On Wed, Apr 5, 2017 at 8:05 PM, Keith Lofstrom <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > I am considering Inkscape as a technical illustration Thanks to Serguei, Andrew, and Ron (and responses arriving after those) confirming that Inkscape is worth investing effort in. I will also become more adept at "make". Makefiles support comments like my prior kludgy bash scripts; without comments, I forget how things work. My illustrations are mostly mechanical, electrical, process, etc. I don't do flowcharts and boxes connected by arrows, so Dia may not be applicable. Xfig is a durable workhorse, but scalable vector graphics (SVG) helps me move between screen, paper, and animation environments. Seemingly, Inkscape can be automated by scripts, which is handy when I rescale components. I also use Povray for raytraced 3D; that is pure text parameterized input, so the "display" is in my head until it emerges (as a bitmap) on the screen. I make PNGs and flash animations from that; I should learn to make SVG and HTML5 animations instead. I dive down into libgd from time to time, to make detailed animated pixel plots that Gnuplot can't make, for example http://server-sky.com/gsr02link Being able to make SVG/HTML5 animations like that from enormous data files and supported standard tools would be nice. Gnuplot of course. It does SVG now, time to make that transition, too. Keith -- Keith Lofstrom [log in to unmask]