Wed, 10 Apr 2024

Ink/Stitch doesn't update as frequently as it could - about once a year, I think. But it's constantly getting new features, and I usually run a pre-release version these days. You can too. The only hard part is knowing which version to run, if you aren't on top of the dev discussions to know what's out there. And hey, that's a service I can provide.

If you look on the Ink/Stitch Github page (https://github.com/inkstitch/inkstitch) you will see the current release, but below it is a clickable link showing all the available pre-releases. 343! Some are there for testing, others are just there for... well, I don't actually know what triggers building a pre-release, but some are pretty trivial.

Luckily, if you click through there's a search box, and it will give you the results most-recent-first which is usually what you want. If you type "satin" you'll get a pretty good selection, because there have been a lot of little tweaks to the underlying code. You don't need to worry about most of the changes beyond "it makes satins prettier under certain conditions." All of the recent releases have the big changes, so you can usually just pick the top one of kaalleen's (claudine may have more recent changes but that's mostly font fixes).

But wait, you may be saying, I don't want to break my current working installation with a test version! You can always just reinstall the June 2023 "current" release, but if you want to swap out different versions to try different things and aren't afraid of directories/folders, you can also just find the extensions folder under Edit > Preferences and click Open.

Ink/Stitch's running parts are all in the inkstitch folder, while the settings are elsewhere - so you can just swap out different versions by dropping different folders in. Close Inkscape before swapping them around, so it loads the right version. If you go up one level, you can create a folder called "oldextensions" or something right there in Inkscape's config directory. Inkscape will ignore it because it's not a name it uses, and you can just plop your current inkstitch folder there for safekeeping, then install a prerelease version and run it. If you want to keep different versions available for dropping back in, just rename them while they're in oldextensions: I have inkstitch-tartan and whatnot as I swap them in for testing.

You don't have to do any of that, of course - you can just download a prerelease and install it, then download the current release and install it, and it should just work. You just have to grab the right file, which is pretty easy.

If you're on Windows, which is statistically likely, you want the 64-bit exe, which will give you the same sort of file as you get from the Download button on the install page at https://inkstitch.org/docs/install-windows/ which you can follow as though you've downloaded the usual version.

If you're on Linux like me, you want the tar.xz, and to follow the instructions from https://inkstitch.org/docs/install-linux/ . If you normally install with a DEB or RPM, you can always ask the dev to generate it but you probably know how the tar file works if you're on Linux.

Mac people probably want the .pkg and the instructions at https://inkstitch.org/docs/install-macos/ , though if you're not on Monterey your package is probably not normally generated. Again, you can ask for it, or you can do the manual install process (on almost any OS).

And that's it! Once the install is done, if you go into Extensions > Ink/Stitch > About... you should see your pre-release's name in place of the usual version number. As you may have guessed from the download screen, I am currently running the tartan releases, which incorporate the satin updates. Tartan's even more fun than the new satins, though it's more of a moving target so I don't have any tutorials planned just yet. The directions are here, though not always current: https://inkstitch.org/docs/stitches/tartan-fill/

You're always welcome to ask me for tech support here, or I'm tyrosinase over in the Github issues.