Hi Bernhard,<br><br>Sorry for delay in responding, I just have overtime on primary work.<br><br>>Skencil has been more or less dormant for the last few years<br>>and a cooperation or merger with sK1 would revitalize it.
<br><br>Yes, you are right, Skencil requires intensive reanimation. As you can see<br>on SF, the project has stable activity in downloading, but often Skencil is <br>downloaded as "additional backend" for Inkscape, to parse ai files in command
<br>line mode. It isn't a best role. In Ubuntu/Kubuntu (according to <a href="http://distrowatch.com">distrowatch.com</a>,<br>the most popular Linux desktop distributives) repository you can find only <br>Sketch 0.6.15 package, but after installation application crashes (uncompatible
<br>default Tcl/Tk). May be this package is used as Inkscape backend only.<br><br>>It also seems to me that the goals of the sK1 project, i.e. developing a general<br>>purpose vector drawing program that can be used for more than SVG
<br>>editing, are close to what I wanted Skecil to become when I started the<br>>project[1].<br><br>As I mentioned in previous messages, the most perspective target is a<br>CorelDRAW users group. So sK1 should be the same all-purpose editor as
<br>CorelDRAW.<br><br>>The first thing one notices when doing a diff is that you reformatted the Python<br>>code to use tabs for indentation. I could have understood all spaces, but tabs,<br>>yuck :-)<br><br>On my opinion, "all tabs" is better than mixed identation with tabs and spaces,
<br>which is observed as in 0.6.x and in 0.7 Skencil branches. Tab identation, <br>at least using Tab key, is widely used (WingIDE, IDEA, Kate etc.), so it is a valid <br>code formatting. <br><br>>Looking closer, it seems you haven't ported any of the bugfixes I made
<br>>in the 0.6 branch since the fork. That's a bit unfortunate because they<br>>address some important things like compatibility with newer Python<br>>versions.<br><br>Naturally, I know this issue, but this task is not urgent, because sK1 distributed as
<br>a bandle with own Python copy. Enduser doesn't appreciate such efforts, but other <br>sK1 UI and engine issues are more imortant.<br><br>>Having worked with neither, I can't say anything about their technical<br>>advantages and disadvantages, but antigrain
2.5 is free software under<br>>the GPL, if I'm not mistaken:<br>><a href="http://www.antigrain.com/license/index.html">http://www.antigrain.com/license/index.html</a><br><br>As you can read on the page: "Anti-Grain Geometry distribution package includes
<br>General Polygon Clipper (GPC) by Alan Murta. GPC has a different kind of license<br>that allows you to use Alan's work for free only in non-commercial software."<br>It seems GPL and GPC are not compartible licenses.
<br><br>>> To achieve antialiasing effect canvas usage (AggDraw, libart, tkZinc etc.)<br>>> is not a good way, because usually these canvas widgets have own internal<br>>> model. On my opinion the simplest way is additional renderer which can be
<br>>> dynamically switched.<br><br>>That sounds like the way it's done in Skencil 0.7, too :-)<br><br>Yes, similar but not the same implemetation. Xlib and Cairo engines can work in<br>mixed mode. Also Cairo can provide hardware acceleration using quartz backend.
<br>In general view as sK1 and Skencil 0.7 now have modern engines, so the main<br>differences will be in application usability.<br><br>>I haven't found the time yet to look at the new code, though. <br><br>Preview code is old. This branch was freezed at May, 2006 and used only for new UI
<br>demonstration. Of course, you can find many improvements and bugfixes, but<br>in summer preview all these changes were made for UI only. Package structure was<br>almost the same as in Skencil.<br><br>During last months sK1 source code was deeply refactored. Now all widgets are
<br>Tile-based (Ttk:: namespace), many packages are reorganized and restructured,<br>heavy-weight classes like MainWindow are refactored to decrease size.<br>C-based modules are extended to support Cairo engine and LittleCMS color managment.
<br>We plan to expose our SVN after release.<br><br>>Well, there have been tarball development releases, but it's not ready<br>>for endusers.<br><br>I can installed Skencil 0.7 on MDK2007 from trunk due to knowledge of Skencil
<br>internal structure; such task is not for regular Linux users. But installation <br>script can be updated - it's not a problem. It would be great if you release <br>Skencil 0.7. I don't like Gimp similar interface but there are many Gnome users
<br>which believe that "it's a single true way" :). So Skencil 0.7 should be popular<br>in Gnome community.<br><br><br>Sincerely,<br><br>Igor Novikov<br>sK1 Team<br><a href="http://sk1.sf.net">http://sk1.sf.net</a>
<br>