Inkscape 0.47
Inkscape 0.47 brings a host of important improvements all across the program:
• Timed autosave: no more lost work
• Spiro splines: an exciting new way to work with paths, fully supported in
Pen, Pencil, and Node tools
• Auto smooth nodes: a new type of node that keeps the path as smooth as
possible as you move it or its neighbors
• New modes in Tweak tool: pushing and jittering whole objects, scaling/
rotating objects, deleting and duplicating using the "soft brush"
• Reworked, much more usable snapping system and a Snapping toolbar
• New path effects, including sketch, hatching, envelope deformation; effects
can be stacked and assigned to groups
• A huge collection of preset filters in the new Filters menu
• New cairo-based PS and EPS export: improved quality, more features
supported, fallback rasterization for filters and transparency
• Spell checker for text objects in a document
• Many new extensions: restacking, calendar, printing marks, cartesian and
polar grids, interpolating attributes
• Optimized SVG code options, now with their own Preferences page
• Many other improvements, usability tweaks, memleak stops, and misc bugfixes
Refactoring effort
The focus of the 0.47 release was to clean up legacy code and push forward the
migration to clean object-oriented C++. The goal of this effort was to increase
reliability and maintainability of Inkscape. In the long run, it will mean
fewer bugs and more new features, because it will be easier to develop and find
bugs in Inkscape.
Migration to lib2geom
Many parts of the code have been changed to use the 2geom library for
geometrical calculations instead of the old libnr and livarot libraries.
Preferences
Instead of global functions directly manipulating an XML document, the
preferences API is now exposed through the Inkscape::Preferences singleton. It
abstracts away the way the preferences are stored in memory. In the future it
may allow for different user settings storage backends (like GConf or the
upcoming dconf on GNOME desktops or .plist files on OS X). Previously, Inkscape
directly manipulated an internal XML document.
The Preferences directory has been moved on Linux (and Mac OS X) from ~
/.inkscape to ~/.config/inkscape to better conform to Linux desktop standards.
Tools
Node tool
• In previous versions of Inkscape, no visual feedback was given back to the
user when hovering over paths when using the Node tool. In this update,
hovering over a path with the Node tool now results in a highlighted path
outline being displayed. Note: the duration and color of the new path
outline feature can be configured in the Tools > Node section of the
Inkscape Preferences dialog.
• The Node tool can now edit clipping paths and masks of objects on canvas,
without releasing them. If the selected object has a clipping path and
mask, the corresponding buttons on the controls bar of the tool will be
enabled; pressing these buttons will display the editable paths or handles
of the clippath or mask. A clipping path is stroked green, a mask is
stroked blue (the same colors as those used for them in Outline mode).
• Snapping has been improved (more details in Snapping below).
• When dragging a node handle with Ctrl pressed, it now snaps not only to the
15 degree increments starting from 0 and to the original handle direction,
but also to the direction of the opposite handle (if it exists) or of the
opposite line segment (if it is a straight line).
• The behavior of the buttons/shortcuts that make a node smooth or cusp has
been improved:
□ If a node is already a cusp (diamond shaped), pressing Shift+C again on
it will retract both its handles. As this works for any number of
selected nodes, you can always retract all handles in all nodes by
selecting all nodes and pressing Shift+C twice.
□ If a non-smooth node is next to a straight line segment, pressing
Shift+S once makes it half-smooth: it now has one handle aligned with
that line segment. Another press of Shift+S will expand the second
handle as well turning it into a full smooth node. If a node is between
two curve segments, Shift+S will expand both handles as before.
• Auto smooth nodes: this is a new node type, similar to the one Xara Xtreme
has. An auto node is a smooth node which automatically adjusts (rotates and
stretches) its handles when this node or its neighbors are moved. This
adjustment (same as what you get when you convert node type to Smooth, but
continuous) keeps the curve at this node as smooth as possible. It feels a
bit like Spiro paths (see below); although not as smooth as a Spiro, auto
nodes may often be preferable as they work without applying any path
effect. Whenever you manually adjust the handles of an auto node or drag
the adjacent curve, the node loses its auto state and becomes simply
smooth; for this reason, it is recommended to edit smooth nodes with the
node handles hidden via a toggle button on the Node tool controls bar. Auto
nodes are represented by little circles, as opposed to smooth/symmetric
nodes (squares) and cusp nodes (diamonds). To convert selected node(s) to
auto, press Shift+A or use the corresponding node type button on the
controls bar.
Tweak tool
Several new modes are added to the Tweak tool for transforming, duplicating,
and deleting selected objects using the same "soft brush" metaphor that the
path editing and coloring modes use. Using these new modes, it is easy to
"sculpt" scatterings of small objects, such as clone tilings, into complex and
naturalistic textures.
