![[tokkee]](http://tokkee.org/images/avatar.png){kind=avatar}
index 5c4070c5bd090277e5a6b85cfd385df2ab6fbb32..78607eb38a9371fac44c6208dc03d95dea527c8c 100644 (file)
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
- Release Notes
- Inkscape 0.43
-
-In brief
-
- The focus of this release is on the exciting new features sponsored by
- Google via their Summer of Code program. However, we have quite a bunch of
- other stuff too. Here are the highlights:
-
- * Connectors: A new Connector tool implements creation, editing, and
- autorouting (object-avoiding) of connector lines between objects.
- Indispensable for diagramming. (A Google SoC project.)
- * Inkboard collaborative editing: You can now connect to other Inkscape
- users over the Net and edit a shared document together, watching
- others' changes and making yours! (A Google SoC project.)
- * Pressure and tilt sensitivity: the Calligraphy tool can now use a
- tablet pen with pressure/tilt support to vary the width and angle of
- the calligraphic stroke.
- * Better node editing: You can freely drag/bend/stretch a Bezier curve
- by any point (not only by a node), as well as add a new node at any
- point on the curve.
- * New extensions for envelope distortion, whirling, and adding nodes.
- * Improved precision, expanded limits, many usability improvements and
- bugfixes.
-
- Tavmjong Bah has updated his online book, A Guide to Inkscape
- (http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/index.php), to cover
- the Inkscape 0.43 features. This guide is not included with the Inkscape
- release. Users are encouraged to read the guide in addition to these
- release notes and the help included with Inkscape.
-
-Connectors
-
- * Inkscape now includes preliminary support for connectors. Connectors
- are lines drawn between objects, that stay connected to the objects as
- these objects are manipulated. Any object may have a "connector-avoid"
- property, which, when set, causes connectors to automatically route
- around the object.
-
- * The Connector tool (Ctrl+F2 or the o key) is a new way of creating and
- rerouting connectors, as well as marking objects "avoided" for the
- purpose of routing connectors.
-
- * A new connector can be drawn by clicking and dragging from any
- point on the canvas. The connector is finalized when the mouse is
- released. Connectors can also be created with two clicks, rather
- than click-and-drag, if this is preferred. In this case, click once
- on an empty point on the canvas to begin drawing the connector,
- then move the mouse to the new connector's target point and then
- click again to finalize the connector. Single clicking on a canvas
- object selects/deselects that object, just as in other tools.
-
- * Connection point handles are shown while the mouse cursor is
- hovering over a non-connector object in the connector tool.
- Currently they are shown only at the center of objects. When
- creating a connector, if the connector is started or ended over a
- connection point then the connector will be attached to that
- object. From then on the connector will be automatically rerouted
- whenever the attached object is moved.
-
- * Connectors attached to objects are currently drawn to the bounding
- box of those objects. It is planned that they will be drawn instead
- to the edges of objects.
-
- * A selected connector will show two endpoint handles. By clicking
- and dragging these, the connector can be rerouted and
- attached/detached from objects.
-
- * The Make connectors avoid selected objects button marks all objects
- in the selection as "avoided", causing all current and future
- connectors to automatically avoid these objects.
-
- * The Make connectors ignore selected objects button marks all
- objects in the selection as "ignored", causing all current and
- future connectors to completely ignore these objects. This is the
- default for all canvas items, i.e., no objects are automatically
- routed around by default.
-
-Inkboard
-
- A first release of the Inkboard collaborative editing system (also known
- as a "white board") is present in this version of Inkscape.
-
- * Inkboard must be enabled at compile time by passing --enable-inkboard
- to the configure script: Inkboard has known bugs, and may present
- security issues.
-
- * Inkboard uses the XMPP (http://www.xmpp.org/) protocol (used by Jabber
- (http://www.jabber.org/)) to link together Inkscape clients in a
- shared document session. Therefore, if you have a Jabber account, you
- can use Inkboard. (There are some exceptions, which are listed below
- in the "Known issues" section.) Inkboard uses the Loudmouth
- (http://loudmouth.imendio.org/) library for Jabber connectivity;
- versions 0.17.2 and above of the Loudmouth library are known to work.
-
- * Inkboard sessions may occur between two users or a group of users in a
- chatroom setting.
-
- Inkboard usage
-
- * You must first connect to a Jabber server before sharing a document.
- To do this, go to Whiteboard -> Connect to Jabber server. You will be
- prompted to enter a server name, your username, and password. You may
- specify a specific port to connect on, and whether or not you would
- like to connect via SSL.
-
- * After connecting, you may establish a session with another user or a
- chatroom. To connect to another user, go to Whiteboard -> Share with
- user. Inkboard can import your Jabber contact list, and will present a
- list of online contacts to you. You may select any contact in the
- contact list, or enter a Jabber ID to connect to.
-
- * Similarly, you can establish a connection with a chatroom by going to
- Whiteboard -> Share with chatroom.
-
- * If you are contacted by another user, Inkscape will present a dialog
- telling you that you have received an invitation. The dialog contains
- the Jabber ID of the user contacting you, and offers you three
- choices: decline the invitation, accept the invitation, or accept the
- invitation in a new window.
-
- * Inkboard can record a session's contents for playback at a later time.
-
- * If you are establishing a session, click the Write session file
- checkbox in the share with user dialog to enable session
- recording. You will need to provide the name of a file to which
- the session contents can be written.
- * If you are accepting a session invitation, click the Write
- session file checkbox in the invitation dialog to enable session
- recording. You will need to provide the name of a file to which
- the session contents can be written.
- * To play back a session, go to Whiteboard -> Open session file.
-
- * The Whiteboard -> Dump XML tracker menu item is intended for debugging
- purposes only.
-
-Pressure and tilt sensitivity
-
- Support for extended input devices has been added.
-
- * The Calligraphy tool now has optional pressure and tilt support from
- an input device such as a tablet. Pressure can be used to alter the
- width of the pen and tilt can be used to alter the angle of the pen's
- nib.
