Inkscape launches versions 0.92.4 and 1.0 alpha
inkscape.org
inkscape.org
Joking aside, I wouldn't hold my breath for a decent mac version. Gtk is not really a cross plattform gui toolkit.
See https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/237953/install-ink...
On Mac, xQuartz is a bad sticking point. The unusual ctrl/cmd key swap is difficult to remember. The XQuartz preferences are difficult to parse and must be changed upon install — even I refer to the instructions on the Mac download page every time. A first class Mac app would make it a much easier sell.
We still use v 0.91 as 0.92 moved from 90 dpi svg to 96 dpi svg, to conform to web svg. This can cause problems with our laser cutter software. More important, opening files authored in 0.92 in 0.91 can change the physical size of the drawings. I believe the sizes remain correct if defined in a physical measurement (ie anything but pixels), but some extensions generate svgs whose dimensions are nevertheless affected when opened in the older software. This issue, and the occasional crashing on windows when pasting an image copied from elsewhere, are the only problems I face with this excellent software. Bravo!
Saying that because I used to use them, and they worked fine (for me).
If you're ok with using a slightly older Inkscape release, you should be able to dig up a few builds that work. ;)
There's also a MacOS setting "displays have separate spaces", under mission control; disabling it can help Inkscape in some of those cases, but I ended up toggling it back since some other apps had issues with it off.
As for getting to a native version, does anyone know what that process is, and if there's a roadmap for doing it? Based on what I've read online, Gimp is based on GTK as well, and runs reasonably well on Mac, so I imagine it's doable.
Not sure if this might help anyone else but: I recently figured out a really big performance problem here that was causing crazy amounts of lag in Inkscape on multiple systems: "recently-used.xbel" in my home folder was about 300K and when referenced, the system seemed to lag while attempting to reconcile some network drives or unplugged USB drives (I wasn't sure which). I deleted it and the lag problem completely disappeared. So I put together a cron job that deletes the file every once in a while. I was surprised that what I thought was a graphics issue turned out to be a convenience-related one. :-)
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9275677/platform-depende...
Ended up having to use an old style file chooser widget (as described in the SO answer) to avoid the problem. I don't know if the issue still exists in GTK3 (which could mean it'll be resolved in inkscape with the port to GTK3), but I ported my app to Qt since so I don't have that issue any more. Made my app totally unusable.
Could you explain a little bit more about what porting an app from GTK to QT is like? It makes sense now that you mention it but I'd never thought of doing that until now.
The threading model was a bit different, requiring message passing to do anything GUI related in the main thread rather than just updating widgets from any old thread with a lock held. But message passing is probably a better way to do this anyway!
Working out how to package up icons into Qt resource files was also a little trickier than just using files on disk.
It took me about two months full time to port about 6000 lines of Python from pyGTK to PyQt4. It's not the most complex application though, and I didn't refactor anything else, I just ported to Qt as 1:1 as possible. This sounds like a long time now that I think about it, but it seemed necessary at the time, I don't remember slacking off. Also I was starting from scratch with PyQt.
But Qt is much more stable than GTK and has better cross-platform support. We ported from Qt4 to Qt5 without much effort and I haven't regretted the switch at all. PyQt is an excellent way to do cross-platform GUIs. We adopted it long before electron was a thing, and I remain an electron sceptic because I don't see much in it that I am missing in Qt.
Related tangent: This "SVG Can Do That??" presentation[1] is "old" by internet standards but is still (to me, at least) somewhere between eye-opening and mind-blowing:
Just speculating since I've only personally tried fumbling around in Inkscape <5 times in my life, but it might explain the phenomenon.
Version numbers are subjective and mean little.
It's hard to describe, but certain tools are designed this way and I love them, other tools are designed great for beginners to learn them but you can never achieve the above.
This is a dupe of my recent submission (< 24h) : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18933825
Why hasn't HN detected that automatically as it usually does?
Recommended reading if you wish to bundle a macOS binary for distribution:
https://birchlabs.co.uk/blog/alex/juicysfplugin/synth/cpp/20...
Congrats on Alpha!
Used it countless times to make T-shirt designs, logos, etc. Super convenient "free" alternative to Adobe Illustrator. (Most people have access to and know how to make vector graphics out of shapes in PowerPoint)
We chose to use inkscape for part of an image generation toolkit because of the great command line options and the easy to modify source files.
As for the UI, ever since .91 they have fixed my biggest concern, and I'm really happy for the team. Rarely feel the pain and need to reach for illustrator on a windows machine!
At this point, I have not used Inkscape as someone else has been using it (not a power user). However, hearing about its command line options makes me want to investigate that immediately. I have been suggesting a CLI approach would be much better for us with all of the automation we are looking to implement. Thanks!
Some of my projects have only the icon svgs checked into the source repo and the build tool renders them to PNGs through inkscape. Works really well.
Loved it even more when they made an MSI installer for Windows so I could easily put it on every computer at workschool
The loss of Xara was already bad. Great to have another option. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xara_Photo_%26_Graphic_Designe...
For those that don't know ArtWorks was a vector graphic package RiscOS and predecessor of Xara. It had fast anti-aliasing and was optimised for the integer maths on the floating pointless Arm 2 and 3 chips in Acorn Archimedes and Acorn RiscPCs.
When the parent company stopped development it convinced me to try to use FOSS packages like Inkscape in future. It can be always with you on every platform and it will only get better with time.
This is probably subjective.
http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Release_notes/1.0#Us...