Skencil: the free vector graphics program
November 9th, 2007
There are graphics programs, and then there are graphics programs. The various raster-based apps out there, like Photoshop, do a great job with photos and paint-type images that are created at their full size. Unfortunately, these types of images don't scale well, and when you start adding text, they can get pretty out-of control. Enter vector-based drawing programs.
With vector drawing apps, you open a whole new world out there. Now you can change your images from small to large, or vice versa, with no loss of clarity or precision. These images are composed of a number of mathematical formulas that tell the app how to draw it, instead of a bitmap that says that this pixel here is blue but that pixel over there is red.
Tools like Illustrator and FreeHand cost a fortune and have a steep learning curve. Skencil is an open source drawing program licensed under the LGPL and written mostly in Python. It runs on Unix-like systems (Linux, OS X, etc.). It's got all the shapes (rectangles, ellipses, and Bézier curves) and properties (line weight, fill color and patterns) you need, as well as the all-important ability to put text along a path, so necessary for designing logos.
You can grab Skencil as a tarball, or there are some binary distributions available (.rpm) as well. Your system must have a Python interpreter, and Tcl/Tk; there are links for both featured on Skencil's download page.
