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| author | bryce <bryce@users.sourceforge.net> | |
| Fri, 12 Jan 2007 00:41:17 +0000 (00:41 +0000) | ||
| committer | bryce <bryce@users.sourceforge.net> | |
| Fri, 12 Jan 2007 00:41:17 +0000 (00:41 +0000) |
| NEWS | patch | blob | history |
index 5318138a3c632c1800fe1293e7e7a9d59ced19d7..78607eb38a9371fac44c6208dc03d95dea527c8c 100644 (file)
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
- Release Notes
- Contents
+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
- * 1 Inkscape 0.44: overview
- * 2 Performance
-
- * 2.1 Outline mode
- * 2.2 Speed
-
- * 3 SVG conformance
-
- * 3.1 Color profile support
- * 3.2 <switch> support
- * 3.3 SVG output
-
- * 4 Interface
-
- * 4.1 Layers dialog
- * 4.2 Selected style indicator
- * 4.3 Tool style indicators
- * 4.4 Controls bar for the Text tool
- * 4.5 Docked color palette
- * 4.6 Inkscape Preferences dialog
- * 4.7 Document Properties / Metadata dialogs
- * 4.8 Configurable keyboard
- * 4.9 Menus
- * 4.10 Statusbar
- * 4.11 Theme
-
- * 5 Tools
-
- * 5.1 Node tool
-
- * 5.1.1 Node sculpting
- * 5.1.2 "Show handles" toggle
- * 5.1.3 New deletion behavior
- * 5.1.4 Preserving positions of nodes and handles
- * 5.1.5 Miscellaneous
-
- * 5.2 Calligraphic pen
-
- * 5.2.1 Tremor
- * 5.2.2 Pen width
- * 5.2.3 Selection
- * 5.2.4 Style
-
- * 5.3 Pen tool
-
- * 6 Clipping and masking
- * 7 Transformations
-
- * 7.1 Transform dialog
- * 7.2 Persistent rotation centers
- * 7.3 Pasting size
-
- * 8 Connectors and automatic layout
- * 9 Selective tracing with SIOX
- * 10 Snapping
- * 11 Sublayers
- * 12 Markers
- * 13 Extension effects
- * 14 Formats
- * 15 Miscellaneous shortcuts
- * 16 Miscellaneous improvements
- * 17 Miscellaneous bugfixes
- * 18 Translations
- * 19 Internal
- * 20 Known problems
-
- * 20.1 Problems with some Debian libgc-6.7 packages
- * 20.2 Problems with "Composite" option of X.org
- * 20.3 Namespaces may need fixing
- * 20.4 Beware of defective themes on Linux
- * 20.5 Make sure to remove menus.xml if you have it
-
- * 21 Previous releases
-
-
-Inkscape 0.44: overview
-
- Inkscape 0.44 is bigger and better than ever. Some highlights:
-
- * Layers dialog
-
- * Outline mode, many performance improvements
-
- * Native PDF export with transparency
-
- * Clipping and masking support
-
- * Configurable keyboard shortcuts, including optional Xara X
- compatibility
-
- * Docked color palette in the editing window
-
- * Interactive indicator of the style of selection in the statusbar
-
- * Innovative "node sculpting" and other improvements in Node tool
-
- * Extensions are enabled by default and work on all major platforms
-
- * Better SVG support: <switch> element, ICC color profiles for images
-
- * Persistent rotation centers, Paste Size command
-
- * New icons, redesigned preferences dialogs, rearranged menus, many
- cosmetic improvements
-
- * Hundreds of bugfixes and smaller features
-
- * Not directly related to Inkscape, but important nevertheless: since
- our last release, Firefox 1.5 was released with SVG support enabled by
- default. This means that you can now view any Inkscape document right
- in your Firefox window without any format conversions or installing
- any plugins!
+Node tool
- Performance
+ * 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.
+
+ * 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.
Outline mode
- An Outline ("wireframe") display mode is implemented. Use the View >
- Display Mode > Outline to activate it. In this mode:
-
- * all paths and shapes are rendered as inverse (black on light
- background and vice versa) outlines of constant width (1 screen pixel
- regardless of zoom), without fill;
-
- * text is painted by inverse fill, without stroke;
+ * 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.
- * bitmaps are shown as is;
+ * The window title displays "(outline)" next to the file name when
+ that editing window is in Outline mode.
- * any opacity and gradients are ignored.
+ * 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.
- The outline mode is usually not drastically faster than regular mode
- (usually 10% to 50% faster), and in some special cases it may even be
- slower. However, the value of the outline mode is not only in its speed;
- it is a good way to get an idea of the structure and objects of your
- document, and it is convenient for precision node editing and for finding
- "stray objects".
+ * 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.
-Speed
+ * The bug whereby stroked shapes didn't change stroke width when
+ switching to Outline mode or back is fixed.
- In addition to the Outline mode which makes it much easier to work with
- complex drawings, this version of Inkscape also provides significant speed
- improvements in many areas.
+ * 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.
- * Thanks to optimizations in the renderer, Inkscape's screen redraw is
- faster by at least 10%, and in some cases (such as complex
- stroked/dashed paths at high zooms) up to three times faster.
+ * 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:
- * Optimizations in the Node tool resulted in noticeable speed gains for
- node editing. Thus, switching to and from the Node tool (with a path
- selected), as well as selecting nodes in that tool, are now at least
- ten times faster than before. Other operations, including curve and
- node dragging and move/scale/rotate operations on multiple selected
- nodes, are much faster as well. This is especially important when
- working with complex paths; with these optimizations, paths containing
- several thousand nodes, though still slow, are much more usable.
+ <group id="startmode" outline="1"/>
- * An optimization in the attribute setting method made operations such
- as moving multiple objects with arrow keys at least 30% faster
- compared to 0.43. This is especially noticeable when you are moving
- clones selected together with their original (e.g. a clone tiling), in
- which case Inkscape now works three to four times faster.
+ placing it after the <group id="options"> opening tag.
- * Interface icons are now rendered in the background (from SVG source in
- share/icons/icons.svg) when Inkscape is idle, rather than waiting for
- all the icons in a menu to render the first time you pull it up. This
- eliminates the annoying delay when opening menus for the first time.
- * Previously, zooming in to view a small portion of a path (especially
- big and complex path), there was a very noticeable slowdown and memory
- use increased dramatically. We optimized the renderer to only process
- the visible part of a path, and as a result the rendering speed is now
- almost the same at any zoom up to the maximum, providing up to 10-40
- times speedup compared to the previous version (the closer is the
- zoom, the greater is the gain).
-
- * The Path > Break Apart command is now dozens of times (up to 100x)
- faster for complex paths with thousands of subpaths.
-
-
- SVG conformance
-
-
-Color profile support
-
- Inkscape now includes base ICC profile functionality. If compiled with
- LittleCMS support (if you run configure with --enable-lcms switch),
- Inkscape passes the ICC color profile test by W3C. The <color-profile>
- element has been implemented along with the "color-profile" attribute for
- <image> elements.
