This week I loaded up the new version 0.47 and tested it out on a few small, odd tasks I had to do. Strangely these did not include drawing which is Inkscapes strength.

• Extracting pages from a PDF
  I like to fill out forms on the computer as opposed to printing, hand writing, scanning and emailing. If you are lucky enough to have Illustrator or Indesign this is relatively easy. Inkscape now extracts single pages from a PDF, you can then lock that into a layer and type over the top – even place your pre-scanned signature. Inkscape performed this seamlessly. Excellent!
• Outputting as PDF
  I had a logo to output and my experience with PDF export in Inkscape has been sketchy in the past, crashing the application and strange clipping in some object fills. This time is was as fast and beautiful as I could have wanted. Again Excellent!

So… along with the excellent drawing main feature set Inkscape is an excellent PDF editor (at least for single pages).

No all I need is Google to put out a Linux edition of Sketchup. Please. Pretty please.

So, when it came to rebooting Merles Dell 1330 which has had consistent networking issues with Vista I thought, hell, we could have Ubuntu running on the wee guy and Vista running as a guest under VM.

This would have the benefit of the guest being easily back-up-able with the apps installed and transportable across computers.

Turns out that is good in theory and not in practice, mainly because running graphics apps is so ram hungry (I think). Vista with apps took up over 20gb and was crazy slow.

So it is back to Vista, a shame because Ubuntu 8.10 was amazing. It recognised all the hardware first go and was a fast joy to use.