2 Inkscape 0.45: overview
4 This release brings the exciting new features developed by the Google
5 Summer of Code 2006 participants, as well as tons of other
6 improvements across the board.
8 SVG filters: Gaussian blur
10 Thanks to Google's Summer of Code program, Inkscape now has basic
11 support for [44]SVG filters. The only filter enabled so far is
12 Gaussian blur.
14 With it, you can softly and naturally blur any Inkscape objects:
15 paths, shapes, groups, text], images. Clones inherit blurring from
16 their original, but they can also be blurred independently from the
17 original (you can create blurred clones with Tile Clones, too). Both
18 the fill and stroke of an object are blurred together, creating
19 semitransparent margins that smoothly blend into the background.
21 Gaussian blur enables a wide range of photorealistic effects:
22 arbitrarily shaped shades and lights, depth of field, drop shadows,
23 glows, etc. Also, blurred objects can be used as masks for other
24 objects to achieve the "feathered mask" effect.
25 * To blur selected objects, open the Fill and Stroke dialog
26 (Ctrl+Shift+F) and use the Blur slider. The blur value is a
27 percentage, with 100% corresponding to a blurring radius of 1/8 of
28 the object's bounding box' perimeter (that is, for a square, a
29 blur of 100% will have the radius equal to half a side).
31 * The Tile Clones dialog also supports blurring. On the Blur &
32 opacity tab, you can set the blur percentage per row or per column
33 of your tiling, as well as randomize blurring and make it
34 alternate (all the same options as for Opacity).
36 * The quality of on-screen blur display is controlled by the Blur
37 quality option on the new Filters tab of Inkscape Preferences
38 (Ctrl+Shift+P). The available options range from best
39 quality/slowest display to worst quality/fastest display, the
40 default being in the middle of the range. Any setting except the
41 "best quality" may introduce some rendering artifacts, especially
42 when blurring thin strokes; on the other hand, the "best quality"
43 setting may make Inkscape extremely slow at high zooms. These
44 settings only affect the screen display of blurred objects; bitmap
45 export always uses the best quality.
47 Here are a few tips on using blur:
48 * Masks and clipping are applied after blur. That is, if you clip an
49 object and then blur it (or blur it first and then clip - it makes
50 no difference), the clipped edges will remain crisp. Often, this
51 is what you want. If, however, you want to blur the clipped/masked
52 edges too (possibly with a different radius), you can use
53 grouping: group the clipped object with some other object (which
54 you can then delete from the group) and blur the group.
56 * A simple drop shadow is now very easy to do: just copy the object,
57 paint the copy black, blur it, shift away a bit and lower it to
58 the bottom. However, such a shadow does not update when you edit
59 the foreground object. If your object is already black (or, more
60 generally, if you want the shadow to be the same color as the
61 object), you can clone instead of copy to make the shadow
62 auto-updating. But what if your foreground object is not black but
63 you need a black shadow? Here's a recipe: unset the object's fill
64 (it becomes black); create two clones of it; put one clone on top
65 and paint any color you want; put the other clone at bottom, blur
66 it and shift sideways. Now you can edit the unset-fill original
67 (use Alt+click to select it) and everything will update.
69 * If an object has a fill that you don't want to blur (e.g. pattern,
70 or if it's a bitmap), but you just want to feather its edges, use
71 a blurred transparency mask. For this, copy the object; paint it
72 white; blur it as needed; scale the blurred copy down so its blur
73 margins are entirely within the original object; select both the
74 original and the blurred mask; do Object > Mask > Set.
76 * Transforming a blurred object transforms its blur, too. This
77 applies to a non-uniform scaling as well, so by squeezing a
78 blurred object you make its blur squeezed as well. So, the easiest
79 way to blur a path horizontally more than vertically is this:
80 stretch it upwards without blur, then apply blur and squeeze it
81 back into the original shape.
83 * You can combine blurring with gradients. For example, an ellipse
84 with elliptic opacity gradient will look much softer and more
85 natural when blurred. An object with a horizontal linear opacity
86 gradient, when blurred, will look like it is more blurred on its
87 transparent side than on its opaque side.
89 * A clone of a blurred object inherits the blur of the original.