-
-
-<switch> support
-
- Rendering support for SVG 1.1's Conditional Processing Module has been
- implemented, including switch element, requiredFeatures,
- requiredExtensions, systemLanguage attributes. Inkscape passes the
- Conditional processing tests ([1] and [2]) by W3C.
+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
- * In Inkscape's SVG documents, colors are now expressed by name
- (`white') or three-digit form (`#f3c') when possible.
-
- * The numeric values in transform attributes are written without
- insignificant trailing zeros, and anything less than that 1e-8 by
- absolute value (usually caused by rounding errors) is written as 0 to
- reduce clutter.
-
-
- Interface
-
-
-Layers dialog
-
- A Layers dialog (Ctrl+Shift+L) is implemented in this version. It works in
- parallel with the quick layer selector in the statusbar, so you can use
- whichever is more convenient for you.
-
- * In the dialog, you can click on a layer to make it current, as well as
- toggle layers visible/hidden and locked/unlocked. You don't need to
- make a layer current to toggle its visibility or lock status.
-
- * A hierarchical tree of layers is represented by a tree-like display in
- the dialog. You can expand or collapse branches of the tree to make
- the layer structure of a document easier to navigate.
-
- * At the bottom of the dialog, there are buttons for adding a new layer,
- moving the current layer up or down (either one step or all the way to
- top or bottom), and deleting the current layer.
-
- * Below the buttons, there's a slider and a spinbutton for adjusting the
- opacity of the current layer. A layer's opacity affects all objects in
- that layer in the same way as opacity of a group.
-
-
-Selected style indicator
-
- A new control in the left end of the statusbar lets you quickly view and
- change the fill and stroke of the selected objects. When you have a text
- selection in Text tool or a gradient handle selected in the Gradient tool,
- this indicator displays and changes the style of the text fragment or
- gradient stop, instead of the entire object (it's the same behavior as the
- Fill&Stroke dialog.)
-
- * The two indicators, labelled F: (top) and S: (bottom), display fill
- and stroke of the selected object(s) correspondingly. (For gradient
- handles, they always display the same style.)
-
- * Each fill/stroke indicator can display either a color+opacity swatch
- (the opacity shown here is the fill opacity or stroke opacity, not the
- master opacity) or a text label specifying N/A (nothing selected),
- None (no fill/stroke), Unset (unset fill/stroke), L Gradient, R
- Gradient, Pattern (corresponding fill/stroke types), or Different
- (selected objects have different fill/stroke types).
-
- * Additionally, each indicator may be accompanied by one of two flags, m
- ("multiple", meaning there are two or more objects all with the same
- fill/stroke) or a ("averaged", meaning there are two or more objects
- with different flat colors in fill/stroke, and the indicator shows the
- average of these colors).
-
- * Left-click on an indicator opens or activates the Fill&Stroke dialog
- with the corresponding tab (Fill or Stroke) active.
-
- * Right-click on an indicator opens a popup menu with the following
- items:
-
- * Edit fill/stroke...: Opens or activates the Fill&Stroke dialog
- with the corresponding tab selected. (Same as left-click.)
- * Last set color: Applies to the selected objects the fill/stroke
- color that was last applied to anything.
- * Last selected color: Applies to the selected objects the
- fill/stroke color that was last displayed in this indicator.
- (Allows you to easily copy fill/stroke color between objects:
- select source, select destination, apply "last selected color".)
- * Invert: Sets the fill or stroke to the inverse of the current
- color (does not affect opacity).
- * White, Black: Sets the fill or stroke to the corresponding color
- (fully opaque).
- * Copy color, Paste color: Copies or pastes the fill or stroke
- color (when it's color) to/from the system clipboard, as text in
- the #rrggbb hex format.
- * Swap fill and stroke: Exchanges fill and stroke (both their types
- and colors, if any).
- * Make fill/stroke opaque: Removes fill or stroke transparency (not
- master transparency!).
- * Unset fill/stroke: Unsets fill or stroke from selected objects.
- * Remove fill/stroke: Removes fill or stroke from the selected
- objects.
-
- * Middle-click on a fill/stroke indicator removes fill/stroke from
- selected objects; if it is already removed (i.e. if the indicator
- displays "None"), it does the same as the "Last set color" command
- from the popup menu.
-
- * Drag and Drop of colors onto a fill/stroke indicator sets the fill and
- stroke of the selected object(s) correspondingly.
-
- * The Stroke indicator also displays the stroke width of selection
- (averaged if there are multiple objects selected with different stroke
- widths), located to the right of the stroke color/transparency swatch.
- Left-clicking on it opens the Fill&Stroke dialog with the Stroke Style
- tab selected. Right-clicking on it opens a popup menu which allows you
- to choose the units for displaying the stroke width, as well as choose
- one of the presets to assign to selection.
-
- * To the right of the fill/stroke indicators, the Opacity numeric field
- (labelled "O:") shows and allows you to change the master opacity of
- the selected object (or the averaged opacity of several selected
- objects). Right-clicking the numeric field opens a popup menu with
- preset opacity levels. Middle-clicking on the "O:" label cycles the
- opacity through the values of 0 (transparent), 0.5, and 1 (opaque).
-
- The zoom field and the cursor coordinates indicator have been rearranged
- for compactness and moved to the right end of the statusbar. There's also
- a window resize handle added at the very end of the statusbar.
-
-
-Tool style indicators
-
- For each object-creating tool (shapes, Pen/Pencil, Calligraphic, Text),
- the Controls bar (above the canvas) now includes a style indicator on the
- right. This indicator shows you which style the newly created object will
- have.
-
- * The indicator correctly displays whichever style the tool is set to
- use - the global "last set" style or that tool's fixed style. For
- example, clicking on a palette swatch (even with nothing selected)
- changes the "last set" color and, if your tool is set to use the last
- set color, its indicator is updated, giving you an idea of your
- "brush" before you start to draw.
-
-
-Controls bar for the Text tool
-
- * This version adds the beginnings of a Controls Bar for the Text tool
- (previously empty). Now you can select the font family, size, apply
- bold and italic styles, change alignment and text orientation without
- opening the Text and Font dialog.
-
- * All controls are instant-apply and work on the entire text object (if
- nothing selected) or text selection. They can also apply to multiple
- text objects (though you would need to switch to Selector to select
- multiple text objects, then switch back to Text tool for its
- controls).
-
- * The font-family drop-down contains names and previews of all fonts;
- unlike other programs, we didn't apply each font to its name, but
- added a separate preview string displayed with gray color after each
- font's name. This design ensures readability of font family names and
- provides maximum useful information in a limited space.
-
- * We will be adding more controls (including spacing and kerning) to
- this bar for the next versions.
-
-
-Docked color palette
-
- * Previously, color swatches could only be used from a floating palette
- (Ctrl+Shift+W). Now the color swatches palette is embedded in the main
- UI, at the bottom of the window between the canvas and the statusbar.
- It is enabled by default; use View > Show/Hide > Palette to enable or
- disable it. The docked palette has the same functionality as the
- floating one; use a button in the top right corner to access the
- swatches menu.
-
- * The Wrap option (off by default) in the swatches menu converts the
- palette from a single row into a frame 2 or 3 rows high, for better
- access to colors in large palettes.
