lgm25-upstream

Welcome to Nuremberg, welcome the Libre Graphics Meeting!

We're kicking of this years special focus -- RE:imagination -- exploring the possible futures of the Libre Graphics Meeting.

Special focus – RE:imagination

The Libre Graphics Meeting faced significant challenges during and after
the pandemic. In Rennes, France, 2024, the local organization team revitalized
the event, and now we aim to rebuild the international community and
strengthen the structures around the Libre Graphics Meeting.

Join us to reconnect with old friends and forge new connections. Under the
theme of RE:imagination, we are going to explore the future of the Libre
Graphics Meeting together.

An update from the many projects of our community.

Submit Slides and Content

Please submit your slides as Pull Requests to https://github.com/libregraphicsmeeting/state-of-lg-2025
details to the format and process are in the README of the repository. If
you have trouble contributing this way, feel free to contact us directly:
libregraphicsmeeting@strong-type.systems.

Call for Slides

The public announcement is at: Call for Slides: State of Libre Graphics.

Processing is one of the most widely used open-source tools for creative coding and CS education. Since it was first released in 2001, it has been instrumental in teaching coding to students, artists, and designers worldwide, serving as a gateway into programming for people who might never have touched code otherwise.

A remarkable thing about Processing is the consistency of its API. Most Processing code written twenty years ago still runs in Processing today with only minor changes. That kind of longevity is rare in software and speaks to the project's thoughtful design.

But behind the scenes, the project struggled.

For a long time, Processing relied on a small, dedicated core team. As contributors moved on, fewer people remained who understood the full complexity of the codebase. Maintenance became harder. Key libraries stopped working. By the time Processing 4 was released, the project was already in a difficult place.

In 2021, a major fundraiser for Processing’s 20th anniversary brought unprecedented financial support, but it also sparked difficult conversations about the project’s future. In 2023, Processing’s historical maintainer, Ben Fry, cut ties with the project, and with no clear direction, development stalled for over a year. Many assumed Processing was dead.

It is not.

That same support that brought uncertainty also made recovery possible. Over the past year, a small group of contributors, with support from the Processing Foundation, has restarted development, modernized infrastructure, and begun the slow, difficult work of making Processing a sustainable open-source project again.

Processing will turn 25 in 2026, and we’re working to make it last for another 25 years!

This talk is an honest look at what it takes to keep a beloved open-source project alive, the progress we’ve made, and why the community’s role in its future is more critical than ever.

UpStage, the artist-led platform for cyberformance (live online performance), celebrated its 20 th anniversary
in 2024 along with the completion of the four-year Creative Europe funded artistic project
Mobilise/Demobilise. This project enabled a complete “RE:imagination” of the UpStage code, removing its
dependency on Flash, introducing new features and bringing it up to date with current technologies. The last
time we presented UpStage at LGM, in 2021, we had just begun this process; since then, the new platform
has been launched and development is ongoing.

In this presentation, our Lead Developer Gloria W. and
UpStage Persister Helen Varley Jamieson will present the new platform and its features including its
integration of Jitsi for audio-visual streams, audience interaction and live text and drawing tools. Most
recently the developers have implemented Docker and made other improvements to the backend, to make
installation of independent instances easier and testing more automated.

Alongside the development work, UpStage continues to actively promote the use of open source tools by
artists, and the involvement of artists in the development of our digital tools. This is ever more important as
LLM (so-called AI) and the increasing hegemony of proprietary social and creative platforms force artists
into their paradigms. UpStage continues to be an independent, artist-led space for the “RE:imagination” of
better worlds.

Links

• UpStage
• UpStage: the cyberformance platform
• Mobilise/Demobilise

Scalable vector fonts have been the norm for decades, but that doesn't
mean artists and hackers don't have use cases where a bitmap font fits
the bill (and it doesn't mean that classic bitmap font designs deserve
to be forgotten, either).

This session explores two distinct scenarios where bitmap fonts have a
role to play and looks at the tooling needed to convert or repackage older
bitmap formats for convenient usage in modern free-software applications.

The first scenario is enabling vintage computing aesthetics in graphic design:
there are several paths available to transform bitmap fonts into forms usable
in Inkscape, GIMP, and other open-source design tools.