90 Therefore, such a clone can be blurred more, but you can't
91 "unblur" it to make the clone sharper than its original (unless,
92 of course, you unlink it). The Fill and Stroke dialog shows you
93 the amount of the blur applied to this particular object; however,
94 if the object is a clone of an already blurred original, the
95 dialog does not reflect that.
97 * Note that Firefox 2.0 does not support SVG filters, so your files
98 will be displayed in Firefox 2.0 without blur. However, support
99 has been added in the current development version ("trunk") and
100 will be included in Firefox 3.0. The Opera web browser, as well as
101 librsvg (used by Wikipedia) and Batik, support filters correctly.
104 Undo history
106 * Inkscape now features a History Dialog accessible through
107 Ctrl+Shift+H or Edit->Undo History. All changes to the document
108 since it was opened are recorded here.
109 + In the dialog, changes are listed from the oldest (top) to
110 the newest (bottom).
111 + The type of each change is indicated by an icon and a short
112 description.
113 + For readability, consecutive changes of the same type are
114 placed in a collapsable branch showing a triangle marker and
115 the number of the hidden actions in the branch.
116 + By clicking on an event event in the list, you can easily
117 move through the undo history, i.e. undo or redo any number
118 of actions with one click.
120 * The Undo and Redo commands in the Edit menu display the
121 descriptions of the commands to be undone and redone,
122 correspondingly. (These are the same descriptions that you see in
123 the History dialog.)
126 Rendering improvements
128 * Interruptible display: Previously, Inkscape could not do anything
129 until it finishes the current screen redraw. Now the redraw is
130 made interruptible, so that Inkscape responds to mouse and
131 keyboard input and can abort the current redraw and start over if
132 you do some screen-changing operation. As a result, Inkscape now
133 feels much snappier and more interactive. This interruptibility is
134 fine-tuned for some interactive operations (such as node dragging)
135 so that a balance is achieved between responsiveness and
136 completeness of display.
138 * Radial gradients are rendered faster by at least 10%.
140 * Screen render is faster by 2-3%, up to 5% for complex drawings
141 with transparency.
143 * Display is more responsive when working at high zoom levels when
144 using a tablet.
146 * Rendering (compositing) quality has been improved. This is most
147 visible with (partially) transparent gradients, banding is a lot
148 less pronounced now. Speed has also been improved in some cases.
151 Tools
154 Node tool
156 * You can grow or shrink node selection by hovering the mouse
157 pointer over a node and using mousewheel (up = grow, down =
158 shrink) or the keys PageUp (grow) and PageDown (shrink). Growing
159 adds the closest unselected node to the selection; shrinking
160 deselects the farthest selected node. There are two modes that
161 differ by how the closest/farthest nodes are chosen:
163 *
164 + Spatial selection (Mousewheel, PageUp/PageDown): distances to
165 nodes are measured directly, regardless of which subpath a
166 node belongs to.
168 *
169 + Linear selection (Ctrl+Mousewheel,
170 Ctrl+PageUp/Ctrl+PageDown): node distances are measured along
171 the path, and only the nodes belonging to the same subpath as
172 the hovered node are considered (i.e. other subpaths are
173 never selected).
175 This technique is convenient for quickly selecting an area in a
176 complex path starting from a center - for example, for node
177 sculpting.
180 Dropper
182 * Instead of the confusing toggle button, now the Controls bar for
183 the Dropper tool has two checkboxes, "Pick alpha" and "Set alpha",
184 which work as follows. Suppose you have an object selected and,
185 using Dropper, click on an object which has red (#FF0000) fill and
186 0.5 opacity (half-transparent).
187 + If the "Pick alpha" checkbox is off, the selected object will
188 get the fill color #800000 (i.e. faded-out red) and fill
189 opacity will be at 1.0 (opaque).
190 + If the "Pick alpha" checkbox is on but "Set alpha" is off,
191 the selected object will get the fill color #FF0000 (red) and
192 fill opacity will be at 1.0.
193 + If both "Pick alpha" and "Set alpha" are on, the selected
194 object will get the fill color #FF0000 (red) and fill opacity
195 will be at 0.5 (half-transparent).
197 If you Shift+click instead of click, the same changes will be
198 made to stroke color and stroke opacity, correspondingly. Note
199 that in no situation can Dropper change the master opacity of
200 the selected object(s), although it can pick it just as it does
201 any other kind of opacity.