-
- * Drag and Drop of colors has been enabled.
-
- * Dragging colors from a palette shows a live swatch of the color
- being dragged under cursor.
- * Drag and Drop of colors onto the selected style indicator in the
- statusbar sets the fill or stroke of the selected object(s).
- * Colors can be dropped directly on to objects on canvas to set
- their fill, or shift+dropped to set their stroke. This affects
- only the object you drop the color on, regardless of whether that
- object is selected or not.
- * Colors can be dragged to and from other applications.
-
- * The new Inkscape default color palette was added. It contains a range
- of grays, standard HTML named colors, and a full range of colors
- sorted by their HSL values (475 colors overall). It is generated by a
- Python script which is available from Inkscape SVN in share/palettes.
-
- * Several specialized color palettes, useful in color-coordinated
- projects, were created or borrowed from GIMP: Grays, Reds, Greens,
- Blues, Gold, Royal, Khaki, Hilite, and Topographic.
-
- * All standard sizes of the swatches (Tiny, Small, Medium, Large, Huge)
- are made smaller overall.
-
-
-Inkscape Preferences dialog
-
- Not only was the Inkscape Preferences dialog completely rewritten and
- redesigned, with numerous bugs fixed in the rewrite.
-
- * The old tabbed dialog is gone; the new dialog fits much better with
- the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines.
-
- * As a new feature, the Simplify threshold can now be set with more
- precision.
-
-
-Document Properties / Metadata dialogs
-
- * The Document Preferences dialog is now named Document Properties, and
- it was split in two: metadata were extracted into the Document
- Metadata dialog; metadata widgets are now also spread over two pages.
-
- * A button was added to fit the canvas to the current selection or, if
- there's no selection, to the entire drawing. The button resizes the
- canvas and, if necessary, moves the drawing into place. It is now very
- easy to size the canvas to an illustration after it is ready.
-
- * New controls: the new object snapping features required their own
- property widgets, and you can set the snapping sensitivity with a
- slider, or let it snap regardless of distance (grid only).
-
- * Rearrangements within Document Properties: everything snapping-related
- was collected on one page; Grid and Guide widgets are on their own,
- the same page. For better HIG compliance, all widgets were
- categorized; especially the widgets on the Page page were completely
- rearranged in the General/Format/Border categories.
-
- * Bug fixes: grayed out license URI had too low contrast, so it's no
- longer grayed out; the proprietary license didn't clean the license
- URI; spinbuttons had no tooltips, and minor grid quirks were removed;
- data was not updated when a new file replaced another in the same
- window.
-
- * HIG compliance: much work went into that, and now only a few details
- are missing from full Gnome-HIG compliance.
-
- * Updated Creative Commons Licenses: Updated CC licenses to the latest
- 2.5 versions by default in the license tab of the metadata dialog.
-
-
-Configurable keyboard
-
- Inkscape's keyboard shortcuts are now configurable!
-
- There is no graphical users interface at this time, and not all Inkscape
- actions can have their shortcuts customized. However, if you do not mind
- editing a configuration file, the majority of actions, including
- everything you see in the menus, can already have their keys changed.
- We're working on making more actions configurable.
-
- On startup, Inkscape reads its keyboard shortcuts from
- share/keys/default.xml. That file is a copy of inkscape.xml in the same
- directory, which also contains keyboard emulation profiles for other
- vector editors:
-
- * xara.xml: Xara X/Xara Xtreme/Xara LX keys
-
- You can copy any of these over default.xml to use that profile. In all
- profiles, those keys which are not used by the corresponding program still
- have their Inkscape bindings. If you can contribute a profile for some
- vector editor that we don't yet have, we will appreciate that. The files
- have a simple XML-based format described in inkscape.xml.
-
- You can also customize some of your keybindings without overwriting the
- main default.xml. If your profile directory (~/.inkscape on Linux)
- contains a keys subdirectory with a default.xml file, the keybindings from
- that file will overlay (i.e. add to, and override in case of a conflict)
- the default bindings. The format of your own default.xml is the same as
- that of the main default.xml.
-
-
-Menus
-
- * Zoom commands in the View menu are moved to a submenu; the Zoom In and
- Zoom Out commands are added to that submenu.
-
- * Clone commands are moved into a submenu in Edit menu and given more
- descriptive names and tips.
-
- * Pattern commands (Objects to Pattern and Pattern to Objects) are moved
- into a submenu in Object menu, under the new Clip and Mask submenus.
-
- * The contents of the Effects menu are categorized into submenus, and
- several effects are renamed to use more intuitive names.
-
-
-Statusbar
-
- * In Selector, for multiple selected objects, the statusbar now reports
- their types. For example, if 5 groups are selected, it displays
-
- 5 objects of type Group in layer LayerName.
-
- instead of just "5 objects selected" as before. If there are up to
- 3 types in the selection, they will be listed, for example:
-
- 5 objects of types Group, Path, Rectangle in layer
- LayerName.
-
- The order of the list will correspond to the order in which the
- objects were added to selection. If there are 4 or more types in
- selection, only the number of types is reported, for example:
-
- 5 objects of 4 types in layer LayerName.
-
- * In Selector, objects selected in groups are now identified as such,
- and the group ID is given, for example:
-
- Rectangle in group g212 (layer content)
-
- If selected objects have different parents within one layer (for
- example, if one is selected in a group and another outside it),
- the number of parents is reported:
-
- 2 objects of types Rectangle, Path in 2 parents
- (layer content)
-
- If objects are in different layers, only the number of layers is
- reported since this also implies different parents:
-
- 2 objects of types Rectangle, Path in 2 layers
-
- * In Node tool, if your node selection includes nodes from different
- subpaths, statusbar reports the number of subpaths with selection and
- the total number of subpaths, for example:
-
- 2 of 195 nodes selected in 2 of 36 subpaths.
-
- * The contents of the statusbar message are now duplicated as a tooltip
- that is shown when you hover the mouse over the statusbar.
-
- * The statusbar text is now no longer just cut off if there is
- insufficient room, but an ellipsis (...) is inserted at the end to
- show there's more (only with Gtk 2.6 and newer).
-
-
-Theme
-
- * Inkscape has a new default icon set titled "Crispy" provided by Andre
- Sousa. The new icons are intended to add a more professional and
- cohesive look to our application, as well as to make the functions the
- icons represent more self-evident.
-
-
- Tools
-
-
-Node tool
-
-
- Node sculpting
-
- An entirely new way of manipulating paths in Node tool is added in this
- version: Node sculpting. Normally, when you have several nodes selected
- and you drag one of them, all selected nodes move by the same amount. Now,
- if you Alt-drag one of the selected nodes, only that node is fully
- displaced; other selected nodes are moved less than the full amount, so
- that those farthest from the drag point remain stationary. This is similar
- to "proportional editing" or "soft selection" in 3D editors such as
- Blender.
-
- So, for example, if you select several nodes on a straight line and
- Alt+drag the middle selected node, the path will bend into a smooth
- bell-like curve. Nodes' handles are also adjusted correspondingly to keep
- the overall shape smooth and natural. (If you don't have enough nodes on a
- path fragment that you want to reshape in this way, just select the end
- nodes of that fragment and press Ins a few times to populate it with
- nodes.)
