New Features for Inkscape

[brynn]

Hi Friends,
As Inkscape is an open source project, anyone is welcome to request new features. If you're thinking of a particular new feature that you'd like to see in Inkscape, you're welcome to discuss it here (in the forum, please start a new topic here:  https://forum.inkscapecommunity.com/index.php?board=6.0).  Maybe there already is a way to do what you want, but you just haven't found it yet?

However, note that you won't be able to discuss it with developers here (or in any forum) since Inkscape developers don't usually participate in forums.  If you want to have a discussion with developers, you'll need to subscribe to the development mailing list https://inkscape.org/en/community/mailing-lists/.

There is a development IRC channel, as well as RocketChat channel (info on this page) but your chances of the right developer being present when you post are slim.  So the mailing list is your best option.

If you don't want to have a discussion, but just make a feature request, you can do that here:  https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inbox/issues.  First, search to find out if the feature has already been requested.   If it hasn't, click the green "New Issue" button, fill out the requested info, and explain your idea.  Please be specific!!  Developers need to understand exactly what you want, and also need to be convinced there's not already a way to accomplish what you want a new feature for.  SVG files, images, or videos which illustrate the new feature would also be helpful.

Also, don't assume that you can make the request and then sit back and wait for it.  Make a shortcut to your request, or at least keep an eye on your email, for notifications that someone has responded to your message.  You'll need to be prepared to answer questions about your request, in case a developer finds it interesting.

If you happen to have any hacking skills, you might want to consider helping to create this new feature.  Here's where you can begin to learn about Inkscape development:  https://inkscape.org/en/develop/getting-started/

The Inkscape Project has developed some guidelines for funded development.  So it is possible to have new features added by crowd funding methods.  Please find those guidelines here:  https://inkscape.org/en/support-us/funded-development/.

Above all, please remember that there really are only a handful of committed Inkscape developers, who have stuck with the project, year in and year out.  There are many more who contribute in the short term, perhaps fixing some bugs here and there, or writing extensions.  So as with most open source projects, development can seem to move at a snail's pace.  This is just a fact of life for most open source projects.

So if the new feature that you want is close to your heart, the best thing you can do to see it happen, is to take a leadership role yourself.  Become involved in the development community and have discussions with developers.  If Inkscape is the best program for containing this feature (rather than any other program) find out which developer might be in the best position to do it.  Find out if there's anything you can do to help.  Or maybe take the lead for a funded development project, and seek out your own team of programmers. 

Otherwise, patience is the key!

[kronos]

• How about Inkscape Discord channel ?
• Which one of the mailing list is for the requests ?

[brynn]

1.  There already are 2 IRC channels for Inkscape.  1 for dev issues and 1 for users.  What need do you see for voice, which can't be met by irc chat?

2.  This is explained in the message above.  For a discussion, use mailing list.  To just make a request, use Launchpad.  Actually, the development list has  been really busy lately.  So it might be better if you used the user community mailing list.  You might end up getting replies from advanced users in addition to developers.  But on the dev list, it's been so busy that your question might get overlooked.

[TMadisson]

Firstly, I would just like to say a big thank you to the Inkscape developers. If it wasn't for their work on this program, my ability to continue practicing and refining my craft in graphic design would not have been able to continue. I owe a lot to the Open Source Community, and can only hope I am able to offer some experience in this forum.

1) Could the future development of Inkscape include a styles panel with the same functionality found usually in word processing packages.
Take for example Scribus; the 'styles' can be the following for example: bold, 12pt, Garamond. This can be named 'Body' for the style applied.
From that point on every selection of text that has the previously mentioned 'Body' style applied will appear bold with 12pt type in the typeface of Garamond.

Having a Shared Style will give a great consistency among multiple graphics made in Inkscape that will appear in the same publication.

P.S: If the 'Shared Style' is ever updated in the any of the files an option of updating 'All Styles' will change ALL the graphics that use that style.
If the change only needs to take place on that one graphic - an option 'Isolate Style' will be available to change ONLY the graphics and none of the others that employ the use of the original 'Body' style.

2) I use many programs and another feature that could be really helpful too is to scale the drawings but also have the ability for the lineweight to change accordingly for easy viewing on the final print out. Just hypothetically speaking if we had the scenario where we want to take a line drawing from some surveyors. They use a hairline style of line - let's say it's 0.05pt on an A1 size of paper. We are now asked to take that floor plan and use it in a glossy brochure to highlight the nearest fire exits. The final brochure is to be A4.
That means the lines that showed up on an A1 piece of paper measuring 0.05pt are now to be shrunk down to a staggering 0.000005pt in an A4 brochure - please don't quote my maths as it's probably wrong.

Could we implement a feature that would allow us to import the floor plan at the desired pt size and to have it dynamically adjust as we scale it up or down?

I have never seen such helpful features among the Adobe packages and feel so heartened towards the Open Source community, I'd much rather share my ideas with you.

[brynn]

Welcome to the forum!

1 - I can't speak to what's planned for Inkscape's Text tool, in the future.  See the op, if you'd like to make a formal request (or mailing list if you'd like a discussion).  However, I doubt if text styles will ever be implemented.  (Why? Because we already have it in open source via Scribus.)  But it never hurts to ask.

2 - There is already something close to this.  It doesn't automatically adjust itself on import, but you can have the stroke width adjust itself when scaled.  So after you import it, and you need to make it larger or smaller, make sure to click this button, on the Selection tool control bar  (when scaling objects, scale stroke width by the same proportion).

[Moini]

Future versions will have support for CSS classes, that should satisfy the 'body' 'paragraph' style needs.

