Inkscape guide tools

These are a series of Inkscape extensions related to guides.

The current extensions are:

1. Add centered guides
2. Add margin guides
3. Add grid guides (formerly Grid Maker)
4. Remove all guides
5. Remove selected guides

1. Add centered guides to the document

With this extension you can quickly add a horizontal and/or vertical guide through the center of the document.

Note: For web images, set your document to a width/height with even numbers, so that the guides fall on a round pixel position.

2. Add margin guides to document

Inkscape already allows you to add guides exactly on the borders of the page, with Edit > Guides around page.

With this extension you can add guides at a certain distance (margin) from the borders of the document. Add them all at once (for equal margins) or separately. Negative margins creates guides outside the page borders. Zero margin guides are not drawn - use the mentioned Guides around Page for that.

3. Add grid guides

This extension will generate guides in a grid of equal width columns (or rows) and gutters.

Example 1: Columns (vertical guides), with gutters (spacing between columns), centered on the document

Example 2: Rows (horizontal guides), gutters set to 0, top aligned

This extension was conceived as a tool for grids in designing websites in Inkscape. The guides are therefore positioned using pixels, and use rounded numbers (they are set on the pixel). Not tested with other units.

With this extension, you can...

• create columns with gutters (vertical guides), and rows with gutters (horizontal guides);
• define the number of columns, the column width and gutter width to generate a grid; same with rows;
• generate evenly spaced guides without gutters by setting gutter width to 0;
• choose to align the grid in relation to the page: left aligned, centered or right aligned;
• optionnally add an extra horizontal/vertical offset, for example to generate the grid at a certain distance from the page border (when left/right aligned); this offset can be negative; for columns, this offset is a shift to the right (when positive), for rows it is a shift down (when positive)
• optionnally delete all existing horizontal/vertical guides before generating the new guides;
• see a preview using Live preview, to test different widths.

Tips:

• You can generate multiple grids on top of each other, by applying grids several times. Just be sure to uncheck "Delete existing guides".
• Need guides in the middle of your gutters? After generating the columns (with gutters set to even number), generate a new grid with gutters set to zero, column width set to [original column width + gutter width]. If you need guides on round pixels, use an even number for gutter width.
• You can generate grids side by side by using a very large offset.
• Need a baseline grid in addition to the generated columns ? Use Inkscape's grids under File > Document Properties > Grids. Set a new rectangular grid with for example Spacing X = 2000, Spacing Y = 14.

Limitations:

• Not tested with other units than pixels. It is made to set guides on round position numbers (ie. at position 24, not 24.35)
• The grid is calculated "inside out" - from the column width, gutter width and number of columns, the guides are drawn. It currently cannot draw the guides "outside in" - from a predefined total width, a gutter width and number of columns, calculate the columns width and draw the guides... Would be a useful addition.

The Add Grid Guides is heavily based on the code from Grid Creator, part of Inkscape core, under Extensions > Render. Many thanks to that extension's maintainer.

4. Remove all guides

This extension is actually made by heathenx, bundled here with his permission. See this blog post and this forum topic. I've just moved the extension's menu item to Extensions > Guides; this functionality may become part of inkscape in upcoming version 0.49

(no user interface, so no screenshot)

5. Remove selected guides

Selectively remove all horizontal and/or vertical and/or angled (diagonal) guides. Based on heathenx's extension Remove all guides.

How to install the extensions

1. Download the zip archive to your computer;
2. Unzip (extract) the archive on your computer;
3. Open it. In the folder "extensions", you will find the extension files - they come in pairs, an .inx and .py file for each extension. Copy these files (not the folder) into your Inkscape extensions folder:

• on Windows: "C:\Program Files\Inkscape\share\extensions"
• on Linux: " /home/yourusername/.config/inkscape/extensions" (.config is a hidden folder)
• on OS X: "/Applications/Inkscape.app/Contents/Resources/extensions"

Restart or open Inkscape.

Where to find them

The extensions will all be available in the menu under Extensions > Guide.

Adding a keyboard shortcut

You can add a keyboard shortcut to any inkscape extension, manually, by editing an xml file with user keyboard shortcuts.

Edit your user shortcuts files (on Linux, it's /home/yourusername/.config/inkscape/keys/default.xml, on Windows, it's in Program Files\Inkscape\share\keys\default.xml.) For example, this will add the shortcut Ctrl-Shift-Alt-G to add centered guides:

<bind key="G" modifiers="Ctrl,Alt,Shift" action="samplify.add_centered_guides" display="true"/>

<bind action="samplify.add_margin_guides" display="true"/>

<bind action="samplify.add_grid_guides" display="true"/>

<bind action="samplify.remove_guides" display="true"/>

<bind action="samplify.remove_selected_guides" display="true"/>

Note: you may want to check first to see if the new keyboard shortcuts already exist in your file or in the default shortcuts file.

What's next

• It would be nice to also make an "outside in" grid building extension - where you would set a total width, a gutter width, and number of columns, and the extension would calculate the columns width and draw the guides. The total width could be defined by a number, or by the document (with or without margins), or by the bounding box of a selection...
• It would be nice if the Margin guides and Centered guides would work on selected objects instead of on the document.
• The Add Grid Guides should be able to work with other units than pixels. And should not always have to be on round pixel positions.

Licence

These guide extensions are licenced under the GPL v2, just like Inkscape.

Author: Samuel Dellicour