graphical blog 2

28 October, 2008

Install Pencil on GNU/Linux

Filed under: Pencil, English tutorial, Tutorial in french, animation, eeePC — Administrator @

Pencil, I alread described here, is a wonderful animation tool.

I created a eeePC-701/Xandros binary of Pencil-0.4.3b (mirror), this piece of software should need preinstalling libming-0 and libqt4:
sudo apt-get install libming-0 libqt4
And have to be uncompressed using:
bunzip2 Pencil-0.4.3b.xandros.eeepc701.bz2
then launch it…

To compile the last SVN version, on Ubuntu-64 (there still isn’t any package), there is to install packeges libqt4-dev, libqt4-opengl-dev libming0 and libming-dev:
sudo apt-get install libming-0 libming-dev libqt4-dev

Then (on ubuntu-64 as on other distrib without pre-existing binary):
svn co https://pencil-planner.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/pencil-planner pencil-planner
then in the directory itself:
With ubuntu (and some other distro?):
qmake-qt4
More generaly on my LFS for example):
qmake
then (on any distro):
make
A Pencil binary (with a uppercase P) sould be created, you just have to copy it where you want (bin directory or your home directory) and execute it, no other files needed.

3 July, 2008

Booksprint Inkscape

Filed under: Inkscape, English tutorial, Tutorial in french — Administrator @

françaisA partir de vendredi est lancé le booksprint Inkscape sur Paris, à la Cité des science et de l’industrie de la Villette, venez y participez nombreux, il est toujours possible d’éditer le livre en ligne sur le site du floss (lire ce lien pour plus de détails pour les francophones) en anglais ou français, il faut d’abord s’enregistrer, vous pouvez également rejoindre le canal IRC #inkscape-fr sur irc.freenode.net ou (plus probablement en anglais) #booksprint sur irc.freenode.net et sur jabber, booksprint@conference.jabber.impressusart.com

english A booksprint start friday in Paris, at la Cité des sciences et de l’industrie de la Villette. You can already edit the book in english, french (or other language ?) on the wiki of the Floss, you also can join booksprint@conference.jabber.impressusart.com on Jabber or #booksprint on irc.freenode.net on (IRC)

16 March, 2008

MyPaint, graphic tablet & eeePC

Filed under: MyPaint, English tutorial, Tutorial in french, numerical painting, system, ultra low voltage, eeePC — Administrator @

français Il y a également une version en français de ce didacticiel.

english Today, I tried to use my with MyPaint & my Wacom Volito graphic tablet (A5 sized, A6 capture surface, less than 50€) in a library (warning, some laughed, looking at me ;) ), their compact size fit ideally with a book on a reader place :). both are flat and little enough to enter in my pocket (for the eeePC) and in a little bag with books (for the tablet), the bamboo that is the successor of the Volito could be a bit littler ??? All Wacom tablets are supported by Linux using open documentation from Wacom.

This give good results for a first test.
I use eeeXubuntu (7.10, gutsy gibbon), the Ubuntu/Debian package that is linked from official MyPaint website, and activated the wacom stylus support :
sudo vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf
at the end of the file in
Section "ServerLayout"
uncomment (remove the #) at the begining of the line
# InputDevice "Stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
and save
restart X (by rebooting or other methods), the Wacom stylus will be managed (eraser few lines later is for the stylus eraser on more expansive tablets).

Here are the three quick sketchs inspired from graphics from books (titles are on pictures filenames):
paysages d'eau à l'acrylique.p23.jpgpaysages d'eau à l'acrylique.couv.jpgLes animaux au pastel.p17.jpg

Here is a screenshot of the interface in 800×480 eeePC screen.

Mypaint brushs on eeePC

The best method is to set the canvas & brush windows at full screen both and use alt+tab to go from one to another.
I often used G (for GTK+ color dialog, same key to close it) and R to pickup color on canvas.
create more optimized brush could be better ? I used only 3 or 4.

I made a screencast of the process (16MB and 16minutes ogg/Theora vidéo), inspirated by a photography book “Des bêtes et des hommes” (beats and mens) from Yann Arthus-Bertrand photograph. This is the final result (quick sketch, with lot of manipulation error, and stress of screencast ;):
eeepcmypaint.cochon.jpg


englishThere is also an english version of this tutorial.

françaisAjourd’hui, j’ai essayé d’utiliser mon avec MyPaint & ma tablette graphique Volito (taille A5, surface de saisie A6, moins de 50€) de Wacom dans une bibliothèque (Attention, certains se sont moqués de moi en me voyant). Leurs tailles compactes rentrent parfaitement avec un livre dans l’espace de travail d’un lecteur :). Ils sont tous deux assez plats et petitts pour rentrer dans ma poche (pour l’eeePC) et dans un petit sac avec les livres (pour la tablette et le stylet), La bamboo qui est le successeur de la Volito doit être un peu plus petite ??? Toutes les tablettes Wacom sont supporté sous Linux, grace aux documentations ouvertes fournies par Wacom.

Cela donne des assez bon résultats pour un premier test.
I use eeeXubuntu (7.10, gutsy gibbon), le packet non-officiel Ubuntu/Debian qui est en lien sur le site officiel de MyPaint et ai activé la gestion du stylet de la Wacom :
sudo vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf
A la fin du fichier, dans la section :
Section "ServerLayout"
Decommenter (effacer le #) au début de la ligne
# InputDevice "Stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
puis sauvegarder
redemarrer X (en rebootant ou par une autre méthode). Le stylet Wacom sera alors géré (eraser quelques lignes après correspond à la gomme des tablette un peu plus chères).

