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Inkscape: Vector Graphics For Linux

Inkscape
Inkscape

In this story we'll do a quick primer on how you can get up to speed on Inkscape. Along the way, we'll explore situations where a vector based graphic would be better suited for a job than a raster based picture. In spite of not being an XML or web development expert I think SVG will be important in the future. Read on and you'll see why.

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PDF exports a similar problem by Anonymous George
Clarification and retraction by Anonymous George
EPS file not working for me by Anonymous George
Animated svg? by Anonymous George
Animated SVG! by Anonymous George

there are

SVG allows doing awesome things. Google for tetris implemented in SVG "image" (yep, it's even playable).

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:wq

Yeah, rsvg is going to suppor

Yeah, rsvg is going to support such things when we're done with our cairo support stuff.

Hopefully such things will be able to be used for lots of things within gnome.

SVG themes will be impressive

So you could implement significant portions of the gui entirely within the theme? Simple things, like button clicking, menu scrolling, etc? That could be amazingly cool...

Well, I guess you could. It m

Well, I guess you could. It may be a tiny bit sluggish though, still if performance is good with our cairo output then it could be quite fast. It also depends if the DOM scripting was done in javascript or c. Anyway, it will be nice to see how well that works after the neccisarry work has been undertaken.

Mozilla has a JS engine by Anonymous George

Yep, that is a possibility. B

Yep, that is a possibility. But what is for certain is that we are sure as hell not going to write a javascript interpreter of our own.
Anyway, c bindings would have other advantages over Javascript even if we support both since c would allow better integration with the desktop and other gnome libraries, not to mention it would be faster.

Well by Anonymous George
Yes, yes, yes, and yes. by Anonymous George

Almost forgot Firefox...

The next major release of Firefox will include native support for SVG, SVG Animation, and manipulation of SVG via the DOM and JavaScript.

You can download unstable builds of Firefox which include SVG support for most platforms.

So Firefox will be an "SVG player" pretty soon. (In all likelihood, sooner than Inkscape will be an SVG player.)

Here's an example of an SVG that should work with Firefox+svg builds: http://fatherham.com/temp/test.svg (uses JavaScript for animation, if you don't have Firefox+svg, at least view the source)

That link crashes my copy of by Anonymous George
nightly build or cvs? by Anonymous George
What nightly? by Anonymous George

No explicit need for animated SVG

All the DOM principles from XHTML apply to SVG. Animation (and more) is possible by using script (such as Javascript) to manipulate the document structure and style properties of the elements.

No it wouldn't. Not without s

No it wouldn't. Not without sound. Remember: most people use Flash to create pointless "cool" intro screens with sound.

SMIL by Anonymous George

So it doesn't have pointless

So it doesn't have pointless sounds. That's an even better reason to use SVG.

Then you can't use it for mak by Anonymous George

Then the web will be a better

Then the web will be a better place.