Inkscape - Open Source Vector Drawing Program

Although not at version 1.0 yet, Inkscape is a quality vector drawing program not unlike Illustrator. I'm pretty dire in the artistic stakes, more technical drawing ability than artistic flair but I used to get by with DPaint back in the early 90s.

Inkscape is a vector drawing package which means that an entire image is created by millions of vectors; each something like a direction, a distance and a color. This is not the same type as the STL vector (a single array). The big advantage of vector over raster formats (bitmaps etc) is that vector can be stretched without requiring fancy pixel color interpolation schemes. As this is coded in C++ it is cross-platform (Windows, Linux, Mac and more) and you can download the source code from Sourceforge.net and see how it works. I'm very impressed just from playing with it for a short time and it's certainly earned a place in the C++ code library.

• Link to C++ Code Library
• Link to C++ Tutorials