/English

Title of script: Inkscape

Author: Basil S Koikara

Keywords: graphics, drawing, illustration

TUTORIAL 1 : TO LEARN SOME INKSCAPE BASICS WHILE CREATING A GRAPHIC IMAGE

Resources for the tutorial

Visual Cue	Narration
PREFACE
Slide 1	Hello everybody. Welcome to this spoken tutorial on “INKSCAPE”.
Slide 2	Inkscape is a drawing and illustration software. 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...
Show the website http://inkscape.org/download/	To download and install Inkscape on your computer, please visit the following site – http://inkscape.org/download/
Slide 3	In this tutorial I have used Inkscape version 0.48 on Windows OS. 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.
Slide 4	We shall see only two different interfaces in this tutorial. 1. One is the slide-interface, just like this one. I shall use slides to introduce a section and to give explanations.
Show the interface of Inkscape – move the mouse around the canvas	2. The other is the Inkscape interface, like this. This is where we draw.
Go to help >> tutorials and show the tutorials available in the submenu.	For more help with Inkscape, please look at the tutorials that come along with Inkscape. To access the tutorials, go to Help >> Tutorials and choose a tutorial to view.
Hover the mouse over a button in the toolbox to show the tooltip.	If you hover the mouse cursor over any button in the Inkscape interface, a tool-tip appears. The tool-tip tells you what that tool can do.
Slide 5	There is also very good online help available on Inkscape. 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.
Slide 6	In this tutorial we shall learn how to create the heading seen at the top of this slide. As we do this, we shall become familiar with the Inkscape interface and also learn a few other basics.
STARTING INKSCAPE
Show how to start Inkscape on Windows.	On Windows, we start Inkscape by clicking on Start >> All Programs >> Inkscape. 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.
Get back to the view of Inkscape on Windows. Maximise the Inkscape interface.	When we start Inkscape, the interface will be small. 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.
Enter 100 into the zoom level box and press ENTER.	The Zoom-level box is situated at the right bottom of the interface. Zoom in to the canvas by entering 100 into the zoom level box and press ENTER.
Slide 7 (A small assignment)	Here is something you could try. 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.
INKSCAPE INTERFACE
Show the bare interface, move the mouse around the interface. Point to the Title Bar and then to the Menu Bar. Point to the Commands Bar.	Inkscape has a very simple and intuitive interface. Below the Title Bar of the window, we have the Menu Bar. The Commands Bar comes below that.
Show the Tool Controls Bar below the Commands bar.	Below that is the Tool Controls Bar. The Tool Controls Bar gives you the different options for the current tool. This section changes with the tool chosen.
Show the toolbox at the left of the interface. Show how the selector tool is chosen.	On the left of the interface, there is the toolbox. 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.
Hover the cursor over the selector tool till the tool tip appears.	When we hover the cursor over the selector tool, the tool tip says “select and transform objects”. This is what we use the selector Tool for.
Indicate the how the Tool Controls Bar looks when the selector tool is chosen. Choose the rectangle tool. Indicate the Tool Controls Bar when this tool is chosen.	When I choose the selector tool, the Tool Controls Bar looks like this. Now I choose the rectangle tool. Notice how the Tool Controls bar changes when the rectangle tool is chosen.
USING THE RECTANGLE TOOL TO DRAW THE RECTANGLE
With the rectangle tool selected, draw a rectangle. 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.	We draw a rectangle by clicking the left-mouse button and dragging on the canvas diagonally, like this. 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.
Bring the cursor over the rectangle. Move the rectangle to some new location.	If you bring the cursor over the rectangle, it will appear as an arrow together with a hand. You can move the rectangle anywhere on the canvas, or outside the canvas, by clicking and dragging it when the cursor looks like this.
Enter the dimensions 360 and 105 for the rectangle, and press ENTER.	You may also set its dimensions precisely by typing in the width and height values in the Tool Controls Bar. 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 Ctrl key and draw a square. Hold the Shift key and draw another rectangle from the centre outward	It is easy to draw a square if you hold the Ctrl key while drawing the rectangle. If we hold the Shift key while we draw the rectangle, it is drawn from the centre outward.
Choose the selector tool. Click outside the rectangle and unselect it.	In general, once we have finished using a tool, we should choose the selector tool which is the default tool. 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.