• Push mode moves those selected objects that are under the brush in the
direction in which you move the brush. This is similar to the Push path
mode, except that the Move mode affects entire objects and not parts of the
paths under the brush.
• Attract/Repel Objects mode moves those selected objects that are under the
brush towards the cursor (default) or away from cursor (with Shift
pressed). This is similar to the Attract/repel path mode, except that the
Move in/out mode affects entire objects and not parts of the paths under
cursor.
• Jitter mode moves those selected objects that are under the brush in random
directions and by random amounts, but the overall amount of movement
depends on Force, pen pressure (if you're using a tablet pen), on the
closeness of the object to the center of brush, and on how long you apply
the brush.
• Scale mode scales those selected objects that are under the brush down (by
default) or up (with Shift pressed). The speed of scaling depends on Force,
pen pressure (if you're using a tablet pen), on the closeness of the object
to the center of brush, and on how long you apply the brush.
• Rotate mode rotates those selected objects that are under the brush
clockwise (by default) or counterclockwise (with Shift pressed). The speed
of rotation depends on Force, pen pressure (if you're using a tablet pen),
on the closeness of the object to the center of brush, and on how long you
apply the brush.
• Duplicate/delete mode randomly duplicates those selected objects that are
under the brush (by default) or deletes them (with Shift pressed). The
chance of an object to be duplicated and deleted depends on Force, pen
pressure (if you're using a tablet pen), on the closeness of the object to
the center of brush, and on how long you apply the brush. Like with the
regular Duplicate command, duplicating with Tweak tool places the copies
right over the originals, and you may need to use the Jitter mode to ruffle
them apart. The duplicates created by the tool are automatically added to
selection if the originals objects were in selection (e.g. if you're
tweaking a group of objects, they are duplicated within that group and are
not by themselves selected).
• Blur mode blurs the selected objects under the brush more (by default) or
less (with Shift pressed). The amount of blur added or removed depends on
Force, pen pressure (if you're using a tablet pen), on the closeness of the
object to the center of brush, and on how long you apply the brush.
Also, the existing path editing modes of the tool have been rearranged: now
Shrink and Grow are one mode (shrinks by default, grows with Shift), and
Attract and Repel are one mode (attracts by default, repels with Shift). Here
is a complete list of modes and shortcuts of the Tweak tool:
Shift+m, Shift+0 move mode
Shift+i, Shift+1 attract/repel objects mode
Shift+z, Shift+2 jitter mode
Shift+<, Shift+>, Shift+3 scale mode
Shift+[, Shift+], Shift+4 rotate mode
Shift+d, Shift+5 duplicate/delete mode
Shift+p, Shift+6 push path mode
Shift+s, Shift+7 shrink/grow path mode
Shift+a, Shift+8 attract/repel path mode
Shift+r, Shift+9 roughen mode
Shift+c paint mode
Shift+j color jitter mode
Shift+b blur mode
In Paint mode, painting with Shift inverts the color you're applying (e.g. when
painting with yellow, Shift will switch the applied color to blue).
Calligraphy tool
• The tool's settings can now be set from a preset (see the drop-down list in
the controls bar). Several presets are provided that imitate various
drawing implements and styles.
• When drawing with Alt pressed, Inkscape subtracts the new path you are
creating from the selected path. With Shift, it unions the new path with
the selected path. This allows you to quickly patch or erase defects in a
stroke you have drawn, without leaving the tool.
• The behavior of the tool when tracking a guide (drawing with Ctrl) has been
improved:
□ The initial "jerk" when you start drawing is suppressed.
□ The undesired flipping of the stroke to the other side of the guide
path, when drawing along closed paths, is fixed.
□ If you lose connection with your guide path, the tool tries to continue
moving in the same direction as if by inertia, so as to minimize the
tearoff jerk.
Paint Bucket tool
• Paint Bucket is now more tightly integrated with potrace. As a result,
memory and CPU usage on each fill operation have been reduced
significantly.
Eraser Tool
A new tool, Eraser, has been added to the main toolbox. Its shortcut is Shift+E
. It has two main modes, selectable by toggle buttons on its controls bar:
• Delete Objects mode: any shape touched by dragging is deleted completely.
This is analogous to "touch selection" in Selector followed by Del.
• Cut mode: dragging subtracts, using a boolean Subtract operation, parts of
paths it touches. On the controls bar, you can adjust the Width of the
trace left by the tool. If nothing is selected, it acts on all objects in
the current layer, whether selected or not; if there's a selection, its
action is limited to selection. This mode is similar to Alt+drag in
Calligraphic tool.
