Inkscape is used for creating technical and artistic illustrations. This is made possible by the open SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) format, which is developed by the W3C consortium. The SVG format allows for the creation of various types of illustrations, including animated ones. In terms of its set of tools and functionality, the editor is not inferior to well-known programs: CorelDraw, Adobe Illustrator, Xara X.
Inkscape supports all SVG capabilities. Paths, text, shapes, markers, alpha channel, clones, gradients. Transformations, textures, and groupings. The program also supports node editing, Creative Commons metadata, complex path operations, layers, text on a path, text wrapped in a shape, direct editing of XML data, and much more.
File Import EMF, EPS, SVG, SVGZ, Sketch, PDF, AI, Dia, JPEG, XPM, PNG, TIFF, GIF, WMF, WPG, RAS, BMP, TGA, WBMP, GGR, CUR, PCX, ANI, ICO, PNM. File Export EPS, PostScript, POV, DXF, PNG, SVG, PDF, Sketch, GPL, Dia, AI, POV-Ray, LaTeX, EMF, OpenDocument Draw.
Main functionality:
- SVG capabilities: transformations, grouping, alpha channels, gradients and textures.
- Text editing: inserting text into a path, rendering, editing flowing and uniform texts.
- Vectorization of raster graphics.
- Working with paths, markers, shapes, text, etc.
- Works with layers.
- Supports Creative Commons metadata.
- Has an infrastructure for executing scripts written in Ruby, Perl, and Python.
- Node editing.
- Complex path options.
- Directly edits XML data.
- Has its own rendering engine.
- Supports hotkeys.
- Collaborative drawing via XMPP (Jabber) protocol.
- Creating and opening compressed files using the gzip compression algorithm.