-
- * A standard input device dialog has been added (in File menu). Input
- device settings are saved to and loaded from the preferences.
+
+Inkscape 0.45: overview
+
+ This release brings the exciting new features developed by the Google
+ Summer of Code 2006 participants, as well as tons of other
+ improvements across the board.
+
+SVG filters: Gaussian blur
+
+ Thanks to Google's Summer of Code program, Inkscape now has basic
+ support for [44]SVG filters. The only filter enabled so far is
+ Gaussian blur.
+
+ With it, you can softly and naturally blur any Inkscape objects:
+ paths, shapes, groups, text], images. Clones inherit blurring from
+ their original, but they can also be blurred independently from the
+ original (you can create blurred clones with Tile Clones, too). Both
+ the fill and stroke of an object are blurred together, creating
+ semitransparent margins that smoothly blend into the background.
+
+ Gaussian blur enables a wide range of photorealistic effects:
+ arbitrarily shaped shades and lights, depth of field, drop shadows,
+ glows, etc. Also, blurred objects can be used as masks for other
+ objects to achieve the "feathered mask" effect.
+ * To blur selected objects, open the Fill and Stroke dialog
+ (Ctrl+Shift+F) and use the Blur slider. The blur value is a
+ percentage, with 100% corresponding to a blurring radius of 1/8 of
+ the object's bounding box' perimeter (that is, for a square, a
+ blur of 100% will have the radius equal to half a side).
+
+ * The Tile Clones dialog also supports blurring. On the Blur &
+ opacity tab, you can set the blur percentage per row or per column
+ of your tiling, as well as randomize blurring and make it
+ alternate (all the same options as for Opacity).
+
+ * The quality of on-screen blur display is controlled by the Blur
+ quality option on the new Filters tab of Inkscape Preferences
+ (Ctrl+Shift+P). The available options range from best
+ quality/slowest display to worst quality/fastest display, the
+ default being in the middle of the range. Any setting except the
+ "best quality" may introduce some rendering artifacts, especially
+ when blurring thin strokes; on the other hand, the "best quality"
+ setting may make Inkscape extremely slow at high zooms. These
+ settings only affect the screen display of blurred objects; bitmap
+ export always uses the best quality.
+
+ Here are a few tips on using blur:
+ * Masks and clipping are applied after blur. That is, if you clip an
+ object and then blur it (or blur it first and then clip - it makes
+ no difference), the clipped edges will remain crisp. Often, this
+ is what you want. If, however, you want to blur the clipped/masked
+ edges too (possibly with a different radius), you can use
+ grouping: group the clipped object with some other object (which
+ you can then delete from the group) and blur the group.
+
+ * A simple drop shadow is now very easy to do: just copy the object,
+ paint the copy black, blur it, shift away a bit and lower it to
+ the bottom. However, such a shadow does not update when you edit
+ the foreground object. If your object is already black (or, more
+ generally, if you want the shadow to be the same color as the
+ object), you can clone instead of copy to make the shadow
+ auto-updating. But what if your foreground object is not black but
+ you need a black shadow? Here's a recipe: unset the object's fill
+ (it becomes black); create two clones of it; put one clone on top
+ and paint any color you want; put the other clone at bottom, blur
+ it and shift sideways. Now you can edit the unset-fill original
+ (use Alt+click to select it) and everything will update.
+
+ * If an object has a fill that you don't want to blur (e.g. pattern,
+ or if it's a bitmap), but you just want to feather its edges, use
+ a blurred transparency mask. For this, copy the object; paint it
+ white; blur it as needed; scale the blurred copy down so its blur
+ margins are entirely within the original object; select both the
+ original and the blurred mask; do Object > Mask > Set.
+
+ * Transforming a blurred object transforms its blur, too. This
+ applies to a non-uniform scaling as well, so by squeezing a
+ blurred object you make its blur squeezed as well. So, the easiest
+ way to blur a path horizontally more than vertically is this:
+ stretch it upwards without blur, then apply blur and squeeze it
+ back into the original shape.
+
+ * You can combine blurring with gradients. For example, an ellipse
+ with elliptic opacity gradient will look much softer and more
+ natural when blurred. An object with a horizontal linear opacity
+ gradient, when blurred, will look like it is more blurred on its
+ transparent side than on its opaque side.
+
+ * A clone of a blurred object inherits the blur of the original.
+ Therefore, such a clone can be blurred more, but you can't
+ "unblur" it to make the clone sharper than its original (unless,
+ of course, you unlink it). The Fill and Stroke dialog shows you
+ the amount of the blur applied to this particular object; however,
+ if the object is a clone of an already blurred original, the
+ dialog does not reflect that.
+
+ * Note that Firefox 2.0 does not support SVG filters, so your files
+ will be displayed in Firefox 2.0 without blur. However, support
+ has been added in the current development version ("trunk") and
+ will be included in Firefox 3.0. The Opera web browser, as well as
+ librsvg (used by Wikipedia) and Batik, support filters correctly.
+
+
+Undo history
+
+ * Inkscape now features a History Dialog accessible through
+ Ctrl+Shift+H or Edit->Undo History. All changes to the document
+ since it was opened are recorded here.
+ + In the dialog, changes are listed from the oldest (top) to
+ the newest (bottom).
+ + The type of each change is indicated by an icon and a short
+ description.
+ + For readability, consecutive changes of the same type are
+ placed in a collapsable branch showing a triangle marker and
+ the number of the hidden actions in the branch.
+ + By clicking on an event event in the list, you can easily
+ move through the undo history, i.e. undo or redo any number
+ of actions with one click.
+
+ * The Undo and Redo commands in the Edit menu display the
+ descriptions of the commands to be undone and redone,
+ correspondingly. (These are the same descriptions that you see in
+ the History dialog.)
+
+
+Rendering improvements
+
+ * Interruptible display: Previously, Inkscape could not do anything
+ until it finishes the current screen redraw. Now the redraw is
+ made interruptible, so that Inkscape responds to mouse and
+ keyboard input and can abort the current redraw and start over if
+ you do some screen-changing operation. As a result, Inkscape now
+ feels much snappier and more interactive. This interruptibility is
+ fine-tuned for some interactive operations (such as node dragging)
+ so that a balance is achieved between responsiveness and
+ completeness of display.