-
- Moreover, node sculpting is pressure-sensitive when you are using a tablet
- pen. If you press slightly, your curve will have a narrow sharp tip (i.e.
- the nearest neighbors of your dragged node will move only a bit); if you
- press hard, the curve's tip will be wide and blunt (i.e. the nearest
- neighbors will move almost as much as the dragged node). (Hint: to stop
- dragging without losing your shape, first release Alt and then lift the
- tip of the pen.)
-
- There are many possible applications of the sculpting technique. To take a
- simple example, selecting all nodes of an ellipse-like shape and
- Alt+dragging one of them will smoothly and naturally stretch and skew the
- entire shape in any direction. Doing the same to a complex path, such as
- star or spiral, will twist and punch it without destroying its intricate
- structure - this is the way to get squashed or self-intersecting stars,
- eccentric spirals and other shapes not easily doable before. Selecting
- only part of all nodes allows you to smoothly reshape parts of the figure
- without disturbing the rest.
-
- When applied to text converted to path, node sculpting is a fun and easy
- way to twist, bend and distort it, achieving effects similar to
- "perspective envelope" or "curvilinear envelope" in other programs - but
- in a more powerful and flexible way. For example, by selecting all or part
- of the text's nodes and Alt-dragging, you can not only make a wavy banner
- out of a paragraph of text, but also apply a "magnifying lens"-like effect
- to any word in the middle.
-
- Especially useful node sculpting is for complex natural paths, such as
- calligraphic strokes or bitmap traces, where you often want to do
- large-scale pushes and bends without destroying the small-scale features.
- Things like making a calligraphic stroke narrower in one place and wider
- in another, or changing the proportions, extending the ear or flattening
- the nose of a head - all this is now much faster and more natural to do
- using sculpting. It is also a new way to create new paths, too - starting
- from en ellipse with added nodes, it takes just a few Alt+drags to tweak
- it into a silhouette of a head, or a map of Australia, or an Inkscape
- logo!
-
- Some examples are shown on the screenshot:
- [www.inkscape.org/screenshots/gallery/inkscape-0.44-nodesculpting.png].
-
-
- "Show handles" toggle
-
- The Controls bar for the Nodes tool now includes a toggle button which
- controls whether Bezier handles are shown on selected nodes (on by
- default). Selecting and dragging nodes on node-dense paths in zoom-out
- (e.g. for node sculpting) may be extremely difficult without hiding the
- handles, as it's hard to pick a node and not a handle when handles are
- shown.
-
-
- New deletion behavior
-
- * In Node tool, deleting node(s) by Del/Backspace keys or by
- Ctrl+Alt+clicking a node now tries to preserve, as much as possible,
- the current shape of the path. This means that the nodes adjacent to
- those being deleted have their handles adjusted to approximate the
- form that the path had before deletion. For example, if you
- Ctrl+Alt+click a path twice, once to add a new node and then to delete
- it, the path will not change at all (or change very slightly). The old
- deletion behavior without adjusting handles is still available via
- Ctrl+Del or Ctrl+Backspace.
-
-
- Preserving positions of nodes and handles
-
- * When you switch the type of the selected node to Smooth or Symmetric
- by pressing Shift+S/Shift+Y, you can now preserve the position of one
- of the two handles by hovering your mouse over it, so that only the
- other handle is rotated/scaled to match.
-
- * Similarly, when you join endnodes by pressing Shift+J, you can
- preserve the position of one of the two nodes by hovering your mouse
- over it, so that only the other node is moved.
-
-
- Miscellaneous
-
- * The ! key inverts node selection in the current subpath(s) (i.e.
- subpaths with at least one selected node); Alt+! inverts in the entire
- path. (This is similar to how these keys work in Selector, with
- current subpath(s) instead of the current layer.)
-
- * The keyboard shortcut for "Make selected segments curves" in Node tool
- is changed from Shift+K to Shift+U for better mnemonics.
-
-
-Calligraphic pen
-
-
- Tremor
-
- * Even when using a graphics tablet with pressure sensitivity, the
- Calligraphy pen's strokes often look too smooth and artificial. To
- enable a more natural look, the new Tremor parameter is added to the
- Calligraphy tool in this version. Adjustable in the Controls bar from
- 0.0 to 1.0, it will affect your strokes producing anything from slight
- unevenness to wild blotches and splotches. This significantly expands
- the creative range of the tool.
-
-
- Pen width
-
- * In all previous versions, pen width depended on zoom in such a way
- that the strokes appeared the same visible width at any zoom, but were
- in fact narrower at zoom-in and wider at zoom-out. This behavior makes
- sense if you want to keep the same "feel" of the pen regardless of
- zoom; for example, if you zoomed in to make a small fix to your
- drawing, it's natural that your pen becomes physically smaller but
- feels the same to you. So, this behavior is kept as the default, but
- now we also added an alternative mode where your pen width is constant
- in absolute units regardless of zoom. To switch to this mode, use the
- checkbox on the tool's Preferences page (you can open it by
- double-clicking the tool button).
-
- * The Width field in the tool's controls bar now changes from 1 to 100,
- which corresponds to the range from 0.01 to 1.0 in the previous
- version. If the "width in absolute units" mode is turned on, the value
- in this fields gives the width of the stroke in px units. In the
- default mode, the value of 100 gives 100px wide strokes only at 100%
- zoom, and strokes are correspondingly narrower or wider at other zoom
- levels.
-
-
- Selection
-
- * A new preferences option for the Calligraphic tool, Keep selected,
- controls whether the newly created object remains selected after you
- finish drawing it. If you turn it off (by default it's on) and set the
- tool to using Last Set color, you can easily choose a new color by
- clicking on the palette without having to worry if this will change
- the color of the stroke you just created. (Watch the tool style
- indicator at the right end of the Controls bar for the style of the
- next stroke you will draw.)
-
- * Esc deselects selected objects in Calligraphic, as in most other
- tools.
-
-
- Style
-
- * The stroke you're drawing is now shown, while you're drawing it, with
- the correct color and opacity that it will eventually have, instead of
- always black as before.
-
- * On a new Inkscape installation, this tool now uses the last set style
- by default instead of the fixed black as before (this is changeable in
- the Inkscape Preferences for the tool).
-
-
-Pen tool
-
- * While drawing a path, you can now move the last node you created by
- the same keys as in Node tool - that is, arrows, with Shift (for 10x
- displacement) or Alt (screen pixel displacement) modifiers.
-
- * Also, you can switch the not-yet-finalized (red) segment of the path
- being drawn from curve to line (Shift+L) or back to curve (Shift+U),
- again the same shortcuts as in the Node tool.
-
- * By popular demand, if a new path is being drawn but not yet finished,
- Ctrl+Z cancels that unfinished path (i.e. does the same as Esc),
- instead of undoing the previous action.
-
- * In Pen tool, Del works the same as Backspace to delete the last
- created point on the unfinished path.
-
-
- Clipping and masking
-
- Inkscape now provides some UI for using clipping paths and masks.
