1 Release Notes
3 Contents
5 * 1 Inkscape 0.44: overview
6 * 2 Performance
8 * 2.1 Outline mode
9 * 2.2 Speed
11 * 3 SVG conformance
13 * 3.1 Color profile support
14 * 3.2 <switch> support
15 * 3.3 SVG output
17 * 4 Interface
19 * 4.1 Layers dialog
20 * 4.2 Selected style indicator
21 * 4.3 Tool style indicators
22 * 4.4 Controls bar for the Text tool
23 * 4.5 Docked color palette
24 * 4.6 Inkscape Preferences dialog
25 * 4.7 Document Properties / Metadata dialogs
26 * 4.8 Configurable keyboard
27 * 4.9 Menus
28 * 4.10 Statusbar
29 * 4.11 Theme
31 * 5 Tools
33 * 5.1 Node tool
35 * 5.1.1 Node sculpting
36 * 5.1.2 "Show handles" toggle
37 * 5.1.3 New deletion behavior
38 * 5.1.4 Preserving positions of nodes and handles
39 * 5.1.5 Miscellaneous
41 * 5.2 Calligraphic pen
43 * 5.2.1 Tremor
44 * 5.2.2 Pen width
45 * 5.2.3 Selection
46 * 5.2.4 Style
48 * 5.3 Pen tool
50 * 6 Clipping and masking
51 * 7 Transformations
53 * 7.1 Transform dialog
54 * 7.2 Persistent rotation centers
55 * 7.3 Pasting size
57 * 8 Connectors and automatic layout
58 * 9 Selective tracing with SIOX
59 * 10 Snapping
60 * 11 Sublayers
61 * 12 Markers
62 * 13 Extension effects
63 * 14 Formats
64 * 15 Miscellaneous shortcuts
65 * 16 Miscellaneous improvements
66 * 17 Miscellaneous bugfixes
67 * 18 Translations
68 * 19 Internal
69 * 20 Known problems
71 * 20.1 Problems with some Debian libgc-6.7 packages
72 * 20.2 Problems with "Composite" option of X.org
73 * 20.3 Namespaces may need fixing
74 * 20.4 Beware of defective themes on Linux
75 * 20.5 Make sure to remove menus.xml if you have it
77 * 21 Previous releases
80 Inkscape 0.44: overview
82 Inkscape 0.44 is bigger and better than ever. Some highlights:
84 * Layers dialog
86 * Outline mode, many performance improvements
88 * Native PDF export with transparency
90 * Clipping and masking support
92 * Configurable keyboard shortcuts, including optional Xara X
93 compatibility
95 * Docked color palette in the editing window
97 * Interactive indicator of the style of selection in the statusbar
99 * Innovative "node sculpting" and other improvements in Node tool
101 * Extensions are enabled by default and work on all major platforms
103 * Better SVG support: <switch> element, ICC color profiles for images
105 * Persistent rotation centers, Paste Size command
107 * New icons, redesigned preferences dialogs, rearranged menus, many
108 cosmetic improvements
110 * Hundreds of bugfixes and smaller features
112 * Not directly related to Inkscape, but important nevertheless: since
113 our last release, Firefox 1.5 was released with SVG support enabled by
114 default. This means that you can now view any Inkscape document right
115 in your Firefox window without any format conversions or installing
116 any plugins!
119 Performance
122 Outline mode
124 An Outline ("wireframe") display mode is implemented. Use the View >
125 Display Mode > Outline to activate it. In this mode:
127 * all paths and shapes are rendered as inverse (black on light
128 background and vice versa) outlines of constant width (1 screen pixel
129 regardless of zoom), without fill;
131 * text is painted by inverse fill, without stroke;
133 * bitmaps are shown as is;
135 * any opacity and gradients are ignored.
137 The outline mode is usually not drastically faster than regular mode
138 (usually 10% to 50% faster), and in some special cases it may even be
139 slower. However, the value of the outline mode is not only in its speed;
140 it is a good way to get an idea of the structure and objects of your
141 document, and it is convenient for precision node editing and for finding
142 "stray objects".
145 Speed
147 In addition to the Outline mode which makes it much easier to work with
148 complex drawings, this version of Inkscape also provides significant speed
149 improvements in many areas.
151 * Thanks to optimizations in the renderer, Inkscape's screen redraw is
152 faster by at least 10%, and in some cases (such as complex
153 stroked/dashed paths at high zooms) up to three times faster.
155 * Optimizations in the Node tool resulted in noticeable speed gains for
156 node editing. Thus, switching to and from the Node tool (with a path
157 selected), as well as selecting nodes in that tool, are now at least
158 ten times faster than before. Other operations, including curve and
159 node dragging and move/scale/rotate operations on multiple selected
160 nodes, are much faster as well. This is especially important when
161 working with complex paths; with these optimizations, paths containing
162 several thousand nodes, though still slow, are much more usable.
164 * An optimization in the attribute setting method made operations such
165 as moving multiple objects with arrow keys at least 30% faster
166 compared to 0.43. This is especially noticeable when you are moving
167 clones selected together with their original (e.g. a clone tiling), in
168 which case Inkscape now works three to four times faster.
170 * Interface icons are now rendered in the background (from SVG source in
171 share/icons/icons.svg) when Inkscape is idle, rather than waiting for
172 all the icons in a menu to render the first time you pull it up. This
173 eliminates the annoying delay when opening menus for the first time.
175 * Previously, zooming in to view a small portion of a path (especially
176 big and complex path), there was a very noticeable slowdown and memory
177 use increased dramatically. We optimized the renderer to only process
178 the visible part of a path, and as a result the rendering speed is now
179 almost the same at any zoom up to the maximum, providing up to 10-40
180 times speedup compared to the previous version (the closer is the
181 zoom, the greater is the gain).
183 * The Path > Break Apart command is now dozens of times (up to 100x)
184 faster for complex paths with thousands of subpaths.
187 SVG conformance
190 Color profile support
192 Inkscape now includes base ICC profile functionality. If compiled with
193 LittleCMS support (if you run configure with --enable-lcms switch),
194 Inkscape passes the ICC color profile test by W3C. The <color-profile>
195 element has been implemented along with the "color-profile" attribute for
196 <image> elements.
199 <switch> support
201 Rendering support for SVG 1.1's Conditional Processing Module has been
202 implemented, including switch element, requiredFeatures,
203 requiredExtensions, systemLanguage attributes. Inkscape passes the
204 Conditional processing tests ([1] and [2]) by W3C.
207 SVG output
209 * In Inkscape's SVG documents, colors are now expressed by name
210 (`white') or three-digit form (`#f3c') when possible.
212 * The numeric values in transform attributes are written without
213 insignificant trailing zeros, and anything less than that 1e-8 by
214 absolute value (usually caused by rounding errors) is written as 0 to
215 reduce clutter.
218 Interface
221 Layers dialog
223 A Layers dialog (Ctrl+Shift+L) is implemented in this version. It works in
224 parallel with the quick layer selector in the statusbar, so you can use
225 whichever is more convenient for you.
227 * In the dialog, you can click on a layer to make it current, as well as
228 toggle layers visible/hidden and locked/unlocked. You don't need to
229 make a layer current to toggle its visibility or lock status.