+
+ * Radial gradients are rendered faster by at least 10%.
+
+ * Screen render is faster by 2-3%, up to 5% for complex drawings
+ with transparency.
+
+ * Display is more responsive when working at high zoom levels when
+ using a tablet.
+
+ * Rendering (compositing) quality has been improved. This is most
+ visible with (partially) transparent gradients, banding is a lot
+ less pronounced now. Speed has also been improved in some cases.
+
+
+Tools
+
Node tool
- * Clicking on a selected path selects the two nodes closest to the click
- point. Shift+click adds or removes these two nodes to the node
- selection (when only one path is selected; otherwise Shift+click works
- as in Selector).
-
- * Double click or Ctrl+Alt+click anywhere on the selected path (even if
- it is under other objects) creates a new node at the click point,
- without changing the shape of the path. (Previously, you could only
- add a node in the middle of a segment by using a toolbar button.)
-
- * You can now edit the selected path (even if it's under other objects)
- by dragging any curve point, not only node(s) as before. In many cases
- it's a much more convenient way to reshape paths than anything
- available before. When you drag a curve close enough to one of the
- nodes, only that node's handle(s) are affected; if you drag a point
- midway between two nodes, both nodes' handles are adjusted.
-
- * When mouse is over a draggable path, the cursor is changed to
- include a hand.
-
- * As in Selector, if you press Shift before starting to drag, you always
- get a node selection rubberband rectangle (even if you start on a path
- but not a node!).
-
- * After duplicating (Shift+D) an endnode, the selected node is always
- the new endnode, so you can move it at once.
-
- * Selected nodes are displayed a little larger than non-selected ones.
-
-Extensions
-
- * Add Nodes: Adds nodes to the selected paths. Each segment of the
- selected path is subdivided into ceil(Length/Max) equal length
- segments. Lengths are measured in SVG User Units calculated from the
- path data and does not take into account any transforms.
-
- * Whirl: Twists the selected paths around the specified center point.
+ * You can grow or shrink node selection by hovering the mouse
+ pointer over a node and using mousewheel (up = grow, down =
+ shrink) or the keys PageUp (grow) and PageDown (shrink). Growing
+ adds the closest unselected node to the selection; shrinking
+ deselects the farthest selected node. There are two modes that
+ differ by how the closest/farthest nodes are chosen:
+
+ *
+ + Spatial selection (Mousewheel, PageUp/PageDown): distances to
+ nodes are measured directly, regardless of which subpath a
+ node belongs to.
+
+ *
+ + Linear selection (Ctrl+Mousewheel,
+ Ctrl+PageUp/Ctrl+PageDown): node distances are measured along
+ the path, and only the nodes belonging to the same subpath as
+ the hovered node are considered (i.e. other subpaths are
+ never selected).
+
+ This technique is convenient for quickly selecting an area in a
+ complex path starting from a center - for example, for node
+ sculpting.
+
+
+Dropper
+
+ * Instead of the confusing toggle button, now the Controls bar for
+ the Dropper tool has two checkboxes, "Pick alpha" and "Set alpha",
+ which work as follows. Suppose you have an object selected and,
+ using Dropper, click on an object which has red (#FF0000) fill and
+ 0.5 opacity (half-transparent).
+ + If the "Pick alpha" checkbox is off, the selected object will
+ get the fill color #800000 (i.e. faded-out red) and fill
+ opacity will be at 1.0 (opaque).
+ + If the "Pick alpha" checkbox is on but "Set alpha" is off,
+ the selected object will get the fill color #FF0000 (red) and
+ fill opacity will be at 1.0.
+ + If both "Pick alpha" and "Set alpha" are on, the selected
+ object will get the fill color #FF0000 (red) and fill opacity
+ will be at 0.5 (half-transparent).
+
+ If you Shift+click instead of click, the same changes will be
+ made to stroke color and stroke opacity, correspondingly. Note
+ that in no situation can Dropper change the master opacity of
+ the selected object(s), although it can pick it just as it does
+ any other kind of opacity.
+
+
+Calligraphy
+
+ * A new numeric parameter, Caps, controls the amount of protruding
+ at the ends of calligraphic strokes. This parameter can range from
+ 0 (flat caps, default behavior in previous versions) through 1
+ (approximately half-circle caps) and up to 5 (long elliptic caps).
+ Rounded caps much improve the look of low-fixation strokes,
+ simulating a rounded pen.
- * Summer's Night: Linearly distorts a path into the destination
- quadrilateral. The destination quadrilateral is specified by a four
- node path (closed or not). To use, draw and position a four node path.
- Select the four node path first and then add to selection the path you
- wish to distort. The original position of the four nodes is considered
- to be clockwise around the bounding box of the path to distort
- beginning in the upper left corner.
-
- * The Wavy extension is renamed to Function Plotter and got many fixes
- and improvements. Importantly, now you don't have to provide an
- analytic formula for the derivative; instead, check the "Calculate the
- first derivative numerically" checkbox and it will itself calculate
- the angle at each node. In the function/derivative formulas, you can
- use functions from the math (http://docs.python.org/lib/module-math.html)
- and random (http://docs.python.org/lib/module-random.html) Python
- modules. As before, you need to have a rectangle selected before calling
- this extension.
-
- * Development continues on SVGSlice but it has not yet been fully
- integrated into Inkscape. Please visit Digital Unleashed
- (http://www.digitalunleashed.com/giving.php) for details and downloads.
-
-More new functionality
-
- * A separate project, the Open Clip Art Library Browser provides an easy
- way to browse local and remote clipart collections and insert clipart
- into Inkscape. Please visit
- http://www.python.org/pypi/clipartbrowser/0.41 for details and
- downloads. (A Google SoC project.)
+ * The "Drag" parameter has been renamed to Wiggle with a value
+ inversion (i.e. low drag corresponds to high wiggle, and vice
+ versa). Increase this parameter (default is 0) to make the pen
+ waver and wiggle in curly patterns.
