Need vector drawing program - [SOLVED]

[banjo]

I am looking for a good vector drawing program to use on my Mandy 9.1

 

I have Sodipodi, but this time I think it has pushed me over the edge.

 

There are NO documents on how to use Sodipodi, so I am left with the trial and error

method for everything. Whilst trying stuff, I hit the Delete key, and all the gradient

tools went away in the Fill Settings dialog. Hunh? The dialog box is trashed.

I rebooted Sodipodi, but it remains trashed. I deleted my .sodipodi to reinit,

and it remains trashed.

 

I suppose I can get it back with a re-install. But then I am still stuck with a tool that

I cannot figure out.

 

Truth be told, sodipodi has one of the most difficult user interfaces I have ever run across.

Coupled with NO documentation and bizarro side effects, I have just about given

up on it. I cannot make this tool do anything useful after months of trying.

 

Enter inkscape. Looks interesting, so I downloaded the source. I ran configure

and it bails with

 

checking for GC_malloc in -lgc... no

configure: error: libgc (the Boehm Conservative Collector), is needed to compile inkscape

 

So I am stuck again. I cannot compile the program and have no idea what it would

take to add the required development bits. Any clues? Am I close, or is this going

to explode into a complete OS upgrade?

 

I looked for a 9.1 RPM for inkscape, but found nothing in the official release, and nothing in

contrib and PLF appears to be down.

 

Is there ANYTHING out there that actually works, has some minimal user

docs and can be installed on Mandy 9.1? This is really frustrating.

 

Thanks for the help.

Banjo

(_)=='=~

Edited January 2, 2005 by banjo

[bvc]

ftp://ftp.pbone.net/mirror/rpm.nyvalls.se...-1thac.i586.rpm

http://rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/search.p...ubmit=Search+...

http://rpmseek.com/rpm-pl/inkscape.html?hl...cape:PN:0:0:0:0

 

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&as_...in%C2%A0results

[banjo]

Thanks for the pointers.

 

I did find RPM's for inkscape, but I have had lousy luck installing just any

old RPM's on my 9.1. It usually drops me right into Dependency Hell.

So I was looking for something that was built for the tools that exist

on 9.1. I am guessing that if I don't have the right stuff to compile inkscape

0.40, I probably don't have the right stuff to install it either.

 

So, the question is, how far back do I go to find one that will work?

 

Maybe I will just download source tarballs until I find one that will

configure on my system.

 

I will poke around and see if I can get any of this to work.

 

Thanks again.

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

[banjo]

Well, I have to take some of it back.

 

I just ran Sodipodi again, and I must have clicked a magic sequence

or something (I don't know what it was) and the gradients came back.

 

This is the strangest tool.

 

Is there a user manual for this thing anywhere?

 

I also took a look at the tons of inkscape RPM's and did not find one that

I dare to install. Most are for 10.0 and above.

 

The search goes on.

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

[coverup]

xfig still stands above the crowd, after I tried KDE equivalents, sodi and the rest.

 

Usually it comes with XFree86 and other GNU stuff, but may be not installed by default.

[banjo]

OK I am figuring some of this sodipodi stuff out.

 

My gradients went away because I had no objects selected.

Duh.

 

When I select an object, the gradient for that object shows up in the dialog.

 

Yay.

 

I have the gradient Apply to: field set to Selected Objects because I want

to apply gradients to individual objects after they have been drawn.

 

There is a trick to changing the colors in the gradient for a selected object

though. The color chooser is posted from the Fill Settings box to allow

changing the colors of the gradient. Once that has been done, it is necessary

to erase the color chooser prior to selecting a new object. If you don't do

that, it remains stuck on the previous object.

 

It is not necessary to erase the Fill Settings dialog. That just follows

whichever object is selected. The color chooser must be invoked again

for each selection.

 

This is inconsistent behavior, but that is what it does.

 

Somebody must have gone through this before and figured out how the

program works. It will take me two lifetimes to try all the combinations

of button clicks and menus to reverse engineer the program.

 

I will continue to look for a buildable version of inkscape to try it out.

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

[bvc]

I also took a look at the tons of inkscape RPM's and did not find one that

I dare to install. Most are for 10.0 and above.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

rpm -ivh --nodeps

or worse case

rpm -ivh --nodeps --force

 

it'll either work or not, it's just an app, not the OS

[iphitus]

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/inkscap...86.rpm?download

 

try that rpm

it's a static build, which means most of its dependencies are compiled into the package

[SoulSe]

Isn't Inkscape on any of the urpmi sources?

 

I would check, but don't have a Mandy box to do it on.

[banjo]

Thanks for all the suggestions.

 

I do not mean to rag on sodipodi. For the most part it seems to work OK,

the problem being that I just don't know how to work it. I have been

designing and programming GUI's for industrial equipment for 20 years,

and it is still true that the manual is half of the job. No matter how elegant

the GUI is, people need some guidance on how to use it. It is not possible

to create a totally self-evident user interface.

 

That said, I give a huge thanks to the folks who write these applications

and make them available for us to use. I also extend a suggetion that

the FM is still WAY important. If I could write such a thing, I would give it

a go.

 

However........

 

I went out to tldp.org once to see if I could help by writing manuals.

I could not figure out all the technology that they require in order to

write the FM.......... I was totally lost in the alphabet soup! :o

 

I also would need to know how to work the program if I were to write the

manual on how to work the program.......... which would require that I

have a manual to figure it all out............... :D

 

So, thanks to all for the suggestions. My search goes on in multiple directions.

