Vector Graphics / News: Recent posts

From: autotrace@freshmeat.net (autotrace@freshmeat.net)
Subject: AutoTrace 0.30 - Converts bitmap to vector graphics
Newsgroups: fm.announce
Date: 2002-04-03 11:47:12 PST

AutoTrace 0.30
by Martin Weber (http://freshmeat.net/~martweb/)
Wednesday, April 3rd 2002 14:37

About:
AutoTrace is a program for converting bitmaps to vector graphics. The aim
of the AutoTrace project is the development of a freely-available
application similar to CorelTrace or Adobe Streamline. In some aspects it
is already better. Originally being created as a plugin for the GIMP,
AutoTrace is now a standalone program and can be compiled on any UNIX
platform using GCC.... read more

Why is a library for image analysis, VXL, featured at the Vector Graphics Foundry? Think of it as input device for vector data. Most packages at the foundry are focused on the output side of the equation, the rendering of vectors to the screen once you've created or acquired them. For balance we have a few projects that are uniquely focused on extracting vector data from raster data, like AutoTrace, and now VXL.... read more

William Cheng (Bill) is the creator of Tgif, a mature vector graphic
editor for X Windows licensed under the QPL
(http://bourbon.usc.edu:8001/tgif/).

Scott: When did you start work on Tgif, and what were your reasons?

Bill: It was the late 80s, I was writing papers with LaTeX and I hated
the picture environment. I really liked MacDraw. So, I found myself
drawing figures on a Mac, export the figures into EPS, and ftp the EPS
files to my UNIX workstation to be included in my LaTeX papers. I
thought the process was crazy and started to write my own MacDraw for
UNIX.... read more

Binaries for XFree86 4.2.0 on Windows are available from http://www.cygwin.com/xfree.

No rootless mode yet. Any interested programmers please get in touch with the Cygwin/XFree86 developers. You wouldn't want the users of XDarwin (http://www.xdarwin.org) to have all the fun.

Subject: ANNOUNCE: Xpdf 1.00 - a PDF viewer for X
Date: Sat, 02 Feb 2002 01:00:39 GMT
From: Derek B. Noonburg
Newsgroups: comp.text.pdf, comp.os.linux.x, comp.windows.x

I've just released a new version of Xpdf, my Portable Document Format
(PDF) viewer for X.

Xpdf runs under the X Window System on Unix, VMS, and OS/2. The non-X
components of the package (pdftops, pdftotext, etc.) also run on Win32
systems.... read more

What follows is an e-mail interview with Bernhard Reiter and Bernhard
Herzog of Intevation, a German free software company. Bernhard Herzog
is also the author of Sketch, a vector-graphics editor written in
Python.

For more news related to free software and vector-graphics
keep your on eye on the vector-graphics foundry at sourceforge:

http://sf.net/foundry/vectorgraphics

Other links related to this article:... read more

What follows is an e-mail interview with Bernhard Reiter and Bernhard Herzog of Intevation, a German free software company. Bernhard Herzog is also the author of Sketch, a vector-graphics editor written in Python. For more news related to free software and vector-graphics keep your on eye on the vector-graphics foundry at sourceforge: http://sf.net/foundry/vectorgraphics

Scott Johnston

Subject: Re: Interview Questions
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 16:52:27 +0100
From: Bernhard Herzog
To: Scott Johnston... read more

Debrief 2001, the Open Source Maritime Analysis application has finally reached release status and is available for download from the Debrief project page,
http://sf.net/projects/debrief

Amongst the new features for Debrief 2001 are the ability to plot VPF data, sensor and narrative data, plus removal of a significant number of memory leaks.

Don't forget that you can find out more about Debrief form it's new home page at:
http://www.debrief.info

Subject: Clara OCR 0.9.8 (announce)
Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2001 19:48:56 CST
From: Ricardo Ueda Karpischek <ueda@ime.usp.br>

Clara OCR 0.9.8
---------------

Clara OCR version 0.9.8 is available. Clara OCR is designed to
OCR old books. It's available under the terms of the GPL.

Clara OCR features a GUI and a web interface. It also features a
command-line interface, but X Windows is always required both to
compile and run. The development effort is using Intel 32-bits
boxes running various Linux distributions and FreeBSD.... read more

Subject: ANNOUNCE: xpdf 0.93 - a PDF viewer for X
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2001 18:49:28 GMT
From: derekn@foolabs.com (Derek B. Noonburg)

I've just released a new version of xpdf, my Portable Document Format
(PDF) viewer for X.

Xpdf runs under the X Window System on Unix, VMS, and OS/2. The non-X
components of the package (pdftops, pdftotext, etc.) also run on Win32
systems.

Noticeable changes:

* Embed TrueType fonts in PostScript output. (Added a "-noembtt" flag
to pdftops.)
* Implement PDF 1.4 (128-bit) decryption.
* Bump supported PDF version number to 1.4.
* Text output for Simplified Chinese. [Thanks to Cheung Siu Fai.]
* Read an app-defaults file for Xpdf. Read a system-wide config file
(<prefix>/etc/xpdfrc) if ~/.xpdfrc doesn't exist.
* Accept and verify owner password; if correct, allow all actions.
* Added a "-level2sep" option to pdftops to generate Level 2 separable
PostScript. The PostScript separation convention operators are used
to handle custom (spot) colors. [Thanks to Thomas Freitag for help
on this.]
* Add support for FreeType 2 to the configure script. Warning: this
requires FT 2.0.5 or newer (see the INSTALL file for details).... read more

