Hello,

I am an inexperienced user working my way through Tavmjong Bah's tutorials using Wolf Drechsel's unofficial build of Inkscape 0.47 for Mac PPC Tiger.

I am presently having difficulties node editing ellipses and would like to know if others are experiencing the same difficulties. I reported this as a bug at Launchpad since I can edit ellipses on Inkscape 0.46 for Mac PPC Tiger. But because of my inexperience I'm really not sure if I'm missing something.

I would appreciate hearing from other users who are "testing" this build to collaborate with.

Thank you.

Please change the title ;)

leonardo wrote:I am presently having difficulties node editing ellipses and would like to know if others are experiencing the same difficulties.

I could reproduce your issue with Inkscape 0.46 and Inkscape 0.47 on OS X 10.5.8, so it is not related to that build for Tiger PPC. Converting ellipses (not circles) to paths apparently produces different paths in 0.46 and 0.47.

~suv wrote:Please change the title ;)

this needs clarification: maybe it is time to add the Inkscape 0.47 X11 for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger (PPC) package to the official downloads from sf.net (note to myself: have to ping the osx packaging maintainers again…)

Maybe this topic is relevant to your question as well: Problem with elipse nodes. It seems that an old setting interferes with the steps of converting the ellipse and editing the resulting path.

You might want to wait until we know which setting possibly causes the error when node-editing or try to reset your preferences right away (and at the same time rename the old ones of Inkscape 0.46 so that Inkscape 0.47 doesn't pick up any wrong presets for the ellipse and node-editing tool):

One way to rename the hidden configuration folder on Mac OS X would be:

1. quit Inkscape
2. open 'Applications > Utilities > Terminal'
3. to rename the Inkscape 0.46 preferences folder, type

   Code: Select all

   mv ~/.inkscape ~/.inkscape-old
4. to rename the Inkscape 0.47 preferences folder, type

   Code: Select all

   mv ~/.config/inkscape ~/.config/inkscape-old
   Be careful not to insert any additional spaces and not to change lower/upper case spelling!
   (files and folders beginning with '.' are hidden in the default Finder windows, '~' is an abbreviation for your 'Home' folder, 'mv old-name new-name' is how you rename a file or folder on the command line)
5. launch Inkscape 0.47 and try again to node-edit curves as described in the soup can tutorial

I switched to 0.46 to finish the soup can tutorial and get more experience using Inkscape. I had completed this tutorial before on 0.46 but this time I only got as far as skewing the label text. When I selected label text path > Menu Effects > Modify Path > Add Nodes... > Maximum segment length (px) > 5.0 > Apply—I got the following notice:

Inkscape has received additional data from the script executed. The script did not return an error, but this may indicate the results will not be as expected.

The fantastic lxml wrapper for libxml2 is required by inkex.py and therefore this extension. Please download and install the latest version from <http://cheeseshop.python.org/pypi/lxml/>, or install it through your package manager by a command like: sudo apt-get install python-lxml

Not knowing how to comply with this I switched back to 0.47 to see if I could finish the tutorial only to discover that the original ellipse edit bug is gone—I must have kept clicking the wrong icons—apparently the bug was me.

When I tried to add nodes to the text path using 0.47 (Menu Extensions > Modify Path > Add Nodes... > Maximum segment length (px) > 5.0 > Apply—I again got the same message stated above. I did a search for "fantastic lxml wrapper for libxml2" and the results were for Snow Leopard and were way over my head. Is this resolvable? I would like to continue using 0.47 but due to this complication and my inexperience I am now considering uninstalling both versions and starting over with a new download of 0.46 for Mac PPC Tiger.

Having both 0.46 and 0.47 running at the same time seems to have caused the interference you mentioned. Maybe I'm not the bug. As I said earlier I was able to complete this tutorial on 0.46 using its Menu Effects > Modify Path > Add Nodes... before I installed 0.47. Is it too late to "...rename the hidden configuration folder on Mac OS X" in Terminal?

I have no experience with Terminal so I looked it up in Mac OS X Tiger Edition The Missing Manual and it looks very interesting—I will study it later. How much do I need to know about Terminal to use it with Inkscape?

I would like to know the exact steps needed to "...rename the hidden configuration folder on Mac OS X." If any steps are missing that you assume I should already know like press "return" or "enter" please state them. I would appreciate knowing all the steps you would perform to get the info into Terminal—please leave nothing out.

1. quit Inkscape

2. open 'Applications > Utilities > Terminal'

A window opened titled "Terminal —bash — 80x24"
with the following content:

"Last login: Sat Jan 16 15:08:28 on console
Welcome to Darwin!
ppp-[numbers]:~ [my name]$"

3. to rename the Inkscape 0.46 preferences folder, type

To look like this?

Last login: Sat Jan 16 15:08:28 on console
Welcome to Darwin!
ppp-[numbers]:~ [my name]$
Code: Select all
mv ~/.inkscape ~/.inkscape-old [ENTER?]

4. to rename the Inkscape 0.47 preferences folder, type

Into a new "shell" to look like this?

Last login: Sat Jan 16 15:08:28 on console
Welcome to Darwin!
ppp-[numbers]:~ [my name]$
Code: Select all
mv ~/.config/inkscape ~/.config/inkscape-old [ENTER?]

Or do I combine them to look like this?

Last login: Sat Jan 16 15:08:28 on console
Welcome to Darwin!
ppp-[numbers]:~ [my name]$
Code: Select all
mv ~/.inkscape ~/.inkscape-old
Code: Select all
mv ~/.config/inkscape ~/.config/inkscape-old [ENTER?]

