NEWS revision cd6e798da45e420a9ee9f074edb105d292c7baf7
Release Notes
Contents
* 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 libgc-6.7
* 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!
Performance
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;
* bitmaps are shown as is;
* any opacity and gradients are ignored.
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".
Speed
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.
* 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.
* 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.
* 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.
* 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.
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 it 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 betters 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:
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 sensitive to pressure of your 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:
"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
Transform dialog
Fixes and improvements in the Transform dialog (Ctrl+Shift+M):
* 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).
* The Clear button resets the values on the current tab to defaults.
* 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:
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.
* 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.
* 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.
* 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.
Translations
* 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.
* Inkscape is now significantly translated to 15 languages: Basque,
Catalan, Czech, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian,
Russian, Serbian (Cyrillic and Latin), Simplified Chinese, Slovenian,
Spanish and Traditional Chinese. Additionally, 23 more languages have
some level of translation. Average translation ratio has increased
from 49% to 58% in this release.
* Some new translations of tutorials have been brought by contributors:
Czech, Portuguese (Brazilian) and Russian.
Internal
* 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.
* 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!
Known problems
Problems with libgc-6.7
* Inkscape will hang or crash when linked with this (newest) version of
the Boehm garbage collection library. Make sure you use libgc-6.5 or
6.6 until this is sorted out.
Problems with "Composite" option of X.org
* On Linux, Inkscape may crash if you have the "Composite" option
enabled in your X.org configuration. To disable this option, comment
out this line in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf:
Option "Composite" "Enable"
so it becomes
#Option "Composite" "Enable"
and restart X.
Namespaces may need fixing
* 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.
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.
* 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
~/.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
* ReleaseNotes042
* ReleaseNotes041
* ReleaseNotes040
* ReleaseNotes039
* ReleaseNotes038
* ReleaseNotes037
* ReleaseNotes036
* ReleaseNotes035
Retrieved from "http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Release_Notes"
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