- * A separate utility has been developed to convert between DXF and SVG
- formats. Please visit http://sourceforge.net/projects/dxf-svg-convert
- for details and downloads. (A Google SoC project.)
-
- * Improved support for viewBox: If the root <svg> element of your
- document has width/height attributes set in percentage units and
- there's a viewBox on that element, then:
-
- * The canvas size is set to the value of the viewBox attribute.
- * Changing the canvas size in Document Preferences sets the
- viewBox, without touching the width/height values.
-
- This does not affect regular documents created in Inkscape, but
- makes it easier to edit other SVG files that use viewBox.
-
- * The new command line parameter, --export-area-snap, used with bitmap
- export to snap the export area outwards to the nearest integer SVG
- user unit (px) values. If you are using the default export resolution
- of 90dpi and your graphics are pixel-snapped to minimize antialiasing,
- this switch allows you to preserve this alignment even if you are
- exporting an area (for example, with --export-id or
- --export-area-drawing) which is itself not pixel-aligned.
-
- * When saving as Postscript, you now have the option to convert or not
- convert texts to paths (previously only available for EPS export).
-
-Interface and usability
-
- * The Icon Preview dialog has been improved. A toggle has been added to
- switch between previewing the entire document or just the current
- selection. A larger 128x128 size has been added to the defaults. The
- sizes are now read from the preferences file and can be customized.
-
- * Rectangles and ellipses now use different handle shapes, so it's much
- easier to see which handle does what. The two square handles change
- the size of the object, while the two round handles adjust the
- rounding corners (in rectangles) and arc/segment ends (in ellipses).
-
- * The controls for the Rectangle tool now include W and H fields for
- setting the width/height of selected rectangle(s) numerically.
-
- * In the controls of Rectangle and Ellipse tools, the "Not rounded" and
- "Make whole" buttons are now grayed out when the selected object
- cannot use the corresponding function (i.e. when a rectangle is
- already not rounded and the ellipse is already whole, which are the
- defaults).
-
- * When editing text with the Text tool, the keypad + and - keys type the
- corresponding characters if NumLock is on (otherwise they zoom in and
- out as before). (Still does not work on Windows.)
-
- * In the Text tool, Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down now move one paragraph up or
- down correspondingly.
-
- * The Calligraphic tool, in addition to the Ctrl+F6 shortcut, has a new
- one-letter shortcut, `c'.
-
- * The Pen, Pencil, and Calligraphy tools finally have mouse cursors of
- their own.
-
- * The canvas width/height fields in Document Preferences are never
- grayed out. Instead, the menu of the canvas sizes scrolls itself to
- "Custom" or to an appropriate standard size as you edit width/height.
-
- * Rectangle editing handles now snap to grid/guides (snapping for other
- shapes' handles is expected to come in subsequent releases).
-
- * The pattern move handle is restricted to horizontal/vertical when Ctrl
- is pressed.
-
- * In the Selector, dragging the rotation center handle snaps to the
- edges and central axes of the selection's bounding box.
-
- * In the Pen tool, while you are drawing a path, the statusbar displays
- the distance and angle of the current mouse point from the last
- created node of the path. This makes it easy to create a path from the
- given lengths and angles of linear segments. When you are dragging to
- create a curve handle, the statusbar also displays the length and the
- angle of the handle.
-
- * A new preference option, Compass-like angle display (in the Steps
- tab), allows you to have absolute angles specified in a compass
- notation (0 at north, 0 to 360 range, increasing clockwise) instead of
- the default trigonometric notation (0 at east, -180 to 180 range,
- increasing counterclockwise). This affects the statusbar angle display
- for path segments and the handles in Pen and Node tools.
- * The Pen and Pencil tools now display helpful statusbar hints when the
- mouse is over one of the end anchors of the selected path.
+Outline mode
- * The precision of most editable length fields is increased from 0.01 to
- 0.001.
+ * A new menu command (View > Display Mode > Toggle) and a new
+ keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+<keypad 5>) switch the display mode from
+ Normal to Outline and back.
- * The minimum zoom is extended from 4% to 1%.
-
- * Work has begun on menu sensitivity and configurability, but has been
- disabled in the release.
+ * The window title displays "(outline)" next to the file name when
+ that editing window is in Outline mode.
-Packaging, documentation, examples
+ * An object with mask and/or clipping path, when viewed in Outline
+ mode, now displays both the object itself and its clipping path
+ and mask as objects, using different outline colors. By default,
+ clippaths use green outlines, and masks use blue.
+
+ * Images in Outline mode are displayed as red (by default) frames
+ with two diagonals.
+
+ * An object with no fill and no stroke, invisible and not selectable
+ by mouse clicking in normal mode, can now be picked by a mouse
+ click in the Outline mode using its visible outline.
+
+ * The bug whereby stroked shapes didn't change stroke width when
+ switching to Outline mode or back is fixed.
+
+ * All outline colors are changeable by editing the "wireframecolors"
+ group inside "options" in the preferences file
+ (~/.inkscape/preferences.xml). The "onlight" and "ondark"
+ attributes set the colors of the regular object outlines on light
+ and dark backgrounds (default black and white correspondingly);
+ the "images", "clips", and "masks" attributes set the colors of
+ images, clipping paths, and masks (defaults are red, green, and
+ blue correspondingly). Each attribute is a decimal integer
+ corresponding to the hex RRGGBBAA of the color.
+
+ * To cater for specialized uses, such as preparing input for
+ personal media cutters, Inkscape now has an option to start in the
+ Outline mode upon launch. To enable this, add the following line
+ to your preferences.xml file:
+
+ <group id="startmode" outline="1"/>
+
+ placing it after the <group id="options"> opening tag.
+
+
+PDF export
+
+ * A new Cairo-based PDF exporter has been added to Inkscape.