204 Calligraphy
206 * A new numeric parameter, Caps, controls the amount of protruding
207 at the ends of calligraphic strokes. This parameter can range from
208 0 (flat caps, default behavior in previous versions) through 1
209 (approximately half-circle caps) and up to 5 (long elliptic caps).
210 Rounded caps much improve the look of low-fixation strokes,
211 simulating a rounded pen.
213 * The "Drag" parameter has been renamed to Wiggle with a value
214 inversion (i.e. low drag corresponds to high wiggle, and vice
215 versa). Increase this parameter (default is 0) to make the pen
216 waver and wiggle in curly patterns.
219 Outline mode
221 * A new menu command (View > Display Mode > Toggle) and a new
222 keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+<keypad 5>) switch the display mode from
223 Normal to Outline and back.
225 * The window title displays "(outline)" next to the file name when
226 that editing window is in Outline mode.
228 * An object with mask and/or clipping path, when viewed in Outline
229 mode, now displays both the object itself and its clipping path
230 and mask as objects, using different outline colors. By default,
231 clippaths use green outlines, and masks use blue.
233 * Images in Outline mode are displayed as red (by default) frames
234 with two diagonals.
236 * An object with no fill and no stroke, invisible and not selectable
237 by mouse clicking in normal mode, can now be picked by a mouse
238 click in the Outline mode using its visible outline.
240 * The bug whereby stroked shapes didn't change stroke width when
241 switching to Outline mode or back is fixed.
243 * All outline colors are changeable by editing the "wireframecolors"
244 group inside "options" in the preferences file
245 (~/.inkscape/preferences.xml). The "onlight" and "ondark"
246 attributes set the colors of the regular object outlines on light
247 and dark backgrounds (default black and white correspondingly);
248 the "images", "clips", and "masks" attributes set the colors of
249 images, clipping paths, and masks (defaults are red, green, and
250 blue correspondingly). Each attribute is a decimal integer
251 corresponding to the hex RRGGBBAA of the color.
253 * To cater for specialized uses, such as preparing input for
254 personal media cutters, Inkscape now has an option to start in the
255 Outline mode upon launch. To enable this, add the following line
256 to your preferences.xml file:
258 <group id="startmode" outline="1"/>
260 placing it after the <group id="options"> opening tag.
263 PDF export
265 * A new Cairo-based PDF exporter has been added to Inkscape.
266 Inkscape 0.45 can export shapes, strokes, transparency, gradients,
267 patterns, text, and images correctly to Cairo. While clipping
268 paths and masks are known to be faulty or missing. Cairo will
269 write a PDF with vector graphics when possible and fall back to
270 raster graphics when needed. What can be exported as vectors and
271 how much of the image will be rasterized when the fallback kicks
272 in depends on your version of Cairo. Cairo version 1.2 with the
273 pdf backend compiled in is the minimum requirement for any
274 Cairo-based PDF exports.
276 * [removed? - mental] The native PDF exporter introduced in Inkscape
277 0.44 is improved along with the new Cairo-based PDF exporter.
278 Changes since Inkscape 0.44 include: New features: bitmap images
279 can be embedded, pdf files can be exported from commandline.
280 Changed behaviour: the pointless text to path question is gone.
281 Fixed bugs: save failure is now detected, miter limits are now >=
282 1, pdfs with transparent gradient are now embeddable, eccentric
283 elliptic gradients fixed, dash style inheritance fixed,
284 transparency inheritance fixed.
287 PS/EPS export
289 * There's a new option to embed the fonts used in the document in
290 the PS or EPS exported file. As of now, this works for Type 1
291 fonts only, not TrueType. The option is available when performing
292 the export from the GUI as well as from the command line via the
293 --export-embed-fonts option.
296 EMF export
298 * Inkscape has a limited support for exporting EMF (Enhanced Meta
299 File) format. This works only on Windows, and only exports strokes
300 and fills with constant colours. No text, no images, no gradients,
301 no transparency.
304 Command line
306 * The new --export-pdf command line parameter allows exporting an
307 SVG image to PDF from command line.
310 Keyboard profiles
312 The previous release allowed sets of keybinding to be created for
313 Inkscape in the style of other applications. Two more sets of
314 keybindings have been added.
