This weekend the annual meeting of Free and Open Source Developers
(FOSDEM) takes place in Brussels. As
usual, the ULB fills up with developers from all over Europe, discussing
large scale projects such as Gnome desktop, Mozilla, Xorg and PHP.
Unfortunately none of the talks addressed our usual working tools …
Inkscape plugins in Python
Inkscape allows python scripts to be used as effects plugins. In a nutshell: you use the DOM to create / manipulate the structure of the SVG document and use CSS properties to style -- so there's quite some overlap with "regular" CGI & web programming.
This example (circles) is based on the example …
Batik, new release
The Apache Foundation has released a new version of Batik.
Batik is a Java-based toolkit for applications or applets that want to use images in the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format for various purposes, such as display, generation or manipulation.
Using Batik’s thumbnail function to navigate a complex SVG …UniConvertor!
A late announcement for an ultra useful tool: Igor Novikov and Valek Philippov have released UniConvertor, a universal vector graphics translator. It uses the sK1 engine to convert one format into another.
With UniConvertor you can now convert files from: CorelDRAW ver.7-X3 (CDR/CDT/CCX/CDRX/CMX), Adobe Illustrator …
Page tiling with poster
Importing Inkscape in Fontforge
Fontforge is an ideal font design program, as far we could test it out:
Opening mac fonts (on ppc here) is more direct, and drawing tools are really ok to take on. Soft seems more fluid than previous version and... it can easely import inkscape svgs!
Here is a way …OSP for VJ10
OSP are currently working and testing hard for Verbindingen - Jonction 10 festival, organised by meta collaborators Constant. Offset CYMK Printout (5000 ex.) expected for next wednesday, with all the blurs, transparencies, gradients and fonts...
While trying to export the svg from inkscape to pdf, we encountered few problems with transparencies …
Creative License: Take as much as you want
Adobe's new Creative Suite is currently advertised with the slogan: Creative License - Take as much as you want. Terms and Conditions which apply when you submit a feature request or a bug report:
You agree that by submitting your Idea, you acknowledge and agree that any such Idea is nonconfidential …
Inconsolata
One of our Rotterdam reporters made us notice Inconsolata, a monospaced font designed by Ghostscript maintainer Raph Levien. Levien offers an OTF version, plus 'raw' fontforge files on his webpage.
First and foremost, Inconsolata is a humanist sans design. I strove for the clarity and clean lines of Adrian Frutiger's …
CMYK overprint
Wonderful Inkscape unfortunately does not support black overprinting. You can define colors in CMYK but it will not allow values such as 40% C + 40% M + 40% Y + 100% K (Inkscape for some reason automatically converts these back to 0% C + 0% M + 0% Y + 100% K).
Left: cyan plate …
