Inkscape Open Source

Joseph asks…

Please Add To List Of ‘Must Have’ Open Source Dev Tools?

I want to make a short list of those Open Source or free apps which make a developer’s live very much easier. Not a massive exhaustive list (for my site – http://www.nerds-central.com, and not things like script engines and compilers. Just the ‘must have grab bag’. It is Windows a centric. Here is where I have gotten so far:

msys
ultra vnc
notepad++
gimp
Process Explorer (procexp)
firefox
gvim
jmeter
skype
putty
filezilla
inkscape
wincvs
windump
netcat

Once I have the list all worked out, I’ll crate links to where to get them, a quick review and ‘why use it’ section.

Why – because I always trying to support people on the phone or Skype and need to have a page where I can say – get these then call back and I can help properly

Any suggestions welcome – for example – is XMLPad any good?

Thanks – AJ
http://www.nerds-central.com

admin answers:

Well, you can add GAIM to that list for one. Also, don’t forget decent free antivirus programs like AVG or Avast – there are too many suckers using Norton or McAffee around today.
NVU’s quite nice for HTML editing.
You might also want to check out portableapps.com – they have a bunch of open-source programs you can run from a Flash drive.
This is a very useful little program which, again, can be launched from a flash drive – http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml.
Good luck!

Steven asks…

how come open-source software usually has so many keyboard shortcuts?

like emacs and inkscape and other projects

admin answers:

All programs generally come with keyboard shortcuts. Not just Open source apps.
Back in the days of yore, when computers didn’t even have mice, keyboard shortcuts was the only way.

Image and text editors like Inkscape, Photoshop, OpenOffice, MS Office etc. All require keyboard shortcuts because it allows the user to work faster.

Chris asks…

If an application can run on “Unix-Like” OS’s, Does that mean it can run on Linux?

Hello, i found a neat little open source software known as Inkscape (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkscape), it says that Inkscape supports Unix-like operating systems, along with other OS’s. But, I was wondering, does that mean it can run on Linux? Since it doesn’t specifically say linux, but rather unix-like.

admin answers:

Inkscape has Linux native installations available. Generally when a software package is described as having support for “Unix-like” they mean both Linux and BSD operating systems. As a matter of fact Inkscape is one of the default programs installed with Ubuntu Studio, as well as many graphics, video, and audio manipulation and design software packages.

Daniel asks…

Free alternative to Flash?

Is there a free alternative to Adobe Flash? I use GIMP as an alternative to Photoshop and Inkscape as an alternative to Illustrator, but I’d like to try doing vector animation and such. Any tips on finding an open source/free alternative?

I’ve got Ubuntu and Mac OSX on this computer, and Windows 7 on my other one, so something for any one of those OSs would be fine.

Thanks!

admin answers:

There are no free alternatives to Flash. There is however a free 1 month trial of Swishmax 4. This software has 100′s of preset animations. I have Macromedia Flash and Swishmax 3. I prefer Flash for javascript but Swishmax for animation as there is very little tweening needed.

Http://www.swishzone.com/index.php?area=products&product=max&tab=downloads