315 * Adobe Illustrator
316 * Macromedia Freehand
318 Of course not every feature in these other programs has a direct match
319 to features in Inkscape so if you can please do help us out by
320 reporting any problems you may have or improvements you would like to
321 request.
323 Additionally, a keybinding that focuses on tablet-based illustration
324 and drawing work has been added:
325 * right-handed-illustration.xml
327 This keybinding places all commonly-used commands under the left hand,
328 so that the user's hands rarely leave the keyboard or the
329 tablet/stylus.
331 (To enable a profile, copy it into default.xml in the same directory,
332 overwriting the old file. To restore the default Inkscape set, copy
333 inkscape.xml into default.xml.)
335 More of Inkscape's keys are implemented as actions and are therefore
336 available for remapping via keyboard profiles. New actions include
337 EditSelectNext and EditSelectPrev for selecting next/previous object
338 or node (by default, they are bound to Tab/Shift+Tab; as a result of
339 becoming global actions, these keys now work in all tools and not only
340 in Selector and Node tool as before).
342 Extension effects
344 * 3 new parameter types have been added to the extension effect UI:
345 tabs, enumerations and optiongroups (radiobuttons). Examples are
346 available of how to use these parameters in the definition of
347 extensions: the new function plotter uses tabs; enumerations are
348 used by the 'Pattern along path' extension; and a small developer
349 example is given to illustrate the use of optiongroups (identical
350 to enumerations).
352 * A new extension, Render > Lorem ipsum creates the traditional
353 Latin-like random text for design mock-ups. The number of
354 paragraphs, the number of sentences per paragraph and the possible
355 fluctuation of the number of sentences (for uneven paragraphs) can
356 be adjusted. If no flowed text element is selected, a new one in a
357 new layer is created, matching the size of the canvas.
359 * Pattern along path: A new powerful extension (in "Generate from
360 path" submenu) allows you to bend, repeat and/or stretch a pattern
361 object (which can be a path or a group) along a "skeleton" path.
362 This makes it easy to create a variety of patterned and shaped
363 strokes. This obsoletes the old "Kochify" extension which is
364 removed.
366 * Color effects: A new group of extensions in the Color submenu of
367 the Effects menu allows you to adjust all colors of a selection at
368 once. These commands affect both fill and stroke colors, including
369 gradients (but not bitmaps). The commands include a full set of
370 HSL adjustments (increasing/decreasing hue, saturation, or
371 lightness by 5%), Brighter and Darker (adjust brightness by up or
372 down by 10%), Desaturate, Grayscale, Negative, commands for
373 removing or swapping the Red, Green, Blue channels, as well as a
374 Custom command where you can set your own formulas for modifying
375 the color channels. These extensions are a temporary solution; in
376 a future version, similar functionality will be added to Inkscape
377 core.
379 Note: undoing color changes on gradients exposes a bug where an
380 object seems to "disappear"; this is however only a display
381 issue (caused by the order in which gradients and their users
382 are restored on undo) not causing any loss of information.
383 Also, on large documents and large selections with gradients,
384 Python's XPath code may get quite slow. Despite these
385 shortcomings, we decided to add this extension, because it's
386 genuinely useful functionality which was so far missing in
387 Inkscape.
389 * The Function Plotter has been extended, providing greater
390 flexibility in x- and y-range definition.
392 * g2png: The new group-to-PNG Python extension (g2png) is an easy
393 way to export any group or layer to individual PNG files. It was
394 first created for use in the [58]Inkscape User Manual (also
395 available in SVN's user_manual module) but is also interesting for
396 many other uses. If e.g. you have to draw a set of icons, you can
397 draw them in the same document, thus making copying, duplicating,
398 cloning etc. easier. Then just create a group for each icon, and
399 with the extension, each group ends up in its own PNG file.
401 * [color markers to match stroke - acspike]
403 * The "Blur Edge" extension is renamed into Inset/Outset Halo to
404 avoid confusion with the real Gaussian blur that we now support,
405 as well as to better describe what this extension actually does:
406 From the selected path, it creates a group of inset and outset
407 paths that form a stepped "halo" around the object.
409 * The Extract One Image extension automatically appends filename
410 extension to the created bitmap file.