231 * A hierarchical tree of layers is represented by a tree-like display in
232 the dialog. You can expand or collapse branches of the tree to make
233 the layer structure of a document easier to navigate.
235 * At the bottom of the dialog, there are buttons for adding a new layer,
236 moving the current layer up or down (either one step or all the way to
237 top or bottom), and deleting the current layer.
239 * Below the buttons, there's a slider and a spinbutton for adjusting the
240 opacity of the current layer. A layer's opacity affects all objects in
241 that layer in the same way as opacity of a group.
244 Selected style indicator
246 A new control in the left end of the statusbar lets you quickly view and
247 change the fill and stroke of the selected objects. When you have a text
248 selection in Text tool or a gradient handle selected in the Gradient tool,
249 this indicator displays and changes the style of the text fragment or
250 gradient stop, instead of the entire object (it's the same behavior as the
251 Fill&Stroke dialog.)
253 * The two indicators, labelled F: (top) and S: (bottom), display fill
254 and stroke of the selected object(s) correspondingly. (For gradient
255 handles, they always display the same style.)
257 * Each fill/stroke indicator can display either a color+opacity swatch
258 (the opacity shown here is the fill opacity or stroke opacity, not the
259 master opacity) or a text label specifying N/A (nothing selected),
260 None (no fill/stroke), Unset (unset fill/stroke), L Gradient, R
261 Gradient, Pattern (corresponding fill/stroke types), or Different
262 (selected objects have different fill/stroke types).
264 * Additionally, each indicator may be accompanied by one of two flags, m
265 ("multiple", meaning there are two or more objects all with the same
266 fill/stroke) or a ("averaged", meaning there are two or more objects
267 with different flat colors in fill/stroke, and the indicator shows the
268 average of these colors).
270 * Left-click on an indicator opens or activates the Fill&Stroke dialog
271 with the corresponding tab (Fill or Stroke) active.
273 * Right-click on an indicator opens a popup menu with the following
274 items:
276 * Edit fill/stroke...: Opens or activates the Fill&Stroke dialog
277 with the corresponding tab selected. (Same as left-click.)
278 * Last set color: Applies to the selected objects the fill/stroke
279 color that was last applied to anything.
280 * Last selected color: Applies to the selected objects the
281 fill/stroke color that was last displayed in this indicator.
282 (Allows you to easily copy fill/stroke color between objects:
283 select source, select destination, apply "last selected color".)
284 * Invert: Sets the fill or stroke to the inverse of the current
285 color (does not affect opacity).
286 * White, Black: Sets the fill or stroke to the corresponding color
287 (fully opaque).
288 * Copy color, Paste color: Copies or pastes the fill or stroke
289 color (when it's color) to/from the system clipboard, as text in
290 the #rrggbb hex format.
291 * Swap fill and stroke: Exchanges fill and stroke (both their types
292 and colors, if any).
293 * Make fill/stroke opaque: Removes fill or stroke transparency (not
294 master transparency!).
295 * Unset fill/stroke: Unsets fill or stroke from selected objects.
296 * Remove fill/stroke: Removes fill or stroke from the selected
297 objects.
299 * Middle-click on a fill/stroke indicator removes fill/stroke from
300 selected objects; if it is already removed (i.e. if the indicator
301 displays "None"), it does the same as the "Last set color" command
302 from the popup menu.
304 * Drag and Drop of colors onto a fill/stroke indicator sets the fill and
305 stroke of the selected object(s) correspondingly.
307 * The Stroke indicator also displays the stroke width of selection
308 (averaged if there are multiple objects selected with different stroke
309 widths), located to the right of the stroke color/transparency swatch.
310 Left-clicking on it opens the Fill&Stroke dialog with the Stroke Style
311 tab selected. Right-clicking on it opens a popup menu which allows you
312 to choose the units for displaying the stroke width, as well as choose
313 one of the presets to assign to selection.
315 * To the right of the fill/stroke indicators, the Opacity numeric field
316 (labelled "O:") shows and allows you to change the master opacity of
317 the selected object (or the averaged opacity of several selected
318 objects). Right-clicking the numeric field opens a popup menu with
319 preset opacity levels. Middle-clicking on the "O:" label cycles the
320 opacity through the values of 0 (transparent), 0.5, and 1 (opaque).
322 The zoom field and the cursor coordinates indicator have been rearranged
323 for compactness and moved to the right end of the statusbar. There's also
324 a window resize handle added at the very end of the statusbar.
327 Tool style indicators
329 For each object-creating tool (shapes, Pen/Pencil, Calligraphic, Text),
330 the Controls bar (above the canvas) now includes a style indicator on the
331 right. This indicator shows you which style the newly created object will
332 have.
334 * The indicator correctly displays whichever style the tool is set to
335 use - the global "last set" style or that tool's fixed style. For
336 example, clicking on a palette swatch (even with nothing selected)
337 changes the "last set" color and, if your tool is set to use the last
338 set color, its indicator is updated, giving you an idea of your
339 "brush" before you start to draw.
342 Controls bar for the Text tool
344 * This version adds the beginnings of a Controls Bar for the Text tool
345 (previously empty). Now you can select the font family, size, apply
346 bold and italic styles, change alignment and text orientation without
347 opening the Text and Font dialog.
349 * All controls are instant-apply and work on the entire text object (if
350 nothing selected) or text selection. They can also apply to multiple
351 text objects (though you would need to switch to Selector to select
352 multiple text objects, then switch back to Text tool for its
353 controls).
355 * The font-family drop-down contains names and previews of all fonts;
356 unlike other programs, we didn't apply each font to its name, but
357 added a separate preview string displayed with gray color after each
358 font's name. This design ensures readability of font family names and
359 provides maximum useful information in a limited space.
361 * We will be adding more controls (including spacing and kerning) to
362 this bar for the next versions.
365 Docked color palette
367 * Previously, color swatches could only be used from a floating palette
368 (Ctrl+Shift+W). Now the color swatches palette is embedded in the main
369 UI, at the bottom of the window between the canvas and the statusbar.
370 It is enabled by default; use View > Show/Hide > Palette to enable or
371 disable it. The docked palette has the same functionality as the
372 floating one; use a button in the top right corner to access the
373 swatches menu.
375 * The Wrap option (off by default) in the swatches menu converts the
376 palette from a single row into a frame 2 or 3 rows high, for better
377 access to colors in large palettes.
379 * Drag and Drop of colors has been enabled.
381 * Dragging colors from a palette shows a live swatch of the color
382 being dragged under cursor.
383 * Drag and Drop of colors onto the selected style indicator in the
384 statusbar sets the fill or stroke of the selected object(s).
385 * Colors can be dropped directly on to objects on canvas to set
386 their fill, or shift+dropped to set their stroke. This affects
387 only the object you drop the color on, regardless of whether that
388 object is selected or not.
389 * Colors can be dragged to and from other applications.