-
- * Any object can be non-destructively intersected with a path (called a
- clipping path) so that only the intersected portion of the object is
- visible.
-
- * To apply clipping, select the objects to be clipped and the
- clipping path object, make sure the clipping path is above the
- other objects in z-order, and do Object > Clip > Set.
- * You can transform, edit, or style the clipped objects as usual.
- The clipping remains applied and transforms together with each
- clipped object.
- * To remove the clipping, do Object > Clip > Release. The clipping
- path is returned to the drawing as a regular object; it is
- inserted on top of the unclipped object in z-order.
-
- * Any object can be non-destructively masked by another object (called
- mask) so that: the mask's black or transparent areas become fully
- transparent in the masked object; mask's opaque white areas become
- fully opaque; and all intermediate colors translate into intermediate
- levels of opacity in the masked object. This allows you to apply, for
- example, arbitrary transparency gradients to objects.
-
- * To apply a mask, select the objects to be masked and the mask
- object, make sure the mask is above the other objects in z-order,
- and do Object > Mask > Set.
- * You can transform, edit, or style the masked objects as usual.
- The mask remains applied and transforms together with each masked
- object.
- * To remove the masking, do Object > Mask > Release. The mask is
- returned to the drawing as a regular object; it is inserted on
- top of the unmasked object in z-order.
-
- * Objects with clippath show their bounding box intersected with the
- bounding box of the clippath, instead of the original unclipped bbox
- as before. (However, this does not apply to objects without clippath
- of their own which are clipped by being inside a clipped group.)
-
- * Clipped or masked objects display "clipped" or "masked",
- correspondingly, in their statusbar descriptions.
-
- * Although Inkscape had render-only support for clipping paths and masks
- for quite some time, in this release we fixed a number of bugs which
- may affect the display of your documents using clippaths or masks.
-
- * Clippaths and masks with objectBoundingBox units are now shown
- correctly upon loading of the document.
- * Clippaths without fill didn't work, this is now fixed.
- * Objects with clippaths or masks are correctly copied/pasted
- between documents.
-
-
- Transformations
+ 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.
+
+
+Translations
+
+ * 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.
-Transform dialog
- Fixes and improvements in the Transform dialog (Ctrl+Shift+M):
+Tutorials and Templates
- * The Apply to each object separately checkbox is added, allowing you to
- scale/rotate/skew each selected object by the same amount, around that
- object's center. When off (by default), the selection is transformed
- as a whole. The status of this checkbox is remembered across sessions.
- (It has no effect on Move and Matrix tabs).
+ * New tutorial "Easter Eggs" by Steve Karg.
- * The Clear button resets the values on the current tab to defaults.
+ * Added Catalan default template and elements tutorial.
- * The Scale tab now allows you to specify horizontal or vertical size
- increments in percentage or absolute units. Also, there's a Scale
- proportionally checkbox which ensures that scaling preserves the
- width/height ratio. (If you are scaling several objects proportionally
- with "Apply to each object separately", you can only use the % unit to
- specify the scaling; otherwise each object's scale increments will
- have the width/height ratio of the entire selection, not of that
- specific object.)
-
- * The Skew tab can now specify the skew as an absolute displacement
- (e.g. for horizontal skewing of a rectangle, that means the shift of
- the top rectangle side relative to the bottom), as percentage
- displacement (e.g. a 1% horizontal skew of a rectangle means shifting
- the top side by 1% of the rectangle height), or as an angle (e.g.
- horizontal skew by 15 degrees results in the sides of a rectangle
- being rotated to that angle, while the top and bottom remain
- horizontal).
-
- * The Matrix tab (previously called "Transform") can either edit the
- current transform= matrix of an object, or post-multiply the
- transform= with the matrix you specify, depending on the Edit current
- matrix checkbox. (As it is now redundant, the transformation matrix in
- the Object Properties dialog is removed.)
-
- * The dialog now correctly watches selection changes in the active
- document window and updates its values accordingly.
-
- * The layout of the dialog is simplified, tooltips and mnemonics added
- for better usability.
-
- * Many bugs are fixed, especially in value conversions between units.
-
-
-Persistent rotation centers
-
- * The position of the center (axis) of rotation and skewing used by
- Selector is now remembered for all objects and restored when you
- select those objects again (even after saving and reopening the
- document). When you move or scale an object, its rotation center is
- moved or scaled too, so its position relative to the object always
- remains the same unless you move it explicitly.
-
- * When you have several objects selected, they use the rotation center
- of the first selected object. If the first object does not have center
- set (i.e. if it's in a default central position), then several objects
- will rotate around the geometric center of their common bounding box
- (as before).
-
- * Shift+click on the rotation center resets it back to the center of the
- object's box.
-
- * Consequently, dragging the rotation center is now an undoable action;
- you can press Ctrl+Z to undo the drag.
-
- * Keyboard rotation by [, ] keys with various modifiers, as well as the
- Rotate tab in the Transform dialog, work around the selected object's
- rotation center (for multi-object selection, the rotation center of
- the first selected object).
-
- * Rotation centers are preserved when duplicating, cloning (including
- clone tiler), grouping/ungrouping, and converting to path.
-
-
-Pasting size
-
- A number of commands are added to easily scale selected objects to match
- the size of the object(s) previously copied to the clipboard. They are all
- in the Paste Size submenu in Edit menu:
-
- * Paste Size scales the whole selection to match the overall size of the
- clipboard object(s).
-
- * Paste Width/Paste Height scale the whole selection
- horizontally/vertically so that it matches the width/height of the
- clipboard object(s). These commands honor the scale ratio lock on the
- Selector controls bar (between W and H fields), so that when that lock
- is pressed, the other dimension of the selected object is scaled in
- the same proportion; otherwise the other dimension is unchanged.
-
- * Paste Size Separately, Paste Width Separately and Paste Height
- Separately work similarly to the above described commands, except that
- they scale each selected object separately to make it match the
- size/width/height of the clipboard object(s).
-
-
- Connectors and automatic layout
-
- * There have been numerous bugfixes and several improvements to the
- behaviour of connectors and the connector tool:
-
- * Connectors moved as part of a selection will now stay attached to
- other objects in the selection, rather than becoming detached
- from them.
- * By default, the Connector tool will not attach connectors to text
- objects. There is a new checkbox in the connector preferences to
- control this setting.
- * The margins around avoided shapes (used for autorouting
- connectors) can now be adjusted via the "Spacing" control on the
- controls bar.
-
- * Automatic Diagram Layout: A new button is available in the Align and
- Distribute dialog that performs automatic layout of diagrams involving
- a network of shapes and connectors. Layout is accomplished using
- force-directed graph layout based on the Kamada-Kawai algorithm. This
- algorithm treats edges as if they are springs such that the distance
- between nodes will be proportional to the path length - number of
- connectors - between them. Disconnected components (where not every
- shape is connected) will be arranged around the circumference of a
- circle.