The second scenario is getting text onto inexpensive LCD, LED, and OLED
display hardware. Most such display hardware allows the runtime loading or
flashing of bitmap characters, but pitfalls abound.

Options and recommendations for both scenarios will be examined, with demos
drawn from vintage arcade fonts and the classic Xorg/X11 font suite. To
conclude, the talk will outline the licensing issues likely to arise when
dealing with bitmap font packages that so often predate contemporary
free-software licenses.

Splines, especially in their general form as NURBS, are an extremely versatile tool in a 3D designer's kit. They allow the designer to succinctly and efficiently model objects of arbitrary shape and smoothness. For converting these designs into physical objects, FreeCAD has a vast set of tools to operate on NURBS, both as planar curves and (with addons) as surfaces. However, the complications of NURBS can also cause a good amount of confusion, especially compared to other representations of splines, which may be more familiar to the user from other applications (which may include other CAE apps as well as more artistic tools like Inkscape).

In this talk, I discuss some of these common questions often seen in the issue tracker and forums, as well as best practices to follow for common workflows. I also showcase current progress and future plans to make the experience more intuitive and in line with other apps.

Images created with digital graphic techniques have played a central role
in promoting the seemingly endless growth of a computing culture that many
of us now recognize as extractive, polluting and exploitative. Beyond that,
something that once promised a utopian future now feels like it has delivered
a rather crappy, disappointing reality. FLOSS has undoubtedly played some role
in this development, but it also holds a great potential as part of a shift
in imagination to new practices and aesthetics that are more verdant, just
and humane.

This presentation will propose the concept of "Permacomputing" as a useful
lens to consider the role of FLOSS in developing alternative practices.
Permacomputing is both a concept and a community of practice oriented
around issues of resilience and regenerativity in computer and network
technology inspired by permaculture.

We will start with a brief introduction to the concepts and emerging projects
around these ideas. With these notions in mind, we can then examine how
some of the existing practices of Libre Graphics might inspire or give
relevant support to newer, more holistic ways of working. And finally, we
will look at some specific examples of software development, education and
image making using the generative flora of computing within limits.

Whether it is stitching together some travel footage or producing high-quality film content, there are many ways people want to work with the medium "video". Their needs for video editing solutions are diverse, and so is their budget.

Open-source video editing software seems great for beginners to get started at zero cost. What do you get and what do you have to give up on compared to the closed-source options? What does it even take to build software like this from scratch, technologically as well as mentally?

This talk takes a brief look at the free-to-use options for video editing on a desktop computer before switching the perspective to that of the developers and maintainers of such software. It offers insights into the struggles with technology, fundraising, self-motivation, and community dynamics, while also highlighting the rewarding moments and intriguing current and future developments.

An interactive session with all attendants. We are looking for your experience,
knowledge and insights. How can we make the structure around the LGM sustainable.

Special focus – RE:imagination

The Libre Graphics Meeting faced significant challenges during and after
the pandemic. In Rennes, France, 2024, the local organization team revitalized
the event, and now we aim to rebuild the international community and
strengthen the structures around the Libre Graphics Meeting.

Join us to reconnect with old friends and forge new connections. Under the
theme of RE:imagination, we are going to explore the future of the Libre
Graphics Meeting together.

Five 10 minute slots for lightning talks. Sign-up on location!

At the 2014 edition of LGM in Leipzig I've shown the evolution on
printed circuit board design with a special focus on fonts, which were
mostly constrained by the technical capabilities of the tools available
at that time.

Ten years later, however, there now is a strong Free Software
option for designing your own PCBs and there is a growing community
of artists using PCBs as a medium for artistic expression, a lot of
them actually using KiCAD for the design work.

I want to showcase examples of PCBs where the properties of PCBs are
used to create visually appealing hardware. I'll also give a quick tour
through KiCAD to show the limits of its capabilities as well as its
strong side for graphical artworks.

It is well known that PDF has become a very popular file format.
Everyone use it everyday for many purposes.

In this context, many software can produce PDF. Still, as graphic
designers, we must often deal with provided PDF that doesn’t match our
needs, because one PDF isn’t worth another. On the other side,
printshops also come with their own standards and constraints.

How can we deal with theses everyday outcomes and be sure our PDF will
match the delivery standards, using only free softwares?