+ Inkscape 0.45 can export shapes, strokes, transparency, gradients,
+ patterns, text, and images correctly to Cairo. While clipping
+ paths and masks are known to be faulty or missing. Cairo will
+ write a PDF with vector graphics when possible and fall back to
+ raster graphics when needed. What can be exported as vectors and
+ how much of the image will be rasterized when the fallback kicks
+ in depends on your version of Cairo. Cairo version 1.2 with the
+ pdf backend compiled in is the minimum requirement for any
+ Cairo-based PDF exports.
+
+ * [removed? - mental] The native PDF exporter introduced in Inkscape
+ 0.44 is improved along with the new Cairo-based PDF exporter.
+ Changes since Inkscape 0.44 include: New features: bitmap images
+ can be embedded, pdf files can be exported from commandline.
+ Changed behaviour: the pointless text to path question is gone.
+ Fixed bugs: save failure is now detected, miter limits are now >=
+ 1, pdfs with transparent gradient are now embeddable, eccentric
+ elliptic gradients fixed, dash style inheritance fixed,
+ transparency inheritance fixed.
+
+
+PS/EPS export
+
+ * There's a new option to embed the fonts used in the document in
+ the PS or EPS exported file. As of now, this works for Type 1
+ fonts only, not TrueType. The option is available when performing
+ the export from the GUI as well as from the command line via the
+ --export-embed-fonts option.
+
+
+EMF export
+
+ * Inkscape has a limited support for exporting EMF (Enhanced Meta
+ File) format. This works only on Windows, and only exports strokes
+ and fills with constant colours. No text, no images, no gradients,
+ no transparency.
+
+
+Command line
+
+ * The new --export-pdf command line parameter allows exporting an
+ SVG image to PDF from command line.
+
+
+Keyboard profiles
+
+ The previous release allowed sets of keybinding to be created for
+ Inkscape in the style of other applications. Two more sets of
+ keybindings have been added.
+ * Adobe Illustrator
+ * Macromedia Freehand
+
+ Of course not every feature in these other programs has a direct match
+ to features in Inkscape so if you can please do help us out by
+ reporting any problems you may have or improvements you would like to
+ request.
+
+ Additionally, a keybinding that focuses on tablet-based illustration
+ and drawing work has been added:
+ * right-handed-illustration.xml
+
+ This keybinding places all commonly-used commands under the left hand,
+ so that the user's hands rarely leave the keyboard or the
+ tablet/stylus.
+
+ (To enable a profile, copy it into default.xml in the same directory,
+ overwriting the old file. To restore the default Inkscape set, copy
+ inkscape.xml into default.xml.)
+
+ More of Inkscape's keys are implemented as actions and are therefore
+ available for remapping via keyboard profiles. New actions include
+ EditSelectNext and EditSelectPrev for selecting next/previous object
+ or node (by default, they are bound to Tab/Shift+Tab; as a result of
+ becoming global actions, these keys now work in all tools and not only
+ in Selector and Node tool as before).
+
+Extension effects
+
+ * 3 new parameter types have been added to the extension effect UI:
+ tabs, enumerations and optiongroups (radiobuttons). Examples are
+ available of how to use these parameters in the definition of
+ extensions: the new function plotter uses tabs; enumerations are
+ used by the 'Pattern along path' extension; and a small developer
+ example is given to illustrate the use of optiongroups (identical
+ to enumerations).
+
+ * A new extension, Render > Lorem ipsum creates the traditional
+ Latin-like random text for design mock-ups. The number of
+ paragraphs, the number of sentences per paragraph and the possible
+ fluctuation of the number of sentences (for uneven paragraphs) can
+ be adjusted. If no flowed text element is selected, a new one in a
+ new layer is created, matching the size of the canvas.
+
+ * Pattern along path: A new powerful extension (in "Generate from
+ path" submenu) allows you to bend, repeat and/or stretch a pattern
+ object (which can be a path or a group) along a "skeleton" path.
+ This makes it easy to create a variety of patterned and shaped
+ strokes. This obsoletes the old "Kochify" extension which is
+ removed.
+
+ * Color effects: A new group of extensions in the Color submenu of
+ the Effects menu allows you to adjust all colors of a selection at
+ once. These commands affect both fill and stroke colors, including
+ gradients (but not bitmaps). The commands include a full set of
+ HSL adjustments (increasing/decreasing hue, saturation, or
+ lightness by 5%), Brighter and Darker (adjust brightness by up or
+ down by 10%), Desaturate, Grayscale, Negative, commands for
+ removing or swapping the Red, Green, Blue channels, as well as a
+ Custom command where you can set your own formulas for modifying
+ the color channels. These extensions are a temporary solution; in
+ a future version, similar functionality will be added to Inkscape
+ core.
+
+ Note: undoing color changes on gradients exposes a bug where an
+ object seems to "disappear"; this is however only a display
+ issue (caused by the order in which gradients and their users
+ are restored on undo) not causing any loss of information.
+ Also, on large documents and large selections with gradients,
+ Python's XPath code may get quite slow. Despite these
+ shortcomings, we decided to add this extension, because it's
+ genuinely useful functionality which was so far missing in
+ Inkscape.
+
+ * The Function Plotter has been extended, providing greater
+ flexibility in x- and y-range definition.
+
+ * g2png: The new group-to-PNG Python extension (g2png) is an easy
+ way to export any group or layer to individual PNG files. It was
+ first created for use in the [58]Inkscape User Manual (also
+ available in SVN's user_manual module) but is also interesting for
+ many other uses. If e.g. you have to draw a set of icons, you can
+ draw them in the same document, thus making copying, duplicating,
+ cloning etc. easier. Then just create a group for each icon, and
+ with the extension, each group ends up in its own PNG file.
+
+ * [color markers to match stroke - acspike]
+
+ * The "Blur Edge" extension is renamed into Inset/Outset Halo to
+ avoid confusion with the real Gaussian blur that we now support,
+ as well as to better describe what this extension actually does:
+ From the selected path, it creates a group of inset and outset
+ paths that form a stepped "halo" around the object.
+
+ * The Extract One Image extension automatically appends filename
+ extension to the created bitmap file.