Pen and Pencil
New modes
Apart from the regular Bezier mode, these drawing tools now provide several new
modes:
• Spiro mode: This mode automatically applies the new Spiro Splines path
effect (see the section on new effects) to any newly drawn path. As
mentioned below, it is not yet possible to preview a spiro before it is
finished. This mode is available in both Pen and Pencil tools.
• Polyline mode (Pen only): This mode makes it easy to draw many straight
line segments by disallowing any curves, even when you accidentally drag
with the mouse instead of clicking.
• Paraxial mode (Pen only): create straight line segments that are parallel
to one of the coordinate axes. This works similar to the Polyline mode with
Ctrl. Normally, each next line segment is drawn perpendicular to the
previous one, but the direction of the line segment being drawn can be
toggled by pressing Shift. If you click on the start anchor, the path gets
closed with an L-shaped segment (its direction of which can also be flipped
with Shift).
Stroke shapes
As a first step towards this blueprint, it is now possible to automatically
apply predefined vector shapes to path strokes in Pen and Pencil tools. The
choice of shapes in the drop-down list on the controls bar includes:
• Triangle in and Triangle out: tapering out in both directions
• Ellipse: smooth elliptic shape stretching along path
• From clipboard: any path you had previously selected and copied to
clipboard
To adjust the width of the stroke, open the Path Effect Editor, choose "Pattern
along path" effect, and edit its Width parameter. It is measured in units of
the original size of the applied shape; the triangles and ellipse are all 10px
in size, and the clipboard size can be any size. The default value of Width is
1.00, which means the triangle/elliptic strokes will be 10px wide and the
from-clipboard stroke will be as wide as the copied object was tall.
Pencil smoothing
In Pencil tool, the controls bar now provides the Smoothing parameter,
changeable in the range from 1 to 100, which controls how much smoothing is
applied to the freehand lines you draw. Small Smoothing values produce rough
lines with many nodes; large values give smooth lines with few nodes.
Previously, this control was only available in Inkscape Preferences.
Pencil sketch mode
The sketch mode is still experimental. In essence, it enables the artist to
draw many strokes, which Inkscape then averages into a single path. It tries to
mimic sketching with a real pencil and paper, taking the 'visual average' of
many strokes and condensing it into one stroke.
Pick the pencil tool, press Alt, and sketch away; release Alt to finalize the
result. After each stroke (a stroke starts when the mouse button is pressed
down, and ends when it is released), the resulting path will be an average of
the old result and the newly drawn stroke. In Inkscape's Pencil tool
preferences, one can choose to either average between all drawn strokes (so
that all stroke have the same weight), or just the new stroke and the old
result (so that later strokes have greater weight).
Currently, going back and forth between A and B in one stroke does not give the
expected result; it will result in a long path going back and forth, instead of
the visually expected path going from A to B just once. We are working on this
(difficult!) issue. For best results, draw strokes only from A to B (and not
from B to A).
Text tool
• When editing multiline or flowed text, the PgUp and PgDn keys now work to
move the cursor by one screen (i.e. by as many lines as fit into the screen
at current zoom).
• The usability of the font family drop-down list in the Text tool controls
bar has been improved: it no longer steals focus, all keyboard shortcuts
work as designed (Alt+X to access the family control, Alt+down to open the
drop-down list with font previews, arrows to move in the list, Enter to set
chosen font) and the completion feature works (start typing a family name
and a pop-up list with possible completions appears).
A remaining problem that may be fixed in a future version is that the first
opening of the drop-down list of family names may be slow (several seconds)
if you have many fonts installed (the delay is Inkscape generating the
previews for all fonts). Subsequent openings of the list are much faster.
Connector tool
• Connectors are now drawn to the edges of shapes, rather than to the
bounding box of shapes.
• The routing buffer around shapes is now altered in the correct direction
when the user changes this via the spacing control fon the connector
toolbar.
• A bug has been fixed where the spinboxes on the connector toolbar did not
properly respond to single clicks of their up and down arrows.
Path effects
Path Effects stacking
More than one Path Effect can be assigned to an object. A new UI was created to
control the stack in the Path Effects Editor (Shift+Ctrl+7): the Effect list
shows the stack of effects for the selected object; below, buttons allow you to
move a selected effect in the stack up or down or remove it from stack.
The stack works from top to bottom, i.e. the topmost listed effect is applied
first, the second one works on the result of the first, and so on until the
bottom effect which produces the final visible result. A new effect that you
choose in the "Apply new effect" list and created by the Add button gets added
to the end of the current stack.
Path Effects for groups
Path effects can now be assigned to a group. In most cases, the effect is
applied recursively to the member paths, but for Bend Path and Envelope
Deformation the result that the distortion applies to the group as a whole.
• You can, as usual, enter the group by double-clicking on it, and edit the
paths there watching the transformed result update live.
