I was wondering if anyone could suggest some well suited Linux
applications for creating and manipulating vector graphics. I use
openSUSE 10.3 with KDE 3.5. I have switched from Windows where I used to
use CorelDraw. I’ve heard of Inkscape? Should I stick with that or try
something else? What about Xara Xtreme? Any help would be much
appreciated.
Hi. I use inkscape and I’m quite happy with it. Maybe you find something
else here: ‘Find Open Source Alternatives to commercial software | Open
Source Alternative - osalt.com’ (http://www.osalt.com)
I used coreldraw occasionally before switching to linux. I think xara is
more familiar, at least at a glance, but Inkscape is very interesting,
possibly more mature/better supported and with a good tutorial. Those
two are, IMHO, the easiest to migrate to and with most features (there’s
also KDE’s Karbon14, but it’s more basic, although it may suit you).
I guess your choice will depend on what features you need, so try both.
Anyway, it will be much easier than moving from corel photopaint to
gimp. That one has a steeeep learning curve.
On Wed, 2009-01-28 at 09:26 +0000, psarajce wrote:
> I was wondering if anyone could suggest some well suited Linux
> applications for creating and manipulating vector graphics. I use
> openSUSE 10.3 with KDE 3.5. I have switched from Windows where I used to
> use CorelDraw. I’ve heard of Inkscape? Should I stick with that or try
> something else? What about Xara Xtreme? Any help would be much
> appreciated.
>
>
I’ll vote for inkscape… but here’s why. It works with Linux AND
Windows. It outputs GOOD SVG that works (with text) under a browser
(that supports SVG) with links.
What I don’t like… it’s connector tool. Wish it worked as well
as Dia’s does.
We’re trying to decide on a good vector tool for drawing diagrams
for our intranet/wiki. Visio is ok… but support under wine is
iffy depending on version… and doing something automatic
on upload to convert it to something presentable on the web…
impossible. With SVG, we can display SVG for browsers that
support it and display an ImageMagick convert raster for the
rest… all done automatically on upload to the wiki.
So… is inkscape the best? Maybe not for an expert illustrator,
but for our needs… it’s the best so far.
If you are thinking of technical diagrams and can put up with an
interface that varies between the 1980s and 1990s, xfig has a wide range
of features and exports to a great many formats. Unfortunately SVG is
only in beta but all the other formats, vector and raster, are fine.