+
+ * In an extension's INX file, you can specify <effects-menu
+ hidden="yes"/> to hide that extension from the Effects menu.
+ However, such a "hidden" extension can still be assigned a
+ keyboard shortcut (by using its id as an "action" in your
+ ~/.inkscape/keys/default.xml).
+
+
+SVG output
+
+ For specialized uses, several aspects of Inkscape's SVG output can now
+ be customized via editing the preferences.xml file (there's no UI for
+ these options). A <group id="svgoutput"> inside <group id="options">
+ can have the following attributes:
+ * usenamedcolors (default is 0). If nonzero, Inkscape uses symbolic
+ color names (such as "white" or "lime") and three-digit color
+ designations (such as $dfe) where appropriate; otherwise, it
+ always uses six-digit colors (such as $d0f0e0). Note that in 0.44,
+ the default was to use named colors, which created problems for
+ some extension effects.
+
+ * numericprecision (default is 8). This is the number of significant
+ digits written for each number into SVG. You can lower this number
+ to get slightly more compact SVG at the expense of precision.
+
+ * minimumexponent (default is -8). In transform= attributes, any
+ number whose absolute value is less than 10 to the power of
+ minimumexponent (i.e. less than 10^-8 by default) is written as 0.
+
+ * indent (default is 2) controls the number of spaces that each
+ level of nesting in SVG is shifted. Set this to 0 to disable
+ indentation.
+
+ * inlineattrs (default is 0). If nonzero, attributes are placed on
+ the same line as their tags; otherwise they are separated by
+ newlines.
+
+
+Bitmap tracing
+
+ * A new color quantization algorithm for multiscan traces works
+ faster (especially for large numbers of colors) and gives more
+ adequate results with less colors used. This improves tracing
+ results both for full-color photographs and for limited-color
+ drawings.
+ * The Trace Bitmap dialog now provides access to three more tracing
+ parameters:
+ + Suppress speckles: If set, spots or speckles larger than the
+ given size are suppressed in the trace.
+ + Smooth corners: This parameter controls how much smoothing is
+ applied to corners in the traced path.
+ + Optimize paths: If set, trace paths are optimized by joining
+ adjacent Bezier segments with the given tolerance.
+ * All controls in the Trace Bitmap dialog are reorganized to be
+ easier to find. The dialog is redesigned to use two main tabs:
+ Mode (where you select the tracing mode, such as brightness cutoff
+ or color multiscan) and Options (where you set various tracing
+ options, such as corner smoothing). The preview is placed
+ horizontally to the right of the tabs. Most labels and tooltips
+ are rewritten for clarity. The trace preview image is made twice
+ larger.
+
+
+Even more improvements
+
+ * A 'Save a copy'-function has been added to the file menu, similar
+ to the 'Save a copy' functionality of e.g. Adobe Illustrator. With
+ this function, you can save your document under a new filename,
+ but Inkscape will 'forget' it has done this: later saves will be
+ to the old filename. The default shortcut assigned to this
+ function is: Shift+Ctrl+Alt+S.
+
+ * Text and flowed text objects behave more consistently. Now you can
+ put a flowed text on path or (re)flow it into a shape just as you
+ would do with a regular (unflowed) text. Previously, the need to
+ convert a flowed text to text before these operations was a
+ stumble for many users.
+
+ * [new Help commands]
+
+ * Exported PNG images have the correct resolution set in the
+ headers.
+
+ * [sculpt profiles - bbyak]
+
+ * [new toolbar: squeezable, expansion menu, right-click menus -
+ joncruz]
+
+ * [union of a single object - acspike]
+
+ * We removed the "hacked" filename entry field that we had added to
+ the Open and Save dialogs because starting from version 2.10, GTK+
+ has finally restored this field in their standard file dialog. The
+ standard field at the top of the dialog supports type-ahead find
+ and performs the default dialog action (open or save) by pressing
+ Enter, which means you can now do a quick Ctrl+O, Ctrl+V, Enter
+ sequence to open the file whose path is in your clipboard (this
+ closes a long-standing usability bug). Those who use older
+ versions of GTK are advised either to upgrade to 2.10 or use
+ Ctrl+L to open a pop-up filename box. (Our Windows builds are
+ shipped with GTK+ 2.10.)
+
+ * The Create Bitmap function (Alt+B in the default keymap) is made
+ more useful. Unless you have specific resolution or minimum size
+ set for this command in preferences.xml (<group
+ id="createbitmap"/>), it will take the resolution hint from the
+ object whose bitmap copy you are creating (in other words, it will
+ use the resolution that you specified for that object when
+ exporting it via the Export Bitmap dialog), or the default 90 dpi
+ if that object was not yet exported. Also, a 90 dpi bitmap (with
+ its pixels exactly 1 px in size) will be snapped to the pixel
+ grid. This makes it easy to use Create Bitmap for quick
+ rasterization preview of an object or document. (Note: if you have
+ used a previous version of Inkscape, your preferences.xml may
+ contain minsize="250"; delete this for objects' resolution hints
+ to work.)
+
+ * Using extended input (i.e. tablet pressure and tilt) can now be
+ disabled via Preferences (Misc tab). This is intended to be a
+ last-resort option for those platform/hardware combinations that
+ are not properly supported by GTK. With extended input disabled,
+ you can still use your tablet as a mouse.
+
+ * Simplify Path now had two modes when working with a group of
+ paths: the default mode, which treats all of the paths as one
+ large object to simplify, or the new mode, which acts the same as
+ using Simplify on each path in a group separately. In
+ preferences.xml, set options.simplifyindividualpaths to 1 to get
+ the new mode.
+
+ * For long Simplify operations (more than 20 paths at a time),
+ Inkscape provides user feedback via the status bar as to how many
+ paths have been simplified. This change also prevents Inkscape
+ from appearing to have locked up during the operation.
+
+ * New templates added for video formats (PAL, NTSC and HDTV 1080) as
+ well as DVD cover templates that were not installed in the
+ previous version. This will help video and DVD authoring with
+ Inkscape. The business card 85×54 template is now installed as
+ well.
