With the release of Inkscape 0.46 approaching, we were contemplating the idea of releasing an experimental version based on (i.e. which does not require X11). In addition, the support for OS X fonts is quite poor in the X11 version and I was hoping that things may be better with the native version of Cairo, Pango, and GTK.
I still used MacPorts to compile Inkscape dependencies but created a local repository with the most recent version of many ports. In the end I used:
- cairo +atsui+no_x11+pdf+quartz
- gtk2 +quartz
- gtkmm
- pango +no_x11
The compilation was straightforward but I did not bother to try bundling Inkscape as an OS X application at this point (it fails), so I did not use the --enable-osxapp configure option. The end result is this one:
The main issues are display speed, lack of keyboard shortcuts reminders in the menus (and they work with Control “⌃” not Command “⌘”), and absence of Inkscape’s dynamic menus (the effects menu is empty while effects run perfectly well and can be found by the help system which is showcased in the screencast above).
The biggest piece of news is that font support was indeed much better in this version than in the X11 one. I will try doing an X11 build with the same versions of the libraries and see how it runs. However, it seems that things are coming along quite nicely on the native side, and that “going native” will probably be the miracle cure for many of the small illnesses Inkscape currently suffers from on OS X.
Thanks for watching.
Dude, awesome. Great video, especially the musical accompaniment =) Thanks for all your work on this port. I’ve been building simple web graphics in keynote for awhile now, because inkscape in OSX is too painful. The cure seems to be in sight.
Try the new builds on sourceforge or modevia, they are probably better. At least I work with those daily and don’t find them to be “painful”. They’re Leopard only for now though. Oh! and chhh, 0.46 is not officially out yet, so don’t tell anyone.
Are you able to compile you’re success into a Universal Binary? That would be great to see (and use.)
Greetings, Gruni
I haven’t tried it yet but the latest build of Inkscape was made Universal by compiling it against universal versions of the libraries in MacPorts. So, from there, going from universal to universal + native should not be too much of a problem.
The real issue is distribution since, at the moment, the native build is not packaged in an app bundle.
Hey, That look very promising. I think once you get Command assigned and the keyboard shortcuts in place, this will be a lot more acceptable to Mac users who don’t want to deal with X11 conventions. Great work. And good points on my blog btw.
Thanks!
Jon
it’s very nice, i’m trying it right now!
even if it’s not really packaged you could have just zipped it to easy download
anyway if you dislike the X11 shorcut you can place an .xmodmap in the home dir containg
keycode 63 = Control_L
keycode 60 = Alt_L
keycode 66 = Alt_L
clear mod1
clear Control
add mod1 = Alt_L
add Control = Control_L
to have the same shortcuts as mac
Indeed I use the xmodmap trick you mention. The final goal, however, would be to get that out of the box in Inkscape, so that people don’t have to mess with the xmodmap.
As for the packaging, the problem is not to produce a dmg vs. a zip, it is really that the binary compiled this way depends on libraries that are in /opt/local on my system (the MacPorts path). Assuming that I can make a zip of that, when you would unzip it on your machine, it would overwrite all data you may have in these locations and you’ll be mad at me, wouldn’t you ;)
So the only way right now is really to compile it on your system. It has been a long time since I last tried and things may have improved significantly. I hope you have good results.
It has been over an year since this article was written. Lot of packages have been updated.
First of all Macports 1.7 was released
Cairo is on 1.8.6
Gtk2 is on 2.14.7
Gtkmm 2.14.3
Pango 1.22.4
Can you do a take 3 of this article.
thanks
Hello there :) I am also for “Take 3″ :-)
I am also for take 3.