In this presentation, we will talk about several PDF tools trying to
reach this goal of giving the right PDF to the right person.

Hyper 8 is a static site generator for video, developed since 2023 and
first released in 2024. It uses a file-based, modular building block
system for authoring video sites ranging from single videos, to
playlists, to video collections of arbitrary hierarchical complexity.
Sites can be created and edited using Hyper 8's graphical user
interface, but also using nothing more than a terminal, file explorer
and text editor (or both). Due to their static nature, Hyper 8 sites are
inherently fast, maintenance-free, long-term archivable (also working
offline without a server, directly off disk) and compatible with pretty
much every webhost (thereby easy to publish and move).

In this talk I want to take you on a whirlwind tour around the project:
Who is this for? What was the motivation? How does this relate to
PeerTube? What is being developed at the moment? Where is it going in
the future? What are the challenges, learnings, anecdotes so far? And so
on. And of course also: Your questions!

Links

• Hyper 8 Video System

Hubs is an open-source interactive browser based 3D meeting space. It is
now fully integrated in Blender 3D, which is using an extended version of
the gltf format. An extension allows you to attach all the basic components
to objects, like particles, UV animations, water and much more. But you can
also share links, videos and audio right inside your 3D rooms.

Soon another feature was added to the gtlf exporter, the Behavior Graph.
It enables interactivity via node-based logic and is only available in
Blender 3D. It is the very feature we would like to present to you. If
you are used to Blender’s nodes graphs, you might feel right at home.
However managing interactivity creates a distinct difference, since every
node needs to get triggered by events, be it player interaction or just
timer based.

Come learn about some ways to create waterfalls for video games!
Inspired by a variety of waterfalls in the Pacific Northwest of the USA,
Tom has been playing around with different ways to create waterfalls in
the open source Godot game engine, with the help of other open source
software such as Blender, Krita, and Gimp. Video game fluid flow is a
complex subject, and this talk will outline various methods to cheat so
that you don't really have to know complex math to make something
acceptable.

Fontra is a novel, libre, browser-based, cross-platform, variable-first font editor.

Links

• website: Fontra

The session will start with an introduction to the topic of usability and user experience (UX),
including the human centered design process (HCD) and design thinking (DT). After having laid
out the foundation, a brief overview of different usability evaluation methods is given. The main
part of the presentation is about introducing two often used methods: On the one hand the heuristic
evaluation as an example of a usability inspection method, and usability testing on the other hand.
Both methods can be used to find (potential) usability problems in a software. Whereas a heuristic
evaluation is conducted by an expert following a check-list, a usability test needs end users who
fulfill tasks to be conducted. After describing how both methods can be used individually, also a
practical way to combining them is presented. The session will conclude with an overview of the
advantages and disadvantages of each method.

Three takeaways of this session will be:

• A basic awareness for usability/UX and the importance of evaluating it
• An overview of the two major usability/UX evaluation methods heuristic evaluation and
  usability testing
• A first idea how to use these methods for your/a software project

Target group

• UX/usability laymen
• Contributors to software

Five 10 minute slots for lightning talks. Sign-up on location!

A developer talk about coming up with a new file format for Drawpile
with the focus being on the findings and ideas that would be useful for
other programs as well. Some of those ideas are already implemented and
have brought a massive speedup in file saving and loading, some wilder
ideas like continuous autosave with history-altering time-travel are in
various states of currently still being worked on, but sufficiently cool
to talk about anyway.

Links

• Drawpile

In this presentation, we partly follow this year's topic "RE:imagination"
and will explore old but not old-fashioned printer control languages such
as HP-GL (1970s and 1980s) and PostScript (1980s) and device-specific commands
for dot matrix printers (1980s) to better understand how we relate to printers
and printing today. What can we learn from these languages from current
graphic practices and perspectives? What context were these languages
developed in? Which aesthetics can be created with them today and which
tools are needed to do so? How can the sharing culture of the FLOSS/LGM
community be applied to such old "closed source" devices? This artistic,
media archeological, and auto-ethnographic research is part of the
Master Experimental Publishing (XPUB) in Rotterdam, where we, students and
teachers, studied these languages together in the first 3 months of this
year on the most obsolete and almost discarded printing devices of our university.