412 * In an extension's INX file, you can specify <effects-menu
413 hidden="yes"/> to hide that extension from the Effects menu.
414 However, such a "hidden" extension can still be assigned a
415 keyboard shortcut (by using its id as an "action" in your
416 ~/.inkscape/keys/default.xml).
419 SVG output
421 For specialized uses, several aspects of Inkscape's SVG output can now
422 be customized via editing the preferences.xml file (there's no UI for
423 these options). A <group id="svgoutput"> inside <group id="options">
424 can have the following attributes:
425 * usenamedcolors (default is 0). If nonzero, Inkscape uses symbolic
426 color names (such as "white" or "lime") and three-digit color
427 designations (such as $dfe) where appropriate; otherwise, it
428 always uses six-digit colors (such as $d0f0e0). Note that in 0.44,
429 the default was to use named colors, which created problems for
430 some extension effects.
432 * numericprecision (default is 8). This is the number of significant
433 digits written for each number into SVG. You can lower this number
434 to get slightly more compact SVG at the expense of precision.
436 * minimumexponent (default is -8). In transform= attributes, any
437 number whose absolute value is less than 10 to the power of
438 minimumexponent (i.e. less than 10^-8 by default) is written as 0.
440 * indent (default is 2) controls the number of spaces that each
441 level of nesting in SVG is shifted. Set this to 0 to disable
442 indentation.
444 * inlineattrs (default is 0). If nonzero, attributes are placed on
445 the same line as their tags; otherwise they are separated by
446 newlines.
449 Bitmap tracing
451 * A new color quantization algorithm for multiscan traces works
452 faster (especially for large numbers of colors) and gives more
453 adequate results with less colors used. This improves tracing
454 results both for full-color photographs and for limited-color
455 drawings.
456 * The Trace Bitmap dialog now provides access to three more tracing
457 parameters:
458 + Suppress speckles: If set, spots or speckles larger than the
459 given size are suppressed in the trace.
460 + Smooth corners: This parameter controls how much smoothing is
461 applied to corners in the traced path.
462 + Optimize paths: If set, trace paths are optimized by joining
463 adjacent Bezier segments with the given tolerance.
464 * All controls in the Trace Bitmap dialog are reorganized to be
465 easier to find. The dialog is redesigned to use two main tabs:
466 Mode (where you select the tracing mode, such as brightness cutoff
467 or color multiscan) and Options (where you set various tracing
468 options, such as corner smoothing). The preview is placed
469 horizontally to the right of the tabs. Most labels and tooltips
470 are rewritten for clarity. The trace preview image is made twice
471 larger.
474 Even more improvements
476 * A 'Save a copy'-function has been added to the file menu, similar
477 to the 'Save a copy' functionality of e.g. Adobe Illustrator. With
478 this function, you can save your document under a new filename,
479 but Inkscape will 'forget' it has done this: later saves will be
480 to the old filename. The default shortcut assigned to this
481 function is: Shift+Ctrl+Alt+S.
483 * Text and flowed text objects behave more consistently. Now you can
484 put a flowed text on path or (re)flow it into a shape just as you
485 would do with a regular (unflowed) text. Previously, the need to
486 convert a flowed text to text before these operations was a
487 stumble for many users.
489 * [new Help commands]
491 * Exported PNG images have the correct resolution set in the
492 headers.
494 * [sculpt profiles - bbyak]
496 * [new toolbar: squeezable, expansion menu, right-click menus -
497 joncruz]
499 * [union of a single object - acspike]
501 * We removed the "hacked" filename entry field that we had added to
502 the Open and Save dialogs because starting from version 2.10, GTK+
503 has finally restored this field in their standard file dialog. The
504 standard field at the top of the dialog supports type-ahead find
505 and performs the default dialog action (open or save) by pressing
506 Enter, which means you can now do a quick Ctrl+O, Ctrl+V, Enter
507 sequence to open the file whose path is in your clipboard (this
508 closes a long-standing usability bug). Those who use older
509 versions of GTK are advised either to upgrade to 2.10 or use
510 Ctrl+L to open a pop-up filename box. (Our Windows builds are
511 shipped with GTK+ 2.10.)
