Ok! Why did I not know about Inkscape before today??! It looks amazing and it’s said that the new version is a major feature update, and although I haven’t tried it out yet, from the screenshots it’s pretty easy to see that this tool is also for the big boys, it works with SVG which makes even more happy, since I was about to begin some SVG experimenting anyways soon, and it’s soo boring to draw complex vector drawings by handcoding, believe you me!!

Here’s the intro text from the Inkscape Website:

Inkscape is an open source drawing tool with capabilities similar to
Illustrator, Freehand, and CorelDraw that uses the W3C standard scalable vector graphics format (SVG). Some supported SVG features include basic shapes, paths, text, markers, clones, alpha blending, transforms, gradients, and grouping. In addition, Inkscape supports Creative Commons meta-data, node-editing, layers, complex path operations, text-on-path, and SVG XML editing. It also imports several formats like EPS, Postscript, JPEG, PNG, BMP, and TIFF and exports PNG as well as multiple vector-based formats.

Inkscape’s main motivation is to provide the Open Source community with a fully W3C compliant XML, SVG, and CSS2 drawing tool. Additional planned work includes conversion of the codebase from C/Gtk to C++/Gtkmm, emphasizing a lightweight core with powerful features added through an extension mechanism, and the establishment of a friendly, open, community-oriented development process.

* Inkscape.org – Draw Freely

* Slashdot | Inkscape 0.42: The Ultimate Answer

Michael Urban wrote “One of the biggest frustrations with GUI design in Java is struggling with layout managers to get complex forms to look good. However, that will all soon be a thing of the past. ”

“…Think he is using absolute positioning? He’s not. That’s a new feature called Matisse. What is so magic about it? Matisse lets you design your form as if you were using absolute positioning. You simply drag your components to where you want them and set them to the size you want by dragging. NetBeans takes care of figuring out what layout managers are needed, and of writing all of the code for you to make your form look the way you design it using ‘Drag, drop, and stretch’…”

See example Flash demo and get more info on the Matisse GUI Designer at Javalobby at the link below.

* Coming Soon: Magic in NetBeans Form Designer. | Javalobby.org

Also see:
* Project Matisse is coming! | Netbeans.org