Is there a better way to do borders in Inkscape?

[bartmoss]

Hi Guys,

I am just playing around, basically avoiding doing climate design for Thraeton. Anyway I came up with the obvious way to do nice colorful borders in Inkscape, the type you'll find in many old-style atlasses:

1) Cut up the continent into different countries
2) Duplicate a country
3) Use the dynamic offset tool to make the upper of the two shapes a little smaller (the inset tool doesn't seem to like overly complex shapes)
4) set style of the smaller shape to no stroke, solid white fill, small amount of blur
5) Set the style of the bigger shape to any solid color you like
6) Done

In my opinion it looks fairly good:

enderra-borders-test1.png

I wonder, though, is there a better way to do it? It would be much easier to edit the map later if I could assign such a faded look to a line directly, but I can't figure out how to do that if it's even possible at all...

[RobA]

Bartmoss-

The easiest way I'd suggest is to use clipping masks.

1) Cut up the continent into different countries
2) Duplicate a country twice
3) Select the top copy and set its border stroke to the colour and width you want.
4) Hit page down to push it below the other copy.
5) shift click on the copy (now on top) so both are selected.
6) right click and "set mask"
7) change the blur and opacity as desired.

borders.png

You can do the same thing with cloned copies rather than duplicates so by modifying the original of the cloned copies the colour and clip mask will change as well. (I can give the step by step for that, too, if you want)

-Rob A>

[bartmoss]

Rob, Thanks, that does sound simpler. I think I can figure out the cloned thing... if not I'll bump this thread. Thanks very much for your help.

[Hai-Etlik]

It's doable purely as filter effect, without clones, copies, insets, etc.

[RobA]

It's doable purely as filter effect, without clones, copies, insets, etc.

Nice. I still can't wrap my brain around filter effects. Plus they are unbearable slow on my machine...

-Rob A>