About Inkscape

Inkscape is an open source drawing tool for creating and editing SVG graphics.  More than just a text vector editor, Inkscape provides a WYSIWYG interface for manipulation of vector images, allowing the artist to express himself freely. While other free and proprietary software exists with similar capabilities, Inkscape provides an interface to directly manipulate the underlying SVG code, which allows one to be certain that the code is in compliance with W3C standards. Since the beginning of its development, the Inkscape project has been a very active, providing stability for the current software and growth of capacities in the future.

Like other drawing programs, Inkscape offers creation of basic shapes (such as ellipses, rectangles, stars, polygons and spirals) as well as the ability to transform and manipulate these basic shapes by rotation, stretching and skewing.

Inkscape also offers functionality to manipulate objects more precisely by adjusting node points and curves.  These functions are indispensable to useful drawing software, and allow the advanced artist to freely create what he imagines.

The properties of objects can either be manipulated individually and precisely through the XML editor, or more generally in an intuitive fashion by input devices such as mice, pen tablets or even touch screen.

In addition, Inkscape allows one to insert text and bitmaps (such as PNG, another W3C recommended bitmap image format) into an image as well as perform some basic editing functions on them.  If further bitmap editing is required, other tools may be used (such as the GIMP) on images before importing them or after. In fact, if a linked bitmap is edited in another program, Inkscape will reflect these changes once the SVG is reloaded.

All of these characteristics make Inkscape a model drawing application, especially considering its flexibility and many other capabilities. Its strict compliance with the W3C SVG standards allow excellent portability of images to many applications and platforms on which these applications are used.