• Path effects can be assigned to groups of groups, applying recursively to
all grouped paths.
• The Convert Object to Path command (Ctrl+Shift+C), when applied to a group
with effects applied, removes these effects from group and converts all its
member paths to effect-less paths looking exactly as before.
Misc new features
• The Paste Path Effect command in Path menu can now assign the path effect
of the clipboard's path to any number of paths, going recursively into
groups if necessary.
• A new command, Remove Path Effect in Path menu, removes any path effects
from all selected objects, going recursively into groups if necessary.
• Path effects can now be assigned to the sides of a 3D box (use Ctrl+click
to select individual sides) without breaking its 3D functionality.
• The Pen and Pencil tools now correctly work with paths with effects: you
can continue such a path or add a new subpath to it by drawing with Shift,
while preserving the effects applied to it.
• Path parameters of effects can now link to existing shapes or texts. For
example, now it is possible to use a text as the pattern for the Pattern
Along Path effect, or shape a path with the Envelope Deformation where one
of the envelope sides is text! Since the effect links to the text, not
copies it, the result will update live if you edit the text.
• Lib2geom now has an implementation for EllipticalArc. For Inkscape, this
means that it is now possible to directly copy-paste ellipse shapes to path
parameters (e.g. 'pattern' in Pattern along Path), without the need to
convert the ellipse to path first.
New effects
• Sketch: Simulates hand-drawn lines. A set of parameters lets you tune the
effect. They are all summarized in this picture.
[300px-SketchExemple]
• Hatches: Fills the shape with rough, randomized hatches, simulating a quick
hand drawing. It is configurable through numeric parameters as well as
on-screen handles visible in Node tool.
[300px-Hatches-lpe].
• von Koch: This effect creates fractal pictures. A collection of
transformations (rotations, rescalings, etc...) is recursively applied to
the input path. The transforms are derived from a "reference" path (a line
segment) and a "generating" path (basically a collection of segments): the
transforms are those needed to move the reference segment onto each segment
of the generating path (components in the generating path having more than
one segment might be used to define shearing/mirroring transforms). A
famous example is the von Koch's snowflake.
[300px-VonKochExample]
Warning: the complexity of the output path grows exponentially fast with
the number of generations. As a guardrail, an editable complexity bound is
provided, above which the effect is disabled.
• Knot: Creates a knot from a flat self-intersecting curve: at each crossing,
one strand is interrupted to make it look like it's going under the other.
The "sign" of each crossing (first strand interrupted, second interrupted,
or no interruptions) can be set independently by clicking the on-screen
handle which can be dragged from one crossing to the other.
[300px-KnotExample]
Warning: as far as possible, the lpe tries to keep the modifications of
crossing signs unchanged under small deformations. For large or topology
changing deformations however, some or all crossings might jump back to
their default orientation.
• Spiro splines are a novel way of defining curvilinear paths developed by
Raph Levien. It takes some getting used to, but for certain tasks (such as
lettershape design) Spiros have a clear advantage over Bezier curves.
Recently, Spiro support was added to the FontForge font editor; now it is
available in Inkscape too, which means you can use all the convenient
Inkscape path tools (moving and transforming groups of nodes, node
sculpting, etc.) on Spiro paths.
A Spiro path is defined by a sequence of points, but unlike a regular path
with Bezier curves, all Spiro points lie on the path and there are no
off-path handles. The curvature of the path is defined entirely by the
positions of the points and their types. The path behaves very similar to a
springy rod which is forced to pass through the given points and which uses
the minimum possible curvature to satisfy the requirement. As such, it
feels quite natural and the resulting path is very smooth - not just
superficially smooth (i.e. having no cusps), but smooth at a deeper level,
which you can achieve with Beziers only after a lot of laborious tweaking.
To create a Spiro path, select any path and assign the "Spiro spline" path
effect to it. There are no parameters. Each node of your path becomes a
point of a Spiro path, depending on the type of node:
□ Smooth nodes (those with two collinear Bezier handles; use Shift+S to
make a node smooth) become smooth curve points of the Spiro path. Note
that the length or direction of the Bezier handles of the source path
is ignored; the only thing that matters is their collinearity.
□ Cusp nodes of the source path become corner points of the Spiro path,
like free hinges on the springy rod. Between two corner points, the
path is always a straight line. To make a node cusp, retract its Bezier
handles by Ctrl+click, or press Shift+C and move one of the handles so
they are no longer collinear.
□ Half-smooth nodes - those with one Bezier handle collinear with a
straight line segment on the other hand - become "left" or "right"
points on the Spiro path which behave exactly the same: they sit
between a straight line and a curve and enforce that these two segments
join smoothly without a cusp. To create such a node, make sure one of
the segments is a line (select its ends and press Shift+L), then
Ctrl+drag the remaining handle to make it snap to the direction of the
straight line segment on the other side, or press Shift+S to lock it to
that direction.
