I deeply appreciate that FOSS exists. But - subjective feeling - in general it always had certain reputation for jankiness and user unfriendliness. Sniping down feedback "because the software is free" certainly contributes to that perception. If I have a choice between free, volunteer made software that's unreliable or doesn't even work for some of my use cases, and a commercial, but non-free product, I will be pragmatic about it and choose the latter.
Feedback is fine, but there are so comments being things like "ermahgerd I paid nothing for this thing and a feature wasn't working What the actual F!". Go file an issue and fix it yourself buddy.
The worst thing they said was that it was "kinda disappointing". Which is perfectly valid. They really want to use inkscape but can't.
Heck the only reason this post made the front page of HN is because of lingering goodwill that was built up when the software was actually decent. Now that it’s regressed into uselessness, the goodwill is drying up. I, frankly, don’t have any interest in the software anymore, since it was rendered unusable. I recommend everyone steer clear of it as well.
You are free to do that. I've only used inkscape like half a dozen times. It was fine for me.
Hit me with the downvotes, but the only thing their comment has contributed to is causing arguments.
I realize that's a little dramatic. I also think people are allowed to raise issues. But the entitlement and the way people talk about free software is annoying. Especially when alternatives cost as much as a used or new car.
If you have a Ferrari pallete for software then I hope there's an alternative that satisfies that for free, if so say so, otherwise shut up, contribute, or pay the Ferrari dollars already.
These things are true at once:
- Good work inkscape developers! Inkscape is used by lots of people. I'm happy for the developers and the users, and I hope inkscape keeps getting better.
- I don't want to use inkscape because when I tried it, it seemed ugly, slow and buggy.
The only problem here is when people equate "this program is junk" with "this person is junk". That's a very dangerous belief to have, because it makes an enemy out of practice. And an enemy out of experimentation. The road to expertise is paved by mistakes. If bad quality work makes you a bad person, you can never learn a new skill.
Instead of celebrating a release the top comments are things like "this one thing doesn't work therefore trash, and unusable". Which reads like coercion for the devs to go spend a bunch of time and prioritize their life to satisfy someone at the free all you can download buffet.
The thing that sucks about it is. The devs will go fix that thing. Make a new release. Then the top comment will be some other bug, because all software has them. Then if there are no bugs it will be something else like the devs cousins dogs affiliation the the neighborhood cat. It just gets old to me.
Honestly, I'm chuffed and always a little surprised when people read what I've written, or when they like my work. If someone says your software has a bug, that means they liked what you're doing enough that they took time out of their day to try it out. It means they care about the problem you're solving enough that they want you to fix it.
I'd take criticism every day over getting no response at all. Criticism of features means you're solving a problem people care about. If the feature they criticise is obscure, it means all the other features are working better.
I don't know if that point of view is teachable though. Even knowing all that, I feel criticism incredibly acutely in person. Stepping on stage and showing your work to a crowd is terrifying. But I think its good for us. It tempers us, somehow. Makes us more real.
It's a little odd to me that the tool regressed so badly in 1.x and stayed the same for five years though, even despite some apparent attempts to fix it, for something that i assume is a core tool (it's right there on the toolbar), though maybe not so much if it's so low priority that it stays unaddressed. It's not a situation where people are asking for something new to be added, it's a feature that worked fine before that got broken years ago and stayed broken. It's frankly bizarre to see hot new releases get touted year after year, while a part of core experience just stays broken.
But again, it's kinda fine because the old version is just there, it just makes for a bit of an odd caveat when recommending it to people, for them to stick with the old version because it works better (well, actually works at all). It's a little unfortunate for the new users that might not know that and will just get the latest version and won't experience a feature properly though. (like, if I was a new user to it and picked up any 1.x version and tried the tool there, it would be clear that it's unusable for drawing and it'd be immediately dismissed, even though it actually works pretty great in older versions)
Mind you that Inkscape is being worked on by volunteers until very recently where there are 2 new contractors specifically for fixing bugs in 1.5.
I don't know if anything is solved in 1.5 dev build yet, but the calligraphy pen there seems to be even worse than before and worse than even in 1.4.4. It's frankly impressive. I take it nobody actually uses that tool for drawing at all (which would explain a lot really), otherwise the issues with it would be immediately glaring a while ago.
Also either the difficulty either upstreaming changes or porting these changes to every subsequent version.
It used to be almost unusable with all the UI bugs (can't close tabs when you open them, can't resize the window without panes bugging out or the app crashing, etc).
I get the occasional crash where it just closes completely for no reason, but very rarely in the last year.
Aside from that, I absolutely LOVE Inkscape - there are no better tools if you want to have granular control over the SVG.
Edit: here's another one, not sure if macOS related tho - auto-selecting the parent when clicking the path underneath it. Because of that, I can't use a hotkey to switch the visibility of the selected path on/off (Inkscape switches the visibility of the parent layer instead, affecting everything that's inside).
There is a plugin for blender that allows CAD style sketching. It may be a way forward.
I made a slicing plugin years ago that lets you create a layer that defines named rectangles. Each area under the rectangle is saved as an image.
(Best of both worlds if I don't have to discover a setting somewhere to get this behavior.)
One of the apps I am working on hit 10,000+ active users (per Playstore dashboard), and Inkscape has a role to play in this.
Since the app is free and doesn't even have a backend, there is no budget for the designer.
I looked for a few tools online, but most of them failed to generate icons/logos.
I ended up using Inkscape to make logos for my app.
Without Inkscape, this workflow is difficult.
Though I am not able to intuitively use it well from the GUI. The thing is, you don't even need the GUI anymore!
But Claude or Codex is able to write SVG line by line (so you can make changes incrementally) and use Inkscape via CLI to generate icons, logos, and graphics for your app.
Here's my app for those who are curious: https://macrocodex.app/
I am pretty sure some designer will come and say "you did a bad job at this," which is fine. My experience is in writing backends, not mobile apps or design.
Every app is saying they use "AI for smart recommendation,” while I went the opposite route, of “no, our product does not use AI for any suggestion.“ It’s entirely deterministic.
The defaults are tuned to aesthetics of my personal logo, but it's quite configurable. (You can even copy your own SVG into the icon input)
Example logos:
- https://leftium.github.io/nimble.css
I do the same thing. How many icon sizes does Apple require now? I create one SVG vector, and then dump them all out with a script. Need to change something? Update the SVG and instantly regenerate the icons.
In this case the "Good" is that it makes Gcode for lasercutter. Everytime it takes atleast 30 minutes, even when I have recorded instructions. Always some weird thing happens, and I have to do it again, step-by-step. There is zero clue what paths, edges, layers, backgrounds, vectors etc might actually mean.
But no more. Gemini AI made me a total solution. It takes a picture, checks it for "isolated islands" (which drop off and need bridges) and then generates perfect silhouette of Mannerheim or Mussolini.
There are few tools that are very ingrained in my daily operations, stay for years, and would be hard to replace, like Emacs or Firefox; Inkscape is among them.
For example if I type "rectangle" in Inkscape command palette I would expect the draw rectangle tool as a top match. Instead the top matches are:
Create a Slicer Rectangle
Create a Slicer Rectangle (No preferences)
Triangle (No preferences)
Clone original path (LPE)
Lightness-Contrast (No preferences)
Refractive Glass (No preferences)
Refractive Gel A (No preferences)
There have been several issue tracker issues about the command palette. Here is one from 2022 and still ongoing about the slow start https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape/-/work_items/3227
Anything new from AI assisted port from c++ to plain and simple C?