-
- * There is a new Remove Overlaps button to move the selected objects
- enough that they don't overlap each other. A minimum spacing between
- the boundaries of objects can be specified. Together with the
- automatic layout tool, described above, this should be a significant
- addition to Inkscape's usability for diagramming. Removing overlaps is
- different from the "Unclump" button in that the former is completely
- deterministic and guarantees removing overlaps on the first
- application, but is not concerned with visual perceptive distances
- between objects. Unclumping, on the other hand, attempts to equalize
- perceptive distances between objects and can be applied repeatedly for
- gradual effect.
-
-
- Selective tracing with SIOX
-
- * Inkscape 0.44 has an early version of the Simple Interactive Object
- Extraction (SIOX) algorithm (see siox.org) implemented in its bitmap
- tracing code. For a quick reference on how this is used, please see
- this file. This clever algorithm from the realm of Image Recognition
- allows you to select areas of similar color, with the goal of
- extracting a foreground area from the background. To use:
-
- * Enable the SIOX checkbox in addition to your usual tracing
- options.
- * Select both the bitmap and an object that covers the foreground
- and part of background, leaving only background areas of the
- image uncovered.
- * Hit OK. SIOX will now analyze and attempt to pull out the
- foreground-colored areas you want, and trace only those parts of
- the image.
-
- * The full SIOX selection mechanism (e.g. the ability to identify
- foreground and background areas separately) is not implemented yet,
- but is planned for a future release.
-
-
- Snapping
-
- * In addition to snapping to guides and grids, you can now snap to other
- objects' paths and/or nodes. As with grid and guide snapping, you can
- separately enable snapping of bboxes to objects and/or snapping of
- nodes to objects. Be aware, however, that this is experimental code -
- there may be surprises. It may also be slow in large documents with
- thousands of objects.
-
- * In addition to the snap sensitivity sliders in Document Preferences
- (which set snap distances in px), there are Always snap checkboxes
- (separately for object, grid and guide snapping) which force snapping
- at any distance.
-
- * Grid snapping now applies only to the visible grid lines. For example,
- if you have zoomed out so that only every 10th grid line is visible,
- snapping will only apply to these visible lines. In addition, default
- grid snap sensitivity is set to "Always snap". This will hopefully
- reduce the number of "snapping does not work" complaints from users
- who didn't zoom in close enough to see that snapping does in fact
- work, but only at sub-px distances to the 1px-spaced grid. At the same
- time, you can still snap to finely grained distances if you zoom in.
-
- * Guidelines are made easier to pick. Now you don't need to position
- mouse exactly over a guideline to activate it; instead there's a small
- position tolerance (1 screen pixel on each side of the guideline).
-
-
- Sublayers
-
- Previously, it was only possible to make a group a temporary sublayer by
- entering that group. Now Inkscape supports creating and using true
- persistent sublayers within a layer.
-
- * The Add layer dialog allows you to place the new layer above, below,
- or inside the current layer.
-
- * In Preferences (Selecting tab), options are added allowing the "Select
- All" command and Tab key selection to work either in the current layer
- only or in the current layer and its sublayers.
-
-
- Markers
-
- * Converting stroke to path now correctly processes dashed strokes. For
- paths with markers, this command now creates a group containing the
- stroke converted to path and all its markers as independent objects
- (i.e. they are not markers anymore, but instead you can easily
- transform them or paint them any color, as a workaround for the
- "markers don't take the color of the stroke" bug; to be properly
- fixed, this bug requires implementing some SVG 1.2 features).
-
- * The DimensionIn and DimensionOut markers are changed so that the arrow
- tips exactly correspond to node positions. It is now very easy to make
- dimension lines that correspond to drawn objects. The dimension
- specifications can now easily be chained by splitting a straight line
- at a point and assigning DimensionIn/Out markers to the resulting
- smaller paths whose endpoints coincide.
-
- * All arrow markers in the standard set are moved on the path so that
- their tips are as close as possible to the corresponding node of the
- path. Complete coincidence is not possible, because it would cause the
- blunt end of the stroke itself to be visible under the sharp tip of
- the arrow, distorting its shape. However, now the arrow tips are much
- closer to their nodes than before, and probably sufficiently close for
- many practical situations.
-
- * A new RazorWire path marker was added. By applying it as a mid-marker
- you can get a good approximation of a razor wire.
-
-
- Extension effects
-
- * The Effects menu is now officially on and no longer an optional
- "experimental feature" as in past versions. The preference setting to
- enable the menu has been removed. Inkscape 0.44 comes with about 30
- effects that perform a variety of useful tasks, such as path blending,
- randomization, function plotting etc.
-
- * Python effects (which includes almost all currently available effects)
- work on Windows out of the box, using a copy of Python shipping with
- Inkscape. The only minor inconvenience is that when an effect is
- launched, you get an empty console window that stays on while the
- effect is doing its work. (Don't close that window, it will disappear
- by itself when the effect is finished.)
-
- * A new Python effect, Render > LaTeX formula, allows you to type in any
- LaTeX formula and get a vector object with the TeX rendition of this
- formula inserted into your document. You need to have latex, dvips,
- and pstoedit installed and in PATH for this to work.
-
- * A new Python effect, Flatten Path, flattens paths in the current
- selection, approximating each path with a polyline whose segments meet
- the specified criteria for flatness.
-
- * A new Python effect, Measure Path, attaches a text label to each path
- in the selection giving the length of that path (in px units).
-
- * The Radius Randomize effect has a new parameter which enables normal
- distribution of random displacements instead of uniform as before,
- which gives a more natural feel to the randomized path.
-
- * The Render > L-system (formerly "Fractal (Lindenmayer)") effect is
- improved in this version. Now you can specify different angle values
- for turning left and right, which makes it possible to smoothly bend
- some L-systems sideways. Also, you can separately randomize the step
- length and the angles by a given percent for more natural look (this
- works especially well with plant-like branching shapes). This effect
- can be used to create Penrose tiling, Sierpinsky triangle, Dragon
- curve and other famous mathematical artefacts, as well as various
- meanders, friezes, patterns, and trees. Some examples can be seen on
- this screenshot:
- inkscape.org/screenshots/gallery/inkscape-0.44-lindenmayer.png as well
- as in the new example file share/examples/l-systems.svg.
-
- * The Interpolate Path, Random Tree, and L-system effects are fixed to
- place their result on the current layer instead of document root and
- in the center of the (last-saved) document view instead of 0,0 as
- before.
-
- * INX files now have the ability to hold more information. This includes
- tooltips and descriptions of the extensions. These are all also
- translatable.
-
- * Thanks to keyboard configurability, it is now possible to assign
- keyboard shortcuts to those effects you use most often, so you can
- activate them without going into the menu.
-
-
- Formats
-
- * Inkscape's PDF export is now native (i.e. does not require any
- external applications) and supports transparency, including gradients
- with transparency. This replaced the old export extension that
- required Ghostscript and worked via Postscript, losing any
- transparency. The new PDF export is still immature; in particular it
- does not handle text, so you should check "Convert text to path" on
- the export options dialog. Other things not yet supported include:
- gradients on stroke; eccentric elliptic gradients; patterns, masks,
- and clipping paths; embedded images.