391 * The new Inkscape default color palette was added. It contains a range
392 of grays, standard HTML named colors, and a full range of colors
393 sorted by their HSL values (475 colors overall). It is generated by a
394 Python script which is available from Inkscape SVN in share/palettes.
396 * Several specialized color palettes, useful in color-coordinated
397 projects, were created or borrowed from GIMP: Grays, Reds, Greens,
398 Blues, Gold, Royal, Khaki, Hilite, and Topographic.
400 * All standard sizes of the swatches (Tiny, Small, Medium, Large, Huge)
401 are made smaller overall.
404 Inkscape Preferences dialog
406 Not only was the Inkscape Preferences dialog completely rewritten and
407 redesigned, with numerous bugs fixed in the rewrite.
409 * The old tabbed dialog is gone; the new dialog fits much better with
410 the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines.
412 * As a new feature, the Simplify threshold can now be set with more
413 precision.
416 Document Properties / Metadata dialogs
418 * The Document Preferences dialog is now named Document Properties, and
419 it was split in two: metadata were extracted into the Document
420 Metadata dialog; metadata widgets are now also spread over two pages.
422 * A button was added to fit the canvas to the current selection or, if
423 there's no selection, to the entire drawing. The button resizes the
424 canvas and, if necessary, moves the drawing into place. It is now very
425 easy to size the canvas to an illustration after it is ready.
427 * New controls: the new object snapping features required their own
428 property widgets, and you can set the snapping sensitivity with a
429 slider, or let it snap regardless of distance (grid only).
431 * Rearrangements within Document Properties: everything snapping-related
432 was collected on one page; Grid and Guide widgets are on their own,
433 the same page. For better HIG compliance, all widgets were
434 categorized; especially the widgets on the Page page were completely
435 rearranged in the General/Format/Border categories.
437 * Bug fixes: grayed out license URI had too low contrast, so it's no
438 longer grayed out; the proprietary license didn't clean the license
439 URI; spinbuttons had no tooltips, and minor grid quirks were removed;
440 data was not updated when a new file replaced another in the same
441 window.
443 * HIG compliance: much work went into that, and now only a few details
444 are missing from full Gnome-HIG compliance.
446 * Updated Creative Commons Licenses: Updated CC licenses to the latest
447 2.5 versions by default in the license tab of the metadata dialog.
450 Configurable keyboard
452 Inkscape's keyboard shortcuts are now configurable!
454 There is no graphical users interface at this time, and not all Inkscape
455 actions can have their shortcuts customized. However, if you do not mind
456 editing a configuration file, the majority of actions, including
457 everything you see in the menus, can already have their keys changed.
458 We're working on making more actions configurable.
460 On startup, Inkscape reads its keyboard shortcuts from
461 share/keys/default.xml. That file is a copy of inkscape.xml in the same
462 directory, which also contains keyboard emulation profiles for other
463 vector editors:
465 * xara.xml: Xara X/Xara Xtreme/Xara LX keys
467 You can copy any of these over default.xml to use that profile. In all
468 profiles, those keys which are not used by the corresponding program still
469 have their Inkscape bindings. If you can contribute a profile for some
470 vector editor that we don't yet have, we will appreciate that. The files
471 have a simple XML-based format described in inkscape.xml.
473 You can also customize some of your keybindings without overwriting the
474 main default.xml. If your profile directory (~/.inkscape on Linux)
475 contains a keys subdirectory with a default.xml file, the keybindings from
476 that file will overlay (i.e. add to, and override in case of a conflict)
477 the default bindings. The format of your own default.xml is the same as
478 that of the main default.xml.
481 Menus
483 * Zoom commands in the View menu are moved to a submenu; the Zoom In and
484 Zoom Out commands are added to that submenu.
486 * Clone commands are moved into a submenu in Edit menu and given more
487 descriptive names and tips.
489 * Pattern commands (Objects to Pattern and Pattern to Objects) are moved
490 into a submenu in Object menu, under the new Clip and Mask submenus.
492 * The contents of the Effects menu are categorized into submenus, and
493 several effects are renamed to use more intuitive names.
496 Statusbar
498 * In Selector, for multiple selected objects, the statusbar now reports
499 their types. For example, if 5 groups are selected, it displays
501 5 objects of type Group in layer LayerName.
503 instead of just "5 objects selected" as before. If there are up to
504 3 types in the selection, they will be listed, for example:
506 5 objects of types Group, Path, Rectangle in layer
507 LayerName.
509 The order of the list will correspond to the order in which the
510 objects were added to selection. If there are 4 or more types in
511 selection, only the number of types is reported, for example:
513 5 objects of 4 types in layer LayerName.
515 * In Selector, objects selected in groups are now identified as such,
516 and the group ID is given, for example:
518 Rectangle in group g212 (layer content)
520 If selected objects have different parents within one layer (for
521 example, if one is selected in a group and another outside it),
522 the number of parents is reported:
524 2 objects of types Rectangle, Path in 2 parents
525 (layer content)
527 If objects are in different layers, only the number of layers is
528 reported since this also implies different parents:
530 2 objects of types Rectangle, Path in 2 layers
532 * In Node tool, if your node selection includes nodes from different
533 subpaths, statusbar reports the number of subpaths with selection and
534 the total number of subpaths, for example:
536 2 of 195 nodes selected in 2 of 36 subpaths.
538 * The contents of the statusbar message are now duplicated as a tooltip
539 that is shown when you hover the mouse over the statusbar.
541 * The statusbar text is now no longer just cut off if there is
542 insufficient room, but an ellipsis (...) is inserted at the end to
543 show there's more (only with Gtk 2.6 and newer).
546 Theme
548 * Inkscape has a new default icon set titled "Crispy" provided by Andre
549 Sousa. The new icons are intended to add a more professional and
550 cohesive look to our application, as well as to make the functions the
551 icons represent more self-evident.
554 Tools
557 Node tool
560 Node sculpting
562 An entirely new way of manipulating paths in Node tool is added in this
563 version: Node sculpting. Normally, when you have several nodes selected
564 and you drag one of them, all selected nodes move by the same amount. Now,
565 if you Alt-drag one of the selected nodes, only that node is fully
566 displaced; other selected nodes are moved less than the full amount, so
567 that those farthest from the drag point remain stationary. This is similar
568 to "proportional editing" or "soft selection" in 3D editors such as
569 Blender.
571 So, for example, if you select several nodes on a straight line and
572 Alt+drag the middle selected node, the path will bend into a smooth
573 bell-like curve. Nodes' handles are also adjusted correspondingly to keep
574 the overall shape smooth and natural. (If you don't have enough nodes on a
575 path fragment that you want to reshape in this way, just select the end
576 nodes of that fragment and press Ins a few times to populate it with
577 nodes.)
579 Moreover, node sculpting is pressure-sensitive when you are using a tablet
580 pen. If you press slightly, your curve will have a narrow sharp tip (i.e.
581 the nearest neighbors of your dragged node will move only a bit); if you
582 press hard, the curve's tip will be wide and blunt (i.e. the nearest
583 neighbors will move almost as much as the dragged node). (Hint: to stop
584 dragging without losing your shape, first release Alt and then lift the
585 tip of the pen.)
