[lug] Installfest flyer

D. Stimits stimits at attbi.com
Thu Apr 10 15:36:40 MDT 2003


Michael J. Hammel wrote:

> On Thu, 2003-04-10 at 14:11, D. Stimits wrote:
>
> >rm at fabula.de wrote:
> >
> >
> >>On Thu, Apr 10, 2003 at 05:12:21AM -0600, D. Stimits wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>Vector is better suited to scaling, but it has to go into a gimp layer.
> >>>I'm not sure how easy/hard it would be to export SVG into gimp. So far
> >>>as I know, there is not an easy way. But that leaves a question for 
> some
> >>>of our gimp experts: Is there any SVG support in gimp, or is any
> >>>planned? That would make my day if gimp could import and/or export SVG.
>
>
> There isn't any SVG import/export available from the GIMP that I know of
> currently.  I also don't know of any planned support.  GIMP is a raster
> tool.  SVG is a vector format.  To get SVG into GIMP you have to render
> the vector into a raster format and import to GIMP.  To get SVG out of
> GIMP you'd end up doing what they do for Postscript - render to a raster
> format and wrap it in a Postscript wrapper.  It still won't be vector in
> that case, but it's in a format that PS interpreters can handle.
>
>
> >I'm curious what tools are being used for SVG authoring, and for the
> >conversion from SVG to other formats? Long ago, I did technical
> >illustrations under CorelDraw while writing manufacturing automation
> >software, and wish there were better vector-based drawing under Linux
> >(for free of course). SVG I think holds a lot of promise in this area,
> >but it doesn't seem to be sufficiently supported yet.
>
>
> Vector tools are severely under represented in the open source world.
> There are a few tools - see
> http://www.graphics-muse.com/cgi/gmcat.pl?id=16
> Artstream had promise as a commercial product when I saw it a few years
> back at LinuxWorld, but for some reason they never seemed to go public
> with it.
>
> Sketch and Sodipodi are the closest you'll get to vector art tools right
> now.  Dia handles diagramming in vector formats, though I don't know if
> it exports to SVG yet.  In general, if you truly need vector support
> you're better off in the MS/Mac worlds.
>
> The lack of vector tools is what keeps me working with GIMP so much.
> I'd love to do poster sized art but that's difficult (re: slow) to do in
> GIMP without tons of memory and very fast CPUs.


Text scaling is one of the first things I noticed a need for vector art 
in gimp. I suspect it would be possible to make some sort of plugin for 
an SVG import, but export would probably be much more difficult. 
Rendering an SVG instruction to a buffer and then converting the pixels 
into something that can be pasted into a layer would be a whole lot 
easier than doing the reverse (or at least doing the reverse and having 
true SVG that looks exactly like the original).

D. Stimits, stimits AT attbi DOT com




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