Forum: Inkscape Inkscape 4.8 outset/inset behavior

In trying to add a  1cm seam allowance outside a pattern drawn with 
Inkscape
4.8, :
1. the Outset is shaped properly, has the correct width, but it is
positioned *over* the path, half in and half out, instead of being 
placed
100% outside of the path.  Is this the intended behavior?
2. The outset doesn't inherit the properties of the path selected, it 
has a
'fill' by default. I have to select the edit object icon, and set fill 
to
'x' and stroke to solid.  Is there a way to cause the 'Outset' path to
inherit the selected path's properties?
3. When I select 'Inset' on the same path,just as a test to see what
happens, I get a very small tight grouping of points that have no 
apparent
relationship to my pattern shape. I don't really need 'Inset' at the 
moment,
just thought I'd mention it.

I'm new to Inkscape, so perhaps there is something that I am missing.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Susan

I'm looking for ways to access Inkscape UI functionality from within an
extension:

1. Is there a way to apply the Outset/Inset functionality from within an
extension?  I have found some documentation regarding the Inkscape verb
SP_VERB_SELECTION_OFFSET, but I'm not seeing a way to access this, or 
access
it from a wrapper, from a Python script.

2. Is there a way to select a node and change it's sodipodi nodetype 
value
to 'symmetrical' or 'smooth'?  Again, I would like to be able to skip 
using
the desktop icon. Perhaps it's possible to add nodetype in the 
attributes
when the node is created, but I've experimented a bit and haven't seen 
this
attribute show up in the XML until I've manually changed the node to
'symmetrical' using the UI.

And thanks very much to ~suv for the assistance in helping me understand 
the
Outset/Inset functions, and the 'change to path' functions for my 
previous
questions.

- Susan

On 2010-08-31 14:12, Susan Spencer wrote:
> I'm looking for ways to access Inkscape UI functionality from within an
> extension:
>
> 1. Is there a way to apply the Outset/Inset functionality from within an
> extension?  I have found some documentation regarding the Inkscape verb
> SP_VERB_SELECTION_OFFSET, but I'm not seeing a way to access this, or
> access it from a wrapper, from a Python script.

I don't think it's possible from an extension (unless lib2geom's python
wrapper allows for this functionality), but you might be able to do it
from the command line (so you could call inkscape from a script and do
this). If you execute:
   inkscape --verb-list
you get a list of all the verbs inkscape supports, you may want to
output this to a file (or pipe it through more or less, or use grep):
   inkscape --verb-list > verblist.txt
Now you can peruse the list of supported verbs at your leisure.

In your case you probably want to do something like this:
   inkscape --select=MyObjectID --verb=SelectionOffset
            --verb=FileSave --verb=FileQuit design.svg
Note that this should all be on ONE line.

More command line options can be found using
   inkscape --help

> 2. Is there a way to select a node and change it's sodipodi nodetype
> value to 'symmetrical' or 'smooth'?  Again, I would like to be able to
> skip using the desktop icon. Perhaps it's possible to add nodetype in
> the attributes when the node is created, but I've experimented a bit and
> haven't seen this attribute show up in the XML until I've manually
> changed the node to 'symmetrical' using the UI.

The problem is that this is mostly an Inkscape thing, so the underlying
path could be the same but the behaviour in Inkscape's UI would be
different. I'm not quite sure what Inkscape would do if an extension
modified the path so that it claimed certain nodes were smooth without
actually modifying the path, barring that I think the only thing you
could do in an extension (or in a wrapper) is basically doing the math
yourself (it's not extraordinarily hard, if you need help just ask).

You may also want to have a look at spiro's (these are implemented a bit
differently, using live path effects and might be well suited to your
purpose).

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