Inkscape 0.92.1 released.

And there appears to be a nice big set of changes and additions to go with it

https://inkscape.org/en/news/2017/01/04/inkscape-version-092-released/

Particularly interesting is their mesh gradient tool, but they also have a lot of other new features that looks to make working in the app. far easier (such as more control over the draw order).

Considering that the program has been used in Blender’s development to make icons (that and the fact that there’s many users here), I would think this would be interest.

EDIT: They just released a bugfix update
https://inkscape.org/en/news/2017/02/17/inkscape-0921-now-available/

This program reminds me of CoreDraw, which IMO is the best vector drawing application there is (and I use Illustrator every day). So it’s a great program in my book.

A long time ago that I hope multi-page. What they said in the forum of inkscape is that because of SVG 1.1 or 1.2 could not be. Now that we are in 2.0 does not want to implement it?. I know that at one time we had a version 0.46.x to be able to create multi-page, now I don’t know what to think.

There are no pages in SVG2.

Inkscape never had multiple pages. You are probably confusing it with sK1.

I believe, in some momeno in inkscape came out I don’t remember if so official.
I think the version 0.46.x had but when i asked in inkscape when final came out at 0.47, I responieron could not be because it did not meet the conditions for svg 1.2. And if I know what sk1. I know that there was a need for SVG 2.0 is used in layers instead of muti-page.


https://sourceforge.net/projects/inkscape-pages/

Inkscape is a great, great program.
I believe they are moving to a faster release rate too, so stay tuned: more goodies to come !

cusa123
I left Inkscape and Gimp behind me since a long long time.

To be honest today there are two much better products on the market.

Look at Affinity Photo (Gimp) and Designer (Inkscape)
They are now Mac/Win and cost each around 45$.

I just ditched Adobe - so tired of their price model and inability to make the products better.

Also a great alternative for Inkscape is Gravit. I am testing right now their internal new version and it blows
Inkscape out of the water in many areas. Better UI multi pages with templates live booleans and such.

You can test the current public version at : https://gravit.io/workspace

Gravit is a nice Freehand clone. Soon it is feature wise the same defeating AI again.

At least the future is starting to brighten for Inkscape as an application. GIMP meanwhile is still following the same failed dev. policies that has kept both its development and its relevance to an absolute minimum (and it shows with the notable decline in the amount of attention it gets here on a Blender forum).

Ah, good ol’ toxic BA community. How I missed that.

Why toxic? This is the naked truth. GIMP failed. Period. For 50 Dollars you get better and PRO grade applications. Period.

I love open source but Blender is the nearly only one that really is good among them. Inkscape? Also a test software. Since years certain features were not added. Now again some 50$ apps do it better.

As a user you have a choice. Toy with out dated apps or invest into a professional tool that does not costs much.

It is just reality. I promoted GIMP and INKSCAPE as alternatives to Adobe 10 years ago. In those 10 years hardly anything improved. FACT!

GIMP seems more open to the idea of paid sponsorship. The GEGL guy has a Patreon going at least. The long dev cycles aren’t doing the project any favors, though.

I think Inkscape is pretty good. Maybe it has a bad Mac port.

I suspect cekuhnen’s problem is that he has a set of workflows which use vector and he hasn’t been able to fully go through them in inkscape without coming across a definite missing functionality.

I mean, I am fine with using inkscape as well, but all I need from it, when I use it, is the path tool. But I know this guy, who makes posters with inkscape, and who I know to be a properly an inkscape super user instead of an illustrator fanboy or someone who gave up after 5 minutes of not recognising the ui, and well, he is able to write some words of criticism. I think though, even the inkscape people are noticing that it is really nice to release things, so we’ll proly see more movement there.

Gimp’s issue is that they decided to start upgrading their core architecture at one point, and everything else is stopped until that is done. This can only be done by a handful of people, so it’s been taking… 5, 8 years? Things should be interesting after that release. Looking at Gimp discussions, people don’t seem to understand this problem and are currently taking Gimp’s lack of development in the UI area as a personal grudge from the devs, which in turn upsets the devs.

Inkscape will also need to upgrade their core architecture at one point to provide color management, as well as a general clean-up for optimisation, which is something that they are concerned about. I hope they will be able to get through that far faster than gimp did.

Core architecture upgrades are really heavy like that, and we ourselves were scared we would end up not releasing krita 3.0 for years due to the qt5 port because a similar thing happened in the distant past of krita, so it is not something unique to gimp or inkscape.

I’m sure it’s my use bias, but I have no problems with inkscape. There are certainly some bugs in some of the included scripts, and I’m sure if you were used to illustrator, the contrast might be hard to get over.

