sK1 (program)

sK1

sK1
Developer(s) sK1 Team
Stable release 0.9.0 / May 9, 2009; 2 years ago (2009-05-09)
Preview release 0.9.1 prerelease2 (codename "Made in Brazil") / November 9, 2010; 14 months ago (2010-11-09)
Written in Python C Tcl/Tk
Operating system Linux, FreeBSD
Type Vector graphics editor
License GNU Lesser General Public License
Website sk1project.org
UniConvertor
Developer(s) sK1 Team
Stable release 1.1.5[1] / June 26, 2010; 19 months ago (2010-06-26)
Operating system MS Windows, Linux, FreeBSD
Type Vector graphics translator
License GNU Lesser General Public License
Website sk1project.org

sK1 is an open-source illustration program for the Linux platform that can be used as a substitute for professional proprietary software like CorelDRAW or Adobe Illustrator. Unique project features are CorelDRAW formats importers, tabbed multidocument interface, Cairo-based engine, and color management.

Contents

History

A small team led by Igor Novikov started the project in 2003, based on the existing open source vector graphics editor Skencil. It was based on the Skencil 0.6.x series which used Tk widgets for a GUI. This version was dropped by the main Skencil developers who have since started developing a new branch of the program based on GTK+ (although this version remains immature compared to the 0.6.x series). sK1 has therefore become a fork. Although an attempt was made to unify the project with Skencil, it failed.

In 2007 the sK1 team reverse-engineered the CDR format.[2] The results and the first working snapshot of the CDR importer were presented at the Libre Graphics Meeting 2007 conference taking place in May 2007 in Montreal (Canada).[3] Later on the team parsed the structure of other Corel formats with the help of CDR Explorer.[4] As of 2008, the sK1 project claims to have the best import support for CorelDRAW file formats among open source software programs.

Target audience

Since the project was started by a small team of Ukrainian professionals in prepress, it was unambiguously focused on full support for PostScript, PDF, CMYK color model and color management at the expense of developing some advanced functions for illustrators. Informally the project is positioned as a free open source alternative to the commercial CorelDRAW.

Functionality

Tools

Supported formats

Import
Export

Side (friendly) projects

Awards

Versions

Version Date Description
0.9.0 9 May 2009 First public release

See also

References

External links