Skencil / News

• New distutils build
• Project structure is refactored as a Python 'skencil' package
• Fixes for Tk 8.5/8.6 support
• 64bit platform-related fixes
• Mixed indents are eliminated in Python source code
• UI fonts and colors import from Gtk engine is implemented
• Ruler widget reimplemented to use Xlib drawing instead Tk functionality
• Palette widget is redesigned
• Multiple fixes in Russian translation

Skencil 1.0alpha source code tarball and ready packages for 12 different distros can be found on the Skencil page of sK1 Project website.

Updated Information on the new mailinglists can be found on the mailinglist page.

Information on how to to get this package can be found on download page.

To find the packages, as always: Use the download page.

Tobias Hilbricht published a plugin which can be used to estimate colour in printouts. Check the Add-ons Page

Tobias also released new Debian packages which are now linked from the download page.

Two new cool screenshots for MacOS X have been added. Produced by Christian Ferber!

Still the Skencil Project needs more help with packaging. Debian is looking for a new package maintainer and other popular distributions like Mandriva or Ubuntu are lacking uptodate Skencil packages. Help us to bring the stable funcationality of Skencil to even more users: Lobby for nicely configured packages in your favourite distribution.

Changes since 0.6.16:

• Support for Python 2.4
• The .sk file format is now the default file format in the File/Open dialog.
• Bug fixes

See the release notes for more details. Sources are available from the download page.

• RPMS for Suse by Joel Biddier
• Debian i386 .deb by Tobias Hilbricht

The gallery section grew a waratah plant drawn by Tobias Hilbricht.

Terry Hancock released 1.0 of his unique BuildImage system, which allows Skencil drawings to be used as sources in automated build systems with several graphic targets.

The last four weeks have seen a bunch of new add-ons announced by Joel Biddier (skLaTeX), KAJIYAMA Tamito (Calendar, Equal-area projection, PolygloText) and Christof Ecker (Autoshapes). Check the Add-ons Page

Axel Thimm has added Skencil and PIL (Python Imaging Library) to his ATrpms apt / yum repository. Check the download page.

There's a new section in the gallery with drawings by Joel Biddier.

Changes since 0.6.15:

• New name: "Skencil".
• New look with new icons by Taiabati.
• Support for Python 2.3
• WMF export, Updated CGM filters (Antoon Pardon, Lukasz Pankowski)

See the release notes for more details. Sources are available from the download page.

"Bernhard Herzog's Sketch" will be renamed to Skencil. On October the 4th "Skencil" was selected as new name after a short search. The name was suggested by Frank Koormann.

Joonas Paalasmaa has done a Windows version of Skencil's development branch.

The gallery has two new drawings by André Pascual and new section with drawings by Stéphane Joly

PathStroke traces the outline of bezier path objects with a second path. This can be used to quickly draw a bezier shape and then vary the line thickness locally to get more "natural" effects.

Right now the resulting path might intersect itself when the source path has very sharp curves, overlaps itself or has edge-anchors. However, the resulting path might be used as a starting point.

Check out pathstroke.py.

(newsitem written by S. Budig)

BuildImage can help you to maintain raster images from a sketch master. It can be used like "make" to keep bitmaps uptodate regarding their vector "source".

Check out the BuildImage Tutorial.

(newsitem added by B.Reiter)

More information on the development page.