[TMadisson]

Hi brynn, thanks for the welcome  i definately should have been more specific with my 1 suggestion. I was only talking in example form of how styles work in scribus but what i really should have elaborated on is how that same form of working could be implemented within the realms of strokes/fill/stroke style etc.

I have checked the road map and i couldbt see anything on the list. I will think about engaging with them via the mailing list or other option... think i would just feel a little intimidated. You input is greatly appreciated though and i will check out your suggestion on idea 2.

[TMadisson]

Wow Brynn... well idea 2 can be knocked off my wishlist. That seems to be exactly what i was looking for. I've saod once and i will say it again: 

[brynn]

I was only talking in example form of how styles work in scribus but what i really should have elaborated on is how that same form of working could be implemented within the realms of strokes/fill/stroke style etc.

Oh yes, that's a whole different story!  In fact, that's also already possible - some of it anyway.  You can copy an object which has the style you want (style includes fill and stroke color, stroke width, transparency, and many other things).  So after you copy something which has the style you want, select the object which you want to have the same style.  Then Edit menu > Paste Style.  Or else I'm sure there's a key shortcut for it. 

Edit
You can also select objects based on their style, by using Edit menu > Find (....I think it's in the edit menu....).

[TMadisson]

Arh yes, i've been using that extensively just a bit bother-some over 60+ documents but: it works and i'm just happy to be able to do it. Thank you for your input 

[brynn]

So you mean that you want something like a library....or at least menu, of user-defined styles?

Or are you asking for some kind of custom palette?

After re-reading your message, I wonder if what you describe as "shared style" could be handled with Inkscape clones?

[TMadisson]

Hi brynn, i actually looked into how far i could push clones incase i had missed something but i hadn't unfortunately.

A menu of use-defined styles library is probably the closest fit. So lets say i make a shape and have a specific fill and stroke and stroke style. I have these three elements on a number of shapes in one document with this 'style' of fill, stroke and stroke style applied to them - now this can be done at the moment with using the 'paste style' option in the edit menu. Now i need to create another document and some shapes need the same fill, stroke and stroke style applied. At present the only way i can get exactly the same as the previous document is copy an element from the old document to the newer one and 'pasteing' the style onto the different elements. All good so far, but then some bright spark in office says can we change the stroke to so n so.

  oh great... so now i've got to go through the documents making sure i change all them correctly = faf

With user defined library if i change the stroke there then the new style is reflected thrpugh out all the documents that reference that 'style' in the library.

[Lazur]

Oh yes that would be a really good feature if some style attributes could be handled separately from the drawing. I feel that such a feature would require a different document structure and might as well better be handled with a different drawing format than a simple svg.

If you need batch modifying stroke styles I think writing an extension can help with the requested functionality.
Ragnar once made an extension that could change swatch colours from one palette to another i.e: changing a set of indexed colours to another palette. Probably a similar extension can be written -I'm not a developer myself and have no experience with python so best I could advice is looking into those existing extensions as a start.

[brynn]

With user defined library if i change the stroke there then the new style is reflected thrpugh out all the documents that reference that 'style' in the library.

Oh, I didn't realize you wanted to change all the documents at the same time.  I still thought you meant one file at a time.

For changing multiple documents, I wonder if it would be better to look into modifying the XML.  You could use a script to perform the same change in many files all at once.  You know "out with the black, 2 px stroke, in with a 1 px, blue stroke - and do that to all the files in this folder".   Unfortuantely, I know little to nothing about scripts.   Or possibly it could be done with the command line - Inkscape has some commandline features.

I can't give you any reference for scripts (I don't think it's necessarily easy to learn, for any language), but here's Inkscape's command line reference:  https://inkscape.org/en/doc/inkscape-man.html

Edit
Making an extension, which Lazur mentioned. would mean taking your script and packaging it so that it can be installed with Inkscape, and potentially shared with other users.

Oh, but I could give you some references for learning SVG/XML code.  That would at least be a start.  Look at our Inkscape Tutorials page (the Home tab) in the Advanced Skills box, and near the bottom are some links to learning SVG/XML code.

[TMadisson]

This is all wonderful input Lazur and Brynn. Thank you so much, I will look into both aspects you have mentioned in your posts.  

[Teto]

A quick message here about this new version. 
I didn't tested extensively, yet, but I have 2 remarks:
- My CG crashed definitively this summer so I decided to change all and have a fresh start with the best. Threadrippoer 1950X, 64 Go for memory and a P5000.  Anyway, when I installed Inkscape, I was disappointed to see that we can have only 8 threads (I can have 32) and 4096 Mo for cache (I can have, well...).
- HOWEVER, I was very pleased by the new option, the tile size multiplier. With a heavy file and a heavy use of complicated filters, before I had to wait almost 20s when refreshing (and way more if I zoomed in a region with big filter), now it's under 1s. Outstanding.

Thanks a lot everyone! 

[Teto]

I didn't use Inkscape for a while and I just downloaded 0.92.4.
That works great. There is just something I'm wondering.
I downloaded long time ago a developer version (see splash screen below) that is more responsive than the actual version. With a file with heavy filters, it's almost in real time. And it's not the case with 0.92.4.

I know that the developer version was special (the way the icons are handled I think)l, but why don't you use the engine that makes this version so fast ? No offense, I'm just asking. 

[Moini]

Maybe you want to update your preferences and set the rendering tile multiplier to a larger value in Edit > Preferences > Rendering, set the number of threads to a higher value and also reduce the filter quality.

[Teto]

Nope, already checked that.  Same preferences same rendering quality.
If you or another programmer reads this, you should try to check why it's different, because oh boy the speed-up/smoothness is sooo amazing ! 

[brynn]

Inkscape  programmers won't see anything here.  They tend not to participate in forums.  The first message above tells how you can contact them.