This book serves as both a textbook and a reference for using Inkscape to produce high-quality drawings. It includes a series of tutorials followed by chapters that cover completely each facet of the Inkscape program. The book is full of tips and notes to enable the user to make the best use of the program.

Inkscape is an open source, SVG-based vector drawing program. It is useful for drawing:

• Illustrations for the Web

• Graphics for mobile phones

• Simple line drawings

• Cartoons

• Complex works of art

• Figures for articles and books

• Organization charts

The file format that Inkscape uses is compact and quickly transmittable over the Internet. Yet it is powerful and can describe complex drawings that are scalable to any size. Support for the format has been added to web browsers and is already included in many mobile phones.

Inkscape supports the drawing of regular shapes (rectangles, circles, etc.), arbitrary paths, and text. These objects can be given a wide variety of attributes such as color, gradient or patterned fills, alpha blending, and markers. Objects can be transformed, cloned, and grouped. Hyperlinks can be added for use in web browsers. The Inkscape program aims to be fully XML, SVG, and CSS compliant.

Inkscape is available prepackaged for the Windows, Macintosh, and Linux operating systems. The program and its source code are freely available. They can be obtained from the Inkscape website [http://www.inkscape.org/].

Inkscape is undergoing very rapid development with new features being added and compliance to the SVG standard being constantly improved. This manual documents versions 0.47 and 0.48.