Inkscape: Guide to a Vector Drawing Program (3rd Edition) [Paperback]

Tavmjong Bah (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0137051735 | ISBN-13: 978-0137051731 | Publication Date: November 16, 2009 | Edition: 3

Inkscape: Guide to a Vector Drawing Program, Third Edition, is the guide to the Inkscape program, with coverage of versions 0.46 and 0.47. This authoritative introduction and reference features hundreds of useful illustrations.With Inkscape, you can produce a wide variety of art, from photorealistic drawings to organizational charts. Inkscape uses SVG, a powerful vector-based drawing language and W3C web standard, as its native format. SVG drawings can be viewed directly in browsers such as Firefox and Opera. A subset of SVG has been adopted by the mobile phone market. Inkscape is available free for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux operating systems. Systematic coverage of the entire Inkscape program begins with eleven tutorials ranging in difficulty from very basic to highly complex.

The remainder of the book covers each facet of Inkscape in detail with an emphasis on practical solutions for common problems.The book is filled with valuable tips and warnings about the use of Inkscape and SVG. Find dozens of Inkscape illustrations from the book in the online color supplement available at http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/.

Updated for Inkscape v0.47, this new edition includes complete coverage of new features, including updated Pen and Pencil tools with new spiro, polyline, and sketch modes; the new Eraser tool; and the new Snapping toolbar with improved snapping. Advanced topics include the use of Inkscape’s powerful tiling tool, built-in bitmap tracing, and SVG use on the Web.

Complete Coverage of New and Improved Inkscape 0.47 Features

• Live Path Effects for tasks such as adding patterns along a path while maintaining complete editability
• Over 200 pre-built SVG filters for adding textures, manipulating color, and so forth
• A tiling tool to create complex tilings with thirteen different symmetries
• Clipping and Masking objects
• An integrated spell checker
• Built-in bitmap-to-vector tracing
• The ability to export to more than a dozen graphics formats, including PDF and PostScript
• The ability to import from more than two-dozen graphics formats, including PDF, Adobe Illustrator, Coral Draw, AutoCad, and XFig Graphics
• Complete vector drawing program supporting the W3C SVG standard
• Three path-drawing tools (Pencil, Pen, Calligraphy)
• Five shape-drawing tools (Rectangles, Ellipses, Stars, Spirals, 3D Boxes)
• Linear and Radial Gradients
• Pattern fills
• Tweak Tool for fine adjustment of paths and colors
• Eraser Tool with both Vector and Bitmap modes
• Sophisticated snapping for precision drawing and aligning objects
• Extendable through scripting; over a hundred scripts included

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

 

About the Author

Tavmjong Bah is a reformed physicist living in Paris whose writing about Inkscape combines his love for technology and culture. An active member of the community,Tav is a registered Inkscape developer and has quite a few patches to his credit. His nom-de-plume is the title granted to him by the paramount chief of the Nso, a Cameroonian people.

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall; 3 edition (November 16, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0137051735
• ISBN-13: 978-0137051731
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,293,540 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not Very Comprehensive, May 14, 2010

By 

A. D. Turner (Shreveport , LA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Inkscape: Guide to a Vector Drawing Program (3rd Edition) (Paperback)

This might be a good basic guide to Inkscape but it is not the comprehensive guide that was expected. It once again falls back on referring you back to a previous section when stepping you through a tutorial instead of including those steps necessary to complete a task in the current tutorial that is being used. Some of the steps in some of the tutorials also make assumption as to the knowledge level of a person using this book as a guide. The author might understand what is being written, but the author is not the one paying to use this book.

It does not get into the nuts and bolts of the program either. Not enough detailed information is given for all of the various functions of Inkscape. A complete and total explanation, with examples, of every item in every menu is what is needed, not just what the author thinks might be important.

Not recommended for someone looking for a complete and comprehensive guide to Inkscape, recommended for someone looking for a quick guide.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great reference book. Recommend it., July 14, 2010

By 

heathenx - See all my reviews

This review is from: Inkscape: Guide to a Vector Drawing Program (3rd Edition) (Paperback)

For many of us Inkscapers who started out several years ago there were not many places to go in order to get an understanding of this application. There still seems to be a shortage even though several new tutorial sites that have cropped up since then serve to fill some of the gaps. I can't even recall if there were any published books that users could turn to back then. Although, what has seemed to have been there from the beginning is Tavmjong's evolving Inkscape manual. Not quite sure when Tav published his guide but since discovering it his guide has become quite a valuable source of documentation for many of us. It's something that I have come to rely on whenever I feel that I have forgotten a feature or needed to re-learn a technique.

I wouldn't say that Tav takes an exhaustive approach at explaining every fine detail of Inkscape but he explains what I consider are the important things by providing practical examples. It doesn't take much reading between the lines in order to grasp a feature's potential use. In addition, he throws in some tips along the way.

I might feel like I have a bit of a soft spot for Tav since I feel like he is partly responsible for teaching me how to use Inkscape and that was just me perusing the pages of his manual. There are probably quite a few of us who fiddle around with features and settings in just about any application but it's nice to know that a good reference manual exits as a companion.

Tav's guide is the number one resource that I recommend to many new users when the opportunity presents itself. I'd even recommend this book to seasoned users of Inkscape for nothing more than just having a handy reference guide to turn to.

My only gripe with this book is that I wish the images that were used were in color as opposed to grayscale. I assume that it was to keep the cost of the book down or perhaps it was just easier to print. It slightly impedes on some of Tav's tutorials. Just a minor thing really.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A solid reference book, though not without downsides, July 27, 2011

By 

Elthar - See all my reviews

This review is from: Inkscape: Guide to a Vector Drawing Program (Digital Short Cut) (3rd Edition) (Kindle Edition)

Actually, i have just read the 4th edition of this book in a digital format, which Amazon sadly lacks for sale for Kindle. The 4th edition has some improvements due to the new version of Inkscape being released since the 3rd edition were written, so i recommend using the newer book.

At the time when i read the book i had no knowledge of Inkscape, and being only slightly familiar with other vector drawing software. The book offers information on all of Inkscape's tools and the basic use of them, but instead of just telling how they work the author starts out with tutorials which include using most of the tools, so you can get a feel of them. The tutorial are written assuming you will do them in particular order, thus the later ones are mentioning the thing you did in the previous ones, but aren't telling you how to do them all over again. I don't know why other reviwers had problem with this, i am myself are greatly annoyed by the contrary - when authors write out each step again and again, even when i did them already for ten times.

Why i'm not giving the book 5 star rating is that some of the said tutorials were missing details not obvious to a complete beginner - for example, in one of the very first tutorials reader has to use a certain tool on several objects, but author fails to note that these objects must be first grouped in order for this tool to work. How am i supposed to know that if the tutorial isn't telling me that and the tool's description is placed well past all of the tutorials?
Also,the tutorials that tell you how to create a button and an animation for web include an overview of html, css and even some extensive scripting, which i don't see as a necessity for a book that is supposed to be a guide to Inkscape, not to web design or coding. I would't mentioned it if the author did not try to teach me a bunch of weird scripting instead of simple JavaScript we all use, when even this book is stating that the scripting included in it will be incompatible with Internet Explorer 9. Then why even mention it in the first place? If i am a webdesigner (and i am), i will not use something incompatible with one of the main web browsers, and even if i was a visual designer or someone else that piece of scripting still be useless and confusing to me.

If to let these slips pass this is a solid book and i would recommend it to a complete beginner or someone who wants a cheaper-than-other-books reference on Inkscape tools.