513 * The Create Bitmap function (Alt+B in the default keymap) is made
514 more useful. Unless you have specific resolution or minimum size
515 set for this command in preferences.xml (<group
516 id="createbitmap"/>), it will take the resolution hint from the
517 object whose bitmap copy you are creating (in other words, it will
518 use the resolution that you specified for that object when
519 exporting it via the Export Bitmap dialog), or the default 90 dpi
520 if that object was not yet exported. Also, a 90 dpi bitmap (with
521 its pixels exactly 1 px in size) will be snapped to the pixel
522 grid. This makes it easy to use Create Bitmap for quick
523 rasterization preview of an object or document. (Note: if you have
524 used a previous version of Inkscape, your preferences.xml may
525 contain minsize="250"; delete this for objects' resolution hints
526 to work.)
528 * Using extended input (i.e. tablet pressure and tilt) can now be
529 disabled via Preferences (Misc tab). This is intended to be a
530 last-resort option for those platform/hardware combinations that
531 are not properly supported by GTK. With extended input disabled,
532 you can still use your tablet as a mouse.
534 * Simplify Path now had two modes when working with a group of
535 paths: the default mode, which treats all of the paths as one
536 large object to simplify, or the new mode, which acts the same as
537 using Simplify on each path in a group separately. In
538 preferences.xml, set options.simplifyindividualpaths to 1 to get
539 the new mode.
541 * For long Simplify operations (more than 20 paths at a time),
542 Inkscape provides user feedback via the status bar as to how many
543 paths have been simplified. This change also prevents Inkscape
544 from appearing to have locked up during the operation.
546 * New templates added for video formats (PAL, NTSC and HDTV 1080) as
547 well as DVD cover templates that were not installed in the
548 previous version. This will help video and DVD authoring with
549 Inkscape. The business card 85×54 template is now installed as
550 well.
552 * The opacity of objects is now displayed as percentage, from 0 to
553 100, both in the Fill & Stroke dialog (with one fractional digit)
554 and in the statusbar style indicator (with no fractional digits),
555 instead of from 0 to 1.0 as before. This makes opacity values
556 easier to read, type, and say.
558 * "Other" license type was added to the metadata/license dialog so
559 that people know that they are entering a URI to an "other"
560 license.
562 * Doxygen DoxyFile is updated.
564 * Thanks to patches submitted by users of our community, Inkscape
565 can now be built on SGI IRIX 6.5.28, gcc 3.4.0 systems and on
566 Tru64 systems.
569 Examples
571 * With all the recent additions - clipping, masking, and especially
572 blur - Inkscape is now able to produce extremely photorealistic
573 art. In the share/examples folder in Inkscape distribution, you
574 will find two brand new, stunningly realistic images of shiny
575 cars: car.svgz by Konstantin Rotkevich and gallardo.svgz by
576 Michael Grosberg.
578 * Inkscape 0.45 does not yet have gradient meshes. But with the
579 addition of Gaussian Blur, this feature suddenly got within reach.
580 A new example file, gradient-mesh-experimental.svgz, explains the
581 approach Inkscape will likely take to implement this feature in a
582 fully SVG-compatible way.
584 * Although Inkscape does not support animation yet, you can add any
585 animation scripts and attributes to your SVG file manually in a
586 text editor - and the file will still be editable in Inkscape.
587 Tavmjong Bah used this technique to create animated-clock.svg
588 which, when loaded in an SVG viewer supporting animation (such as
589 Firefox, Opera, or Batik), demonstrates the intricate moving
590 clockwork of a watch - and shows real time to boot! If loaded in
591 Inkscape, the image is static, but instead you can freely edit any
592 of the objects.
595 Translations
597 * Remarkable improvements are in the Danish, Finnish, Nepalese and
598 the Vietnamese translations of the user interface. They all jumped
599 from 0 to over 90 percent in a very short timespan.
601 * All people which are familiar with pig latin are now able to use
602 Inkscape's user interface in that language. Isthay isway oughtbray
603 otay usway ybay away ewnay anslatortray.
605 * default lituanian template was not installed before, which is now
606 fixed.
608 * Updated British English, Catalan, Bulgarian and Thai translations.
611 Tutorials and Templates
613 * New tutorial "Easter Eggs" by Steve Karg.
615 * Added Catalan default template and elements tutorial.