Tgif, the full-featured vector graphics editor from William Cheng, is now dual-licensed under its original gratis-with-restrictions license and the QPL (QT Public License). For further details:

http://bourbon.cs.umd.edu:8001/tgif/relnotes/v4.1.41.html

For other vector-graphic news, keep an eye on the Vector Graphics Foundry at SourceForge: http://www.sourceforge.net/foundry/vectorgraphics/

Linux.com interviews Lauris Kaplinsky, author of the Sodipodi vector graphics drawing program:

http://www.linux.com/enhance/newsitem.phtml?sid=93&aid=12529

For other vector-graphic related news, watch the vector graphics foundry at SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/foundry/vectorgraphics

From http://www.w3.org/2001/09/svg1-pressrelease

http://www.w3.org/ -- 5 September 2001 -- The World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C) has issued Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.0 as a
W3C Recommendation, representing cross-industry agreement on an
XML-based language that allows authors to create two dimensional
vector graphics. A W3C Recommendation indicates that a specification
is stable, contributes to Web interoperability, and has been reviewed
by the W3C Membership, who favor its widespread adoption.... read more

From http://www.w3.org/2001/09/svg1-pressrelease

http://www.w3.org/ -- 5 September 2001 -- The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has issued Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.0 as a W3C Recommendation, representing cross-industry
agreement on an XML-based language that allows authors to create two dimensional vector graphics. A W3C Recommendation indicates that a specification is stable, contributes to Web
interoperability, and has been reviewed by the W3C Membership, who favor its widespread adoption.... read more

Here is a review (in German) of six vector graphic editors: Figurine, Impress, Kontour, Sketch, Sodipodi, and Xfig

http://www.linux-user.de/ausgabe/2001/09/040-vektorgrafik/vektorzeichenprogramme-3.html

For related news, watch the vector graphics foundry: http://sourceforge.net/foundry/vectorgraphics

Here is a review (in German) of six vector graphic editors: Figurine, Impress, \Kontour, Sketch, Sodipodi, and Xfig

http://www.linux-user.de/ausgabe/2001/09/040-vektorgrafik/vektorzeichenprogramm\e-3.html

For related news, watch the vector graphics foundry: http://sourceforge.net/fou\ndry/vectorgraphics

Here is a review (in German) of six vector graphic editors: Figurine, Impress, Kontour, Sketch, Sodipodi, and Xfig

http://www.linux-user.de/ausgabe/2001/09/040

For more related news, watch the vector graphics foundry: http://sourceforge.net/foundry/vectorgraphics

Here is a review (in German) of six vector graphic editors: Figurine, Impress, Kontour, Sketch, Sodipodi, and Xfig

http://www.linux-user.de/ausgabe/2001/09/040-vektorgrafik/vektorzeichenprogramme-3.html

Subject: ANNOUNCE: ImPress 1.1b9
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2001 11:27:55 CST
From: Chris Cox
Organization: North Texas Linux Users Group
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.announce

Major changes. Full undo capability, reworked grouping (let
me know), gradient thing, vectorized text tool, progress
bar, pstoedit handles vectorizing text on the fly and
produces much better output (!) and much more...

Call pstoedit with the following flags...... read more

Subject: Data Plotting Library DISLIN 7.5
Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2001 23:17:06 GMT
From: Helmut Michels <michels@linmpi.mpg.de>
Organization: MPI fuer Aeronomie
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.announce
Followup-To: comp.os.linux.misc

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

I am pleased to announce version 7.5 of the data plotting software
DISLIN.

DISLIN is a high-level and easy to use plotting library for
displaying data as curves, bar graphs, pie charts, 3D-colour plots,
surfaces, contours and maps. Several output formats are supported
such as X11, VGA, PostScript, PDF, CGM, HPGL, TIFF and PNG.... read more

xfig 3.2.3d is out:

http://www-epb.lbl.gov/xfig/new_features.html

Looking to improve your resume with some hands-on experience with Design Patterns [1]? Want to learn more about the actual source code that inspired the book? You have two choices: dig into ET++ [2] by yourself, or join forces with the ivtools project [3] at Sourceforge, with its ready-made list of programming activities suitable for
beginner through expert.

John Vlissides [4], one of the Gang of Four [5], hacked on InterViews [6] and Unidraw [7] before joining with Gamma [8], et.al. to launch the Design Patterns movement in software engineering. Many of the examples in the book(s) are drawn from that code, code which has been continuously evolved to this day within ivtools. It is one thing to read about software, another to experience it with a compiler, debugger, and the goal of adding a feature.... read more

Looking to improve your resume with some hands-on experience with <a href="http://hillside.net/patterns/DPBook/DPBook.html">Design Patterns</a>? Want to learn more about the actual source code that inspired the book? You have two choices: dig into <a href="http://www.ivtools.org/ivtools/etplusplus.html">ET++</a> by yourself, or join forces with the <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ivtools/">ivtools project</a> at Sourceforge, with its ready-made list of programming activities suitable for beginner through expert.... read more

I just submitted a patch to the Berlin Project (http://www.berlin-consortium.org) to synch up their cvs copy of Fresco with the latest version of the sources used on the TargetJr project (http://www.targetjr.org).

Berlin is a derivative work of Fresco that used that foundation of code to create an entirely new kind of window server. If you want a replacement for X11, ignore this news item and download the other sources in their cvs repository.... read more

Subject: xfig and transfig 3.2.3d beta available
Date: 27 Mar 2001 19:09:16 GMT
From: bvsmith@epb1.lbl.gov (Brian V. Smith)
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

I have put xfig and transfig 3.2.3d *beta* on our ftp site for testing
by anyone who would like to try them out.
You can get them from ftp://epb.lbl.gov/xfig/beta

Here is a summary of the new features and bugs fixed for xfig 3.2.3d-beta1:... read more