587 There are many possible applications of the sculpting technique. To take a
588 simple example, selecting all nodes of an ellipse-like shape and
589 Alt+dragging one of them will smoothly and naturally stretch and skew the
590 entire shape in any direction. Doing the same to a complex path, such as
591 star or spiral, will twist and punch it without destroying its intricate
592 structure - this is the way to get squashed or self-intersecting stars,
593 eccentric spirals and other shapes not easily doable before. Selecting
594 only part of all nodes allows you to smoothly reshape parts of the figure
595 without disturbing the rest.
597 When applied to text converted to path, node sculpting is a fun and easy
598 way to twist, bend and distort it, achieving effects similar to
599 "perspective envelope" or "curvilinear envelope" in other programs - but
600 in a more powerful and flexible way. For example, by selecting all or part
601 of the text's nodes and Alt-dragging, you can not only make a wavy banner
602 out of a paragraph of text, but also apply a "magnifying lens"-like effect
603 to any word in the middle.
605 Especially useful node sculpting is for complex natural paths, such as
606 calligraphic strokes or bitmap traces, where you often want to do
607 large-scale pushes and bends without destroying the small-scale features.
608 Things like making a calligraphic stroke narrower in one place and wider
609 in another, or changing the proportions, extending the ear or flattening
610 the nose of a head - all this is now much faster and more natural to do
611 using sculpting. It is also a new way to create new paths, too - starting
612 from en ellipse with added nodes, it takes just a few Alt+drags to tweak
613 it into a silhouette of a head, or a map of Australia, or an Inkscape
614 logo!
616 Some examples are shown on the screenshot:
617 [www.inkscape.org/screenshots/gallery/inkscape-0.44-nodesculpting.png].
620 "Show handles" toggle
622 The Controls bar for the Nodes tool now includes a toggle button which
623 controls whether Bezier handles are shown on selected nodes (on by
624 default). Selecting and dragging nodes on node-dense paths in zoom-out
625 (e.g. for node sculpting) may be extremely difficult without hiding the
626 handles, as it's hard to pick a node and not a handle when handles are
627 shown.
630 New deletion behavior
632 * In Node tool, deleting node(s) by Del/Backspace keys or by
633 Ctrl+Alt+clicking a node now tries to preserve, as much as possible,
634 the current shape of the path. This means that the nodes adjacent to
635 those being deleted have their handles adjusted to approximate the
636 form that the path had before deletion. For example, if you
637 Ctrl+Alt+click a path twice, once to add a new node and then to delete
638 it, the path will not change at all (or change very slightly). The old
639 deletion behavior without adjusting handles is still available via
640 Ctrl+Del or Ctrl+Backspace.
643 Preserving positions of nodes and handles
645 * When you switch the type of the selected node to Smooth or Symmetric
646 by pressing Shift+S/Shift+Y, you can now preserve the position of one
647 of the two handles by hovering your mouse over it, so that only the
648 other handle is rotated/scaled to match.
650 * Similarly, when you join endnodes by pressing Shift+J, you can
651 preserve the position of one of the two nodes by hovering your mouse
652 over it, so that only the other node is moved.
655 Miscellaneous
657 * The ! key inverts node selection in the current subpath(s) (i.e.
658 subpaths with at least one selected node); Alt+! inverts in the entire
659 path. (This is similar to how these keys work in Selector, with
660 current subpath(s) instead of the current layer.)
662 * The keyboard shortcut for "Make selected segments curves" in Node tool
663 is changed from Shift+K to Shift+U for better mnemonics.
666 Calligraphic pen
669 Tremor
671 * Even when using a graphics tablet with pressure sensitivity, the
672 Calligraphy pen's strokes often look too smooth and artificial. To
673 enable a more natural look, the new Tremor parameter is added to the
674 Calligraphy tool in this version. Adjustable in the Controls bar from
675 0.0 to 1.0, it will affect your strokes producing anything from slight
676 unevenness to wild blotches and splotches. This significantly expands
677 the creative range of the tool.
680 Pen width
682 * In all previous versions, pen width depended on zoom in such a way
683 that the strokes appeared the same visible width at any zoom, but were
684 in fact narrower at zoom-in and wider at zoom-out. This behavior makes
685 sense if you want to keep the same "feel" of the pen regardless of
686 zoom; for example, if you zoomed in to make a small fix to your
687 drawing, it's natural that your pen becomes physically smaller but
688 feels the same to you. So, this behavior is kept as the default, but
689 now we also added an alternative mode where your pen width is constant
690 in absolute units regardless of zoom. To switch to this mode, use the
691 checkbox on the tool's Preferences page (you can open it by
692 double-clicking the tool button).
694 * The Width field in the tool's controls bar now changes from 1 to 100,
695 which corresponds to the range from 0.01 to 1.0 in the previous
696 version. If the "width in absolute units" mode is turned on, the value
697 in this fields gives the width of the stroke in px units. In the
698 default mode, the value of 100 gives 100px wide strokes only at 100%
699 zoom, and strokes are correspondingly narrower or wider at other zoom
700 levels.
703 Selection
705 * A new preferences option for the Calligraphic tool, Keep selected,
706 controls whether the newly created object remains selected after you
707 finish drawing it. If you turn it off (by default it's on) and set the
708 tool to using Last Set color, you can easily choose a new color by
709 clicking on the palette without having to worry if this will change
710 the color of the stroke you just created. (Watch the tool style
711 indicator at the right end of the Controls bar for the style of the
712 next stroke you will draw.)
714 * Esc deselects selected objects in Calligraphic, as in most other
715 tools.
718 Style
720 * The stroke you're drawing is now shown, while you're drawing it, with
721 the correct color and opacity that it will eventually have, instead of
722 always black as before.
724 * On a new Inkscape installation, this tool now uses the last set style
725 by default instead of the fixed black as before (this is changeable in
726 the Inkscape Preferences for the tool).
729 Pen tool
731 * While drawing a path, you can now move the last node you created by
732 the same keys as in Node tool - that is, arrows, with Shift (for 10x
733 displacement) or Alt (screen pixel displacement) modifiers.
735 * Also, you can switch the not-yet-finalized (red) segment of the path
736 being drawn from curve to line (Shift+L) or back to curve (Shift+U),
737 again the same shortcuts as in the Node tool.
739 * By popular demand, if a new path is being drawn but not yet finished,
740 Ctrl+Z cancels that unfinished path (i.e. does the same as Esc),
741 instead of undoing the previous action.
743 * In Pen tool, Del works the same as Backspace to delete the last
744 created point on the unfinished path.
747 Clipping and masking
749 Inkscape now provides some UI for using clipping paths and masks.
751 * Any object can be non-destructively intersected with a path (called a
752 clipping path) so that only the intersected portion of the object is
753 visible.
755 * To apply clipping, select the objects to be clipped and the
756 clipping path object, make sure the clipping path is above the
757 other objects in z-order, and do Object > Clip > Set.
758 * You can transform, edit, or style the clipped objects as usual.
759 The clipping remains applied and transforms together with each
760 clipped object.
761 * To remove the clipping, do Object > Clip > Release. The clipping
762 path is returned to the drawing as a regular object; it is
763 inserted on top of the unclipped object in z-order.
765 * Any object can be non-destructively masked by another object (called
766 mask) so that: the mask's black or transparent areas become fully
767 transparent in the masked object; mask's opaque white areas become
768 fully opaque; and all intermediate colors translate into intermediate
769 levels of opacity in the masked object. This allows you to apply, for
770 example, arbitrary transparency gradients to objects.
