Comment by khet | Hacker News Reader

Comment by khet | Hacker News Reader

Inkscape is a great piece of design software. I've been using it for a good 8 years now to design websites, complex application interfaces, prototype many projects and everything in between. The application has been designed with care and it shows. There is a sense of respect towards the user and you can really enjoy using it for long periods of time. It just fades away and lets you get to work. No fuss.

The interface and workflows are simple, yet extremely powerful if you spend some time understanding the tool. I have used Inkscape exclusively to do all my interface design work during my career.

After moving to OSX, I was put off by the lack of native support. So I tried moving to Sketch and Illustrator. I found Illustrator to be overly complicated and plain bloated. I've always had a distaste for Adobe software and Illustrator maintains that negative image for me. Sketch on the other hand was unstable when I tried it. It had some serious bugs that made it unusable.

I went back to Inkscape and am now used to the GTK quirks & the lack of Retina support. The software itself remains my favorite tool. And I'm excited to see this major update to Inkscape.

You're in luck! There is a native OSX port in progress, called the 'osxmenu' branch:

https://code.launchpad.net/~suv-lp/inkscape/osxmenu

There are still some bugs, but it works well for me.

Wow, thanks for posting this! I've been trying to find native OSX builds of Inkscape without much luck for a while.

Wow! It's works pretty well! I could never get Inkscape working on OS X before. There is still the big startup time but it's definitely better than using xquartz.

FWIW - the long startup time is just the first time you launch the application, I think it's doing something with fonts, after that it launches pretty quickly.

Cool! This is pretty nice. Are you able to edit gradients? I can't seem to get that functionality to work.

  <url snipped> - Sorry, the Public links of my Dropbox
  account currently are suspended due to bandwidth limits.

Does anyone have a mirror?

Here[0]. Please use your best judgment regarding bandwidth, and don't share this link. It'll be gone after some time (a few days).

[0]: https://www.adhoc-gti.com/hn/Inkscape-0.91+devel+osxmenu-r12...

Thanks for that. I am not sure posting it on HN is the best way to not share the link though.

I uploaded it to Google Drive to save your bandwidth: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2dUQpSGutXERFhLSnNmanNBam8...

Please let me know if I am in breach of distribution rules for it.

> I am not sure posting it on HN is the best way to not share the link though.

I simply don't want the link itself to appear elsewhere, I don't care if the whole HN crowd downloads it and send the link privately to their coworkers or whatever.

We're on a 100Mbps link so bandwidth should not be an issue if people are not selfish dicks.

Thank you as well!

Thank you!

I too am a long timer user and fan of Inkscape .. I'd love to know more about your flow/process of using it to design websites .. got an inclination to share the details?

I think a lot of the power of Inkscape comes from harnessing the abstractions of SVG. I've used it in the past as a container for GUI elements, and as long as you name things properly and maintain a good order of abstraction, using Inkscape to create SVG that can be parsed directly into working code is a thing of joy to behold.

That is interesting. I'm looking to use SVG for a gui too. Do you have something visible?

Not at the moment - but I am preparing something for release shortly, and it'll be mostly focused around the MOAI framework. If you want to tune in to the forums at http://getmoai.com, that'll be where I launch first .. I'm targetting specifically the Hanappe framework for MOAI, if that will give you some clues ..

Agreed, I'm in love with Inkscape's support for SVG. Like some of the other posters here, I am fed up with Adobe and it's bloated software. In Adobe's defense, this is likely due to all of the backwards compatibility they need to do.

However, when it comes to using SVGs on the web, Inkscape is clearly the king. Illustrator has a bunch of nice and fancy filters and such, but you try exporting as an SVG for web and you will find a great deal of your design has been lost due to non-svg-compatabile "frills" Illustrator adds.

FWIW, I use Sketch daily and it has been a lifesaver after I abandoned Photoshop. Give it a second try! (This is v3, to be fair -- I believe earlier versions had new-adopter quirks.)

I've also recently started using Sketch as an Illustrator replacement (for basic icon/design work, I'm not a professional graphic designer). I've really enjoyed using it so far.

Agreed. I kept trying to use Inkscape wherever I could but it just ground me down. As soon as I tried Sketch I was sold.

I'm much quicker with Inkscape than with Illustrator. I know Illustrator is much more powerful, but Inkscape just feels more productive to me.

Example: last week I had to open a bunch of EPS files in Illustrator and extract shapes to make new images. I had to realign shapes all the time, and had to set the "Relative to" field ALL THE DAMN TIME. While in Inksapce it remembers my previous choice.

What about:

http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/CompilingMacOsX#Comp...

I'm also a long time Inkscape user and it suits my need perfectly. However, I'd rather be able to edit the nodes of an image to clip it, as in Corel Draw, instead of having to commit to a shape, combine, and set the clip onto the image. But that's a minor problem.

Another reason why Inkscape rocks where other vector editors don't fare as well is in their understanding of Bezier curves. It's right on, just like in Corel Draw. One example of a program that does not get Bezier curves right is Adobe Illustrator. It's impossible, or very very hard, to draw a rectangle, make the top two nodes cusp, and curve only the top side. I remember reading in forums where people were trying to do that and long time users were admitting that it's complicated. However, in truth there's nothing complicated about it, as Inkscape demonstrates very well.

Fine control over nodes is the reason you want Inkscape. Illustrator gets on my nerves because it's so roundabout in this regard.

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