Note that what matters is the actual collinearity of a node's handles,
regardless of the node type that the node has in the Node tool; for
example, if a node designated as cusp (diamond-shaped) has collinear
handles, it will become a smooth curve point of the Spiro path.
Some configurations of points do not converge and produce wild loops and
spirals instead of a smooth curve. According to Raph, "The spline solver in
this release is _not_ numerically robust. When you start drawing random
points, you'll quickly run into divergence. However, "sensible" plates
based on real fonts usually converge." Avoid too sharp changes in direction
between points to prevent divergence. Hopefully, the robustness of the
algorithm will be improved in future releases.
For now, to edit Spiro paths viewing the result in real time, you have to
use the Node tool; it is recommended to turn off the red highlight of the
source path. The Pen tool does not yet allow you to preview a Spiro as you
draw, although you can paste the Spiro effect on the path and see the
result as soon as the path is finalized.
You can always use the Node tool to continue a Spiro path by duplicating
and dragging away its end nodes. Also, when you have a Spiro path selected,
you can add a new subpath to it with Pen or Pencil if you start drawing
with Shift.
• Construct Grid: Draws a grid using the first three nodes of a path. The
center node defines the origin. The other two nodes define the direction
and length of the two adjacent sides of the first cell. If a path has more
than three nodes, the other nodes are ignored. One can select the number of
cells in the two orthogonal directions.
• Envelope Deformation: Allows you to deform an object (or a group of object)
by deforming its sides. Modifications are done by deforming the four path
parameters: Top, Bottom, Left and Right; for each, you can edit it with
Node tool, copy, paste, or link to an existing path in the document.
• Ruler: Draws ruler marks along the path; you can set distance between the
marks, their length for major and minor marks, the major/minor ratio, and
other parameters.
• Interpolate Subpaths: Creates a given number of interpolated paths between
the (first) two subpaths of a path (the subpaths after the second subpath
are ignored). The interpolations are spread along an editable trajectory
path.
[InterpolateSubpathsExample]
Notable effect bugfixes and changes
We try to refrain from changing the behavior of existing path effects, because
it will change appearance in old files when opened in a new version of Inkscape
(but not in any other SVG viewer or editor). However, when an effect is really
broken, we have to fix it:
• Pattern Along Path:
□ The pattern used to be stretched across discontinuities (separate
subpaths). This has been fixed; now it treats a discontinuous path as a
group of continuous paths and applies the effect separately to each.
□ Successive copies of the pattern can now be fused into continuous paths
(using the new "fuse nearby ends" feature) so that "filling" the result
works as expected.
• Bend Path:
□ Closed input paths would sometimes result in unclosed output paths.
This has been fixed.
Import/Export
PostScript and EPS import
Inkscape's PS and EPS import now uses Ghostscript instead of pstoedit. If you
need to open files of these types, install Ghostscript and make sure the
directory with the ps2pdf utility from Ghostscript installation is in your
PATH. On importing a file, you will see a preferences dialog, similar to PDF
import; for multipage PS files, this dialog allows you to select which page to
open.
PDF import
• A new checkbox on the PDF import dialog, Replace PDF fonts with
closest-named installed fonts (on by default) attempts to replace all font
names in the imported PDF with the most similar names of those fonts
installed on your system. For example, if the PDF uses the font
"TimesNewRomanPSMT" and you have "Times New Roman" installed, that font
will be used, which will likely give you a more correct appearance than the
unknown font "TimesNewRomanPSMT" that will be displayed as the default sans
serif font. This is a temporary fix necessary because Inkscape cannot yet
extract the fonts from the PDF files it imports nor can it embed them into
SVG; when it gets these capabilities, such font name conversion will become
unnecessary because all fonts will be preserved.
• Importing PDF files now works from the command line. For example,
inkscape file.pdf --export-plain-svg=file.svg
will take the first page of the PDF and use the default import options, and
save the result to SVG. If you try to import PDF without an --export
command, it will show the import options dialog as before and open the file
in the UI.
PDF, PostScript, and EPS export
The new Cairo-based PS and EPS exporter provides much better support for
various vector features, including clipping paths, patterns, and non-ASCII
characters. Those features that are not supported by the targeted format become
embedded bitmaps that preserve the appearance. In particular:
• transparency is always rasterized in PS or EPS but not PDF, as PDF supports
vector transparency;
• filters, such as blur, are by default rasterized in all three formats (PS,
EPS, PDF). This can be turned off by unchecking the "Rasterize filter
effects" option in the UI or adding the --export-ignore-filters option via
the command line. In this case, filtered objects are rendered as vectors
without filters and without rasterization.