772 * To apply a mask, select the objects to be masked and the mask
773 object, make sure the mask is above the other objects in z-order,
774 and do Object > Mask > Set.
775 * You can transform, edit, or style the masked objects as usual.
776 The mask remains applied and transforms together with each masked
777 object.
778 * To remove the masking, do Object > Mask > Release. The mask is
779 returned to the drawing as a regular object; it is inserted on
780 top of the unmasked object in z-order.
782 * Objects with clippath show their bounding box intersected with the
783 bounding box of the clippath, instead of the original unclipped bbox
784 as before. (However, this does not apply to objects without clippath
785 of their own which are clipped by being inside a clipped group.)
787 * Clipped or masked objects display "clipped" or "masked",
788 correspondingly, in their statusbar descriptions.
790 * Although Inkscape had render-only support for clipping paths and masks
791 for quite some time, in this release we fixed a number of bugs which
792 may affect the display of your documents using clippaths or masks.
794 * Clippaths and masks with objectBoundingBox units are now shown
795 correctly upon loading of the document.
796 * Clippaths without fill didn't work, this is now fixed.
797 * Objects with clippaths or masks are correctly copied/pasted
798 between documents.
801 Transformations
804 Transform dialog
806 Fixes and improvements in the Transform dialog (Ctrl+Shift+M):
808 * The Apply to each object separately checkbox is added, allowing you to
809 scale/rotate/skew each selected object by the same amount, around that
810 object's center. When off (by default), the selection is transformed
811 as a whole. The status of this checkbox is remembered across sessions.
812 (It has no effect on Move and Matrix tabs).
814 * The Clear button resets the values on the current tab to defaults.
816 * The Scale tab now allows you to specify horizontal or vertical size
817 increments in percentage or absolute units. Also, there's a Scale
818 proportionally checkbox which ensures that scaling preserves the
819 width/height ratio. (If you are scaling several objects proportionally
820 with "Apply to each object separately", you can only use the % unit to
821 specify the scaling; otherwise each object's scale increments will
822 have the width/height ratio of the entire selection, not of that
823 specific object.)
825 * The Skew tab can now specify the skew as an absolute displacement
826 (e.g. for horizontal skewing of a rectangle, that means the shift of
827 the top rectangle side relative to the bottom), as percentage
828 displacement (e.g. a 1% horizontal skew of a rectangle means shifting
829 the top side by 1% of the rectangle height), or as an angle (e.g.
830 horizontal skew by 15 degrees results in the sides of a rectangle
831 being rotated to that angle, while the top and bottom remain
832 horizontal).
834 * The Matrix tab (previously called "Transform") can either edit the
835 current transform= matrix of an object, or post-multiply the
836 transform= with the matrix you specify, depending on the Edit current
837 matrix checkbox. (As it is now redundant, the transformation matrix in
838 the Object Properties dialog is removed.)
840 * The dialog now correctly watches selection changes in the active
841 document window and updates its values accordingly.
843 * The layout of the dialog is simplified, tooltips and mnemonics added
844 for better usability.
846 * Many bugs are fixed, especially in value conversions between units.
849 Persistent rotation centers
851 * The position of the center (axis) of rotation and skewing used by
852 Selector is now remembered for all objects and restored when you
853 select those objects again (even after saving and reopening the
854 document). When you move or scale an object, its rotation center is
855 moved or scaled too, so its position relative to the object always
856 remains the same unless you move it explicitly.
858 * When you have several objects selected, they use the rotation center
859 of the first selected object. If the first object does not have center
860 set (i.e. if it's in a default central position), then several objects
861 will rotate around the geometric center of their common bounding box
862 (as before).
864 * Shift+click on the rotation center resets it back to the center of the
865 object's box.
867 * Consequently, dragging the rotation center is now an undoable action;
868 you can press Ctrl+Z to undo the drag.
870 * Keyboard rotation by [, ] keys with various modifiers, as well as the
871 Rotate tab in the Transform dialog, work around the selected object's
872 rotation center (for multi-object selection, the rotation center of
873 the first selected object).
875 * Rotation centers are preserved when duplicating, cloning (including
876 clone tiler), grouping/ungrouping, and converting to path.
879 Pasting size
881 A number of commands are added to easily scale selected objects to match
882 the size of the object(s) previously copied to the clipboard. They are all
883 in the Paste Size submenu in Edit menu:
885 * Paste Size scales the whole selection to match the overall size of the
886 clipboard object(s).
888 * Paste Width/Paste Height scale the whole selection
889 horizontally/vertically so that it matches the width/height of the
890 clipboard object(s). These commands honor the scale ratio lock on the
891 Selector controls bar (between W and H fields), so that when that lock
892 is pressed, the other dimension of the selected object is scaled in
893 the same proportion; otherwise the other dimension is unchanged.
895 * Paste Size Separately, Paste Width Separately and Paste Height
896 Separately work similarly to the above described commands, except that
897 they scale each selected object separately to make it match the
898 size/width/height of the clipboard object(s).
901 Connectors and automatic layout
903 * There have been numerous bugfixes and several improvements to the
904 behaviour of connectors and the connector tool:
906 * Connectors moved as part of a selection will now stay attached to
907 other objects in the selection, rather than becoming detached
908 from them.
909 * By default, the Connector tool will not attach connectors to text
910 objects. There is a new checkbox in the connector preferences to
911 control this setting.
912 * The margins around avoided shapes (used for autorouting
913 connectors) can now be adjusted via the "Spacing" control on the
914 controls bar.
916 * Automatic Diagram Layout: A new button is available in the Align and
917 Distribute dialog that performs automatic layout of diagrams involving
918 a network of shapes and connectors. Layout is accomplished using
919 force-directed graph layout based on the Kamada-Kawai algorithm. This
920 algorithm treats edges as if they are springs such that the distance
921 between nodes will be proportional to the path length - number of
922 connectors - between them. Disconnected components (where not every
923 shape is connected) will be arranged around the circumference of a
924 circle.
926 * There is a new Remove Overlaps button to move the selected objects
927 enough that they don't overlap each other. A minimum spacing between
928 the boundaries of objects can be specified. Together with the
929 automatic layout tool, described above, this should be a significant
930 addition to Inkscape's usability for diagramming. Removing overlaps is
931 different from the "Unclump" button in that the former is completely
932 deterministic and guarantees removing overlaps on the first
933 application, but is not concerned with visual perceptive distances
934 between objects. Unclumping, on the other hand, attempts to equalize
935 perceptive distances between objects and can be applied repeatedly for
936 gradual effect.
939 Selective tracing with SIOX
941 * Inkscape 0.44 has an early version of the Simple Interactive Object
942 Extraction (SIOX) algorithm (see siox.org) implemented in its bitmap
943 tracing code. For a quick reference on how this is used, please see
944 this file. This clever algorithm from the realm of Image Recognition
945 allows you to select areas of similar color, with the goal of
946 extracting a foreground area from the background. To use:
948 * Enable the SIOX checkbox in addition to your usual tracing
949 options.
