Difference between revisions of "/English"

• It can do almost everything that CorelDraw or Adobe Illustrator can do.
• It enables you to create drawings and save them in a variety of formats.
• You can use these illustrations in your presentations, documents, for Desktop Publishing, etc...

Inkscape may be used under LINUX, WINDOWS and MacOSX, too.

However, the shortcuts described in this tutorial will be valid only on PCs.

There are no pre-requisites for using this tutorial.

1. One is the slide-interface, just like this one.

I shall use slides to introduce a section and to give explanations.

This is where we draw.

To access the tutorials, go to Help >> Tutorials and choose a tutorial to view.

The tool-tip tells you what that tool can do.

All menu items in the “Help” menu except “tutorials” and “About...” require an active Internet connection.

Please visit http://tavmjong.free.fr/ INKSCAPE/MANUAL for online help.

As we do this, we shall become familiar with the Inkscape interface and also learn a few other basics.

Ubuntu Linux users can launch Inkscape by clicking on Applications >> Graphics >> Inkscape. Make sure that you have installed Inkscape using the Synaptic Package Manager beforehand.

Maximise the Inkscape interface.

Make the screen larger, as demonstrated in the beginning of this tutorial. You may also maximise it if you wish.

An empty canvas or page of the default size is presented to you.

Zoom in to the canvas by entering 100 into the zoom level box and press ENTER.

(A small assignment)

• Pause this tutorial now and start Inkscape.
• Once you have started Inkscape, maximise the Inkscape interface, if it is not already maximized.
• Also zoom the canvas to 100%.
• When you have done this, come back to the tutorial and resume play by clicking the “play” button.
• In fact, after each step of the tutorial, you can try out that step.

Point to the Title Bar and then to the Menu Bar.

Point to the Commands Bar.

Below the Title Bar of the window, we have the Menu Bar.

The Commands Bar comes below that.

The Tool Controls Bar gives you the different options for the current tool. This section changes with the tool chosen.

Show how the selector tool is chosen.

We choose a tool from the toolbox by clicking on it.

By default, the selector tool is active. The selector tool is the top-most tool in the toolbox.

Choose the rectangle tool. Indicate the Tool Controls Bar when this tool is chosen.

Now I choose the rectangle tool.

Notice how the Tool Controls bar changes when the rectangle tool is chosen.

Click on the selector tool. Indicate the eight selection handles.

Show how to reshape the rectangle using any of the selection handles.

Ctrl+drag a corner handle of the rectangle.

Once the rectangle is drawn, click on the selector tool.

You will find 8 arrows around the rectangle.

Click and drag any of these arrows to re-size the rectangle.

If we drag a corner arrow while holding the Ctrl key down, as I am doing now, the object is scaled proportionately i.e. the length to breadth ratio remains the same while the rectangle size can be increased or decreased.

Move the rectangle to some new location.

You can move the rectangle anywhere on the canvas, or outside the canvas, by clicking and dragging it when the cursor looks like this.

I am entering 360 for length and 105 for height.

Remember to press the “ENTER” key on the keyboard after you enter the values.

Hold the Shift key and draw another rectangle from the centre outward

If we hold the Shift key while we draw the rectangle, it is drawn from the centre outward.

If you click on the canvas anywhere outside the rectangle, the rectangle becomes “unselected”. When an object is “unselected”, you don't see the arrows.

Delete the selected rectangle and select and delete the square, leaving the required rectangle.

The rectangle can be deleted by selecting it and pressing the 'delete' button on the keyboard.

That is what I am now doing to these two figures that I drew earlier.

The outline is generally referred to as “stroke”.

Show the eight arrows with the mouse.

Remember that to do anything to an object, we must select it first.

If the 8 arrows are seen, it is selected, otherwise it is not.

Click on the yellow swatch in the colour palette.

With the left mouse button, click on the colour yellow in the colour palette.

The rectangle gets filled with the colour yellow.

In another tutorial, we shall see other options for filling a closed area.

Set the stroke to dark red by right-clicking on the dark red colour swatch in the colour palette.

Choose “set stroke” from the pop-up that appears.

We also want to change the size of the stroke.

