Karbon14

Karbon14 is an application for creating scalable vector graphics. 'What is scalable vector graphics?' (or SVG for short) you might be asking. SVG is an alternative to the 'raster' or 'bitmapped' graphics which, at present, dominate the computer graphics world. The best known raster based image creating tools are The Gimp in the open source world and Adobe's Photoshop in the proprietary realm. While raster based tools create an image by assigning colors pixel by pixel, vector based graphics applications, like Karbon14, use math to assign points or vectors on the screen. Then colors are assigned to fill in the points between them. The other major difference is that SVG is a W3C standard and a SVG file is stored in an XML format. This makes the format extremely portable. As a matter a fact, you can edit an SVG file by hand and even add attributes like web links to it. You could then use a browser that supports SVG files to view the file and even navigate the links in it. At present, only the Mozilla project has a browser in a beta format that supports SVG files. Adobe does, however, have a browser plug-in for both Windows and Linux that can view SVG. The format is extremely useful for creating images for icons, cartoons and other vignettes. The most popular use of SVG is creating images known as 'clip art'. The one major drawback of SVG is the lack of detail. This makes raster based graphics the best format for storing digital photography.

Is Karbon14 going to be the best tool for you to create SVG? I am by no means an expert in creating SVG, though I have created quite a few images in that format and I am familiar with the W3C specs on it. After working with Karbon14, I think you'll probably get more out of another open source tool known as Inkscape. Apart from the fact that Karbon14 crashed on me enough times to be annoying, I have seen in various postings that a lot of the KDE developers themselves seem to mention using Inkscape quite a bit. I also need to point out that there is a notable lack of documentation for the application. That's a big turn-off for me. The KOffice maintainers must have included Karbon14 in the suite for some reason but they just forgot to tell anybody. Since SVG promises to be a popular format in the future (there's talk about it replacing Flash), we can hope that Karbon14 may get better.

Krita

Krita is the raster based graphics counterpart to Karbon14. It is also a new addition to the KOffice suite.

It is surprisingly like the popular image manipulation program Gimp. If you're used to working with the Gimp, Krita will take a bit of getting used to. You can start by creating separate windows for the tool dialogs, as you can see in the screen shot below.

If you're already an accomplished Gimp user, you may not find this application compelling enough to switch to it. I'm a long time user of the Gimp (but with no real artistic talent) and I'm going to stick with the Gimp too.

Kexi

Kexi is a tool for creating databases with their accompanying forms. It aims at being the MS Access for Linux. Its inclusion in the KOffice suite is recent and Kexi is technically a stand-alone application. According to what I see out there, an application like this would be a welcome addition to the Linux world.

I gave Kexi a try and created a basic database and a table for storing common personal information. This is the type of database that could be created quickly and be used by a local club to store membership information. After this, I created a form which I thought I would use to enter the information. This is where I had to stop. Like with Karbon14, there is no documentation for beginners to speak of. A Google search for a tutorial for what I thought was a very promising app turned up nothing. There is a wiki for developers, but it's of little help for a neophyte like me who just wants to get his feet wet. I am of the opinion that a good tutorial should always exist at the time of the first major public release. Unfortunately, these situations are common in open source software in general and in KOffice in particular. I hope we'll see the day when we realize that good technical writers are just as important as good coders.

Using my knowledge of a couple of similar applications, like Borland's Paradox, which is used over a decade ago, I tried to trudge along. I didn't get too far. Again, like Karbon14, we can only hope that the developers keep working at it and a useful tool emerges. We certainly do need an Access clone in the Linux world.

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