Voilà trois croquis rapides inspirés de livres graphiques (les titres sont les noms des fichiers):
paysages d'eau à l'acrylique.p23.jpgpaysages d'eau à l'acrylique.couv.jpgLes animaux au pastel.p17.jpg

Voici une capture d’écran de l’interfaçe sur le LCD 800×480 de l’eeePC.

Mypaint brushs on eeePC

La meilleure méthode est de mettre les fenêtres de la toile (canvas) et des brosses en plein écran chacunes et de passer de l’une à l’autre grâce à alt+tab.
J’utilise souvent G (pour le dialogue de couleur GTK+, même touche pour le refermer) et R pour récuperer une couleur sur la toile.
Créer des brosses plus optimisées pourrait aider ? J’en utilise que 3 ou 4 dans la palette par defaut.

J’ai également fait une a capture d’écran vidéo du processus (16 Mo et 16 min, vidéo format ogg/Theora), inspirée par le livre photographique, “Des bêtes et des hommes” du photographe Yann Arthus-Bertrand. Cette image est le résultat final de la vidéo (croquis rapide, avec tout un tas d’erreurs de manipulation et le stress (traque) de la capture vidéo) ;) :
eeepcmypaint.cochon.jpg

29 February, 2008

Free fonts and Linux

Filed under: Fontforge, Inkscape, English tutorial, Tutorial in french, fonts & typography, news, system — Administrator @

englishJust after the fork of Inkscape SVN-0.46 & SVN-0.47, the support for advanced SVG fonts management (already supported by Fontforge) was started. It’s also good to recall than a SVG print draft is in progress, and everyone is welcome to improve it.

Fontmatrix is a nice font manager with lot of informations about fonts, last SVN launched from a terminal, give font path and filename on the terminal (soon on the interface ;) ). It allow to activate/disactivate fonts in the fontconfig system for GNU/Linux.

Some other free software font tools and converter on the Fontforge project page.

Some other open source fontes.

GNU/Linux distributions already include lot of nice fonts as Déjà Vu fonts, here are some other international fonts (sometimes inlcuded in your distribution package manager):
Languagegeek contain some native North americans scripts fonts.

Omniglot contain lot of links to international fonts, here the Dongba Naxi fonts, I will make an article about them soon.Tthis is only one pictographic scripture used around the world today, from the Naxi minority of Tibet highland, in Mainland china.

Some good links about font management on GNU/Linux systems
Some presentations about font management on GNU/LInux

10 February, 2008

Pencil and xcb_xlib_lock: Assertion `!c->xlib.lock’ failed.

Filed under: Pencil, English tutorial, animation, software developement — Administrator @

After a try on Xubuntu (the light desktop XFCE version of Ubuntu) of Pencil Gnu GPL licensed animation software (for GNU/Linux, Mac OSX and clone of Wine including MS version called something like ixpi).
,

Pencil is a young but really good application for animation. It’s mainly oriented to traditional drawing animation, but can be used for other things.
Features :
* multilayer (several bitmap layers (on demand), several vector layers (on demand), one(SVN include several) camera layer, SVN include sound layers)
* pan, zoom, rotate of the view (allowing drawing on a rotated canvas) objects and camera
* tablet pen pressure management for drawing (on pencil, brush and dip pen).
* onionskin for the pleasure of animators :)
* import of bitmaps (and SVG vector format as bitmap).
* export as MOV, only on Mac and perhaps wine clones)
* export frame by frame png (with transparency) or opaque jpeg, this should be reopened easily with Gimp Animation Package or assembled in a movie with mencoder (in mplayer project) and transcode.
* export as SWF movie (my test was not really good, only vector part worked perfectly in svn version, with libming version 0.4.0.beta5)
* timeline with keying of layers objects
* interpolation of camera movements
* palette management (GPL gimp/Inkscape/Agave palette format isn’t managed for now)

Update : The following described problem was due to libXi < 1.1.3, you can easily correct this by installing libXi-1.1.3 (lib) and the dependence inputproto >= 1.4 (proto), the last one are on x.org mirrors, go to individual subdir and then the lib or proto subdirs to get these versions. Upgrade only these two libs works with x.org 7.2

I really liked it, then tried to compile it on my main Linux From Scratch production computer, the compilation works perfectly, but sadly, when I tried to launch it on my LFS box, I obtained the following error:

Pencil: xcb_xlib.c:41: xcb_xlib_lock: Assertion `!c->xlib.lock' failed.
Aborted

This is a common problem on xlib coded application, that yet aren’t tested on libxcb_xlib systems. XCB is a replacement of Xlib on X11 graphic interface, that allow faster access to graphical ressources a better way. XlibXcb is a wrapper to Xlib, allowing application coded for xlib to take transparently benefits of the new xcb architectures. But there is still some software that aren’t compatible, due to some light errors on (un)locking.

Some GNU/Linux distro patched libxcb to automatically pass this or doesn’t install xcb_xlib wrapper to avoid errors.
Some other have patched it with an environment variable to set to avoid the bug:

export LIBXCB_ALLOW_SLOPPY_LOCK=1
launch_your_application

Else the main two possible errors, for not corrected applications are:
xcb_xlib.c:41: xcb_xlib_lock: Assertion `!c->xlib.lock' failed.
xcb_xlib.c:50: xcb_xlib_unlock: Assertion `c->xlib.lock' failed.

More information on this Debian-devel message:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/11/msg00010.html

The libxcb patch proposed in Linux from scratch with LIBXCB_ALLOW_SLOPPY_LOCK settable variable.

I don’t have only the bug only with Pencil, but with few other applications:
xsetwacom (from linuxwacom project) and few other. Searching on Google, at least some release of Sun implementation of Java suffer the same bug.

I hop this will help some people using those application and having bug to find a mean to avoid it until these application are patched.

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