[Skencil-users] sK1 (was: Path Text to curve)

[Tobias Hilbricht]

Am Samstag, den 11.11.2006, 16:19 +0200 schrieb Igor Novikov:

> sK1 tarball on SourceForge is old summer preview

It compiles and installs on Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper) without problems.

>         You say there that the development into
>         a GTK-application made you fork sK1 from Skencil. 
> 
> GTK migration wasn't a main fork cause. In 2003 before Orange
> Revolution Microsoft initiated in Ukraine hard software legacy
> inspections across printing firms and we were forced quickly migrate
> on Linux. 
> So, MS is unofficial "sponsor" of sK1 :)

This is an interesting notion.

>  More over such way does not create dependecies from Gtk/Gnome or
> Qt/KDE. We use temporary KDE Open/Save dialog, but the same manner Gtk
> dailogs can be used.

I run into this because on my Ubuntu Dapper I did not have KDE and
kdialog on which open/save in sK1 is based. So the large K in sK1 does
not signify a strict KDE binding?
> 
>         Do you see a way to get say full antialiasing of drawing
>         objects
>         or fontconfig integration into a tk/tile application? 
> 
> During last three months following features were implemented:
> 
> 1. Full CMYK support

As you are aiming at print and as you have cyan, magenta, yellow and
black drops in the sK1 logo I expected that - great!

>  (not emulation like in Inkscape)

Inkscape confused me with its fake CMYK colour chooser.

> 2. Runtime color managment using LittleCMS:

As I wrote a rather simple softproof plugin for Skencil I appreciate
this progress very much.

> 3. XRender support (still unstable) is almost implemented to produce
> bezier curves antialiasing:

This will make the objects on canvas look more attractive and brings
them closer to print output - an important aspect for me.

> 4. Multidocument interface using tabs (like Firefox :) )

I like that better than the Gimp-like approach.

> 5. FreeType 2 bridge is almost finished  to substitute Skencil
> _type1module.so. This allows introducing Unicode based Text object and
> to use TrueType, OpenType and PS1 fonts with glyph kerning.

This will be an important improvement. Apropos fonts and text: I am
curious to try if Joel Biddiers skLaTeX plugin for LaTeX-typesetting in
Skencil-drawings works with sK1.

> The main goal of first sK1 release is to arrive functionality level
> which will be closely to CoreDRAW 7. 

Your project is very interesting for me and I will have a look at future
versions of sK1.

Yours sincerely

Tobias Hilbricht