Tgif (program)

Tgif (pronounced t-g-i-f) is an Xlib based interactive 2-D drawing tool under X11 for Unix, available on Linux and most Unix and Unix-like platforms. It was developed since 1990 and is free software released under the QPL license.

Tgif is one of the few free drawing programs that has, as well as a ruler, a usable grid.

Quirks

Because Tgif was developed long before a standard way for drawing programs to work, one might find it unfamiliar to use in a number of ways:

• Although it might mention point sizes, it uses a unit that is 1/128 of an inch for point sizes. There is an option to display font sizes in points, the sizes are still subject to rounding to the nearest 1/128".
• Unlike modern drawing programs, Tgif uses spline curves instead of Bézier curves.
• Colour is not selected from a colour wheel or through controls that allows one to adjust colour values; instead, there is a named list with a short list of colours. To use a colour that is not in the list, one needs to add the colour to the list. This list gets saved with the drawing.
• Fonts that can be used are listed in a configuration file. To use fonts that are not on the list, one has to change the configuration file.
• Only fonts in the ISO 8859-1 encoding, “square” CJK fonts, and symbol or dingbat fonts can be used.
• Rescaling can lead to ugly artifacts, which is probably due to the use of integer coordinates and roundoff errors.
• In addition, because Tgif uses Xlib, which predated modern Unicode support, Tgif......
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