• The resolution for rasterizing the filters can be set in the UI in the
"Resolution for rasterization (dpi)" parameter or on the command line by
--export-dpi parameter (same as used for exporting SVG documents to
bitmaps). The default is 90 dpi. The rendering quality of filters for
rasterization, as well as for bitmap export, is always the best possible
regardless of what you have set in the Filters tab of Preferences (which
only affects on-screen rendering). For example,
inkscape --export-pdf=out.pdf --export-dpi=300 file.svg
will export file.svg to out.pdf, rasterizing any filtered objects in it at
300 dpi. (If there are no filtered objects, the --export-dpi has no
effect.)
All of PS, EPS, and PDF export formats uniformly support the export area
options (page or drawing) and the new export-id option:
• You can now export a single object from a complex document (for example, a
single layer) if you specify the ID of that object in the "Limit export to
the object with ID" field in the GUI or via the --export-id=ID option on
the command line. The export will show only that object (all others will
not be exported). The BoundingBox (page size) of the exported PS/EPS/PDF
file will correspond to the bounding box of that object. You can override
this with "Export area is page" (GUI) or --export-area-page (command line)
option which forces the output to have the size of the SVG document's page
(this may not be possible with EPS, see below).
• The "Export area is page" (GUI) or --export-area-page (command line) option
forces the output to have the size of the SVG document's page. This is the
default for PS and PDF but not for EPS.
□ Note, the specification of the EPS format does not allow a bounding box
to extend beyond the content. This is enforced by the Cairo graphics
library which means that when --export-area-page is used with EPS
export, the page bounding box will be trimmed inwards (but never
expanded outwards) to the bounding box of the content if it is smaller.
If you want a file which has a %BoundingBox different from the bounding
box of its content, you can use PS or PDF export formats instead of
EPS, or add a white background rectangle with the required size to
source document before exporting to EPS.
□ The --export-bbox-page command line parameter has been removed; use
--export-area-page instead.
□ The --export-area-page option was renamed from --export-area-canvas for
consistency with the use of the terms page and canvas in the GUI.
• The "Export area is drawing" (GUI) or --export-area-drawing (command line)
option forces the output to have the size of the exported objects' bounding
box, regardless of page size. If no --export-id is specified, this means
the bounding box of the entire drawing; with --export-id, this means the
bounding box of the exported object only. This is the default for EPS. Note
that checking "Export area is page" or using --export-area-page overrides
this setting for PS and PDF output.
• The --export-embed-fonts option is removed. Inkscape now always embeds and
subsets all fonts used in the document when exporting PS, EPS, or PDF.
UniConvertor-based import and export
Inkscape can now use UniConvertor to import files of the following types:
• Corel DRAW versions 7 to X4 document files (CDR)
• Corel DRAW versions 7 to X4 Template files (CDT)
• Corel DRAW Presentation Exchange files (CMX)
• Corel DRAW Compressed Exchange files (CCX)
• sK1 files (SK1)
• Computer Graphics Metafiles (CGM)
• Windows Metafiles (WMF)
• HPGL (AutoCAD) Plot files (PLT) (requires UniConvertor 1.1.4)
Inkscape can now use UniConvertor to export files of the following types:
• Windows Metafiles (WMF)
• sK1 files (SK1)
• HPGL (AutoCAD) Plot files (PLT) (requires UniConvertor 1.1.4)
Text objects are not supported as of UniConvertor 1.1.4.
On Windows, UniConvertor is included with Inkscape distribution and does not
require separate installation.
HPGL export
In addition to the HPGL export via UniConvertor listed above, Inkscape can now
export to HPGL (Hewlett-Packard Graphics Language) via an internal routine that
is geared towards various cutters/plotters.
JavaFX export
Inkscape can export drawings to JavaFX format (.fx file extension).
DXF import and export
• DXF export for desktop cutting plotters is much faster than in previous
versions. A new option was added to provide support for RoboMaster desktop
cutting software. Also, polylines and polysplines are now supported.
• DXF import is new. It supports a number of the simpler DXF shapes: line,
Bezier spline, ellipse, circular arc, text.
PNG export
• PNG export has been updated to include metadata if present in the source
SVG. This includes the Author, Copyright, Creation Time, Description, and
Title fields. PNG metadata can be viewed using the ImageMagick identify
command.
• Export filenames that are relative (e.g. ../file.png or simply file.png)
are now resolved relative to the document's location. This applies to the
filenames you type in the Export dialog as well as those stored in export
hints in the document itself (and used by the "Batch export" checkbutton as
well as in command line export with --export-use-hints). However, export
filenames specified directly on the command line are not resolved, which in
effect means they work, as before, from the current working directory from
which you run the export command.
