Installing Sozi on Mac OS X

Update (March, 2013): Link to tdelahais guide (Mountain Lion up-to-date guide)

Update (done) (August 14th, 2012): I will clean up my system and reinstall Sozi in a few days in order to describre precisely all steps. I'll also clean up comments (but bugs and problems will be described in the installation process).

Update (June 22th, 2012): These instructions work with Sozi (12.05).

Sozi is "a small program that can play animated presentations". In fact, Sozi is a Prezi-like, open-source project based on Inkscape.

This extension provides series of effects (translations, zooms, rotations) that let users make their presentation easily and beautifuly.

Installing Sozi on Mac OS X was not that easy ; this article explain how I managed to do it. My installation is based on MacPorts whereas the proposed one on the Sozi website is using Fink (that I don't want to use). The whole process can take several hours, so be patient.

About the installation

These steps explain how I managed to install Sozi on a MacBook Pro (Lion). Inkscape was not installed from MacPorts.

Mountain Lion users

I'm not able to provide correct steps for Mountain Lion (because I still running a Lion OSX). Thomas Delahais provides additionnal steps to install Sozi on Mountain Lion right here.

Installation steps

  1. Install MacPorts (this can be done by installing XCode), pretty long step,
  2. Install Inkscape using the dmg (Snow Leopard) provided from Inkscape website,
  3. Install MacPorts dependencies for Inkscape:
sudo port selfupdate
sudo port sync
sudo port -c -R upgrade outdated
sudo port install py27-lxml py27-gtk gtk-theme-switch gnome-themes
  1. Install Sozi by putting files from the zip archive into your home directory :
mv sozi-release-.../* ~/.config/inkscape/extensions/

Problems encountered when installing Sozi

Inkscape crashes on startup

I encountered this problem while using MacPorts version of Inkscape. As soon as I switched to Inkscape.app, it worked.

Inkscape displays weird characters (squares) in the Sozi window

Inkscape is using Python from the Mac and can't use MacPorts dependencies installed in step 2. You have to edit Inkscape binary launcher:

cd /Applications/Inkscape.app/Contents/Resources/bin/
vim inkscape

Line 28, replace:

export PATH="/usr/bin:$PATH"

by

export PATH="$CWD:$PATH:/usr/bin"

Also, you have to create a python command, describing the Python environment.

vim python
chmod +x python

The content of the file is:

#!/bin/sh

# unset env used in Inkscape.app
unset PYTHONHOME
unset DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH
unset FONTCONFIG_PATH
unset PANGO_RC_FILE
unset GTK_IM_MODULE_FILE
unset GDK_PIXBUF_MODULE_FILE
unset GTK_DATA_PREFIX
unset GTK_EXE_PREFIX
unset GNOME_VFS_MODULE_CONFIG_PATH
unset GNOME_VFS_MODULE_PATH
unset MAGICK_CONFIGURE_PATH
unset MAGICK_CODER_FILTER_PATH
unset MAGICK_CODER_MODULE_PATH
unset ASPELL_CONF
unset XDG_DATA_DIRS

# set locale (language) explicitly
export LANG="en_US.UTF-8"

exec /opt/local/bin/python "$@"

It should work.

Inkscape displays a warning when closing the Sozi windows

When closing Sozi window, Inkscape may display this warning:

/Users/.../.inkscape-etc/gtkrc:56: Clearlooks configuration option "menuitemstyle"
    is not supported and will be ignored.
/Users/.../.inkscape-etc/gtkrc:57: Clearlooks configuration option "listviewitemstyle"
    is not supported and will be ignored.
/Users/.../.inkscape-etc/gtkrc:58: Clearlooks configuration option "progressbarstyle"
    is not supported and will be ignored.

This is due to the theme used by Sozi. Even if it is just a warning, it is boring to close the warning window every time.

Retrieve the patch osx-clearlooks-gtkrc.diff from the inkscape bugtracker. Then, apply the patch:

cd /Applications/Inkscape.app/Contents/Resources/themes/Clearlooks-Quicksilver-OSX/gtk-2.0/
patch pre_gtkrc osx-clearlooks-gtkrc.diff

Comments !