 

xfig is new to me. I will go research.

 

I downloaded the static inkscape RPM and will see where that goes. I did

not realize that people did static links any more. What a concept! A whole

program included in the executable! Next thing you know we will be writing

programs that are small enough to fit into RAM.

 

As for the urpmi sources, I have not updated mine to look at the online

sources. That is because I just recently got broadband and I have not

found the time to go do that. When I was on dialup, there was no way

that I would send this thing to look out on the net for updates and programs.

It could easily cost me the second half of my life if it ever found anything

and tried to download it. So, my sources are still stuck on the CD's

 

I did go out to the recommended sites, official, contrib, and plf and found

nothing about inkscape there..... perhaps I was not looking in the right

places. plf seems to have disappeared.

 

Well, I wrote a book again.

 

Thanks to all for the help.

 

This board is the best.

 

Linux rocks!

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

[banjo]

I went out to sourceforge.net and looked up inkscape to see what

rpm's are there. I downloaded some of the different versions, and

tried to install. Here is a list of the packages that I downloaded and

what I got for dependencies:

 

# ll

total 22076

-rw-rw-r--    1 brian    brian    1871421 Jan  1 12:46 inkscape-0.37-2.mdk90.i686.rpm

-rw-rw-r--    1 brian    brian    2897053 Jan  1 12:38 inkscape-0.38.1-1.mdk91.i586.rpm

-rw-rw-r--    1 brian    brian    4124166 Jan  1 12:42 inkscape-0.39-1.mdk91.i586.rpm

-rw-rw-r--    1 brian    brian    8371743 Jan  1 08:48 inkscape-0.40-1.static.i386.rpm

# rpm -ivh inkscape-0.40-1.static.i386.rpm

error: failed dependencies:

        gtk2 >= 2.4.0 is needed by inkscape-0.40-1

# rpm -ivh inkscape-0.39-1.mdk91.i586.rpm

error: failed dependencies:

        libsigc-1.2.so.5  is needed by inkscape-0.39-1

# rpm -ivh inkscape-0.38.1-1.mdk91.i586.rpm

error: failed dependencies:

        libsigc-1.2.so.5  is needed by inkscape-0.38.1-1.mdk91

# rpm -ivh inkscape-0.37-2.mdk90.i686.rpm

error: failed dependencies:

        libsigc-1.2.so.5  is needed by inkscape-0.37-2.mdk90

#

 

Is there an easy way to resolve these? It seems that the versions that

are packaged for mdk91 are still missing an upgrade of libsigc.

I have libsigc-1.0.so.0.0.0 in /usr/lib. Is this related to libsigc++?

 

Any ideas? I am confused.

 

Thanks

Banjo

(_)=='=~

[bvc]

ML-9.1 has

gtk+2.0-2.2.1-2mdk

libsigc++1.0-1.0.4-5mdk

 

ML-9.2 still has the same

libsigc++1.0-1.0.4

 

ML-10.0 was when libsigc++1.2 was included

 

ftp://ftp.proxad.net/pub/Distributions_Li.../Mandrake/RPMS/

libsigc++1.0_0-1.0.4-7mdk.i586.rpm

libsigc++1.0_0-devel-1.0.4-7mdk.i586.rpm

libsigc++1.0_0-examples-1.0.4-7mdk.i586.rpm

libsigc++1.2_5-1.2.5-5mdk.i586.rpm

 

Easy way? Depends on how you look at it. If you want to maintain a pure 9.1 sys then no, there's not. Otherwise, point urpmi to the 10.0 mirror, let urpmi resolve deps to get what you need and change urpmi back to 9.1.

[banjo]

WOO HOO!

 

I have inkscape running!

 

I did some research on libsigc and found the dependencies for ver 1.2.5, which are:

 

Requires

 

* /sbin/ldconfig

* /sbin/ldconfig

* libc.so.6

* libgcc_s.so.1

* libm.so.6

* libstdc++.so.5

 

This is from

http://at.rpmfind.net/z1/opsys/linux/RPM/m...-5mdk.i586.html

 

Since this list is short, I looked for all of these libraries in /lib and /usr/lib.

The were all there already, so I took a chance and installed libsigc++1.2_5-1.2.5-5mdk.i586.rpm

 

That went just fine, so I then installed inkscape-0.39-1.mdk91.i586.rpm, which also

seems to have gone fine. That was the highest level rev. that I found that was

complaining only about libsigc.

 

And now inkscape runs.

 

Thanks to all for the help. I don't know what I would do without this board.

 

The tool looks very much like sodipodi so far, so I will go try it out and see if I

can work it better.

 

Thanks again.

 

Linux rocks!

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

 

P.S.

( I suppose I ought to make sure that my system will still reboot before I celebrate......

Last time I messed with the system, I celebrated prematurely and my system was

actually so broken that it wouldn't reboot..... :o )

[bvc]

I don't like sodipodi. I don't know why....inkscape just feels right. Hope it works for ya!

[banjo]

One final word on this topic before I leave it.

 

Inkscape seems to work fine. It is just what I was looking for.

The GUI is a lot easier to use than Sodipodi, and the program is

constantly being improved, whereas Sodipodi appears to be

kinda stuck...... and Inkscape is real Open Source.

 

I may be back later to open up a new topic on updating my GTK to

2.4 so that I can update to version 0.40 of inkscape. But for now I am

going with what I have.

 

Thanks again to all the great folks on this board for pointing me to the

right places.

 

Linux rocks!

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~