Inkscape On Ubuntu

A new addition to Ubuntu is Inkscape, a drawing program that has similar features to popular drawing applications like Illustrator, Freehand, and Corel Draw. Inkscape allows users to create illustrations that works best for all professional print and electronic projects while maintaining W3C compliant XML, SVG, and CSS2 standards. Like many other of the popular drawing applications Inkscape uses nodes, curves, lines and shapes together to create a finished product. Inkscape contains all of the industry standard tools you would expect from a drawing applications and some unique tools of its' own.

Here are some useful object creation tools and features that Inkscape offers:

• Pencil tool

• Pen tool

• Calligraphy tool

• Shape tools

• Text tool

• Embedded bitmaps

• Clones

Features and tools that allow you to manipulate objects:

• Common transformation options
  

• Z-order operations

• Object grouping

• Layers

• Copying and pasting objects

Here are some Fill/Stroke options offered in Inkscape

• Color selector

• Color picker tool

• Copy/paste style

• Multi-stop gradients

• Pattern fills

• Dashed stroke options

• Path markers

• Node editing

• Convert to path

• Boolean operations

• Path simplification

• Path insetting and outsetting

• Bitmap tracing

Text options include some of the following

• Multi-line text

• Install outline fonts

• Kerning, letterspacing, linespacing adjustments

• Text on a path

Rendering options and features i found useful include:

• Fully anti-aliased display

• Alpha transparency support for display and PNG export

• Complete "as you drag" rendering of objects during interactive transformations

Inkscape has too many features to list here but as your can see it allows the creation of professional products using commonly used features.

In Ubuntu 8.04 you can select the Inkscape drawing application by clicking on the Gnome, Applications --- Graphics --

The Inkscape interface is full of tools to get the job done, start out by selecting tools on toolbar to the left.