To set the colour of the stroke to a dark red, select the rectangle if it is not already selected. Then click on the dark red colour in the colour palette with the right button of the mouse (right-click).

From the pop-up that appears, choose “set stroke”.

Show the dockable window. Indicate the tabs of the dockable window.

Choose the “Stroke Style” tab and enter 4 for “Width”.

A dockable window appears on the right of the Inkscape interface.

This window has several tabs.

Choose the tab which says “Stroke style”.

Set the width of the stroke to 4 pixels.

Then open it by clicking on the iconified window and then iconify it again.

For this click on the little triangle at the top right corner.

To see the window again, click on the icon.

When we do not need the window, we may iconify it.

I am iconifying the Fill and Stroke dockable windows now.

Show the square nodes.

Show the circular node.

Press the Ctrl key and drag the circular node and round the corners.

When you do this, two square nodes appear at two opposite corners of the rectangle.

And a circular node appears on one corner of the rectangle.

Now, press the Control key on the keyboard. Then click and drag the circular node vertically downwards, till the corners of the rectangle become rounded, as required.

Then enter the values as required in the tool controls bar.

The two radii are denoted by Rx and Ry.

Enter 15 pixels for both and press ENTER.

To do this, select the zoom tool. Then click and drag a marquee around the yellow rectangle.

Click inside the rounded rectangle.

The text I-beam will appear.

Type “INKSCAPE” in uppercase.

From the left side of the Tool Controls bar, select “Arial Rounded MT Bold” as the font.

From the text-size drop down, select 56 as the font size.

Click on black colour in the colour swatch to make the text black.

Move the text into position.

Resize the text as required.

Notice that the text is surrounded by the selection arrows.

If the text is not already black, make it black by clicking on the black colour swatch in the colour palette.

Click and drag within the text to move it into position.

Next click and drag the arrows around the text to make it the size we want.

For creating the shadow, we need to duplicate the text.

Right-click on the text and choose Duplicate.

This creates a duplicate of the text which sits exactly above the original text.

Nudge the selected text while holding the ALT key, 3 times to the right and 3 times to the left.

To do this, first select the text using the selector tool.

Then hold the ALT key and click once again.

Now, move the text slightly down and to the right.

Do this by pressing the ALT key and using the DOWN and RIGHT arrow keys - 3 times down and 3 times to the right.

With the text still selected, click in the opacity text box and enter 30 for the opacity value

Select the text, if it is not selected.

This is the opacity text box.

It is at the left of the status bar at the bottom of the Inkscape interface.

Click on it and type in 30 for the opacity value.

• To save the document, either choose File >> Save or press Ctrl+S.
• By default, Inkscape saves graphics in the SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) format.
• SVG is an open standard widely supported by different graphic software.
• Besides SVG, Inkscape can save in several other formats. Some of these formats are
  • portable document format (.PDF),
  • encapsulated postscript (.EPS),
  • portable network graphics (.PNG),
  • windows metafile (.WMF), etc.

To save it in another format or under a different name, choose File >> Save As... or File >> Save a copy... There are keyboard shortcuts for these options, too.

Choose File >> Save, enter “inkscape graphic” in the File Name text box in the dialog that appears. Click Save.

Close the document by choosing File >> Close.

For this, choose File >> Save.

Enter the name you want to give it in the File Name text box. I will name it as “inkscape graphic” and click on “Save”.

Close the document using File >> Close.

Please note that if this is the only Inkscape document that is open, Inkscape quits when you choose Close.

In this tutorial we learnt –

• What is Inkscape
• The INKSCAPE interface
• The Menu, Title, Command, Tool Controls Bars
• Using the RECTANGLE TOOL to draw a RECTANGLE
• Setting the FILL and STROKE
• Making the ROUNDED CORNERS
• Putting the TEXT into place
• Creating the SHADOW of the TEXT
• Saving Files and File Formats

Funding for this work has come from the National Mission on Education through ICT, launched by MHRD, Government of India.

For more information, please visit

http://spoken-tutorial.org/NMEICT-Intro.

This brings us to the end of this tutorial. This is Dr. Basil Koikara from Don Bosco College of Engineering, Guwahati saying Goodbye and Thank you for watching.