OCAL (Open Clip Art Library) Export
• Export to Openclipart.org has been disabled for 0.47 as it had become
non-functional and needs to be re-written.
Autosave
The new autosave feature allow for automatic timed backups as work goes on.
Saved versions are put in a designated directory and do not overwrite the
original SVG file nor each other.
In Inkscape Preferences (Ctrl+Shift+P), Save tab, you can enable this feature
and specify various options:
• the time interval between backups, in minutes;
• the directory where you want the backups to be stored;
• and the maximum number of saved backups (if this number is exceeded, old
backups will start to be deleted).
Extensions
• The former Effects menu is renamed to Extensions. This is less confusing
and better reflects the content of the menu: a collection of extensions,
written mostly in Python, which perform various tasks with or without
selection.
New and improved extensions
• The new Arrange > Restack extension restacks (changes the z-order of)
selected objects, with options including: left to right, top to bottom (or
vice versa), radial outward or inward, or at an arbitrary angle. You can
also specify what point of an object is used to calculate its position for
restacking.
• The new Generate from Path > Extrude extension is similar to the old
Extrude effect, which has been renamed Motion. The new effect requires two
paths and draws connection lines or polygons between their nodes. If you
want more dense extrusion, add more nodes to the paths. All the extrusion
polygons are separate (grouped) objects, so they can be easily painted by
the Tweak tool to get nicely shaded ribbons, 3D letters, and the like.
• The new Generate from Path > Scatter extension spreads copies of pattern
along arbitrary "skeleton" paths. The pattern must be the topmost object in
the selection. Groups of paths, shapes, clones are allowed.
• The improved Modify Path > Add Nodes extension now allows segments to be
divided into a given number of subsegments.
• The new Modify Path > Convert to Dashes extension takes the dash pattern of
the stroke and explicitly cuts the curve to duplicate this pattern. This
can be used to allow desktop cutting plotters, which don't understand
dashed stroke style, to cut dashed paths. You can also achieve interesting
effects with smoothly varying dash length if you edit the resulting path
with Node Sculpting technique (Alt+drag with Node tool).
• The new Render > Add printing marks extension adds printing marks and color
bars required by print bureaus. You can either manually define margins by
which cut marks are created.
• The new Render > 3D Polyhedron extension draws 2D projections of 3D
polyhedrons and other 3D shapes. You can choose one of a number of
predefined shapes (cube, octahedron, truncated dodecahedron and others) or
load a shape definition from an OBJ file. The shape can be rotated around
any of the three axes by arbitrary amount; you can also define various
style options such as color of the faces and stroke width, and enable
shading with adjustable light source position.
• The new Render > Alphabet Soup extension is a vector rework of Matt
Chrisholm's script. Alphabet Soup randomly mashes glyph elements together
to make exotic-looking text.
• The new Render > Cartesian Grid extension plots Cartesian (square) grids
that do not fill the page, but offer three levels of division, logarithmic
scales (with clutter-reduction and arbitrary base) and customizable line
width. All like elements (e.g. x-axis subminor divisions) are put into
subgroups together. A proper border is also drawn, with an independent line
width.
• The new Render > Polar Grid extension plots a polar coordinate grid, with
options for arbitrary-base logarithmic subdivisions, clutter-reduction
around the origin, circumferential labels and custom line widths.
• The new Render > Draw from Triangle extension takes a triangle drawn as a
path (only the first three nodes of a path are counted) and allows to draw
many triangle-related geometrical objects such as circumcircles, excentral
triangles, etc. It also lets you specify custom trilinear coordinates and
triangle centre functions, as well as compute basic triangle properties
such as area and semiperimeter.
• The new Render > Guides Creator extension quickly creates horizontal and
vertical guides for subdividing the canvas. You can choose the divisions
from None, 1/2, 1/3 ... to 1/10.
• The new Render > Calendar extension draws a calendar for a given year with
localizable month/weekday names, colors, and many other options.
• The new Render > Foldable Box extension creates foldouts for paper boxes.
• The new Text > Convert to Braille extension recodes English (or just Latin
letters) text to Braille code. It is not intended to create a real Braille
text for visually impaired people, just an accurate graphical
representation of Braille text to be used in illustrations.
• The new Modify Path > Interpolate Attribute in a Group extension takes a
group of objects and assigns to its members interpolated values of an
attribute of your choice, such as width, height, opacity, etc.
• The new Web > JavaScript extensions allow you to set various interactive
JavaScript attributes, such as onclick or onfocus, on SVG elements.
Inkscape does not support them on rendering but you might need them for
other SVG viewers such as Firefox.