+
+ * The opacity of objects is now displayed as percentage, from 0 to
+ 100, both in the Fill & Stroke dialog (with one fractional digit)
+ and in the statusbar style indicator (with no fractional digits),
+ instead of from 0 to 1.0 as before. This makes opacity values
+ easier to read, type, and say.
+
+ * "Other" license type was added to the metadata/license dialog so
+ that people know that they are entering a URI to an "other"
+ license.
+
+ * Doxygen DoxyFile is updated.
+
+ * Thanks to patches submitted by users of our community, Inkscape
+ can now be built on SGI IRIX 6.5.28, gcc 3.4.0 systems and on
+ Tru64 systems.
+
+
+Examples
+
+ * With all the recent additions - clipping, masking, and especially
+ blur - Inkscape is now able to produce extremely photorealistic
+ art. In the share/examples folder in Inkscape distribution, you
+ will find two brand new, stunningly realistic images of shiny
+ cars: car.svgz by Konstantin Rotkevich and gallardo.svgz by
+ Michael Grosberg.
+
+ * Inkscape 0.45 does not yet have gradient meshes. But with the
+ addition of Gaussian Blur, this feature suddenly got within reach.
+ A new example file, gradient-mesh-experimental.svgz, explains the
+ approach Inkscape will likely take to implement this feature in a
+ fully SVG-compatible way.
+
+ * Although Inkscape does not support animation yet, you can add any
+ animation scripts and attributes to your SVG file manually in a
+ text editor - and the file will still be editable in Inkscape.
+ Tavmjong Bah used this technique to create animated-clock.svg
+ which, when loaded in an SVG viewer supporting animation (such as
+ Firefox, Opera, or Batik), demonstrates the intricate moving
+ clockwork of a watch - and shows real time to boot! If loaded in
+ Inkscape, the image is static, but instead you can freely edit any
+ of the objects.
- * The windows installer has now a modular structure that allows the
- selection of separate features such as examples, tutorials, or
- translations. All options are supported for a silent installation.
- * Windows packages now contain the release notes (NEWS file), authors
- and translators lists, the README file, the GPL and the LGPL license
- files.
- * The Inkscape man page is updated with additional examples.
- * The About dialog now more closely resembles the stock Gtk About
- dialog. A full list of authors and translators, as well as the license
- are now viewable.
Translations
- * The MacOS X package now includes interface translations and reads the
- user language setting, as specified in System Preferences, to use the
- corresponding translation language.
- * Many interface and tutorial translations have been updated.
-
-Important bugfixes
-
- * A systematic error when scaling objects with stroke via the Selector
- controls panel (W and H fields) is fixed.
- * In stroke dash patterns in CSS, comma separators were erroneously
- replaced by spaces upon writing the document. For now, Inkscape will
- still be capable of reading both space-separated and comma-separated
- lists (for compatibility with old files), but it now always writes
- correct comma-separated lists on output.
- * Due to a bug, Inkscape tended to replace relative paths to embedded
- images by absolute, which made them fail after moving a document to
- another computer; this is fixed.
- * The precision of most boolean operations and offsets is improved,
- especially noticeably for small paths.
- * In text on path, in some cases letters were distributed unevenly along
- a curve; this is now fixed.
- * Searching by text in the Find dialog (Ctrl+F) was broken, now fixed.
- * Some of the stock markers were missing in the marker menus in the Fill
- & Stroke dialog.
- * The bounding box of a stroke with markers now includes the markers.
-
-Internal progress
-
- * Source documentation: the big goal is to have a brief description for
- classes and most functions in every source file; this now holds for
- more than 100 files of the 1350 files in the source code. The doxygen
- index file now shows many useful links to external documentation and a
- categorization of main directory files which should be useful for
- beginners in particular.
- * Removed trailing fractional zeros in SVG for cleaner and more compact
- markup.
- * C++ Encapsulation: the View class hierarchy has been reimplemented in
- C++, after separating the widget classes from each class. The number
- of dependencies on the central file desktop.h (about 100) was reduced
- by half.
-
-Known issues
-
- Windows 95/98/ME support
-
- * Due to issues in GTK 2.8 beyond our control this version of Inkscape
- will not work on Windows 95/98/ME. Please do not send us crash reports
- from those platforms. We hope to be able to resume support for these
- platforms in the future, but no specific committments can be made at
- this point.
-
- Problems on Linux under KDE
-
- * SuSE, Fedora Core 4: Inkscape and other GTK programs are known to
- crash if the KDE Baghira theme and the package gtk_qt_engine are
- installed. If you experience Inkscape crashes on KDE, please try to
- install a different theme from Baghira, or uninstall the gtk_qt_engine
- package from your system.
- * Kubuntu: For similar reasons, Inkscape can crash on Kubuntu Breezy
- when, at the same time, the gtk2-engines-smooth package is installed.
- Removing it resolves the problem. Both problems also affect older
- versions of Inkscape.
-
- Pressure and tilt sensitivity
-
- * Pressure and tilt sensitivity do not currently work on MacOS X, due to
- a limitation of the MacOS X version of X11.
- * There are known issues with the current version of the X.org server
- not releasing events on extended devices that use pressure
- sensitivity. What that translates to is you can start a stroke, but
- when you lift your pen, the stroke won't end (and will just continue
- when you put your pen back on the tablet). This seem to be linked to
- the usage of /dev/psaux for the mouse instead of /dev/input/mouseXX,
- see http://linuxwacom.sourceforge.net/index.php/howto/mouse1)
- * The current version of GTK for Windows has a bug that affects tilt
- sensitivity.
-
- Inkboard
-
- * Imported bitmaps are not transmitted to other users in a whiteboard
- session.
- * At present, Inkboard relies on Loudmouth
- (http://loudmouth.imendio.org/) to provide Jabber connectivity,
- which means that it is limited to Linux builds of Inkscape.
- Inkboard is currently being redesigned to use a cross-platform
- Jabber client; this redesign will be present in a future release.
