1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
|
What Is Skencil?
===============
Skencil is an interactive vector drawing program for X (similar to XFig
or tgif). It is written almost completely in Python, an object oriented
interpreted programming language.
This is a stable release. It is quite featureful and usable, but there
are still things missing that I want in a 1.0 release, hence the low
version number.
To compile and run Skencil, you need some additional software. Have a look
at the file INSTALL to see what you need and how to install Skencil.
Skencil was originally named "Sketch" (it was renamed with release
0.6.16) and the name "Sketch" is still used is many places.
Resources:
==========
Change-Log:
See the file NEWS and Plugins/ChangeLog for plugin specific
changes
Website:
http://www.skencil.org
Mailing Lists:
Users:
http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/sketch-list
Subscription through the web interface or by sending a mail with
the word subscribe in the subject to
<sketch-list-request@lists.sourceforge.net>
Developers:
http://mail.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/sketch-devel
Bugs and Patches:
https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/skencil/
Please report bugs to one of the mailing lists or through the
bug-tracker
Features
========
Skencil already has the following features:
o Drawing primitives:
o Rectangles, with optional round corners
o Ellipses (full ellipses, arcs, pie slices, chords)
o Bezier curves (single and multi path)
o External images:
o Raster images: JPEG, GIF,...
(all types the Python Imaging Library can read)
o Encapsulated PostScript (EPS)
o Text
o All objects, including images and text, can be rotated,
scaled, sheared, etc. (all affine transformations are
possible)
o Primitives can usually have fill and line properties:
o Fill properties are patterns like solid colors,
gradients, tiled images and hatching.
o Line properties are currently a (solid) color, width,
dashes, cap and join styles and arrow heads. Patterns
instead of a single color are planned for the future.
o Special Effects and Features:
o Bezier curves, rectangles and ellipses can be used as
guides in addition to the standard vertical and
horizontal guide lines.
o Blend Groups: Automatically updated interpolations of
arbitrary objects
o Text can be converted to bezier objects. (This only
works if skencil has access to the PostScript Type 1
font files (pfa or pfb)).
o Text along a Path
o Export file-formats:
o Encapsulated PostScript
o Adobe Illustrator files
o Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)
o Import file-formats:
o XFig files (.fig) (incomplete)
o Adobe Illustrator files (.ai)
o Windows Meta File (WMF, Windows 3.1)
o Corel's CMX
o Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)
o Unlimited undo history
o User scripts
Limitations
===========
o Currently, only TrueColor visuals with depths of 15, 16, 24 or 32 bits
and 8-bit PseudoColor visuals are supported.
o Rotated and otherwise transformed text requires (as far as I know) at
least X11R6. See below for more information on fonts.
License
=======
Most of Skencil is released under the GNU Library General Public License
(see the file COPYING for details). The only exceptions are the module
Pax (in the Pax directory) and the stream filters (in the Filter
directory). See the respective READMEs for details.
Problems
========
There are some problems you may run into which can be solved by changing
Skencil's configuration or the X-server's configuration.
ImportError: No module named Image
----------------------------------
This message means that the Python Imaging Library (PIL) is not
installed correctly. Follow the instrctions in the PIL README.
Font Problems
-------------
Exception TclError: font "..." doesn't exist
--------------------------------------------
If you get a message like
Exception TclError: font "[some text with lots of hyphens]" doesn't
exist
when browsing fonts in the font dialog, the reason is probably that
Skencil tries to use fonts that are not installed in the X-server or the
font server (if you use one). Refer to the ``User's Guide'' on how to
install fonts and configure Skencil.
Cannot load '[...]'
-------------------
When Skencil tries to display the drawing, you get messages like
Cannot load 'MyFont-Bold':
no such font
This can have two reasons:
1. Skencil tries to use fonts that are not installed in the X-server.
Refer to the ``User's Guide'' on how to install fonts and configure
Skencil.
2. Your server cannot handle transformed fonts or maybe not even scaled
fonts. See the next section for details.
Transformed Fonts
-----------------
To rotate, shear or otherwise transform fonts, Skencil relies on the
capabilities of the server. This means, that the server has to be able
to understand X font names of the form
`-*-*-*-*-*--[0 0 0 0]-*-*-*-*-0-*-*'.
The `[0 0 0 0]' stands for a matrix describing the transformation (the
zeros are replaced by the coefficients of that matrix). Not all servers
support this. To find out if a server supports this run xlsfonts(1) like
this:
$ xlsfonts -fn '-*-*-*-*-*--[0 0 0 0]-*-*-*-*-0-*-*'
If your server supports this feature, a list of font names should be
printed. You will probably get an error message otherwise.
As far as I know, this syntax for transformed fonts was introduced in
X11R6.
|
