alt Hacker NewsInkscape 1.4.4
Comments
Calligraphy pen/tool is still unusable, messy and less responsive (lower resolution, more angular, etc), much worse than in 0.92, and it's been this way ever since 1.0. It also now requires windows ink to be on, and they removed devices panel so you can't even tell if your device is recognized properly. It's bad with a tablet, but it's still just as bad and much worse in comparison even with the mouse. It's kinda disappointing to see this bad of a regression to just linger there for years. Here's the issue for this problem on their gitlab https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape/-/work_items/1473#note_...
Inkscape is really good for products with no budget for designers. Let me explain why.
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.
Inkscape has many good features but also many rough edges. Fixing the command palette (shortcut key ?) would go a long way. On Windows it takes around 5 seconds for the palette search box to appear after a clean start of Inkscape 1.4.4. Typing is lagging and results are wildly irrelevant. That's a shame because Inkscape has so many powerful features tucked away in menus and side panes. A well working command palette makes it quick and easy for the user to use tools without exploring menu hierarchies or memorizing keyboard shortcuts.
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
Inkscape is awesome - I use it regularly for extracting design elements from PDFs and vectorising bitmaps.
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.)
Some of the plugins for it are pretty interesting. We have a Brother embroidery machine in our work Makerspace, and it ends up there's an Inkscape plugin (called Inkstitch) to create command files for the machine. It's like working with a slicer for 3d printing, but more about changing thread than filament, plus how stitches should be oriented and such.
Ah, the tool I love and hate. Mostly love though. Let me tell you about the single thing I hate:
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!
~~~
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 is an indispensable tool for me. I use it for quick drawing and drafting, for presentation slides, illustrations, small-scale print works, and even just pictures for fun. It allows to combine freehand drawing and moving things around with very precise, CAD-like handling of shapes, sizes, coordinates, etc.
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.
I love Inkscape! My game Enalim was made with Inkscape. (https://uzudil.itch.io/enalim)
I'm glad this project keeps going.
inkscape has had a long and quiet ascent from quintessentially janky foss creative software to genuinely pleasant to use. i still wish it were a little easier to edit the individual portions of deeply nested clip/mask operations, but if you need to crank out some icons, you can use inkscape and not hate your life, which is something i'd have called someone insane for telling me a decade ago.
I use 0.92 for extracting HPGL data from cutting machine software and converting it to better vector formats sometimes. I use that version because I think HPGL support was removed in newer versions. Inkscape is a great program, keep up the good work. Kind Regards A user
I wish Inkscape would add constraints, as found in CAD tools.
Inkscape is one one my favorite open source software. Myabe it is not as powerful than proprietary software but it does anything I need
> Fixed a crash when starting Inkscape with a graphics tablet plugged in
Great news! Having to reconnect the USB cable each time is no fun.
I love Inkscape.
But their UX is getting worse with each release. I think they need another Blender-style overhaul
Love inkscape and wish it could get some engineering love around MacOS. For quick work I'll use it on MacOS, but anything deep I switch to Windows.
I wish it was written in plain and simple C.
Anything new from AI assisted port from c++ to plain and simple C?
Wow, I think they finally fixed the awful lag just in time for me to have completely moved my practice to https://graphite.art/
Inkscape is great but I wish Xara Xtreme for Linux had not died.
[dead]
Is there a reason to consider Inkscape instead of Tikz?
It seems to me Tikz does the same but programmatically.
Inkscape = Press random buttons until something good happens.
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.
I have my first contribution to Inkscape in this release I think. It's quite a minor feature though, so I don't see it in the changelog. It allows the user to set their default saved file name. I was tired of drawing.svg :)