Object annotations ?

Post questions on how to use or achieve an effect in Inkscape.
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Hibou57
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Object annotations ?

Postby Hibou57 » Sat Jan 17, 2009 11:12 pm

Hello every body out there,

I was looking for a way to attach annotations to objects in Inskscape.

An exemple : I have a shape, or a group, and it's standing for something which has an external formal reference, and I would like to add an annotation giving a page number, a comment, etc. Or as an other exemple, add a comment to let some notes about how and why a particular shape was designed (the latter will better apply to a group).

When I open the property dialog on an object or a group, there is a "title" and a "description" field, but it is grayed (disabled) and I cannot write anything into it.

I had a look at the inkscape namespace in the Inkscape wiki, but I did not see anything about it.

I had a look at the SVG reference for attributes/elements, but did not see any relevant things for that (I've just found a "title" attribute, but it only applies to "style" elements, and there is nothing for annotations on objects)

Is there a way to add annotations which I could read, write, view, in Inkscape ? (I means, little annotations, not big text documents, obviously)

Perhaps there is a script which can do that ? But for such a script, it would be mandatory to add a new namespace in the document, and I do not know if a script can do that in Inkscape (I had never used script in Inkscape)

Well, many thanks for any kind of ideas and materials :)

Read you soon

Yannick D.

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loonquawl
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Re: Object annotations ?

Postby loonquawl » Tue Jan 20, 2009 12:32 am

Not sure if this is exactly what you want, but if you call the XML Editor (Ctrl+Shift+X) after having marked an object on the canvas, you have the option to add a text node (or somesuch, i have the german version: "neuer textknoten" - it is the second button from the left, featuring a "+" and "abc".

bbyak
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Re: Object annotations ?

Postby bbyak » Tue Jan 20, 2009 3:03 am

Easy, open Object Properties and use Description field. It was disabled in 0.46 but works in the SVN version.

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Hibou57
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Re: Object annotations ?

Postby Hibou57 » Tue Jan 20, 2009 11:34 pm

loonquawl wrote:Not sure if this is exactly what you want, but if you call the XML Editor (Ctrl+Shift+X) after having marked an object on the canvas, you have the option to add a text node (or somesuch, i have the german version: "neuer textknoten" - it is the second button from the left, featuring a "+" and "abc".

Hello Loonquawl,

I already tried this, but there are some inconveniences. The first is that I do not really like to work with the XML editor, beceause it is not a handy user UI (I just use it to move an object from one layer to another, beceause it can't be done from the UI), and the second one is that I wonder if it's really Ok to add text node like that (I want to keep my files welformed).

I've tried to manually add comment in the SVG file and re-open it to see how Inkscape handles this : it handles this fine, but there is no way to add XML comment from the UI. Any way, as I said before, I do not think the XML editor should be treated as an UI component, and IMHO, it should only be used as a last ressort....

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Hibou57
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Re: Object annotations ?

Postby Hibou57 » Tue Jan 20, 2009 11:36 pm

bbyak wrote:Easy, open Object Properties and use Description field. It was disabled in 0.46 but works in the SVN version.

Hello Bbyak,

Yes, I've seen it is disabled :( That's why I was wondering about it.

Unfortunatly, my Inkscape is the 0.46 and I cannot compile from SVN sources beceause I do not have a suitable compilation environnement.

I guess I just have to wait for the next verstion :)

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Hibou57
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Re: Object annotations ?

Postby Hibou57 » Wed Jan 21, 2009 12:29 am

I've found it here : http://inkscape.modevia.com/win32/?M=D

There are builds of the lastest versions for Windows

Gonna try it :)

Many thanks

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Hibou57
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Re: Object annotations ?

Postby Hibou57 » Wed Jan 21, 2009 1:19 am

Great it works fine, I can add annotations to objects and groups.

By the way, there is a new wonderful stuff in version 0.47 : it is now possible to move an object from one layer to another. I do not need anymore to use the XML editor for that. That's nice.

Just a little bug : there is a new menu entry named “ guide around page ”. If I switch it on, it is not possible to switch it off.

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ScaryBinary
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Re: Object annotations ?

Postby ScaryBinary » Wed Jan 21, 2009 10:43 am

Hibou57 wrote:By the way, there is a new wonderful stuff in version 0.47 : it is now possible to move an object from one layer to another. I do not need anymore to use the XML editor for that. That's nice.


...this is in 0.46, too, in the Layer menu (Move Selection to Layer Above/Below). Or is that something different? You have to "bubble" the objects up and down through multiple layers, if the layer you want to move the objects to isn't an adjacent layer.

(Sorry this is sort of off topic...)


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