title: Skencil / Features

<h2>Drawing Primitives</h2>
<p>Skencil has the usual drawing primitives found in a vector
drawing program:</p>
<ul>
<li>Rectangles, optionally with rounded corners</li>
<li>Ellipses (full ellipses, pie slices, arcs and chords)</li>
<li>B&eacute;zier curves (single and multi path)</li>
<li>External images: 
<ul>
<li>Raster images: JPEG, PNG,...<br />
 (all types the Python Imaging Library can read)</li>
<li>Encapsulated PostScript (EPS)</li></ul></li>
<li>Text (very simple at the moment)</li></ul>
 
<p>All objects, including images and text, can be rotated, scaled,
sheared, etc. (all affine transformations are possible)</p>

<h2>Properties</h2>
<p>Primitives can usually have fill and line properties:</p>
<p>Fill properties are patterns like solid colors, gradients, tiled
images and hatching.</p>
<p>Line properties are currently a (solid) color, width, dashes,
cap and join styles and arrow heads. Patterns instead of a single
color are planned for the future.</p>

<h2><a name="N2" id="N2">Special Effects and Features</a></h2>
<ul>
<li>Rectangles, ellipses and b&eacute;zier curves can be used as
guides. Skencil has ordinary horizontal and vertical guide lines as
well, of course.</li>
<li>Blend Groups: Automatically updated interpolations of arbitrary
objects</li>
<li>Text can be converted to b&eacute;zier curves. (This works only
if Skencil has access to the PostScript Type 1 font files (pfa or
pfb)).</li>
<li>Text along a path: 

<table style="TEXT-ALIGN: center">
<tr>
<td><img src="images/textpathrot.png" width="200" height="150"
alt="Rotated letters" /></td>
<td><img src="images/textpathskew.png" width="200" height="150"
alt="Skewed letters" /></td></tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">Text along a path can have either rotated letters
(left) or skewed letters
(right).</td></tr></table>

</li></ul>
<br />
<br />
 

<h2>Plugins</h2>
<p>Skencil has plugin mechanisms for a variety of purposes:</p>
<p><em>Import Filters</em> allow Skencil to read different file
formats. Currently Skencil has import filters for XFig (.fig),
Adobe&nbsp;Illustrator (.ai) files, Corel CMX, Windows 3.1
Metafiles, Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) and for its own file
format.</p>
<p><em>Export Filters</em> allow Skencil to write the drawing to
various file formats. Skencil has filters for its own format and for
Adobe&nbsp;Illustrator, PDF and SVG files.</p>
<p><em>Plugin Objects</em> provide a way to define new graphics
objects.</p>

<h2>Other Features</h2>
<ul>
<li>User scripts</li>
<li>Exports Encapsulated PostScript</li>
<li>Unlimited undo history</li></ul>
<br />
<br />