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Generating posters for scientific conferences is best done using a vector-based graphics system. Although it can be done using Photoshop or the GIMP and a 10,000 by 10,000 canvas, vector-based approaches use less RAM and therefore run faster on most machines; they also offer more flexibility in the alteration and rearranging of both text and images. Similarly, you should use a vector-based graphics system to generate figures for scientific papers—being arbitrarily scalable, they'll keep your figures looking good even after the journal editors have manhandled them.

The difficulty to this point has been in finding an effective vector-based graphics package that doesn't cost you a month's rent (or half of a month, if you live in Boston), and/or one that will run in your (non-Windows) operating system. Below I review Inkscape, a free (as in beer) [and free as in free speech—Ed.], open-source vector-based graphics system that runs under Windows and Unix.

A popular commercial solution to this problem is Adobe Illustrator, but it has a high price tag. Some departments are rich enough to buy you a copy, I think that they do get an academic discount of some sort. However, then you can't use it from home (not legally, anyway), and may not be able to access your own poster from your next job. I've never actually used Illustrator, so I'll leave it to others to comment on whether or not it's really worth a month's rent.

The old freeware program Xfig is a useful, lightweight tool for generating good-looking figures for your papers, but its text manipulation system is a train wreck that makes it unsuitable for generating posters.

Enter a new open-source solution: Inkscape. Inkscape, although only currently in version 0.42, has a surprisingly finished feel to it, and is easy to figure out how to use, for the most part.

Text is done very well, with boxes to indicate location and size of the desired writing area and flowing text within the box. Both WYSIWIG and an external, fast popup window can be used for entering text. In all, I was very pleased with this text system, perhaps because I really did make posters in Xfig before. Don't do that.

The mechanic for graphics in Inkscape is well-implemented as well. Moving and resizing of images, with or without keeping aspect ratio, is very easy, and intuitive. My only beef was that I was unable to directly import Encapsulated PostScript files. Although the Inkscape website says that this is no big deal, it didn't work on my home machine. This could be the result of my version of ghostscript there being busted, though, and I'd like to hear if others get this working properly. I ended up having to convert a few figures to the scalable vector graphics (.svg) format.

SVG is a new, XML-based vector graphics storage format. Inkscape uses this format to save and load. Seems cool; it means that you can easily import .svg files from other vector-graphics programs, and vice versa.

So: try Inkscape and let us all know what you think.