Skencil

Skencil (formerly Sketch ) is a free vector graphics program for Mac and various Unix derivatives, which appeared under the GNU Lesser General Public License, but is now no longer being developed.

Functionality

Skencil allows the design and positioning of objects as geometric primitives (lines, Bezier curves, rectangles, ellipses ), Text, EPS and raster graphics using a mouse and keyboard on a graphical user interface. All objects can be rotated, scaled and sheared. Skencil has effects such as glare, masking groups, text along a path or text to curves. Import filters are available for Xfig, AI (up to version 8), WMF, Corel CMX and SVG files. Export is possible in the formats EPS, AI, PDF and SVG. With the program pstoedit PostScript files can be recycled for further processing in Skencil. For Skencil there are additional modules ( plugins) by various authors that provide special functions such as the integration of LaTeX text, graphical effects, or a soft proof available.

Technology

Skencil is programmed primarily in Python and provides for compute- intensive operations modules that are written in C. It runs under the operating system GNU / Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris and FreeBSD on different computer architectures such as i386, PowerPC, Alpha or SPARC. For the graphical user interface GUI library Tk is used.

History

The first public version 0.5.0 Sketch was published on 31 October 1998. Up to the versions of the 0.6.x branch the graphical user interface was implemented with Tk. The 0.7.x series uses GTK and should provide the basis for more operating systems are capable of running and further for example offer better text functions. But still there was no press release and the last release of the project as a whole ( version 0.6.17 dated 19 June 2005) is now years back. A Ukrainian developer team has a spin-off called sK1 started, which is continued with Tk interface, and focuses on the requirements in prepress.