Expect a presentation about frustrations with serial connections, dust removal
with compressed air, porous plastic that disintegrates into small pieces,
glitch aesthetic with PostScript and the practice of working within the obstacles
of dying devices. Watch out for undead pen plotters & printers and their
obscure languages!

So, is LGM all about libre tools that software developers make that
designers and artists use to make creative work … ? At previous LGMs
we’ve talked about open-source design feeding back into improving the
look, feel and usability of creative software. But what about the
tools used to write those tools? Can we link things back another step?

Coding environments have barely changed in decades. Yet the complexity
of software produced in them has risen exponentially. The disconnect
from cause to effect has become ever greater. All software has bugs,
most bugs involve software doing exactly what it was told to do.
Sometimes they eat your work, sometimes they kill people.

The title of this talk is partly “borrowed” from an article that
appeared in The Atlantic in 2017. But is it all hyperbole? This talk
was originally proposed for the cancelled LGM in 2020 - the landscape
may have evolved since then, such as in the growth of AI, but has it
improved? Let’s consider some of the issues. And ongoing experiments
in user interaction, liveness and design in various open-source tools
that are seeking to change coding for the better.

This talk may cover some of the ideas in play. But it certainly won’t
have the right answers. It probably hasn’t even found the right
questions. But just maybe it’s time to help save the world from code.

This presentation explores UI improvements for Inkscape, aiming to make it
more welcoming for newcomers while enhancing efficiency for experienced
users. It showcases design concepts, feedback from the UX team, and discusses
how UI refinements can strengthen Inkscape's community.

Links

• Inkscape

TypeRoof is type tooling infrastructure. It provides type proofing
applications, initially based on Video Proof and Variable Type Tools.
Now it also explores the world of general animation with type as a
principal actor, and document creation with general typography in mind
and typographical automations based on expert knowledge.

TypeRoof is intended as a host for all kinds of type related tools,
providing advanced methods of resource loading (i.e. fonts, data files)
saving and restoring state etc. – features which ad-hoc developed tools
typically miss out, as they are hard to do right on limited time.

TypeRoof is Free/Libre Open Source Software and web based, build mainly
with vanilla JavaScript and a few specialized dependencies. We are looking
for a community of users and developers who are interested in shaping its future.

Links

• website: TypeRoof
• git

… using Qgis and Scribus with a little help from Inkscape, and Ghostscript.

A happy-ending story about finding out the tips and tricks along the way.

Last November, we've been comissioned to produce a small series of printed
maps for a cultural center in Lessines, Belgium, to celebrate memories of
Louis Scutenaire and René Magritte. We aimed for a project using three colors,
and decided to go for spot color printing - using libre graphics tools, mainly
QGIS for the design of the map, and Scribus for layout elements and to prepare
the pdfs for printing.

We also used Inkscape to vectorize some small illustrations, as well as
Ghostscript to check and sometimes fix the resulting PDFs.

Then, once we decided that it would be spot color printing, we had to find
out a workflow from QGIS to Scribus in order to produce PDFs for spot-color
printing. It was not without a few obstacles that we encountered, as both
QGIS and Scribus present limitations in terms of color processing or vector
rendering.

We will present our productive investigation into both QGIS and Scribus,
describe how we use QGIS functionalities to optimize the maps for spot color
printing and show the tips and tricks we learned along the way - and share
the results, hoping to inspire other mapmakers around to give it a try.

Organising a film festival is 90% communication. The FOSS and Libre Graphics
toolbox is well-equipped for this. However, for many of the tasks that a
festival entails (video formats, subtitles), we needed to dig a little deeper.
Hear about the challenges we faced and the solutions we came up with!

Links

• website: LusOFest

Machine embroidery is becoming increasingly popular. It is more durable
than other customization methods for textiles and it adds a whole new
artistic dimension to the design. What makes it so beautiful, also adds
a new layer of complexity to the machine embroidery design creation
process. In this brief introduction we will learn a few basic
essentials on how to create machine embroidery designs using the Open
Source vector graphic software Inkscape along with the Ink/Stitch
extension.

Links

• Ink/Stitch
• Inkscape

We discuss our conclusions of our special focus re:imagination
and find out more about the next edition of the LGM.

Goodbye.