I have the opposite problem though, I learned on inkscape, then later I tried illustrator. That’s a confusing transition, and I was startled to find out that some features that I consider core didn’t exist (or weren’t obvious enough) after 5 minutes of frustration with illustrator, I gave up and went back to inkscape (btw, their subscription model punishes you if you unsubscribe too soon, thanks adobe)

I totally understand that this is the user experience that a lot of people switching to inkscape or blender feel. moving into a new UI is hard, things are labeled differently or just work differently. It has nothing to do with commercial vs open source, and more to do with experience.

This is my impression from years of following BA threads and participating in some of them. I barely ever return with insights from BA. Mostly it’s all just headache, because I have to repeat the same stuff over and over again. To pretty much the same people. Who don’t even pretend to listen. To me that is a toxic community. With some nice exceptions, of course.

Fact? Nope, perception. Point of view, really.

As a professional you surely know exactly how long it took Adobe to introduce artboards to Illustrator since they had started getting first requests for something approaching the multipage functionality. And Adobe didn’t even have an excuse of having no pages support in SVG. I don’t see you complaining about that, though :slight_smile:

When you talk about GIMP and Inkscape, you talk about old applications with huge code bases. When you talk about e.g. Gravit, you talk about a new app built very nearly from scratch (Stagestack wasn’t all that large in terms of LOC). It’s an entirely different thing.

Similarly, people who complain that even Krita has more features like adjustment layers than GIMP, usually have no idea that Krita was ported to a new core back when it had a tiny code base (compared to GIMP’s). And even then they spent several years to stabilize it. And, as Therahedwig will attest here, they still spend a huge amount of time on stabilizing the code after every big change. While being understaffed.

You can’t magic your way through tons of work. Someone’s gotta do it. Handing around big stupid words like “failure” doesn’t change a thing.

As an end-user you can ignore all that and pretend you don’t care. But come on, Claas, you know better than that :slight_smile:

Yes, it’s one of the problems. When you replace the entire image processing core, there’s not much point in releasing until things work more or less as expected.

Personally I don’t have a very good feeling about both 3.0 and 3.2 in that respect.

Apart from having a complete GTK+3 port, v3.0 will need a new wire protocol for scripts and plug-ins. It may slow things down and it can’t be postponed.

And a new file format in v3.2 to make full use of GEGL and store non-destructive changes may take quite a while.

OTOH, I do have a good feeling about Øyvind’s Patreon-based involvement, because he is extremely capable and knows the GEGL code better than anybody else.

That’s a pretty good list of constructive criticism. Minus the unnecessary hyperbole anyway. I agree Inkscape should consult artists more. He should contact them. :yes: They should try to get Nick Saporito too.

I run KDE and tend to be out of the loop on GNOME. But I was under the impression they were going to GTK+4 soon. Is GIMP for sure going GTK+3? Or does it even matter?

I love inkscape with a man’s love

Well, first of all, GIMP has already gone GTK+3 :slight_smile: It’s a separate branch waiting to be completed in due time. Some people even use it, although personally I wouldn’t recommend that.

Secondly, GTK+ 3.90 is due to be released in March. There was no date for 4.0 in the roadmap last time I checked (two days ago), although maybe it will be this fall. And then GTK+4 needs to stabilize enough to be used. Meanwhile GTK+3 will be stable enough by that time.

So let’s not hurry :slight_smile: Depending on the state of GTK+4 it may or may not be advisable to skip GTK+3 after all.

In a usual case, a core rewrite being done would be a legitimate reason for very slow development overall over a period of years.

However, either the GIMP developers have been having trouble keeping people on board for the rewrite or their codebase is much larger than it would seem when you look at the app. yourself (compared to the 2D powerhouse solutions like Photoshop). A 5 to 8 year time period is a long time for almost any application, and we have seen other powerful 2D solutions written completely from scratch during that time period (which also raises the question of whether GIMP can keep up with low-cost commercial solutions even after the new core is in place).

It’s even a long time when compared to other FOSS applications, Blender saw a complete overhaul of the event system, modeling, rendering, and other areas during that time. Godot has seen (and is seeing) large parts rewritten. Krita has seen a few overhauls as well, what has led to things taking so long for the GIMP with no end in sight?

If what you’re saying is true, then it makes no sense waiting for decades to see these open source apps become mature enough to be taken seriously. It’s basically just wasting time. $50 - $100 is affordable for most people compared to big apps like CorelDraw and AI. Sending donations to these open source apps doesn’t even hasten development.

I wouldn’t say that is the case. Two major contributors that we lost over the past ca. 6 years left for family reasons (kids etc.)

You can have a look for yourself :slight_smile:

https://www.openhub.net/p/gimp/analyses/latest/languages_summary

And that a single person is in charge for 41% of commits over the last 12 months should be telling as well.

https://www.openhub.net/p/gimp/contributors/summary

A while ago I wrote a detailed post on exactly that: http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/gimp-is-20-years-old-what-is-next

You are on the largest Blender forum out there. You probably wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for financial support from the community, because otherwise Blender would have maybe half of its current feature set.