A to 100.
(For some reason the value of A is represented as a percentage
from 0 to 100,
although R, G and B
are represented by values from 0 to 255.)
Edit menu. It is sometimes
convenient for making changes that might be awkward using the GUI,
or for examining the details of how the drawing has been
constructed. For example,
the details of how paths are encoded are given under
Path data
in the SVG specification.
- SVG and the Web chapter of Bah’s manual
- Bah’s test page
- Bah’s SVG Web-browser test
- Bah’s blog post on SVG Buttons in HTML (2011 Feb 25)
- JavaScript polyfills can be used to implement SVG features that are supported by Inkscape but not yet supported directly by Web browsers; for example, Bah’s mesh polyfill
- Raphaël JavaScript library for developing Web-based vector-graphics widgets; latest commit dated 2016 Nov 11 as of 2017 Jan 15
- The .svg file
can be included in a Web page with code like
<object type="image/svg+xml" data="name.svg" width="500" height="400"> Alternative content </object> - For the graphics to scale nicely to the requested size,
make sure that the root
svgelement in the .svg file contains a viewBox attribute. Inkscape does not normally create aviewBoxattribute, but one can be added using the built-in XML editor. (See Bah’s Positioning SVG.) - An SVG drawing can be used as a link inside an
aelement by using<img>rather than<object>(see Bah’s The <img> Tag). It is also possible to define links within the SVG itself.
As of version 0.92 there are ‘live path effects’ to
fill the space bounded by separate open paths:
create a path with a fill attribute
and then do .
In the dialogue box that comes up, click on the plus sign and
in the pop-up list select either
or (the latter being for
just two strokes). That path becomes the ‘container’.
Then, one path at a time, select a path that you want
to use as a boundary; do ;
select the container path; and click on the
icon in the dialogue box.
The individual boundary lines can be reversed as necessary, using
check boxes in the dialogue, to get the desired effects.
The stroke styles of the boundary paths and of the container path
can be set independently. If the container path has a stroke
attribute, then with
the fill area is completely enclosed by strokes,
while with
the container’s stroke just joins the end of the first path
to the start of the second path (red strokes in the figure on the right).
(In response to my
erroneous bug report in 2017, the Fill between strokes
path effect was enhanced within a few weeks
to optionally also join the other two ends of the two strokes.
This wasn’t actually released until 2020 May 9.)
Neither Inkscape nor the SVG specification itself supports regions with
shared boundaries (see thread from 2013 May).
A partial work-around (thanks to Alejandro Castillo for the clue)
is to create two copies of the shared
boundary and then edit the nodes on both copies at the same time.
For example, to create the image on the right I did the following:
- Create paths A, B and C, using to get the nodes where they touch to match exactly.
- Use and to make path D as a copy of path C, and then do on one of them so each one has a direction that’s consistent with either A or B.
- Use to combine paths A and C into a closed path, and paths B and D into a closed path, so fills can be specified.
- To move a node on the shared boundary, simultaneously select both path A+C and path B+D, then use rubber-band selection to select the desired node in both path C and path D. There’s a bug that causes the selected nodes to only be highlighted when the mouse hovers over them. The nodes can be moved simultaneously using either the mouse or the keyboard. It doesn’t seem to be possible to move their handles simultaneously using the mouse; to move them simultaneously using the keyboard, the keystrokes to Scale handle do not work as expected for me (Inkscape 0.92) but the keystrokes to Rotate handle do work.
)
to unset the colour of the item that was cloned,
so it is undefined in the clones and can
be set independently.
(The tooltip says ‘so it can be inherited’,
which doesn’t make sense to me.)
One way is to use
in the Text tool. This works nicely with letters and numerals, but
not so nicely with other characters.
Whether it works or not depends on the font.
For example, I can superscript a comma with the Linux Libertine G font
but not with other fonts that I’ve tried.
Another way is to use the xy and xy icons that are in the toolbar when the Text tool is active. This method seems to work regardless of the font.
The two methods don’t mix well, and the glyphs used are not the same.
- To draw analytical curves like sines and exponentials, use .
- There’s an extension to draw charts in Inkscape, available as in version 0.92
- To make arrow heads (and other line markers) the same colour as their line, select the line and use . This is no longer present as of version 0.91 and should be unnecessary.
- Other available extensions
- Beginning of my collection of symbols: electrical; electrical, mechanical & acoustical circuit elements
- Public-domain Wikipedia Electrical symbols library.svg
- fsmMLK’s circuitSymbols extension, among others.
- To be able to import EPS files, see
What formats can Inkscape import/export?.
Importing EPS files has sometimes resulted in problems. The method that Inkscape uses is defined byeps_input.inxin/usr/share/inkscape/extensions/(c:\Program Files (x86)\Inkscape\share\extensions\on my Windows 7 machine) or~/.inkscape/extensions/. At various times it has used different converters: gs, pstoedit, ps2pdf. If problems occur, a workaround may be to just manually use one of these converters to produce a.svgfile. We recently (2012 Aug 7) had good luck with pstoedit.
As of 2022 Mar 15, How to open EPS files in Windows has instructions for usingps2pdf, part of Ghostscript. - UniConvertor can be used by itself or from within Inkscape to permit the reading of CorelDraw files. Once Inkscape 0.47+ and UniConvertor 1.1.5 have been installed, running UniConvertor’s ‘Inkscape patch script’ integrates the two. As of version 1.1.5, UniConvertor still doesn’t import text from the CorelDraw file.
- See and
- Scripting and Interactivity (chapter in SVG 2 Editor’s Draft)
- Adding JavaScript by Tavmjong Bah
- SVG Clickmap Landmines by Steve Litt
- JavaScript code to turn a multi-layer Inkscape SVG document into a presentation; and
- an Inkscape extension to insert the script into the document and to edit the presentation’s transitions, effects, etc.