My greatest challenge in learning to use this computer is finding out what I'm missing. I'm surprised how easy it is to make a tutorial/program perform once I find and practice all the needed steps. The hard part for a beginner is finding those steps that are implied or assumed to be known and are not actually stated.

Thank you ~suv, I appreciate your assistance.

leonardo wrote:I switched to 0.46 to finish the soup can tutorial and get more experience using Inkscape. I had completed this tutorial before on 0.46 but this time I only got as far as skewing the label text. When I selected label text path > Menu Effects > Modify Path > Add Nodes... > Maximum segment length (px) > 5.0 > Apply—I got the following notice:

[error message about lxml snipped]

(…) When I tried to add nodes to the text path using 0.47 (Menu Extensions > Modify Path > Add Nodes... > Maximum segment length (px) > 5.0 > Apply—I again got the same message stated above. I did a search for "fantastic lxml wrapper for libxml2" and the results were for Snow Leopard and were way over my head. Is this resolvable? I would like to continue using 0.47 but due to this complication and my inexperience I am now considering uninstalling both versions and starting over with a new download of 0.46 for Mac PPC Tiger.

Since you get the same message when trying to apply an effect/extension in Inkscape 0.46 and Inkscape 0.47 I doubt that re-installing Inkscape 0.46 will solve this issue.

It could be related to

a) you Python installation
changes to your Python installation on your computer since the time you managed to finish that tutorial the first time without that error message. Maybe you installed a newer Python version (e.g. Python 2.6) because it was needed or recommended for a some other application you use? Inkscape packages for OS X Tiger only support Python versions 2.3, 2.4 and 2.5.

[ The included precompiled python modules 'lxml' and 'numpy' are needed for most of the extensions. These modules are specific to python version and system architecture. So if the python binary - called by Inkscape to execute any of the extension scripts - is version 2.6, there's no 'lxml' module to be found and thus many extension will fail with above error message. ]

or b) confused config files used at runtime

leonardo wrote:Having both 0.46 and 0.47 running at the same time seems to have caused the interference you mentioned.

That's indeed possible and not recommended - it seems better to me to have them running one after the other and not both at the same time.
(Note: you can have both installed at the same time - this doesn't result in any conflicts I know of, however you better don't launch both at the same time)

[ internally both versions use some configuration files which are newly written every time Inkscape launches - to the same location but containing different paths - unlike the user preferences, which have changed location in Inkscape 0.47 ]

leonardo wrote:Is it too late to "...rename the hidden configuration folder on Mac OS X" in Terminal?

No, that can be done any time, for both versions. Re-setting the preferences to default values means that you loose any custom settings you have made in the preferences dialog, but it can help in cases where the preferences file got corrupted.

leonardo wrote:I have no experience with Terminal so I looked it up in Mac OS X Tiger Edition The Missing Manual and it looks very interesting—I will study it later. How much do I need to know about Terminal to use it with Inkscape?

The developers spent a lot of time in porting Inkscape to OS X to make sure that the user don't need to use the terminal for any basic operations. I regret to have mentioned using the terminal as first and seemingly only way to have access to the preferences files: there are other ways that might be easier for you.

[ looking at your first steps using the terminal, I'll add just one hint: the part about 'Code: Select all' is added by the forum software here to my post and is not part of the text you are supposed to type into the terminal. It is there to make it easier for other users to copy code fragments. The command I meant is one line for each Inkscape 0.46 and Inkscape 047 preferences folder and consists of three parts plus the <ENTER> at the end:

(command to change the name) separator (current path and folder name) separator (new path and folder name) <ENTER>

above line is meant as pseudo-code to explain the 'mv' command, not to be entered as is at the prompt of a terminal. (the prompt - that's the line with your name and some cryptic '$' characters and the blinking cursor - wating for you to enter a command ;-). You can use the same terminal to enter several commands, no need to open a new one for each command. However I recommend that you don't use my instructions I initially gave until you have some basic understanding about the concept of using the command line in the Terminal application ;-) ]

Alternatively - if you want to re-set Inkscape's preferences to default values - you can use the Finder to re-name the preferences file itself instead of renaming the folder where it is located:

for Inkscape 0.46:

1. quit Inkscape
2. in the Finder, use menu 'Go > Go to Folder…' and enter the path to the preferences folder:
   ~/.inkscape
   click on the button labelled 'Go' to open a finder window showing the contents of the folder.
3. select the file 'preferences.xml' (maybe the finder hides the file extension '.xml' - then the file would just be called 'preferences') and change its name to 'preferences-old.xml' (or 'preferences-old' if you don't see the file extension)
4. restart Inkscape

for Inkscape 0.47:

1. quit Inkscape
2. in the Finder, use menu 'Go > Go to Folder…' and enter the path to the preferences folder:
   ~/.config/inkscape
   click on the button labelled 'Go' to open a finder window showing the contents of the folder.
3. select the file 'preferences.xml' (maybe the finder hides the file extension '.xml' - then the file would just be called 'preferences') and change its name to 'preferences-old.xml' (or 'preferences-old' if you don't see the file extension)
4. restart Inkscape

Does this help?

Thank you very much ~suv for your enlightening reply.

Removing Python 2.6, which someone recommended I try to learn, and installing Python 2.5 corrected the problems I was having with both Inkscape 0.46 Effects and 0.47 Extensions.

I will stay out of Terminal until I get a chance to learn about it.

The Finder menu > Go > Go to folder... is remarkable. I read up on it in The Missing Manual and will start to use it.

Not knowing what I'm missing is an odd and somewhat frustrating feeling because it's impossible to ask for what I needed to know. I was fortunate to come upon you ~suv and I thank you for taking the time to share your experience.