I have been trying to reach the advertised Manual address http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/ for several days now (over a week actually), but I keep getting a network timeout error. Is there an alternate address where an archived Manual is available for viewing?

I'm running the latest version of INKSCAPE on Windows 10 Pro

The specific issue I was hoping to find a fix for is the ruler ... my rulers are using a bottom-left point of origin instead of the SVG default of top-left, this is resulting in the effect that my images display flipped when viewed in Inkscape which makes positioning of image elements counter intuitive.

Example: I have a 450x450px image, split into a 9x9 grid ... I have a 150x100 green box placed at (300,150) within my image
when viewed in Inkscape the box (or rect if you prefer) appears 5 squares down in the grid, and 7 squares across
when viewed via a html page, the same file displays the green rect 7 squares across and 4 squares down (where it should be)

I've been looking for the setting I need to alter to make the Y indexing run from top to bottom

Going main menu->"Help"->Inkscape Handbook leads here to: http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/index.php
The part you might seeking is this: http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL ... nates.html

Cheers
P.

Weird. I've used the manual frequently these last days and never had a problem. No - there is no alternative address, as the manual is not freely licenced. You can buy the book or use this free (but even more outdated) manual instead: http://en.flossmanuals.net/inkscape

Page listing manuals at inkscape.org: https://inkscape.org/en/learn/books/

@Polygon
Accessing the in App Help doesn't work because there is no local copy of the Manual and the website version is inaccessible (from my connection)

I have checked my ISP, apparently there is a connectivity issue with an oceanic hop, I have no clue at this stage when that will be remedied

Including an offline Manual which covers these types of issues in the Installation Package would be helpful with remedying this situation ...
The Included Manual would not necessarily need to cover techniques, but it should at least cover UI interaction, so relatively minor setting issues could be searched without the need for web connectivity.

@Moini
I have the Floss Manual and have been able to reference that without issue, however it seems to focus more on drawing tasks than in the actual UI tweakability

kstingel wrote:@Polygon
Accessing the in App Help doesn't work because there is no local copy of the Manual and the website version is inaccessible (from my connection)

That is why I posted the link - can´t you access it either directly?

Cheers
P.

Maybe you can reach the wayback machine?

https://web.archive.org/web/20160110172 ... /index.php

@kstingel: Yes, that's the disadvantage of not having a free manual people can contribute to. It's a well-known Inkscape issue, but so far, nobody had the energy it would take to assemble some people and coordinate them to write a manual.

AFAIU, there have been efforts to free the manual and some other Inkscape literature (so the publisher doesn't own the rights anymore, but the writer can do what he wants with it), but I don't know what became of them.
Tavmjong only has his publisher's permission to make the manual available online or as a book. He may not make it available for download. It wasn't even planned to be used as the official manual when it was being written, as far as I know.

tylerdurden wrote:Maybe you can reach the wayback machine?

https://web.archive.org/web/20160110172 ... /index.php

Thanks @tylerdurden, I was finally able to access it via the link you provided

@Moini: Now that I can access a copy of the Manual, I can try to compile it into a local ePub if that helps with the rights matter

I have paid for the InformIT publication (on Feb 12, 2016 2:39:40 PM EST), but as yet have not been provided access to the eBook, so hopefully I will be able to find the info I need from the wayback copy

kstingel wrote:@Moini: Now that I can access a copy of the Manual, I can try to compile it into a local ePub if that helps with the rights matter

I don't think it would - any changes to or reformatting of the manual would require the consent of the publisher...
So for not infringing any copyrights, you'd have to wait until you receive your copy and use the online version while waiting .

Moini wrote:I don't think it would - any changes to or reformatting of the manual would require the consent of the publisher...
So for not infringing any copyrights, you'd have to wait until you receive your copy and use the online version while waiting .

I didn't mean for reformatting or changing ... just to give us a base for updating for version 0.9x

My only minor change would be point the live pages to the wayback page so I can still read them (at least until I get my eBook)

Anything that hasn't changed could pretty much stay the same, but we at least would have a pathway to providing help pages for the new areas
and I could add place-holders for those sections

On a side note: I would have thought that as owners of the software, the publisher would grant you permission to keep the book up to date ...
If the book is being maintained and kept current, they are more likely to be able to continue to make sales,
but if the book content is outdated due to software progression, sales will diminish and eventually stop.

Keeping it up to date, or making other changes, is only allowed to the author (or maybe even only the publisher, as they have bought the rights). That book does not have a free, collaborative licence. We can only wait for the manual to be freed (i.e. bought back from the publisher) or expand the other, existing ones or write a new one.

I believe Tav would accept improvements if they were sent to him (he doesn't have a lot of time to work on the book), but I for one am not going to invest work into a proprietary document, where it cannot easily be improved or edited and where I don't have any rights in using my own work afterwards.