950 * Select both the bitmap and an object that covers the foreground
951 and part of background, leaving only background areas of the
952 image uncovered.
953 * Hit OK. SIOX will now analyze and attempt to pull out the
954 foreground-colored areas you want, and trace only those parts of
955 the image.
957 * The full SIOX selection mechanism (e.g. the ability to identify
958 foreground and background areas separately) is not implemented yet,
959 but is planned for a future release.
962 Snapping
964 * In addition to snapping to guides and grids, you can now snap to other
965 objects' paths and/or nodes. As with grid and guide snapping, you can
966 separately enable snapping of bboxes to objects and/or snapping of
967 nodes to objects. Be aware, however, that this is experimental code -
968 there may be surprises. It may also be slow in large documents with
969 thousands of objects.
971 * In addition to the snap sensitivity sliders in Document Preferences
972 (which set snap distances in px), there are Always snap checkboxes
973 (separately for object, grid and guide snapping) which force snapping
974 at any distance.
976 * Grid snapping now applies only to the visible grid lines. For example,
977 if you have zoomed out so that only every 10th grid line is visible,
978 snapping will only apply to these visible lines. In addition, default
979 grid snap sensitivity is set to "Always snap". This will hopefully
980 reduce the number of "snapping does not work" complaints from users
981 who didn't zoom in close enough to see that snapping does in fact
982 work, but only at sub-px distances to the 1px-spaced grid. At the same
983 time, you can still snap to finely grained distances if you zoom in.
985 * Guidelines are made easier to pick. Now you don't need to position
986 mouse exactly over a guideline to activate it; instead there's a small
987 position tolerance (1 screen pixel on each side of the guideline).
990 Sublayers
992 Previously, it was only possible to make a group a temporary sublayer by
993 entering that group. Now Inkscape supports creating and using true
994 persistent sublayers within a layer.
996 * The Add layer dialog allows you to place the new layer above, below,
997 or inside the current layer.
999 * In Preferences (Selecting tab), options are added allowing the "Select
1000 All" command and Tab key selection to work either in the current layer
1001 only or in the current layer and its sublayers.
1004 Markers
1006 * Converting stroke to path now correctly processes dashed strokes. For
1007 paths with markers, this command now creates a group containing the
1008 stroke converted to path and all its markers as independent objects
1009 (i.e. they are not markers anymore, but instead you can easily
1010 transform them or paint them any color, as a workaround for the
1011 "markers don't take the color of the stroke" bug; to be properly
1012 fixed, this bug requires implementing some SVG 1.2 features).
1014 * The DimensionIn and DimensionOut markers are changed so that the arrow
1015 tips exactly correspond to node positions. It is now very easy to make
1016 dimension lines that correspond to drawn objects. The dimension
1017 specifications can now easily be chained by splitting a straight line
1018 at a point and assigning DimensionIn/Out markers to the resulting
1019 smaller paths whose endpoints coincide.
1021 * All arrow markers in the standard set are moved on the path so that
1022 their tips are as close as possible to the corresponding node of the
1023 path. Complete coincidence is not possible, because it would cause the
1024 blunt end of the stroke itself to be visible under the sharp tip of
1025 the arrow, distorting its shape. However, now the arrow tips are much
1026 closer to their nodes than before, and probably sufficiently close for
1027 many practical situations.
1029 * A new RazorWire path marker was added. By applying it as a mid-marker
1030 you can get a good approximation of a razor wire.
1033 Extension effects
1035 * The Effects menu is now officially on and no longer an optional
1036 "experimental feature" as in past versions. The preference setting to
1037 enable the menu has been removed. Inkscape 0.44 comes with about 30
1038 effects that perform a variety of useful tasks, such as path blending,
1039 randomization, function plotting etc.
1041 * Python effects (which includes almost all currently available effects)
1042 work on Windows out of the box, using a copy of Python shipping with
1043 Inkscape. The only minor inconvenience is that when an effect is
1044 launched, you get an empty console window that stays on while the
1045 effect is doing its work. (Don't close that window, it will disappear
1046 by itself when the effect is finished.)
1048 * A new Python effect, Render > LaTeX formula, allows you to type in any
1049 LaTeX formula and get a vector object with the TeX rendition of this
1050 formula inserted into your document. You need to have latex, dvips,
1051 and pstoedit installed and in PATH for this to work.
1053 * A new Python effect, Flatten Path, flattens paths in the current
1054 selection, approximating each path with a polyline whose segments meet
1055 the specified criteria for flatness.
1057 * A new Python effect, Measure Path, attaches a text label to each path
1058 in the selection giving the length of that path (in px units).
1060 * The Radius Randomize effect has a new parameter which enables normal
1061 distribution of random displacements instead of uniform as before,
1062 which gives a more natural feel to the randomized path.
1064 * The Render > L-system (formerly "Fractal (Lindenmayer)") effect is
1065 improved in this version. Now you can specify different angle values
1066 for turning left and right, which makes it possible to smoothly bend
1067 some L-systems sideways. Also, you can separately randomize the step
1068 length and the angles by a given percent for more natural look (this
1069 works especially well with plant-like branching shapes). This effect
1070 can be used to create Penrose tiling, Sierpinsky triangle, Dragon
1071 curve and other famous mathematical artefacts, as well as various
1072 meanders, friezes, patterns, and trees. Some examples can be seen on
1073 this screenshot:
1074 inkscape.org/screenshots/gallery/inkscape-0.44-lindenmayer.png as well
1075 as in the new example file share/examples/l-systems.svg.
1077 * The Interpolate Path, Random Tree, and L-system effects are fixed to
1078 place their result on the current layer instead of document root and
1079 in the center of the (last-saved) document view instead of 0,0 as
1080 before.
1082 * INX files now have the ability to hold more information. This includes
1083 tooltips and descriptions of the extensions. These are all also
1084 translatable.
1086 * Thanks to keyboard configurability, it is now possible to assign
1087 keyboard shortcuts to those effects you use most often, so you can
1088 activate them without going into the menu.
1091 Formats
1093 * Inkscape's PDF export is now native (i.e. does not require any
1094 external applications) and supports transparency, including gradients
1095 with transparency. This replaced the old export extension that
1096 required Ghostscript and worked via Postscript, losing any
1097 transparency. The new PDF export is still immature; in particular it
1098 does not handle text, so you should check "Convert text to path" on
1099 the export options dialog. Other things not yet supported include:
1100 gradients on stroke; eccentric elliptic gradients; patterns, masks,
1101 and clipping paths; embedded images.
1103 * You can now Save as Compressed Inkscape SVG with media.This save
1104 option collects the svg file and all linked images into a zip archive
1105 for distribution. Although you cannot open the resulting archive
1106 directly with inkscape, the media is linked such that after unzipping
1107 you can open the SVG file immediately.
1109 * An output format for desktop cutting plotters, such as the Wishblade
1110 and Craftrobo, was added. This format is a very minimalist DXF file
1111 with appropriate scaling and translation applied. This output format
1112 should not be expected to operate as a generalized DXF output.
1114 * Inkscape can open/import default files generated by the Xfig vector
1115 graphics editor. This requires that the fig2dev command (transfig) is
1116 in your PATH.