Extension API changes
• While the "Live preview" checkbox is useful for most effects, for some it
just does not make sense. Now, you can add the attribute needs-live-preview
="false" in the effect element in the .inx file of the effect to suppress
this checkbox for your effect.
• Parameters passed to extensions (via the element) now can have a
boolean attribute, gui-hidden, to indicate that the parameter should not be
represented in the GUI. If all parameters are marked as hidden, no GUI is
presented for such extension.
• All .inx files are now properly formatted XML files with their own
namespace of: http://www.inkscape.org/namespace/inkscape/extension and a
Relax NG schema to define it. More information can be found on the
Extensions page.
Filters
The Filter Editor (former Filter Effects) and Remove Filters commands are moved
from the Object menu to the new Filters top-level menu, which also contains a
collection of preset filters.
Preset filters
The Filter Editor is powerful, but can be quite cumbersome. You can now apply
complex preset filters to selected objects with a single command by choosing it
from the new Filters top-level menu. Submenus categorize the filters by
function or appearance. To view a sampler of all preset filters, open
filters.svg document from Inkscape's examples (share/examples in the Inkscape
tree).
Most filters apply immediately after selecting the command; some present a
dialog where you can adjust some of the parameters before applying the filter
(such filters have "..." at the end of the command in the menu).
By default, if the selected object already has some filter applied, the chosen
filter will be merged with the existing filter for combined effect. However you
can also overlay several filters to an object while keeping them separated:
simply press Ctrl+G after applying any filter and then apply another one; the
filters will then display separately in the Filters Editor.
You can easily add your own filters to these menus. Simply place any SVG file
with the filters to the filters subdirectory of your config directory (~
/.config/Inkscape/ on Linux) and the filters will be picked up from it when you
start Inkscape. By default, they will be placed in the Personal submenu under
Effects > Filters. If you want to control this, add the following attributes to
the filter element:
inkscape:label is the command label
inkscape:menu is the submenu to place the command into
inkscape:menu-tooltip is the tooltip (displayed in the statusbar
as you select the command)
No Filters rendering mode
In order to facilitate editing documents that use lots of SVG filter effects,
filter effects can now be disabled for a particular document window by
selecting View > Display mode > No Filters from the menu. This provides an
intermediate step between Normal and Outline view modes.
The Toggle View command in the Display Mode submenu (Ctrl+keypad 5) toggles
between all 3 modes in a loop: Normal, No filters, Outline.
Filter quality setting
In addition to the Blur Quality setting, Inkscape now has a general Filter
Effects Quality setting on the Filters tab of Inkscape Preferences. It affects
all filters and gives you an opportunity to seek optimum balance between speed
and accuracy when rendering filters.
• Best quality is the quality used when exporting.
• Better quality uses fast methods for transforming images, which
occasionally shows up as jagged edges. Full rendering resolution is used.
• Anything below that also uses low resolution rendering for filters.
For exporting images, the best quality is used regardless of this setting.
SVG support
Optimized CSS properties
• As a file size optimization, Inkscape does not write into SVG some of the
stroke properties if the object has stroke:none and some of the fill
properties when it has fill:none. The only situation where this might
affect you is if you remove stroke from an object and then turn it back on
- the object will get the default stroke instead of the same it had before.
Also, in manually-edited SVG where a parent group has no stroke but sets
some stroke properties to be inherited by its descendants, you will need to
set stroke property to other than none on the group, and suppress
inheritance with stroke:none on those children that don't need it.
Specifically, if stroke:none, the following properties do not get written
to SVG:
stroke-width
stroke-linecap
stroke-linejoin
stroke-miterlimit
stroke-opacity
stroke-dasharray
stroke-dashoffset
Note that this does not include marker properties, which means you can
still have markers on a path without visible stroke.
If fill:none, the following properties do not get written to SVG:
fill-opacity
fill-rule
• The opacity property is not written if it has the default value of 1 (this
property is not inherited, so the change should have no side effects).
• The marker-start, marker-mid, and marker-end properties are not written if
the marker property is already present with the same value.
Optimized path data
In this version, the size of the path data written in the d= attribute of path
elements is reduced by about 10%. Inkscape generates the shortest possible path
strings by avoiding repeated operators and using relative coordinates (when it
helps).
This is controlled by the options on the SVG output page of Inkscape
Preferences dialog. Also, you can change the following attributes in group id=
"svgoutput" in your preferences.xml file:
• allowrelativecoordinates (default 1) to switch relative coordinates on (1)
or off (0)
• forcerepeatcommands (default 0) to force repeating operators (1) or allow
use of the more compact representation without repeated operators (0)
Horizontal and vertical path segments
If an SVG contains paths with shorthands for horizontal and vertical path
segments ('H' or 'V'), then Inkscape will try to maintain those shorthands if
possible, so the saved file will also contain them.