- * Inkboard cannot yet connect to Google Talk clients. This will be
- remedied in a future release. (The reason is because it expects the
- "server" portion of a Jabber ID to be the same as the server that it
- contacts, which is not the case for the Google Talk network.)
- * Inkboard's handling of concurrent modifications is still very rough.
- Future releases will make this more robust.
-
- See http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=93438&atid=604306 for a
- full list of known issues. If you find a bug not listed here, then please
- report the bug: see instructions at http://inkscape.org/report_bugs.php
- (the Report Bugs link from http://inkscape.org/).
-
-Previous releases
-
- * ReleaseNotes042 (http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ReleaseNotes042)
- * ReleaseNotes041 (http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ReleaseNotes041)
- * ReleaseNotes040 (http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ReleaseNotes040)
- * ReleaseNotes039 (http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ReleaseNotes039)
- * ReleaseNotes038 (http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ReleaseNotes038)
- * ReleaseNotes037 (http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ReleaseNotes037)
- * ReleaseNotes036 (http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ReleaseNotes036)
- * ReleaseNotes035 (http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ReleaseNotes035)
+ * Remarkable improvements are in the Danish, Finnish, Nepalese and
+ the Vietnamese translations of the user interface. They all jumped
+ from 0 to over 90 percent in a very short timespan.
+
+ * All people which are familiar with pig latin are now able to use
+ Inkscape's user interface in that language. Isthay isway oughtbray
+ otay usway ybay away ewnay anslatortray.
+
+ * default lituanian template was not installed before, which is now
+ fixed.
+
+ * Updated British English, Catalan, Bulgarian and Thai translations.
+
+
+Tutorials and Templates
+
+ * New tutorial "Easter Eggs" by Steve Karg.
+
+ * Added Catalan default template and elements tutorial.
+
+ * Russian header and footer templates are added.
+
+
+Bugfixes
+
+ * When deleting a node, neighboring smooth nodes are converted to
+ cusp.
+
+ * Releasing the mouse button while dragging nodes using a tablet
+ will now always release the nodes. Before this, a race condition
+ could occur where dragging could continue after the mouse button
+ was released.
+
+ * An object's mask and clipping path are now preserved after
+ Simplify, Object/Stroke to path, or boolean operations.
+
+ * Ungrouping a group containing clipped/masked objects might
+ sometime break the clip/mask (move it away); fixed.
+
+ * User-supplied templates in ~/.inkscape/templates can now be SVGZ
+ files in addition to SVG.
+
+ * Previously, Inkscape didn't check if there's enough free memory
+ for its pixel buffers and could crash without warning due to
+ insufficient memory e.g. upon zooming in. This problem became much
+ worse after implementing Gaussian blur, because rendering blurred
+ objects at high zooms may require a pixel buffer much bigger than
+ the visible canvas. Now this situation is handled more gracefully:
+ if a display operation requires more memory than available, or
+ more than 100Mb (which corresponds to a 5000x5000 pixel buffer),
+ it is skipped. This may result in blurred objects "disappearing"
+ at high zooms. This is purely a display issue, however, it never
+ corrupts data; just zoom out (or reduce blur radius) and the
+ disappeared object will show up OK.
+
+ * When resizing objects, scaling numbers in the statusbar are no
+ longer overwritten by other text when pressing special keys (alt,
+ shift, ctrl).
+
+ * To work around problems some users have had with pressure
+ sensitive tablets ([66]bug), the pressure sensitivity can be
+ disabled from the misc tab of Inkscape preferences dialogue. The
+ tablet can then be used, though with reduced functionality.
+
+ * The layer widget in the statusbar used to lose its current layer
+ after an effect run; this is fixed.
+
+ * When using different display resolutions or a dual screen setup,
+ dialogs could be displayed off-screen; this is fixed: now Inkscape
+ checks whether the saved position of the dialog is offscreen, if
+ so it will move the dialog to the center of the screen. Note that
+ this not solve all problems. If the dialog is still not visible,
+ go to the [67]bugreport where a procedure is given to make the
+ dialog visible (editting preferences.xml).
+
+ * Performing a boolean union without selecting an object no longer
+ crashes Inkscape.
+
+ * Grid and guidelines no longer vanish when changing their color.
+
+ * Group transformation is now correctly applied when ungrouping and
+ undo'ing the ungroup.
+
+ * Text dialog no longer discards the style of the selected text.
+
+
+Known problems
+
+
+Problem with Dialogs on Top on Microsoft Windows (win32)
+
+ [Describe minimizing of document window problem, and solution:
+ right-click taskbar button and press "Restore"]
+
+OSX 10.3.9: cannot open files
+
+ This bug is due to a missing symbol (_statvfs) in the system library
+ /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib on 10.3.9. The dependency is introduced by
+ one of the gnome-vf2 modules. It is not something we can easily fix
+ other than by not linking with gnome-vfs2, which we will do for or
+ upcoming 0.45 release if no other solution becomes apparent.
+ [mjwybrow]
+
+Problems with some Debian libgc-6.7 packages
+
+ * Inkscape will hang or crash when linked with the first Debian
+ packaged version of the Boehm garbage collection library. This
+ problem was fixed in version 1:6.7-2 of the package. If you have
+ libgc 6.7 on your Debian-based system, make sure that you are
+ using that version of the package or later.
+
+
+Beware of defective themes on Linux
+
+ * Inkscape and other Gtk programs can crash on any Linux, when the
+ gtk2-engines-smooth / libsmooth package is installed. We have
+ filed a bug against libsmooth which is now in gtk-engine and part
+ of gnome. Removing the package resolves the problem. Update: this
+ bug appears to be fixed in newer versions of gtk-engines. If you
+ are affected by this problem please update to a newer version of
+ gtk-engines. If problems persist then please inform the
+ gtk-engines maintainers of the problem.
+
+ * A similar crash happens if the KDE Baghira theme or the package
+ gtk_qt_engine are installed. If you experience Inkscape crashes on
+ KDE, please try to install a different theme from Baghira, or
+ uninstall the gtk_qt_engine package from your system. Both
+ problems also affect older versions of Inkscape.
+
+