Skencil 0.6.17 review
DownloadSkencil is a Free Software interactive vector drawing appliction
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Skencil is a Free Software interactive vector drawing appliction. Known to run on GNU/Linux and other UNIX-compatible systems, it is a flexible and powerful tool for illustrations, diagrams and other purposes.
A somewhat unique (for a drawing program) feature of Skencil is that it is implemented almost completely in a very high-level, interpreted language, Python. Python is powerful, object-oriented and yet easy to use.
Here are some key features of "Skencil":
B?zier Curves
Transformed text and images
B?zier curves, rectangles and ellipses can be used as guides
Gradient fills
Blend groups
Writes EPS files
Rectangles, optionally with rounded corners
Ellipses (full ellipses, pie slices, arcs and chords)
B?zier curves (single and multi path)
External images:
o Raster images: JPEG, PNG,...
(all types the Python Imaging Library can read)
o Encapsulated PostScript (EPS)
Text (very simple at the moment)
Rectangles, ellipses and b?zier curves can be used as guides. Skencil has ordinary horizontal and vertical guide lines as well, of course.
Blend Groups: Automatically updated interpolations of arbitrary objects
Text can be converted to b?zier curves. (This works only if Skencil has access to the PostScript Type 1 font files (pfa or pfb)).
Text along a path:
User scripts
Exports Encapsulated PostScript
Unlimited undo history
What's New in This Release:
Prepare for Python 2.4:
Update paxtkinter to deal with python's Tkinter changes
The .sk file format is now the default file format in the File/Open dialog. Patch by Frank Koormann
The setup.py script works on HP-UX now. Shared libraries have a .sl extension there. Patch by Olivier Mehani (Savannah patch #3709).
Mouse-wheel support for the canvas. The mouse wheel scrolls up/down. Savannah patch #3836 by cafeine
Updated the FAQ a bit to better match the one on the web-page.
Kinyarwanda translations by Steve Murphy. The translation seems quote incomplete.
Bug Fixes:
On some systems math.atan2 raises an exception when called with two zeros. Fix one occurrence in the arrow module. Reported by Joel Biddier
Cancelling the drawing of a poly line or poly bezier with ESC resulted in tracebacks until the next mouse click. Reported by Antoon Pardon (Savannah bug #9378). Patch by Valentin Ungureanu (Savannah patch #3141).
The "Export Raster" script gives a better error message if ghostscript can't be called. Bug reported by Eric Devost
When importing EPS files, skencil didn't parse %%BeginData comments correctly. Fixed by Savannah patch #3134 by Bernhard Reiter
The svg export filter now sets the winding rule for all objects to even-odd. Savannah patch #3103 by Philippe Blayo, fixes Savannah bug #5756 by Simon Budig.
The SVG filter handles ill-formed transform specifications a bit better. The old version would hang in a regular expression match if the triling closing parenthesis of e.g. a matrix specification was missing. Bug report by Joel Biddier
The svg import filter also accepts capital Z as closepath command of a path specification as required by the SVG specification. Savannah Patch #3587 by Bernhard Reiter.
In the print dialog, when the user clicked on the file selection button and cancelled the dialog, Skencil would give an exception. This is now fixed.
The usage messge printed when the --help option is given on the command line now correctly refers to "skencil" not "sketch" anymore.
The source URL in the spec file now refers to skencil as well. It still points to sourceforge, though. Patch by Paul Dickson
The setup.py script now finds the tcl/tk libraries on OpenBSD as well (savannag bug #12046)
Already in 0.6.16, but not mentioned before: Skencil's type1 font parsing code could not cope with some type1 files -- files with no subrs or with flexes. Now it can. Bug report by Andr? Pascual
Skencil 0.6.17 keywords