Inkscape 1.2.1 Released | Hacker News Reader

Inkscape 1.2.1 Released

inkscape.org

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After struggling with the sluggishness on a Mac for a long time, I am super excited that 1.2 finally works super smooth for me on an M1!

I found the same. Looks good!

But the UI performance on Intel is pretty bad. You can watch redraws happening. I wonder what's wrong there.

This looks much improved! The sluggish old X-Windows-based UI was a huge turn-off (although it did put the menu where it belongs: on the main window frame of the application, a foreign concept on the Mac).

But this looks good and seems responsive (on an M1 Mac). GJ Inkscape team!

Update: I just installed it on my Intel Mac and while the UI appearance is obviously still improved, the performance is pretty bad. Resizing a single shape is very slow, with massive tearing of the image and visible redrawing.

Inkscape has a bug in dxf_outlines.py which gives endless 100% CPU load then you try to export your SVG to DXF with --ROBO=true (often used for laser cutting). This bug is there for almost a year and nobody cares to fix it, instead they are self pleased with icon shuffling all the other release.

Is Inkscape better than Adobe Illustrator for working with vectors because Illustrator may be the most unintuitive piece of software ever made.

Illustrator, which is essentially abandonware at this point, does indeed suck.

There is one overwhelming defect that kills illustrator, at least for some of us. It lacks the essential selection mode that Inkscape, Corel Draw, Sketch, and others have: only selecting objects that are totally enclosed by the marquee.

Illustrator insists on selecting everything the marquee TOUCHES. The straight-up stupidity of this limitation becomes obvious as soon as you... well, do almost ANY drawing. Did you do a wireframe of a UI, but want to shift a group of labels? Have fun selecting each one separately instead of just drawing a box around them.

The problem may not sound like a big deal if you don't work with this kind of app, but it is. It's a deal-breaker.

I’ve had a hell of a time just dividing a closed vector into two separate vectors. Scissors absolutely did not work sanely. What you’re supposed to do is use a line segment to bisect the vector. Then select just the vector and the line. Then go and find the shape builder tool and click on the two parts separately. This is madness.

Why can’t I just draw a line from one part of the path to another and have it recognize that.

There’s no trim feature, you have to mess around with whatever the hell the join function is.

I’m coming from fusion 360 where everything is an intuitive dream to work with. Illustrator is straight trash.

Not sure if this is what you are looking for, but to divide a vector in Inkscape, draw a strait line through it, it doesn't matter if the line goes past the edge of the vector, then select both objects (vector and line) and go the the "Path" menu and chose "Division" (keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+/ ).

Abandonware, replaced by what exactly?

Nothing from Adobe. Affinity Designer is a competitor, but it's hobbled by some bad UI, missing functionality, and a "we're not gonna fix that" attitude from the publisher. Not a terrible option, but it has been disappointing.

There's also Sketch, which offers a more limited toolset than some and seems to target UI design. Not bad. Some unintuitive UI and some bugs here and there that aren't getting fixed, but you can get stuff done and it's supported by quite a few design-collaboration platforms online. There doesn't seem to be any official user forum for Sketch, though, which is annoying. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong on that.

Corel Draw, which is Windows-only, has always been better than Illustrator. It's pretty good.

I see. There are plenty of UI design tools like sketch, figma, adobe xd but Illustrator has the illustrative part as well. I don’t think any of the UI tools are a great replacement for that.

Designer and Corel Draw are not UI-centric.

"Better" how? UX-wise, or features? "Different". But it is FOSS, so why not just try it for yourself and see if it suits you?

I love Inkscape.

But.

There's always a but.

Is there a way to make it use the standard Windows file browser, I desperately need to copy 'n' past a many-levels-deep folder structure.

Haven't used Inkscape in windows, but I believe it's built on GTK. There maybe a GTK config setting on windows to use the native picker.

I see now there's a setting in Inkscape to use either the native open / save dialogue or the GTK one. The GTK picker has / as the shortcut to start typing a path.

I've just woken up at 03:00, which just seems to be something I do.

And it's occurred to me it's possible to paste a path in to the filename field.

Why has that not occurred to me before.

Ctrl+l in the file save dialog, maybe?

Use Explorer.

I don't use Inkscape very often but I love it every time I need it

Problems I've encountered with Inkscape consistently with Arch Linux over the past few years:

* In a completely new document, drawing boxes yields an invisible shape that cannot be styled regardless of how you set the stroke or fill.

Problems that still persist with Inkscape consistently with Arch Linux with the new update:

* In a completely new document, drawing boxes yields an invisible shape that cannot be styled regardless of how you set the stroke or fill.

That being said, I love Inkscape. It's my go-to for modifying SVGs, albeit not for creating them.

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