Most of the illustrations that have appeared in Tested Technology since the beginning of last year have been put together with the help of a superb software tool called BoxySVG. It runs on MacOS, on Windows, and, of course, on our own choice operating system, Linux.
BoxySVG is the creation of Jarosław (Jarek) Foksa, a developer working in Poland. The app is closed source and requires modest payment from Mac and Windows users. A full-function free version is available for Linux users.
Although described as “a lightweight alternative to complex software like Adobe Illustrator”, BoxySVG turns out in practice to be much more fully functional than this description implies. What Jarek has done is a masterly exercise in “information hiding”. This crucial feature of software design presents the beginner with a simplified, easily manipulated surface while still leaving the more complex capabilities accessible to the experienced user.
What follows here, a description of a process Tested Technology has been using for several months to separate foreground from background, illustrates a small part of BoxySVG’s usefulness. It uses a similar technique we applied previously to other graphical software like Gimp, now very much streamlined thanks to Jarek.
Chris Bidmead 05-Feb-25