1118 * Starting with this version, there is a limited ability to export
1119 Inkscape drawing shapes as Open Document Format drawings (.odg files).
1120 Currently the export is limited to text, shapes, and solid fill and
1121 strokes. This output will be improved in the coming months. In the
1122 meantime, however, ODG output is already useful for getting your SVG
1123 drawings into the Open Document world, in particular into an office
1124 suite such as OpenOffice.org.
1126 * The new XCF output extension exports all top-level elements (i.e.
1127 layers and objects directly under root) as PNGs and assembles them
1128 into an XCF for procesing in GIMP. Requires Python, PyXML and GIMP.
1129 GIMP 2.2.x or above must be in the path and be named gimp. A version
1130 of Inkscape 0.44 or above must be accessible from the path. Does not
1131 function in Windows yet.
1134 Miscellaneous shortcuts
1136 * Now you can use Shift+middle button drag, in any tool, to zoom into an
1137 area. This works the same as simple drag in Zoom tool, but is faster
1138 because it does not require switching away from your current tool.
1139 Together with middle button drag (panning), middle button click (zoom
1140 in) and Shift+middle button click (zoom out), this completes the set
1141 of canvas navigation shortcuts available in any tool or context.
1143 * In Gradient tool, Shift+R reverses the gradient definition (i.e.
1144 mirrors the stop positions) without moving the gradient handles. For
1145 example, an elliptic gradient with blue center and red periphery
1146 becomes red in the center and blue in the periphery. This works on the
1147 gradient(s) of the currently selected gradient handle or, if no handle
1148 is selected, on all selected objects' gradients. (Compare with the
1149 Node tool where Shift+R reverses the direction of the selected path.)
1150 This is especially convenient for elliptic gradients which, unlike
1151 linear, you cannot simply rotate by 180 degrees for the same result.
1153 * In Selector, Ctrl+Enter enters the selected group (making it a
1154 temporary layer). Ctrl+Backspace leaves the current layer and goes one
1155 layer up in the hierarchy (but not to root).
1158 Miscellaneous improvements
1160 * Document templates (listed in File > New) are now first searched in
1161 the templates subdirectory of the user's profile directory (on Linux
1162 it's ~/.inkscape/templates), then in the system-wide Inkscape
1163 templates directory. This allows you to add your own templates on top
1164 of the list of standard templates, as well as override the default
1165 template with your own one (the default.svg in the profile directory
1166 has priority over the system-wide one).
1168 * When toggling one of the "transform with object" buttons (for stroke
1169 width, rounded rectangle corners, gradients, or patterns), a message
1170 is displayed in the statusbar explaining what has changed in the
1171 program's behavior. Hopefully this will reduce the number of
1172 complaints from users who had accidentally toggled one of these and
1173 were surprised by the result.
1175 * Whole thousands above 2000 in the rulers are now displayed as 2k, 3k,
1176 4k etc.
1178 * In the Document Preferences dialog, the new object style for each tool
1179 is now shown as a style swatch (displaying fill/stroke colors and
1180 opacity, stroke width, and master opacity), similar in design to the
1181 selected style indicator in the statusbar.
1183 * In the Grid Arrange dialog, row/column spacing can now be negative.
1185 * The installation default is now to scale the rounded rectangle corners
1186 with the rectangles themselves (the previous default mode, still
1187 available as an option, was to keep rounding radii unchanged when
1188 scaling rectangles).
1190 * Added a new --export-area-canvas command line parameter that causes
1191 the exported PNG to contain the full canvas. This option as well as
1192 --export-area-drawing and --export-area can now be used along with
1193 --export-id and --export-id-only for greater flexibility.
1195 * The --query-* command line parameters now return the true SVG bounding
1196 box of the object instead of the Inkscape coordinate system bbox (with
1197 inverted Y axis). The new behavior makes more sense for scripting use
1198 of Inkscape.
1200 * The dpi value in the Export dialog has had its range extended; now
1201 possible values are from 0.01 to 100000.
1203 * Individual <tspan>s within text objects (including line tspans) can
1204 now be selected via the XML editor to view their bounding boxes
1205 (though per SVG, you cannot transform them). Also, you can use the
1206 --query-* command line parameters to find out the bounding boxes of
1207 tspans from a script. (Individual strings within or between tspans are
1208 still not selectable, and they cannot have an ID for querying anyway.)
1210 * The placeholder image which is shown when a bitmap file was no longer
1211 accessible reads now "Linked image not found" instead of the confusing
1212 "Broken image".
1214 * Cloning multiple selected objects now works as expected (i.e. each
1215 selected object is cloned separately, similar to the Duplicate
1216 command). Previously you could only clone a single selected object.
1218 * The separate "license" and "contributors" dialogs have been merged
1219 into tabs on the About dialog. The about dialog now correctly sizes
1220 itself to fit the size of the splash SVG (while remaining resizable),
1221 and the rendering area is now cropped to the correct aspect ratio when
1222 the dialog is resized. The dialog also now displays the build
1223 information in the upper right corner.
1225 * In the Transform dialog / Rotate tab, the icon was flipped
1226 horizontally to be in line with the direction of positive rotation;
1227 the change was applied to the default (now crispy) and legacy icon
1228 sets.
1230 * The scale ratio lock button on the Selector controls bar shows a
1231 closed lock when pressed and open lock otherwise (same as the layer
1232 lock in the statusbar).
1234 * The Browse button on Export dialog now opens the new file chooser,
1235 same as those used by Open and Save.
1238 Miscellaneous bugfixes
1240 * Reading a document with an incorrect namespace URI not only did not
1241 cause Inkscape to complain, but could also "pollute" Inkscape's
1242 internal namespace table, resulting in an "infection" of subsequently
1243 saved documents by the incorrect namespace. This is now fixed, but as
1244 a result, documents with incorrect namespace URIs will no longer load.
1245 You will have to edit them in a text editor to fix the namespaces.
1247 * With newer versions of GTK, dragging with graphics tablet pen did not
1248 work in some tools and contexts (in particular, in Node and Rectangle
1249 tools). This is fixed.
1251 * Scaling of objects with stroke in Selector used to cause undesired
1252 shifts of the scaled object, as well as scaling it in the dimension
1253 which was intended to remain untouched (e.g. slight change in width
1254 when you scale only height). All these problems are now fixed, both
1255 for interactive scaling by mouse and for numeric scaling via the
1256 Controls bar, and for both values of the "Scale stroke with objects"
1257 option. Among other things, this means that stroked objects no longer
1258 lose snapping on scale, and that the "Default scale origin" option in
1259 the Selector tool preferences finally works as designed. Caveat: There
1260 may still be problems if you scale a selection that contains objects
1261 with different stroke widths.
1263 * Scaling of stroke now works for objects that didn't specify
1264 stroke-width; before, they always ended up with the default 1px
1265 stroke.
1267 * The bounding box for text and flowed text objects did not include
1268 stroke width. This has been fixed.
1270 * Stroke miterlimit on text objects was misinterpreted in absolute units
1271 instead of multiplies of stroke width (resulting in miter joins
1272 rendered as bevel).