Choose the selector tool and select one of the rectangles again. Delete the selected rectangle and select and delete the square, leaving the required rectangle.	To select the rectangle again, choose the selector tool and click on the rectangle again. 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.
SETTING THE FILL AND STROKE
Slide 8	We now want to fill the rectangle with the colour yellow and make its outline black. The outline is generally referred to as “stroke”.
Select the rectangle. Show the eight arrows with the mouse.	Select the rectangle using the selector tool. 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.
Show the colour palette at the bottom of the Inkscape interface. Click on the yellow swatch in the colour palette.	At the bottom of the Inkscape interface is 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.
Select the rectangle. 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 now want the stroke colour to be dark red. 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”.
Choose Object >> Fill. Show the dockable window. Indicate the tabs of the dockable window. Choose the “Stroke Style” tab and enter 4 for “Width”.	Now, choose Object >> Fill and Stroke from the menu. 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.
Click on the little triangle at the top right hand corner of the dockable window and “Iconify” the Fill and Stroke window. Then open it by clicking on the iconified window and then iconify it again.	These dockable windows may be “iconified” or minimised, 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.
MAKING THE ROUNDED CORNER
Slide 9	We shall now make the corners of the rectangle rounded.
Select the rectangle with the selector tool (if required), then choose the rectangle tool. Show the square nodes. Show the circular node. Press the Ctrl key and drag the circular node and round the corners.	Select the rectangle with the selector tool. Then choose the rectangle tool from the toolbox. 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.
Drag the node back and set the corners back to normal. Then enter the values as required in the tool controls bar.	You can also set the exact value of the radius for rounding in the Tool Controls bar. The two radii are denoted by Rx and Ry. Enter 15 pixels for both and press ENTER.
PUTTING THE TEXT INTO PLACE
Choose the zoom tool and click and drag a marquee around the yellow rectangle.	Next, we will put the text “Inkscape” into the rectangle. We first zoom into the yellow rectangle. To do this, select the zoom tool. Then click and drag a marquee around the yellow rectangle.
Choose the text tool and click in an appropriate place in the rounded rectangle and enter the text “INKSCAPE”.	Now, for the text. Choose the text tool from the tool bar. Click inside the rounded rectangle. The text I-beam will appear. Type “INKSCAPE” in uppercase.
Select the text with the text tool by clicking and dragging across the text using the text tool and set its font and size as described on the right.	Click and drag across the text with the text tool to select it for editing. 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.
Choose the selector tool. Click on black colour in the colour swatch to make the text black. Move the text into position. Resize the text as required.	Now, choose the selector tool in the tool box. 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.
CREATING THE SHADOW OF THE TEXT AND MOVING IT INTO PLACE
Slide 10	Next, we shall create the shadow for the text and move it into place. For creating the shadow, we need to duplicate the text.
Select the text and duplicate it using the right-click menu-item - Duplicate.	Select the text with the selector tool. Right-click on the text and choose Duplicate. This creates a duplicate of the text which sits exactly above the original text.
Click on the text with the selector tool. Then hold ALT and click again. Nudge the selected text while holding the ALT key, 3 times to the right and 3 times to the left.	Next, we select the text that lies below the duplicate. 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 on the black colour in the colour swatch.	If the selected text is not black, click on the black colour swatch to change its colour to black.
Show the opacity text box at the left of the status bar. With the text still selected, click in the opacity text box and enter 30 for the opacity value	Now, we shall reduce the opacity of the selected text to make it look like a shadow. 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.
SAVING FILES AND FILE FORMATS
Slide 11	Now let’s save our first drawing. 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.
Switch to Inkscape 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.	Let’s save our drawing. 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.
Slide 12	That’s all in this tutorial. Let me summarise. 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
Slide 13	Spoken Tutorial is the initiative of the ‘Talk to a Teacher’ project coordinated by http://spoken-tutorial.org. 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.

Contributors and Content Editors

Gyan