617 * Russian header and footer templates are added.
620 Bugfixes
622 * When deleting a node, neighboring smooth nodes are converted to
623 cusp.
625 * Releasing the mouse button while dragging nodes using a tablet
626 will now always release the nodes. Before this, a race condition
627 could occur where dragging could continue after the mouse button
628 was released.
630 * An object's mask and clipping path are now preserved after
631 Simplify, Object/Stroke to path, or boolean operations.
633 * Ungrouping a group containing clipped/masked objects might
634 sometime break the clip/mask (move it away); fixed.
636 * User-supplied templates in ~/.inkscape/templates can now be SVGZ
637 files in addition to SVG.
639 * Previously, Inkscape didn't check if there's enough free memory
640 for its pixel buffers and could crash without warning due to
641 insufficient memory e.g. upon zooming in. This problem became much
642 worse after implementing Gaussian blur, because rendering blurred
643 objects at high zooms may require a pixel buffer much bigger than
644 the visible canvas. Now this situation is handled more gracefully:
645 if a display operation requires more memory than available, or
646 more than 100Mb (which corresponds to a 5000x5000 pixel buffer),
647 it is skipped. This may result in blurred objects "disappearing"
648 at high zooms. This is purely a display issue, however, it never
649 corrupts data; just zoom out (or reduce blur radius) and the
650 disappeared object will show up OK.
652 * When resizing objects, scaling numbers in the statusbar are no
653 longer overwritten by other text when pressing special keys (alt,
654 shift, ctrl).
656 * To work around problems some users have had with pressure
657 sensitive tablets ([66]bug), the pressure sensitivity can be
658 disabled from the misc tab of Inkscape preferences dialogue. The
659 tablet can then be used, though with reduced functionality.
661 * The layer widget in the statusbar used to lose its current layer
662 after an effect run; this is fixed.
664 * When using different display resolutions or a dual screen setup,
665 dialogs could be displayed off-screen; this is fixed: now Inkscape
666 checks whether the saved position of the dialog is offscreen, if
667 so it will move the dialog to the center of the screen. Note that
668 this not solve all problems. If the dialog is still not visible,
669 go to the [67]bugreport where a procedure is given to make the
670 dialog visible (editting preferences.xml).
672 * Performing a boolean union without selecting an object no longer
673 crashes Inkscape.
675 * Grid and guidelines no longer vanish when changing their color.
677 * Group transformation is now correctly applied when ungrouping and
678 undo'ing the ungroup.
680 * Text dialog no longer discards the style of the selected text.
683 Known problems
686 Problem with Dialogs on Top on Microsoft Windows (win32)
688 [Describe minimizing of document window problem, and solution:
689 right-click taskbar button and press "Restore"]
691 OSX 10.3.9: cannot open files
693 This bug is due to a missing symbol (_statvfs) in the system library
694 /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib on 10.3.9. The dependency is introduced by
695 one of the gnome-vf2 modules. It is not something we can easily fix
696 other than by not linking with gnome-vfs2, which we will do for or
697 upcoming 0.45 release if no other solution becomes apparent.
698 [mjwybrow]
700 Problems with some Debian libgc-6.7 packages
702 * Inkscape will hang or crash when linked with the first Debian
703 packaged version of the Boehm garbage collection library. This
704 problem was fixed in version 1:6.7-2 of the package. If you have
705 libgc 6.7 on your Debian-based system, make sure that you are
706 using that version of the package or later.
709 Beware of defective themes on Linux
711 * Inkscape and other Gtk programs can crash on any Linux, when the
712 gtk2-engines-smooth / libsmooth package is installed. We have
713 filed a bug against libsmooth which is now in gtk-engine and part
714 of gnome. Removing the package resolves the problem. Update: this
715 bug appears to be fixed in newer versions of gtk-engines. If you
716 are affected by this problem please update to a newer version of
717 gtk-engines. If problems persist then please inform the
718 gtk-engines maintainers of the problem.
720 * A similar crash happens if the KDE Baghira theme or the package
721 gtk_qt_engine are installed. If you experience Inkscape crashes on
722 KDE, please try to install a different theme from Baghira, or
723 uninstall the gtk_qt_engine package from your system. Both
724 problems also affect older versions of Inkscape.