Inkscape Tutorial in Full Circle Magazine

[brynn]

Made a Filtering Special edition from your series here.
May worth sharing at the other special editions too.

Note: 39 page PDF - takes a while just to display on the screen! Look forward to reading! Thanks Lazur!

PS - Is this ok re FC copyright or license?

[Lazur]

PS - Is this ok re FC copyright or license?

guess so

So as far as I'm concerned you're welcome to put them on the site, but should probably at least include a mention of Full Circle Magazine, and a link to the original download site somewhere on the page.

[brynn]

Good deal

[Xav]

Made a Filtering Special edition from your series here.
May worth sharing at the other special editions too.

Hi Lazur. Thanks for assembling this. I'm happy for it to be shared with other users who might benefit from it, but I don't think the editor would accept it onto the page with the other Special Editions as it stands - it would need some additional work doing to it for that. In particular:

1) It needs a cover page
2) I would prefer to also see an introductory second page, as in the first two Special Editions, to clarify the source of the content and its license.
3) Some of the additional boxes from the magazine are no longer relevant, and should probably be removed or blanked over (e.g. pages 12, 35 & 39)
4) The erroneous numbering of Part 50 as Part 49, which was present in the original source files, should probably be fixed to avoid confusion.
5) Personally I would like to see the page numbers replaced with "correct" numbers within the PDF - though this is a problem the previous Special Editions also suffer from so it's probably not so important to the editor.


It's up to you if you want to put the extra effort in to make at least the first change or two so that it can go on the same page as the previous special editions. If not, that's fine and I'm happy for you to share it as it is, but it won't be get onto that download page.

[Lazur]

I would if I had the source files. This was assembled using pdfsam.

After opening a special edition cover page to build upon it leaves you with this.
Don't want to reinwent the wheel if it's unnecessary.
Along 40+ pages.

[Xav]

You could always drop a line to the editor of the magazine - his contact details are in every edition. He might be able to provide you with the source files for a previous cover and first page. The magazine is assembled in Scribus, so that's likely to be the type of file he would supply.

That said, the Special Editions were created by other people, in pretty much the same way you've done it (i.e. none of them have the "right" page numbers, so they've likely all been produced by extracting the pages from the finished PDFs), so it might simply be that they've re-created the cover page from scratch, independently of the editor. I really don't know for sure.

I just write the articles and have nothing to do with the final layout (which I'm not entirely happy with in some cases) or producing the magazine or Special Editions. I can help a little - I'm happy to provide my original ODT files, if they would be useful - but there's only so much I can do.

(In the long term, once the series is "finished", I hope to produce my own collection of all of them in some form, but that's a way off yet so don't let it put you off persevering with this project if you want to)

[Xav]

Full Circle Magazine #122 has part 62 of my series. This time it's finding and selecting objects using the new features of 0.91/0.92.

[Xav]

Full Circle Magazine #123 has part 63 of my series, all about the Objects dialog.

[Xav]

Full Circle Magazine #124 has part 64 of my series, all about the Symbols dialog.

[Xav]

Full Circle Magazine #125 has part 65 of my series. This time I turn my attention to the new LPEs in 0.92, beginning with the BSpline and Simplify effects that are available via convenience buttons in the and tools.

[Moini]

Great read! You must have experimented quite a lot, to find out all of that.

Have you thought of telling Jabier and / or the inkscape-devel mailing list about your observations about usability and language, Xav? He is usually investing a lot of time into improving LPE stuff. He's also welcoming help in phrasing the options (his native language is Spanish).

[Xav]

Great read! You must have experimented quite a lot, to find out all of that.

Indeed! Each article takes a lot of experimenting and testing before I can even start to write it.

The earlier parts weren't too bad, as they dealt with functionality I was already familiar with. But for the past year or more I've found that I'm having to put more and more hours in to ensure that I understand each feature (or at least think I do) well enough to write about.

Have you thought of telling Jabier and / or the inkscape-devel mailing list about your observations about usability and language, Xav? He is usually investing a lot of time into improving LPE stuff. He's also welcoming help in phrasing the options (his native language is Spanish).

You're right, I should do that - or at least file bug reports. I have filed a few things in the past, when I've found particularly problematic issues, but with a looming deadline it's usually the last thing on my mind, so I tend to focus on at least warning the readers of any issues I've found. I will try to do better, but I barely have enough free time to keep researching and writing the articles as it is, without adding more to do.

[Moini]

I was hoping that a native speaker could make better suggestions than I could
I'm sure you could save time experimenting, if you contact him and let him explain how to use stuff. Could become a give-and-take, even.

[Xav]

I'm sure you could save time experimenting, if you contact him and let him explain how to use stuff. Could become a give-and-take, even.

Nice idea in theory, but it assumes that I'm organised enough not to leave the article 'til the last minute. I'd end up pestering him with increasingly panicked emails as the deadline approaches. I agree it might give me a better understanding of some of the design choices, but what happens when I move on from the LPEs? Do I have to go through the roster of developers, pestering them about each feature?

I don't want to sound dismissive, and I know I should be more proactive in reporting issues or UI improvements, but between writing the articles and moderating this forum I'm already well beyond the amount of time I can really spare on Inkscape.

[Moini]

Nobody says that you have to, Xav. It's an option. They're nice people, and they aren't adverse to someone wanting to explain what they created, or to improving it.

[Xav]

Nobody says that you have to, Xav. It's an option.

I understand that. When I say I should be more proactive, it's just a recognition of the way that Open Source works - that ideally I should report issues I find in order to help make the program better for everyone in the long run.

They're nice people, and they aren't adverse to someone wanting to explain what they created, or to improving it.

I'm sure they're lovely people - I wasn't in any way trying to imply that they're not. All I'm pointing out is that I have a limited amount of free time available to work on Inkscape stuff, and adding anything more to that pile just isn't possible at the moment.

[Moini]

Sorry, I guess I didn't understand Please know that I'm not asking you to add more to that pile (I also have no authority to ask anyone here to do anything).

[Xav]

Full Circle Magazine #126 is out, with part 66 of my series. This time I look at the Roughen and Show Handles LPEs.

[Xav]

Full Circle Magazine #127 is out, with part 67 of my series. This time I look at the Fill Between Many and Taper Stroke LPEs.

[Xav]

Full Circle Magazine #128 is out, with part 68 of my series. This time I look at the Fill Between Strokes, Transform By 2 Points, Interpolate Points and Join Type LPEs.

[Xav]

Full Circle Magazine #129 is out, with part 69 of my series. New LPEs in 0.92: Perspective/Envelope, Lattice Deformation 2, Rotate Copies, Mirror Symmetry, Bounding Box, Ellipse by 5 Points, Attach Path

[Xav]

Full Circle Magazine #130 is out, with part 70 of my series. This time I introduce Extensions, with a few specific examples:

• Colour > Brighter,
• Colour > HSL Adjust,
• Render > Function Plotter,
• Render > Barcode > QR Code,
• Render > Hershey Text

[Moini]

Wow, already part 70! Unbelievable, how consistent you are with these! Thank you!

[Xav]

Full Circle Magazine #131 is out, with part 71 of my series. This time continue to look at Extensions, with a few specific examples:

• Arrange > Deep Ungroup
• Arrange > Restack
• Text > Lorem Ipsum
• Text > Extract
• Text > Merge
• Text > Split Text
• Images > Embed Images
• Images > Extract Image

(Plus there's a warning to steer clear of anything in the Raster submenu)