Potracegui is a GUI interface for potrace (http://potrace.sourceforge.net), and autotrace (http://autotrace.sourceforge.net/), two programs for tracing bitmapped images.

-=What does it do?=-
Not much at all ;)
All the dirt work is done by potrace and autotrace, my app is only an interface: it collects informations in an easy way (hopefully) and then it launches the backend with all the relevant options. Potrace and autotrace, on the contrary, are great apps for tracing: they transform a bitmap image in a vector one (.eps or .svg format as an example) so that they can be scaled, rotated, and transformed in general, without loss of quality (this isn't an accurate description of potrace. For full details and a real description visit their websites).

-=So why should I use Potracegui?=-
Well, using a GUI sometimes is more comfortable (particularly if working with images), even if I'm a strong supporter of command-line programs.
On the other hand, Potracegui (thanks to Jakub Stachowski) can now load remote files (web, ftp...), use any image format recognizeb by KDE (potrace uses only a few bitmapped formats) and support drag and drop.


-=A note about dependancies=-

I'm using kde 3.3.2 and QT 3.3.3 (and SuSE 9.1, but it is so patched that it is quite unrecognizable) for development.
Potracegui builds without problem with these versions, but it should do so even if you are using older versions of QT and kde (QT >= 3.3.x and kde >= 3.2.x).
I also understand that it builds under FreeBSD 4.x, even if I have never tried personally.

If you are able to build it in other distros/versions/O.S please let me know.


-=Dirty tricks=-

If building potracegui you get an error complaining about a version of qt too old, when processing user interface files (*.ui), it may be possible that you can build it anyway. Try opening MainWidgetBase.ui in the src subdirectory: in the first line yu will find the tag



Try changing the version value to that of your QT installation, and rebuild the project. It may work or it may not, but it's worth a try.