On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 12:35 PM, Programmer In Training < pit@joseph-a-nagy-jr.us> wrote:

I was looking at the changelog for 2.7 and I still don't see GIMP moving any closer to supporting SVG (which is quickly becoming not-so-rare). I'd rather not have to go to another tool to create SVGs (I would like to move my website to exclusively using SVGs and only serving up PNGs to browsers that don't support SVG yet). The SVG Export tool does not work (I followed the directions to the "T" the last time I tried it and all it did was crash GIMP).

SVG is a vector format, not a raster format; GIMP is a raster image editor. Why should GIMP support SVG export? At least, there seems no advantage in using GIMP over using Inkscape to make SVGs, and many disadvantages.

On 12/8/09, David Gowers wrote:

Why should GIMP support SVG export?

Because jumping from one (bitmap) application to another (vector) and back is fairly normal? While I agree with you that Inkscape is a superior authoring tool for vector graphics, there is no reason why GIMP shouldn't have SVG export. Or PDF export.

@Programmer In Training (jeez, is that your real name? you know people on the Internet might have problems referring to you? ;)) As a matter of fact GEGL comes with an SVG loader and also supports a number of SVG Filters. It also has quite a interesting and extensible API for drawing paths. So in the future GIMP will at least load complex SVG files correctly.

Alexandre

On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 2:26 PM, Torsten Neuer wrote:

The only way to "fully support SVG in Gimp" would be to implement SVG graphics internally, so SVG "export" could be just native SVG without raster image conversion. However, in this case, the Gimp image format would need to include special vector layers, the Gimp itself would require SVG editing tools, a method for combining raster and vector layers in a single image, etc. It would be a whole new program inside the already existing program...

Guess what :)

http://www.mmiworks.net/eng/publications/2009/07/teaching-interaction-09.html

Alexandre

There is no non-sense that Inkscape supports some bitmap operations and also no nonsense that a bitmap applications support some vector possibilities simply because in many project, you simply need to mix vector and bitmap datas.

a logo on a photo for example : and if the logo can be kept vector that's much better. if the photo don't need any modification, yo ucan simply load it into Inkscape (except that inkscape doesn't deal with import resolution), but in the other case, it will be more comfortable to open the vector logo in Gimp.

Anyway, gimp works on vector layers since a long time and it's on a good way. SVG import has been improved in the last realease and will go on.

Just a question : text tool is a vector tool. Would you tell gimp don't need it ?

pygmee

On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 6:52 AM, Cédric Gémy wrote:

There is no non-sense that Inkscape supports some bitmap operations and also no nonsense that a bitmap applications support some vector possibilities simply because in many project, you simply need to mix vector and bitmap datas.

a logo on a photo for example : and if the logo can be kept vector that's much better. if the photo don't need any modification, yo ucan simply load it into Inkscape (except that inkscape doesn't deal with import resolution), but in the other case, it will be more comfortable to open the vector logo in Gimp.

This is certainly true. I think this level of vector support is something that will only come with a GEGL based fileformat, to make the rendering and manipulation of objects more flexible. For example, the vector-layers implementation generates pixels on a layer, which is kind of incorrect -- a vector-layer is more like a view on a particular vector object, not a layer with nominally static content. The DAG-based architecture of GEGL should allow this kind of operation to be represented in a much more sensible, and somewhat more efficient, way.

Anyway, gimp works on vector layers since a long time

Not exactly. Paths have been available for a long time; however vector layers were implemented by Henk Boom a year or so ago but haven't been merged into the main GIMP source tree yet. So vector layers are not yet available.

way. SVG import has been improved in the last realease and will go on.

Just a question : text tool is a vector tool. Would you tell gimp don't need it ?

Being capable of vector operations (GIMP) is very different from being fundamentally built around vector operations (Inkscape and the SVG file format).
It's not that vector operations cannot be useful to GIMP, it's simply that GIMP is orientated in the opposite direction, and because of this difference, it requires great care when deciding whether to implement further vector features.

There is a description of C++ "C++: an octopus made by nailing extra legs onto a dog"
That is the kind of risk involved when you attach things so fundamentally different to each other. I think one of the reasons that vector layers haven't been merged yet is this kind of issue -- the implementation can still seem a little hackish and awkward from the user's point of view.

(of course, for all I know we'll end up using the GEGL vector renderer along with a GEGL-oriented fileformat, which may render much of the vector-layers code obsolete anyway)

On 12/9/09, David Gowers wrote:

Not exactly. Paths have been available for a long time; however vector layers were implemented by Henk Boom a year or so ago

Three years ago. It was a GSoC2006 project.

Alexandre

It seems that my message has been sent several time. I don't know where it comes from, please apologize for this.

actual i don't have any idea of how vector layers have been implemented to Gimp. I guess the most important thing is not that vector property of the layer.
IMO, having vector masks (whose mask would be linked to a path) would already be a very good improvement.

pygmee