Skip to main content


i have gained a new enemy today as i learn that biorender is $100 a month for the privilege of exporting to SVG, making color gradients, and using times new roman.
in reply to jonny (good kind)

Inkscape, Johnny, Inkscape. But you know that already 😀

For figure panels, for posters, even for presentations now with its multi-page documents. Works brilliantly. I could not have done my work as a scientist over the last 20 years without #inkscape.

Inkscape has existed for 20+ years and, thanks to the power of open source, will continue to exist for decades to come, when all these and more subscription services have come and gone.

#academia

This entry was edited (3 months ago)
in reply to Albert Cardona

@albertcardona
Oh we have some biorender type things in the import clipart functionality. Not many people know about it but it might be worth checking out.
in reply to Martin Owens :inkscape:

@doctormo
Thank you. Emphasis on clipart imports on cookbooks would be appreciated. It's not for lack of open access SVG libraries online.
in reply to Martin Owens :inkscape:

@doctormo
A cookbook is a collection of recipes – i.e., a bunch of explained examples.

See for example the cookbook for scipy: https://scipy-cookbook.readthedocs.io/

Far more useful than a manual, which tends to be focused on individual functions.

in reply to Albert Cardona

@doctormo
I should find the time to populate the Inkscape "Help - Tutorials" menu with tutorials for making scientific posters, for organising manuscript figures and their panels, and more. And one for scripting, for generative art or simply making shapes that are easy to describe mathematically but hard to do by hand. It's been in my agenda for at least a decade – my available time has gone instead towards my family.

May others join me – these tutorials should be community-vetted, and simple yet complete enough to enable an undergraduate to work on the figures and posters of their senior year thesis. Would set them on a career free of subscription software, for starters.

in reply to Albert Cardona

@albertcardona @doctormo I do a Inkscape Gantt chart tutorial in one of my classes that could be contributed. This is mostly to make students see the benefit of letting the software deal with alignment and even distribution. Where would I submit such a tutorial for community vetting?
in reply to Roger Schürch

@schuemaa @doctormo
We could start on an online repository, perhaps on GitLab since #inkscape also uses it?

The one script I have online is for fixing text kerning issues, and is not suitable for an entry-level tutorial on writing small scripts and extensions: https://github.com/acardona/scripts/tree/master/python/inkscape

Also to give here a shout out to the Inkscape Simple Scripting framework, as described https://inkscape.org/~pakin/%E2%98%85simple-inkscape-scripting and available as code to manually install: https://github.com/spakin/SimpInkScr The examples are amusing, and could be adapted: https://github.com/spakin/SimpInkScr/wiki

in reply to jonny (good kind)

oh there is so much wrong with biorender. Avoid if you can and use some of the free open, or cheaper, alternatives.
in reply to jonny (good kind)

@lwpembleton artists should get paid but i don't think that the way to do it is to build yourself into the parasitic publishing pipeline and charge $100/month
in reply to jonny (good kind)

💯their terms and conditions is one thing, then the price is another, and then the fact its a subscription. arrr 😱 the horrors!!!
in reply to Luke Pembleton

@lwpembleton we looked into an institutional license at my uni, but they refused to discount anything, so it would have been full price for thousands of people.

Lo, thar be cookies on this site to keep track of your login. By clicking 'okay', you are CONSENTING to this.