-
- * You can now Save as Compressed Inkscape SVG with media.This save
- option collects the svg file and all linked images into a zip archive
- for distribution. Although you cannot open the resulting archive
- directly with inkscape, the media is linked such that after unzipping
- you can open the SVG file immediately.
-
- * An output format for desktop cutting plotters, such as the Wishblade
- and Craftrobo, was added. This format is a very minimalist DXF file
- with appropriate scaling and translation applied. This output format
- should not be expected to operate as a generalized DXF output.
-
- * Inkscape can open/import default files generated by the Xfig vector
- graphics editor. This requires that the fig2dev command (transfig) is
- in your PATH.
-
- * Starting with this version, there is a limited ability to export
- Inkscape drawing shapes as Open Document Format drawings (.odg files).
- Currently the export is limited to text, shapes, and solid fill and
- strokes. This output will be improved in the coming months. In the
- meantime, however, ODG output is already useful for getting your SVG
- drawings into the Open Document world, in particular into an office
- suite such as OpenOffice.org.
-
- * The new XCF output extension exports all top-level elements (i.e.
- layers and objects directly under root) as PNGs and assembles them
- into an XCF for procesing in GIMP. Requires Python, PyXML and GIMP.
- GIMP 2.2.x or above must be in the path and be named gimp. A version
- of Inkscape 0.44 or above must be accessible from the path. Does not
- function in Windows yet.
-
-
- Miscellaneous shortcuts
-
- * Now you can use Shift+middle button drag, in any tool, to zoom into an
- area. This works the same as simple drag in Zoom tool, but is faster
- because it does not require switching away from your current tool.
- Together with middle button drag (panning), middle button click (zoom
- in) and Shift+middle button click (zoom out), this completes the set
- of canvas navigation shortcuts available in any tool or context.
-
- * In Gradient tool, Shift+R reverses the gradient definition (i.e.
- mirrors the stop positions) without moving the gradient handles. For
- example, an elliptic gradient with blue center and red periphery
- becomes red in the center and blue in the periphery. This works on the
- gradient(s) of the currently selected gradient handle or, if no handle
- is selected, on all selected objects' gradients. (Compare with the
- Node tool where Shift+R reverses the direction of the selected path.)
- This is especially convenient for elliptic gradients which, unlike
- linear, you cannot simply rotate by 180 degrees for the same result.
-
- * In Selector, Ctrl+Enter enters the selected group (making it a
- temporary layer). Ctrl+Backspace leaves the current layer and goes one
- layer up in the hierarchy (but not to root).
-
-
- Miscellaneous improvements
-
- * Document templates (listed in File > New) are now first searched in
- the templates subdirectory of the user's profile directory (on Linux
- it's ~/.inkscape/templates), then in the system-wide Inkscape
- templates directory. This allows you to add your own templates on top
- of the list of standard templates, as well as override the default
- template with your own one (the default.svg in the profile directory
- has priority over the system-wide one).
-
- * When toggling one of the "transform with object" buttons (for stroke
- width, rounded rectangle corners, gradients, or patterns), a message
- is displayed in the statusbar explaining what has changed in the
- program's behavior. Hopefully this will reduce the number of
- complaints from users who had accidentally toggled one of these and
- were surprised by the result.
-
- * Whole thousands above 2000 in the rulers are now displayed as 2k, 3k,
- 4k etc.
-
- * In the Document Preferences dialog, the new object style for each tool
- is now shown as a style swatch (displaying fill/stroke colors and
- opacity, stroke width, and master opacity), similar in design to the
- selected style indicator in the statusbar.
-
- * In the Grid Arrange dialog, row/column spacing can now be negative.
-
- * The installation default is now to scale the rounded rectangle corners
- with the rectangles themselves (the previous default mode, still
- available as an option, was to keep rounding radii unchanged when
- scaling rectangles).
-
- * Added a new --export-area-canvas command line parameter that causes
- the exported PNG to contain the full canvas. This option as well as
- --export-area-drawing and --export-area can now be used along with
- --export-id and --export-id-only for greater flexibility.
-
- * The --query-* command line parameters now return the true SVG bounding
- box of the object instead of the Inkscape coordinate system bbox (with
- inverted Y axis). The new behavior makes more sense for scripting use
- of Inkscape.
-
- * The dpi value in the Export dialog has had its range extended; now
- possible values are from 0.01 to 100000.
-
- * Individual <tspan>s within text objects (including line tspans) can
- now be selected via the XML editor to view their bounding boxes
- (though per SVG, you cannot transform them). Also, you can use the
- --query-* command line parameters to find out the bounding boxes of
- tspans from a script. (Individual strings within or between tspans are
- still not selectable, and they cannot have an ID for querying anyway.)
-
- * The placeholder image which is shown when a bitmap file was no longer
- accessible reads now "Linked image not found" instead of the confusing
- "Broken image".
-
- * Cloning multiple selected objects now works as expected (i.e. each
- selected object is cloned separately, similar to the Duplicate
- command). Previously you could only clone a single selected object.
-
- * The separate "license" and "contributors" dialogs have been merged
- into tabs on the About dialog. The about dialog now correctly sizes
- itself to fit the size of the splash SVG (while remaining resizable),
- and the rendering area is now cropped to the correct aspect ratio when
- the dialog is resized. The dialog also now displays the build
- information in the upper right corner.
-
- * In the Transform dialog / Rotate tab, the icon was flipped
- horizontally to be in line with the direction of positive rotation;
- the change was applied to the default (now crispy) and legacy icon
- sets.
-
- * The scale ratio lock button on the Selector controls bar shows a
- closed lock when pressed and open lock otherwise (same as the layer
- lock in the statusbar).
-
- * The Browse button on Export dialog now opens the new file chooser,
- same as those used by Open and Save.
-
-
- Miscellaneous bugfixes
-
- * Reading a document with an incorrect namespace URI not only did not
- cause Inkscape to complain, but could also "pollute" Inkscape's
- internal namespace table, resulting in an "infection" of subsequently
- saved documents by the incorrect namespace. This is now fixed, but as
- a result, documents with incorrect namespace URIs will no longer load.
- You will have to edit them in a text editor to fix the namespaces.
-
- * With newer versions of GTK, dragging with graphics tablet pen did not
- work in some tools and contexts (in particular, in Node and Rectangle
- tools). This is fixed.
-
- * Scaling of objects with stroke in Selector used to cause undesired
- shifts of the scaled object, as well as scaling it in the dimension
- which was intended to remain untouched (e.g. slight change in width
- when you scale only height). All these problems are now fixed, both
- for interactive scaling by mouse and for numeric scaling via the
- Controls bar, and for both values of the "Scale stroke with objects"
- option. Among other things, this means that stroked objects no longer
- lose snapping on scale, and that the "Default scale origin" option in
- the Selector tool preferences finally works as designed. Caveat: There
- may still be problems if you scale a selection that contains objects
- with different stroke widths.
-
- * Scaling of stroke now works for objects that didn't specify
- stroke-width; before, they always ended up with the default 1px
- stroke.
-
- * The bounding box for text and flowed text objects did not include
- stroke width. This has been fixed.
-
- * Stroke miterlimit on text objects was misinterpreted in absolute units
- instead of multiplies of stroke width (resulting in miter joins
- rendered as bevel).
