I think you, “Bill”, are a spambot.

* What about offset / linked offset (see Inkscape). This grows a new shape x pixels outside/inside the selected shape.

* More complicated but very cool would be an effect that filled with a gradient that matched the shape. For example, if I had an “S” shape, linear gradients don’t follow the curve of the “S”. This usually has to be done manually by creating a smaller S inside (using offset above) and then blurring it. This doesn’t exist in Inkscape yet, but is much needed.

* Something like Inkscapes new spiro paths would be cool (thicker in the middle, to thin at the end).

Naturally, I’ve asked for the hardest stuff first. You *did* tell us to ask!

Seeing interesting new art tools appear on my machine keeps my motivation to create artwork up!

Let me know if there’s any way I can help further. For my part, I’ll just say that it’s great getting to hear about what’s actually happening “behind the scenes”. Commit logs usually look like another language that I don’t understand, so blog posts like this are like gold.

Shift+Click: Clicking to fast might result in a double click, which will activate the “native” tool for the clicked shape.

And thanks for your kind words, your feedback is also a valuable contribution. Keeps my motivation up.

I’ve gone and filed bugs with some more detailed descriptions and occasionally ideas how these could be implemented. I also looked and, yes indeed, Karbon *does* save to different file formats! Don’t know how I missed this (probably just so used to the fact that Inkscape *doesn’t*!) Nice work!

Shift+click seems to work well, too… sometimes. If you click too fast it seems to change into edit path mode. Maybe the time for two clicks to change to edit mode could be reduced, or this could be ignored when shift+clicking. It also seems to not work if you already have a large object selected behind the object you’re clicking on.

Anyway, using Karbon more, I’m really impressed with how its coming. Already I see a couple of things that I wish were in Inkscape (single curve calligraphy editing, multi format file export, a real layer view with individual objects!)

I just wish I could magic up some trained packaging monkeys so I could give you feedback on the dev version of 2.1! Anyway, thanks again for working on this. Karbon is one of the projects I’m really looking forward to using once some of the current patches make their way down the line. It’s looking fabulous!

1. fast tool switch:
This makes sense. I have to see if the middle mouse button is not used that much already, otherwise we would have a problem.

2. Clipping/Masking
This particular feature is not yet implemented in Karbon/KOffice. Hopefully will come in the near future.

3. Select under
Is already implemented, use Shift + Click to select next shape behind the currently selected shape.

Bonus items:

1: Dynamic line width:
Well that is heavy, as none of the rendering engines do have support for this. And it is not something you can easily save to SVG/ODF, so that is probably the reason the Inkscape guys don’t like this. This will not work with a normal path shape. But I can imagine having a special shape which then would emulate the dynamic line width with fill, similar to the calligraphy tool/shape.

2. Export to different image formats:
I think this should already work. Karbon can export to PNG, from there krita export filters should be able to “kick” in and convert to different bitmap formats.

Usability issues:

1. Import raster image just like import graphics
Yeah this seems like a good idea.

2. Toolbars as docks.
I don’t think this is possible.

And yes filing these as bugs/wishes is certainly a good idea, so I can find them all in one place.

1. *** Fast switch between pan and edit with middle mouse button. Simple but vital. Something like middle mouse button to quickly pan around the image, only until you release middle mouse button. This is how both Gimp and Inkscape works and it makes working super fast if you don’t need to take your jand off the mouse or keep clicking to go back to the edit tool you were on before. I do a lot of “Move. Small edit. Move. Small edit. Move. Small edit.” Having to keep pushing space and then click on my edit tool then push space makes this very slow. Much better is move with MMB. Edit with LMB. Move with MMB. etc. Photoshop works in this way too, but using space instead of MMB. It’s still good, but not as good as being able to do everything with only one hand on the mouse. So to wrap up: MMB switches to pan *and* switches back to the previous tool when released.

2. Clipping / masking. The intersect path tools get close-ish. If I want to use 1 shape as a mask for another I can choose both and do “Intersect path”. What happens when I want to edit just shape 1 so it reveals more of shape 2 though? There doesn’t seem an equivalent of set / release mask in Inkscape.

3. Select under. Often you don’t want to select the shape that happens to be on top. Inkscape has you hold Alt and click to cycle through selecting objects underneath. Obviously this doesn’t play well with Kwin which uses alt to drag a window. Maybe something like ctrl+shift would work (if it’s not used already.)

BONUS ITEMS:
Ok, these are the items I *wish* were in Inkscape but dev’s don’t seem to want, so these aren’t really “I miss these from Inkscape” because they aren’t there.

1. *** Ability to edit path widths on a per node basis (and have the width interpolated between the nodes). Look at any hand drawing / cartoon. Drawings *constantly* change the width of lines. Not being able to thicken and taper lines is crazy. Having to manually move and edit a gazillion nodes just to change a lines width along a curve is crazy. This concept seems to be ad odds with many programmers concept of a line as being a pure mathematical algorithm rather than a line drawn by a hand using various angles / pressures. Please. Please. Please. I’ve been desperate for this for years.

2. Ability to export to different bitmap formats. I still don’t get why Inkscape refuses to support exporting to Jpeg ( /PGF / TIFF / GIF / Anything but PNG). I love PNG, but it’s a pain to constantly have to export, then open in another app and save as a jpg.

MINOR USABILITY:
1. Import graphic looks like you can’t import a raster image… Yet if you click on add shape -> image you can do just that. Why not put image formats in the “Import graphic” dialogue, and if it’s raster, do the exact same thing that insert shape -> image does now?

2. Would be nice to have the toolbars as docks too, so we can mix other docks in the same positions. I keep wanting to put the add shape dock next to the file / edit toolbars. I can put it under, but it wastes a lot of space.

*phew* Well you asked! I really should put all these in wishlist items at bugs.kde.org. Let me know if this would be worth enough to you to warrant doing.

Cheers