Danni Coy (rgcoy@midcoast.com.au) wrote: > Background.
>
> Ok at the moment I have 2 reasons for booting Windows on my system. One
> is a Musical sequencing package and my pro soundcard. The other is the
> lack of a descent vector art package (on windows I use a combination of
> Expression2 and flash3).
> After playing with a package called autotrace it occured to me that it
> would be not too difficult to set up a program that will allow me to
> create basic vector strokes and fills with my wacom tablet... > Paint with pencil type tool onto bitmap(ie one bit per pixel) Convert
> this to a vector at the end of each stroke....
You might want to look at sketch and sodipodi. Maybe you'll find what
you are looking for. But both have IIRC no explicit tablet support.

I do not like the work flow of either of the programs you mentioned, they do not currently support any type of artistic stroke that can be controlled via wacom.

The approach I intend to use is a hybrid of raster and vector techniques. Essentually What I want to do is have autotrace convert a bitmap image stroke by stroke rather than all at once (problem areas at the moment are where strokes overlap).... I then need to be able to display move and delete objects and purhaps change their stacking order.

These are
> Questions....
> 1) At this point I could either start on a simple stand alone app or try
> and extend an existing project like the gimp.(gimp 1.3 code seems to be
> a lot more readable). Which would be better at this point.
I am not sure. To extend Gimp with a general vector infrastructure (in
fact I am working on something like this, but progress is slow since I
am very busy with other stuff right now) a lot of work has to be done.
Starting a new project would be silly in my eyes. There are some interesting vector programs out there and the gimp is not the most obvious possible target.

Um I am not seeing anything to my liking currently.... gyve I can't get a compile of... Sodipodi's workflow is too contorted... And I find the Koffice component and sketch don't work the way I do at all. If you can tell me of any other project I would be greatful.
> 2)Is the brush code now modular enough to allow me to create a new brush
> tool for creating vector strokes. (ultimately this would be very simular
> to the pencil.

Currently this is not possible. It would be cool though...

This is planned though? soonish?
> 3) I know that dynamic text creates its own special layers... Is the
> system robust enough to allow the creation of 'vector' layers?
You can attach arbitrary data to regular layers. This is waht dynamic
text does. You can modify text rendered by dynamic text with all tools,
however, if you change the text it will get re-rendered and all changes
are lost. Of course someone could do the same with the gfig plugin.
It is planned to make this mechanism more generic. For example to have
adjustment layers or - as you intended - to have real vector layers.

I was hoping to do something that works and try something more elegant and the point where gegl is folded into the main code base... 2.O right.
> 4) Gimp already uses a library (libart?) to do raster to vector > conversions does anybody know how this compares to autotrace?
libart is used to do vector -> raster conversions and is thus exactly
the opposite thing to autotrace :-)
It is mainly used to convert bezier-curves to selections.
Thanks for your input
Danni