I can always use his book as a jump off point and write a new one with updated content

that way I can also pull in some of the more up to date guides

... and I can (self) publish my "new" manual under a GPL so it can be maintained by the community
- I'll send a copy to Tav to make sure it doesn't breach his work before re-publishing though

kstingel wrote:I can always use his book as a jump off point and write a new one with updated content

that way I can also pull in some of the more up to date guides

... and I can (self) publish my "new" manual under a GPL so it can be maintained by the community
- I'll send a copy to Tav to make sure it doesn't breach his work before re-publishing though

You sound serious! There's a small group of us who have briefly discussed creating a team and writing a new "open" manual (on the mailing list). Some, and maybe it's mostly me, are ready to go and write it, right now. I'm still very new to the development community, and it's still hard for me to understand how slowly things can move.

If you really are serious, would you be interested in joining the Docs mailing list, and working with others? Or are you someone who prefers to work alone?

I certainly would volunteer to help, if you need it. If no one else were to become interested enough, I could probably lead such a group, with more or less successful outcome (just based on my own life skills). But I'm not really the best choice for a leader, because I don't have any experience, and because I'm finding it hard to understand the development/programming/opensource world. Plus, I don't have enough technical knowledge of Inkscape, to guide the writing of the more technical sections.

Although to be honest, I think the less technical the manual the better. I think we've been more or less talking about a step by step, or how-to manual, rather than making another manual that's so technical.

Anyway, are you really serious?

@brynn: I am most certainly serious .... nothing irritates me more than pulling up my reference material only to find out that all the example references are obsolete

lol - as I glance at my Library and see my Red Hat 7.2 Manual

When it comes to manuals and such I'm an OC - they gotta be current, else I write my own personal addendum - Except Red Hat lol ... I switched to Ubuntu

If someone can design the Layout wrapper, I can gather the text and images fairly easily

I can't join the list just yet - I'm about to wipe my PC, so I'll lose anything that comes through ...
but if you can drop the link in here, once I've re-installed my OS I'll most certainly join

@brynn:
Also, there's something wrong with having to shell out $30+ for a manual for Open Source Software when the proceeds don't even go back to the project

hmm .... I wonder if I can bill my ISP since it's their fault I still can't directly access the online Manual?

.. quite literally their fault there's a damaged underwater cable cutting access to an entire region

Info for all the Inkscape mailing lists: https://inkscape.org/en/community/mailing-lists/

Well, I suppose the profits go to the author, who is a leading Inkscape developer. So it's possible that indirectly the profits come back to the project. (maybe some part of profits go to publisher though, which doesn't come back)

So if you write your own custom manual, do you keep it up to date? Things are happening so fast with Inkscape right now, any new manual would likely need updating at least once yearly.

I certainly would think about asking for a break in the fee, until you can access the whole internet! Actually, I'd probably consider finding a different isp

Moini, what do you think about this manual discussion?

kstingel wrote:Also, there's something wrong with having to shell out $30+ for a manual for Open Source Software when the proceeds don't even go back to the project

If you're referring to Tav's manual here, the proceeds do go back to the project in the sense that Tav is an Inkscape developer. He's also a member of the W3C SVG working group (the people who define the spec for the SVG file format that Inkscape uses). So any proceeds that go to him are likely to be good for Inkscape and for SVG as a whole.

I will point out that my own Inkscape tutorial series in Full Circle Magazine (viewtopic.php?f=6&t=11981) is not only free to download, but also under a CC BY-SA license, should anyone wish to modify or update it - or compile all the articles into a single document. Once the series is finished (probably not until next year) I am considering producing my own compilation with updated content, which will be released under an open license. It's a tutorial series rather than a reference manual, though (although some of the articles probably go into enough detail to serve as both).

Yes, absolutely that's an awesome and impressive series! (Got to get you linked up on the website!)

Moini, what do you think about this manual discussion?

I think that a day should be longer than 24 hours... 36, maybe?...

Would be great if you all could put something official together. I'd suggest using the infrastructure and experience supplied by fossmanuals (Elisa and Nicolas), to have an easy start.

Speaking of FOSS manual, maybe kstingel could help with editing that, instead of making a whole new one? It's open, right??

Yep.

I have the FOSS manual available locally, so that would be a great starting point

I can utilize that as a template and insert any updates as asides then submit back for approval and refinement by the community

And, with regards the cost of Tav's Book ... I was meaning the amount the Publisher retains ... that goes to no related cause (just profiteering)

@kstingel: You might save yourself some work in converting formats if you contact the Fossmanuals team via the docs mailing list. They use a specific formatting for their books when they write them (don't know which), and thus it might make more sense to edit the source, rather than copy-paste from a pdf.
Tav once told me that the profits were negligible.

Moini wrote:Tav once told me that the profits were negligible.

I know they are, it all seems to flow the publisher's way with little spillover to the authors

I once looked into publishing through a recognized vendor, but found that it was more beneficial to self-publish since most of what I was going to be writing/collaborating on was Open Source