1274 * The unfinished path in Pen tool is now cancelled, not finalized, when
1275 you switch away from the Pen tool. Apart from being more intuitively
1276 correct, this also fixes a crash when you quit Inkscape with the
1277 unfinished path in Pen tool.
1279 * Fonts on Win32 now use the native font mapper, meaning that Inkscape's
1280 font list is the same as other Windows programs, and the (potentially)
1281 very long delay experienced when using fonts for the first time in
1282 each session is gone.
1284 * Setting dash pattern was broken for transformed objects, and
1285 copy/paste of style with dash pattern did not apply correctly to
1286 objects with transforms.
1288 * An error caused a complete extra screen redraw after each zoom
1289 operation. That is, after you press "+" in a complex drawing, Inkscape
1290 redraws, but for some time after that it remains still unresponsive
1291 because it does that second redraw (invisibly for you, i.e. nothing
1292 changes on the screen). This is fixed.
1294 * Gradient rendering was off by one pixel, which often resulted in
1295 visibly wrong gradient rendering for small objects or in zoom-out.
1297 * The SVG path parser could not handle fractional numbers with the
1298 initial dot.
1300 * Several pattern rendering bugs are fixed, discovered by working with
1301 SVG files exported from Adobe Illustrator.
1303 * Inkscape on Mac OS X will now notice fonts in your ~/Library/Fonts
1304 directory, in addition to the other standard places.
1306 * Inkscape couldn't be compiled with libxml versions <= 2.6.9, and we
1307 now bumped the requirements from 2.6.0 up to libxml >= 2.6.11, which
1308 is the earliest you can get officially, anyway.
1310 * Inkscape no longer crashes when presented with a defective inx file
1311 for extensions.
1313 * More document memory is now freed when documents are closed.
1315 * EPS output now correctly includes an %%EOF footer.
1317 * There was a regression in 0.43 that caused several minor, though
1318 annoying bugs; knots and handles remained highlighted after the mouse
1319 was released, and the rubberband selection rectangle stayed visible if
1320 the selection was ended over a node while in the node tool. This
1321 regression has been fixed.
1323 * The connector routing code would previously sometimes confuse objects
1324 between multiple documents resulting in strange routing behaviour.
1325 This has been fixed.
1327 * There existed a bug in 0.43's Inkboard code that allowed a malicious
1328 outsider to very easily disrupt an Inkboard session. This has been
1329 fixed.
1331 * There existed a bug in 0.43's Inkboard code that would cause deadlocks
1332 in the case that two users attempted to invite each other at the same
1333 time (see bug #1352522 for further details). This should be fixed,
1334 although the fix has not been widely tested.
1336 * There existed a bug in 0.43's Inkboard code that would cause session
1337 invitations to not appear on the invitee's screen. This was the result
1338 of a mistake in handling GDK modifier flags, and has been fixed.
1341 Translations
1343 * INX files (containing the UI of the external effects) now allow the
1344 user visible strings to be translated. This means that effect dialogs,
1345 file type selections, and extension names can all be translated by
1346 translators.
1348 * Inkscape is now significantly translated to 18 languages: Basque,
1349 Catalan, Czech, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian,
1350 Norwegian (Bokmaal dialect), Polish, Russian, Serbian (Cyrillic and
1351 Latin), Simplified Chinese, Slovenian, Spanish, Traditional Chinese,
1352 and Vietnamese. Additionally, 21 more languages have some level of
1353 translation. Average translation ratio has increased from 49% to 59%
1354 in this release.
1356 * Some new translations of tutorials have been brought by contributors:
1357 Czech, Portuguese (Brazilian) and Russian.
1360 Internal
1362 * The Document Properties Dialog code was completely gtkmmified, which
1363 lead to dramatic reduction of code size due to usage of widget
1364 objects. The used widget objects should be reusable by other dialogs,
1365 too, and the code is much more readable.
1367 * Work on optimizing includes in all cpp files started, using the
1368 purgeincludes tool specifically written for that purpose, and ended
1369 with 40% of include lines removed!
1372 Known problems
1375 Problems with some Debian libgc-6.7 packages
1377 * Inkscape will hang or crash when linked with the first Debian packaged
1378 version of the Boehm garbage collection library. This problem was
1379 fixed in version 1:6.7-2 of the package. If you have libgc 6.7 on your
1380 Debian-based system, make sure that you are using that version of the
1381 package or later.
1384 Problems with "Composite" option of X.org
1386 * Some prereleases of inkscape-0.44 could crash if the "Composite"
1387 option were enabled in X.org's configuration. This is not a problem in
1388 the final release.
1391 Namespaces may need fixing
1393 * Previous versions of inkscape sometimes silently saved documents with
1394 wrong namespace URIs. This has been fixed, but such corrupted
1395 documents will no longer load successfully. Such documents may require
1396 their namespace declarations to be fixed by hand. Correct namespace
1397 URLs are as follows, with typical namespace prefixes given in
1398 parenthesis:
1400 * Sodipodi (sodipodi):
1401 http://sodipodi.sourceforge.net/DTD/sodipodi-0.dtd
1402 * Inkscape (inkscape): http://www.inkscape.org/namespaces/inkscape
1403 * XLink (xlink): http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink
1404 * SVG (svg or none): http://www.w3.org/2000/svg
1405 * RDF (rdf): http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#
1406 * Creative Commons (cc): http://web.resource.org/cc/
1407 * Dublin Core Metadata (dc): http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/
1410 Beware of defective themes on Linux
1412 * Inkscape and other Gtk programs can crash on any Linux, when the
1413 gtk2-engines-smooth / libsmooth package is installed. We have filed a
1414 bug against libsmooth which is now in gtk-engine and part of gnome.
1415 Removing the package resolves the problem. Update: this bug appears to
1416 be fixed in newer versions of gtk-engines. However, but it would be
1417 nice if you as affected user would inform the gtk-engines maintainers
1418 of any further problem.
1419 * A similar crash happens if the KDE Baghira theme or the package
1420 gtk_qt_engine are installed. If you experience Inkscape crashes on
1421 KDE, please try to install a different theme from Baghira, or
1422 uninstall the gtk_qt_engine package from your system. Both problems
1423 also affect older versions of Inkscape.
1426 Make sure to remove menus.xml if you have it
1428 * If you were using certain CVS/SVN builds from autumn of 2005, you may
1429 have the file menus.xml hanging around in your profile directory (e.g.
1430 ~/.inkscape on Linux). In that case you will see many errors about
1431 verbs that cannot be found, and some commands in menus will be
1432 disabled. Make sure to delete menus.xml to fix this.
1435 Previous releases
1437 * ReleaseNotes043
1438 (http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes043)
1439 * ReleaseNotes042
1440 (http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes042)
1441 * ReleaseNotes041
1442 (http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes041)
1443 * ReleaseNotes040
1444 (http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes040)
1445 * ReleaseNotes039
1446 (http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes039)
1447 * ReleaseNotes038
1448 (http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes038)
1449 * ReleaseNotes037
1450 (http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes037)
1451 * ReleaseNotes036
1452 (http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes036)
1453 * ReleaseNotes035
1454 (http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes035)
1456 Retrieved from "http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Release_Notes"
1458 This page has been accessed 20,078 times. This page was last modified
1459 09:07, 19 June 2006.