sK1 is an open-source, cross-platform illustration program that seeks to be a substitute for professional proprietary software like

CorelDRAW CorelDRAW is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Alludo (formerly Corel Corporation). It is also the name of the Corel graphics suite, which includes the bitmap-image editor Corel Photo-Paint as well as other graphics-related progr ...

Adobe Illustrator Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor and Computer-aided design, design software developed and marketed by Adobe Inc., Adobe. Originally designed for the Apple Inc., Apple Mac (computer), Macintosh, development of Adobe Illustrator began ...

. Unique project features are CorelDRAW formats importers, tabbed multiple document interface,

Cairo Cairo ( ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Egypt and the Cairo Governorate, being home to more than 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, L ...

-based engine, and color management.

History

A small team led by Igor Novikov started the project in 2003, based on the existing open source vector graphics editor

Skencil Skencil, formerly called Sketch, is a free software vector graphics editor, released under the GNU Lesser General Public License. History Its first public version, ''Sketch 0.5.0'', was released on October 31, 1998 by Bernhard Herzog. Later ...

. sK1 is a

fork In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tines with which one can spear foods either to h ...

of the Skencil 0.6.x series which used Tk widgets for the user interface (this version had been dropped by the main Skencil developers who were working on a branch of the program based on

GTK+ GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free software cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both free and proprietary s ...

). In 2007 the sK1 team reverse-engineered the CorelDRAW (CDR) format. 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). Later on the team parsed the structure of other Corel formats with the help of CDR Explorer. Export into CDR and CMX file formats was presented at the Libre Graphics Meeting 2019 conference taking place in May 2019 in Saarbrücken (Germany).

Target audience

Since the project was started by a small team of Ukrainian professionals in

prepress Prepress is the term used in the printing and publishing industries for the processes and procedures that occur between the creation of a print layout and the final printing. The prepress process includes the preparation of artwork for press, media ...

, it was unambiguously focused on full support for

PostScript PostScript (PS) is a page description language and dynamically typed, stack-based programming language. It is most commonly used in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm, but as a Turing complete programming language, it c ...

PDF Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

CMYK The CMYK color model (also known as process color, or four color) is a subtractive color model, based on the CMY color model, used in color printing, and is also used to describe the printing process itself. The abbreviation ''CMYK'' refers ...

color model and

color management Color management is the process of ensuring consistent and accurate colors across various devices, such as monitors, printers, and cameras. It involves the use of color profiles, which are standardized descriptions of how colors should be disp ...

at the expense of developing some advanced functions for illustrators. Informally the project is positioned as a free open source alternative to the commercial

Functionality

Compared to

Inkscape Inkscape is a vector graphics editor. It is used for both artistic and technical illustrations such as cartoons, clip art, logos, typography, diagrams, and flowcharts. It uses vector graphics to allow for sharp printouts and renderings at ...

, sK1 has a limited feature set, adequate for simple sketching, while its user interface remains clean. Drawable objects include circles and ellipses, rectangles, text,

Bézier curves Bézier can refer to: *Pierre Bézier, French engineer and creator of Bézier curves *Bézier curve *Bézier triangle *Bézier spline (disambiguation) *Bézier surface * The city of Béziers in France *AS Béziers Hérault, a French rugby union tea ...

, and straight lines. Those can be transformed in typical manners and aligned in multiple ways.

Supported formats

; Import: * CorelDRAW v7-X4 (CDR/CDT/CCX/CDRX/CMX) * Adobe Illustrator up to version 9 (based on PostScript) * Postscript (PS) and Encapsulated Postscript (EPS) * Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM) * Windows Metafile (WMF) * XFIG * Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) * Skencil/Sketch/sK1 (SK, SK1, SK2) * Acorn Draw (AFF) * PLT - HPGL cutting plotter files * CorelDRAW palettes (CPL and XML) * Adobe Swatch Exchange palettes (ASE) * Adobe Photoshop palettes (ACO) * Xara Designer palettes (JCW) * GIMP/Inkscape palettes (GPL) * LibreOffice palettes (SOC) * Scribus palettes (XML) * sK1 palettes (SKP) * Adobe Photoshop files (PSD) * GIMP files (XCF) * Images BMP, PNG, JPG, JPEG2000, TIFF, GIF, PCX, PPM, WEBP, XBM, XPM ; Export: * AI - Adobe Illustrator 5.0 (based on PostScript) * PDF - Portable Document Format * PS - PostScript * SVG - Scalable Vector Graphics * SK/SK1/SK2 - Skencil/Sketch/sK1 * CGM - Computer Graphics Metafile * WMF - Windows Metafile * PLT - HPGL cutting plotter files * CorelDRAW palettes (CPL and XML) * Adobe Swatch Exchange palettes (ASE) * Adobe Photoshop palettes (ACO) * Xara Designer palettes (JCW) * GIMP/Inkscape palettes (GPL) * LibreOffice palettes (SOC) * Scribus palettes (XML) * sK1 palettes (SKP) * PNG - Portable Network Graphics

Side projects

;Skencil (revitalization) On 19 November 2006, On 19 November 2006, Bernhard Reiter and Bernhard Herzog asked Ihor Novikov to join ''Skencil'' development, stalled since 2005. On 31 October 2010, ''Skencil 1.0 alpha'' was released, as a result of revitalization work done by Ihor Novikov. On 4 November 2016, ''Skencil 1.0 rc1'' was released, and the last code changes committed on 7 February 2020. ;UniConvertor : an application for conversion of files from one vector format into another one. In fact it is a part of sK1, rewritten as a standalone code and being developed by the same team. UniConvertor is also used by

for opening CorelDRAW, WMF and Sketch/Skencil files. ;Color Palette Collection : a set of free palettes provided in different native file formats for sK1, Inkscape, GIMP, Scribus, LibreOffice, CorelDRAW, Adobe Illustrator, Xara Designer etc. For sK1 2.0 the palette collection is available as a web service. ;CDR Explorer : a program that simplifies the reverse-engineering of CorelDRAW formats. ; LinCutter : an application for interactive work with cutting machines (PLT format).

Awards

* In 2007 the project was awarded the second place in the Trophées du Libre open source project contest in the "Multimedia and games" category. * In 2008 the project was awarded the third place in the contest Hackontest, organized by the Swiss Open Systems User Groupd /ch/open and sponsored by

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

. * In 2009 the project was awarded the second place in the contest "The best free project of Russia", conducted by Linux Format magazine. Among the group projects. * In 2009 the UniConvertor project was awarded the first place in the Trophées du Libre open source project contest in the "Multimedia" category.

sK1 versions

UniConvertor versions

References

External links

* {{Vector graphics editors Free vector graphics editors Free diagramming software Free software programmed in C Free software programmed in Python Software forks Vector graphics editors for Linux Vector graphics editors Software that uses wxWidgets