NoStarchPress sent us in the newly released “Book of Inkscape“, written by Dmitry Kirsanov, who is also one of the core developers of Inkscape.
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The book weighs at over 400 pages, and it has a lot of illustrations to help the reader visualize the concepts. The first part of the book uses thematic chapters, while the second part includes tutorials, command line switches, keyboard shortcut list, and even an SVG format primer.
On that first part of the book, Kirsanov is educating us from the very beginning of the concept: what are vectors, and what are its advantages and disadvantages. He later delves into who are Inkscape’s competitors, but soon goes back to the real meat, ranging his teaching from simple concepts like shapes and selections, to more complex ones, like paths and clones. Every fundamental concept of vector-based creation is discussed in the book.
I was at first concerned that a core developer wrote this book rather than an actual artist/writer, but quickly my fears faded away. Kirsanov is also a web designer, and this is not his first book. He is able to hand-out the knowledge with ease, without confusing the reader. He also has an uncanny ability to prioritize concepts and tools, and so each chapter and each section appears at the right moment in the book, while the reader is ready for it.
In fact, one interesting aspect of the book is that it doesn’t only work as an Inkscape book, but it also works pretty well as a generic “get familiar with vector creation art” kind of book. The other aspect is that the book feels both as a tutorial and a manual, rolled into one. All the menu/shortcuts/features/etc information is present as you would expect from a manual, but there are also chapters that show you step by step how to create traced art, CAD-like objects, animation, and even simple 3D scenes.
In conclusion, the Book of Inkscape is the definitive guide both if you are new to vectors, and if you’re new to Inkscape. If only a more in-depth tracing/photorealistic portrait tutorial was included too. I still have some trouble laying out the colors and shadows on a traced face in a way that feels well-painted.
Rating: 9/10
With all that added knowledge how does Inkscape stack up against its competitors?
Is it better to buy this book and use Inkscape than just buying a proprietary solution without a book?
It very much depends on tasks you usually accomplish.
All kinds of illustrations (including technical illustrations, especially in upcoming 0.47 with much better snapping) can be done in Inkscape easily.
The app doesn’t have as much polishing as proprietary competitors, but then Adobe Illustrator has quite a number of awkward solutions as well.
I use Inkscape almost everyday and it’s lovely to use. Adobe Illustrator, you can see why people need much more training, it makes life hard just for simple tasks like gradient editing.
I like the singe panel layout on the right, which has all of the options for gradient editing and such, it’s just so much easier to use. Inkscape also uses proper blur, it’s slow( you can change the preview quality) but looks very nice in comparison to Vector Feathering.
Illustrator maybe the leading vector application but it’s just hard to use, The new version of Illustrator doesn’t have easier gradient editing than Inkscape either, even though it’s made out to be some super easier way.
I haven’t seen much activity up until recently and thus I assumed that it had become abandonware like the Quark Xpress clone called Passepartout that existed not too long ago but died quickly. I really wish them the best of luck but they do need to be a lot clearer with what their goals are and giving regular updates so that people can see the project is moving in a particular direction – and maybe contributing money or time to it.
Maybe closer ties by creating a network whose focus is on an alternative to Creative Suite by projects working together so that components can be shared. A dreamweaver clone with webkit as the back end, for example.
What are you talking about??
Their communication is just fine.
http://www.inkscape.org/archive.php?lang=en&year=2009
No change log linked to that page, no roadmap, no milestones (categorised, not just lofty generalised “make it better” statements), no status progress to meet those milestones.
It is quite active, the information you are looking for are on launchpad. They are slow to fix bugs, but add feature on a regular basis. It seem than getting 0.47 out of the door is problematic, they are always pushing it forward because of bugs but the features are there. The new handdraw tool, new preview option, more dialog snapping integration, new toolbars (with new options in them), new filter and many more improvement are in.
Yep and I’m in the process of reporting a bug where it breaks Qsvg rendering saving as a svg file.
Don’t you just hate it when distributions ship snapshots in their stable releases!
That is, you don’t visit the website and you don’t read the RSS feed. Do you expect us to leave newspapers with SVN logs at your door 7 a.m. every morning perhaps?
Dude, Passepartout never was QXP clone and it didn’t quite die. 0.8 was released earlier this year, though development isn’t really active — on that I fully agree. I told ’em half a dozen of times they should update the old site or at least link to the new GNOME page, but they didn’t do it, sadly.
Are goals are mentioned on top of the main website page. Try reading them
We give regular updates. You just don’t read them out of what ever reason you have
Maybe you should actually respond to my original reply to the first person who replied to be instead of moderating me down and abusing me.
http://www.osnews.com/permalink?390741
I Google’d it and this came up:
http://www.stacken.kth.se/project/pptout/
No mention of 0.8 – it might as well not exist.
True:
http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Roadmap
So as a user one is stuck with a piece of software that is perpetually stuck in beta.
http://inkscape.org/
Where is the weekly update? “Oh, well, go to the SVN and hope that you might find something useful”. Marvelous, a project perpetually stuck in beta and a project manager who can’t be figged writing a small summery each week over what has improved and putting it on the front page.
Ah, oversensitive too, I see
You see, online discussions are possible only when one reads carefully before writing. You obviously fail to read carefully, so why do you write then?
Probably
Did we promise them? Why should we be giving them? Because of just one vocal user who is oversensitive and makes demands?
I’m not a project manager. I just happen to find some time in my busy schedule to write news a couple of times a month. But I have an idea. Maybe *you* want to take care of the website?
Let me know. As a community project we are open to people who like making decent contributions.
I have been using Inkscape for a while now and really like it.
They have a real good tutorial to follow built into the application (as an SVG)… pretty neat.
Also, this really helped me a lot too.
http://screencasters.heathenx.org/