-
- * The unfinished path in Pen tool is now cancelled, not finalized, when
- you switch away from the Pen tool. Apart from being more intuitively
- correct, this also fixes a crash when you quit Inkscape with the
- unfinished path in Pen tool.
-
- * Fonts on Win32 now use the native font mapper, meaning that Inkscape's
- font list is the same as other Windows programs, and the (potentially)
- very long delay experienced when using fonts for the first time in
- each session is gone.
-
- * Setting dash pattern was broken for transformed objects, and
- copy/paste of style with dash pattern did not apply correctly to
- objects with transforms.
-
- * An error caused a complete extra screen redraw after each zoom
- operation. That is, after you press "+" in a complex drawing, Inkscape
- redraws, but for some time after that it remains still unresponsive
- because it does that second redraw (invisibly for you, i.e. nothing
- changes on the screen). This is fixed.
-
- * Gradient rendering was off by one pixel, which often resulted in
- visibly wrong gradient rendering for small objects or in zoom-out.
-
- * The SVG path parser could not handle fractional numbers with the
- initial dot.
-
- * Several pattern rendering bugs are fixed, discovered by working with
- SVG files exported from Adobe Illustrator.
-
- * Inkscape on Mac OS X will now notice fonts in your ~/Library/Fonts
- directory, in addition to the other standard places.
-
- * Inkscape couldn't be compiled with libxml versions <= 2.6.9, and we
- now bumped the requirements from 2.6.0 up to libxml >= 2.6.11, which
- is the earliest you can get officially, anyway.
-
- * Inkscape no longer crashes when presented with a defective inx file
- for extensions.
-
- * More document memory is now freed when documents are closed.
-
- * EPS output now correctly includes an %%EOF footer.
-
- * There was a regression in 0.43 that caused several minor, though
- annoying bugs; knots and handles remained highlighted after the mouse
- was released, and the rubberband selection rectangle stayed visible if
- the selection was ended over a node while in the node tool. This
- regression has been fixed.
+ * Russian header and footer templates are added.
- * The connector routing code would previously sometimes confuse objects
- between multiple documents resulting in strange routing behaviour.
- This has been fixed.
- * There existed a bug in 0.43's Inkboard code that allowed a malicious
- outsider to very easily disrupt an Inkboard session. This has been
- fixed.
+Bugfixes
- * There existed a bug in 0.43's Inkboard code that would cause deadlocks
- in the case that two users attempted to invite each other at the same
- time (see bug #1352522 for further details). This should be fixed,
- although the fix has not been widely tested.
+ * When deleting a node, neighboring smooth nodes are converted to
+ cusp.
- * There existed a bug in 0.43's Inkboard code that would cause session
- invitations to not appear on the invitee's screen. This was the result
- of a mistake in handling GDK modifier flags, and has been fixed.
+ * 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.
- Translations
+ * Ungrouping a group containing clipped/masked objects might
+ sometime break the clip/mask (move it away); fixed.
- * INX files (containing the UI of the external effects) now allow the
- user visible strings to be translated. This means that effect dialogs,
- file type selections, and extension names can all be translated by
- translators.
+ * User-supplied templates in ~/.inkscape/templates can now be SVGZ
+ files in addition to SVG.
- * Inkscape is now significantly translated to 18 languages: Basque,
- Catalan, Czech, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian,
- Norwegian (Bokmaal dialect), Polish, Russian, Serbian (Cyrillic and
- Latin), Simplified Chinese, Slovenian, Spanish, Traditional Chinese,
- and Vietnamese. Additionally, 21 more languages have some level of
- translation. Average translation ratio has increased from 49% to 59%
- in this release.
+ * 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.
- * Some new translations of tutorials have been brought by contributors:
- Czech, Portuguese (Brazilian) and Russian.
+ * 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.
- Internal
+ * The layer widget in the statusbar used to lose its current layer
+ after an effect run; this is fixed.
- * The Document Properties Dialog code was completely gtkmmified, which
- lead to dramatic reduction of code size due to usage of widget
- objects. The used widget objects should be reusable by other dialogs,
- too, and the code is much more readable.
+ * 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).
- * Work on optimizing includes in all cpp files started, using the
- purgeincludes tool specifically written for that purpose, and ended
- with 40% of include lines removed!
+ * Performing a boolean union without selecting an object no longer
+ crashes Inkscape.
+ * Grid and guidelines no longer vanish when changing their color.
- Known problems
+ * Group transformation is now correctly applied when ungrouping and
+ undo'ing the ungroup.
+ * Text dialog no longer discards the style of the selected text.
- 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.
+Known problems
- Problems with "Composite" option of X.org
+Problem with Dialogs on Top on Microsoft Windows (win32)
- * Some prereleases of inkscape-0.44 could crash if the "Composite"
- option were enabled in X.org's configuration. This is not a problem in
- the final release.
+ [Describe minimizing of document window problem, and solution:
+ right-click taskbar button and press "Restore"]
+OSX 10.3.9: cannot open files
- Namespaces may need fixing
+ 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]
- * Previous versions of inkscape sometimes silently saved documents with
- wrong namespace URIs. This has been fixed, but such corrupted
- documents will no longer load successfully. Such documents may require
- their namespace declarations to be fixed by hand. Correct namespace
- URLs are as follows, with typical namespace prefixes given in
- parenthesis:
+Problems with some Debian libgc-6.7 packages
- * Sodipodi (sodipodi):
- http://sodipodi.sourceforge.net/DTD/sodipodi-0.dtd
- * Inkscape (inkscape): http://www.inkscape.org/namespaces/inkscape
- * XLink (xlink): http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink
- * SVG (svg or none): http://www.w3.org/2000/svg
- * RDF (rdf): http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#
- * Creative Commons (cc): http://web.resource.org/cc/
- * Dublin Core Metadata (dc): http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/
+ * 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
+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. However, but it would be
- nice if you as affected user would inform the gtk-engines maintainers
- of any further problem.
+ 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.
-
-
- Make sure to remove menus.xml if you have it
-
- * If you were using certain CVS/SVN builds from autumn of 2005, you may
- have the file menus.xml hanging around in your profile directory (e.g.
- ~/.inkscape on Linux). In that case you will see many errors about
- verbs that cannot be found, and some commands in menus will be
- disabled. Make sure to delete menus.xml to fix this.
-
-
- Previous releases
-
- * ReleaseNotes043
- (http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes043)
- * ReleaseNotes042
- (http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes042)
- * ReleaseNotes041
- (http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes041)
- * ReleaseNotes040
- (http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes040)
- * ReleaseNotes039
- (http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes039)
- * ReleaseNotes038
- (http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes038)
- * ReleaseNotes037
- (http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes037)
- * ReleaseNotes036
- (http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes036)
- * ReleaseNotes035
- (http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes035)
-
- Retrieved from "http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Release_Notes"
-
- This page has been accessed 20,078 times. This page was last modified
- 09:07, 19 June 2006.
+ uninstall the gtk_qt_engine package from your system. Both
+ problems also affect older versions of Inkscape.
+