Contents

1 Inkscape 0.45.1 changes with respect to 0.45

2 Inkscape 0.45: overview
3 SVG filters: Gaussian blur
4 Undo history
5 Rendering improvements
6 Tools
6.1 Node tool
6.2 Dropper
6.3 Calligraphy
7 Outline mode
8 Keyboard profiles
9 Extension effects
9.1 New effects
9.2 Improved effects
9.3 Infrastructure
10 Export formats
10.1 AI import/export
10.2 PDF export
10.3 PS/EPS export
10.4 EMF export
11 SVG output
12 Bitmap tracing
13 Even more improvements
14 Examples
15 Translations, tutorials, templates
16 Dependency changes
17 Notable bugfixes
18 Known problems
18.1 Problem with "Dialogs on Top" on Windows
18.2 Spinbuttons may crash if you have GTK+ older than 2.10.7
18.3 Numerical Python required for Perspective effect
18.4 Do not use a clone of an object as its clipping path/mask
18.5 Non-Unicode symbol fonts on Windows don't work
18.6 Problems with some Debian libgc-6.7 packages
18.7 Beware of defective themes on Linux
19 Previous releases
Inkscape 0.45.1 changes with respect to 0.45
Patch [ 1667939 ]: fix crash when tile-tracing with too small clones
Patch [ 1666532 ]: Broken link in inkview man page
Patch [ 1665447 ]: fix for the blur quantization bug 1617082
Patch [ 1664849 ]: fix for 1662589: increase blur margins
Patch [ 1664004 ]: embedimage.py with fixed search order
Patch [ 1662649 ]: markers.svg with reversed order
Crudely improve check-markup for { markup, fix translations with bugs in that ar
ea (dz and zh_TW).
Patch [ 1659404 ]: Set locale directory from environment variable
Patch [ 1657072 ]: fix for bug 1654495
Patch [ 1654636 ]: defocus dropper checkboxes
Adding japanese.nsh and russian.nsh into files that should go into the release t
arball
Correct russian translation
Patch [ 1651797 ]: fix for attributes when saving/save-a-copy
Patch [ 1651752 ]: fix dropper tool
Pattern along path extension fixed on Windows
Include libtiff3.dll in the Windows distribution, fixing crash when opening TIFF
files
Patch [ 1673067 ]: fix blur export on flowtext
Patch [ 1678075 ]: fix FontInstance.cpp compile issue
Patch [ 1673502 ]: fix broken Envelope (Summers Night) effect
Patch [ 1680182 ]: fix pattern inversion on bool op (bug 1659445)
Patch [ 1681754 ]: fix crash when editing text with multiple tspans
Patch [ 1682425 ]: fix bug 1679477 (crash exporting gradients to ODG)
Khmer translation now installs correctly
Updated Slovak translation
Updated Bulgarian translation
Updated Catalan translation
Updated Czech translation
Security: fixed format string overflows in dialogs (CVE-2007-1463) and whiteboar
d Jabber protocol (CVE-2007-1464).
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.
Here are the highlights:
Gaussian blur is the first SVG filter supported by Inkscape. You can blur any ob
ject to any extent - yet it remains vector and fully editable. This gives a huge
boost to Inkscape as a creative art tool.
Display speed and interactivity: not only does Inkscape render faster, but it ca
n now respond to user input before it finished redrawing the screen, which great
ly improves the responsiveness (perceived speed or interactivity) of the program
.
History dialog makes it easy to to review your editing session and jump to any s
tep of it, undoing and redoing multiple actions with one click.
Several important tool features are added, notably the new selection mode in Nod
e tool and the adjustable rounded caps in Calligraphic pen.
Bitmap tracing works better for multi-color traces, sports a redesigned dialog a
nd several new options.
Many new extension effects are added, including Color effects and Pattern along
path.
The Outline mode has got many fixes and improvements, including a keyboard short
cut.
Several new commands in Help menu open various Inkscape-related pages in your de
fault browser, making Inkscape reference information more accessible as you work
.
Dozens of smaller features are added throughout the program, and hundreds of bug
s are fixed.
SVG filters: Gaussian blur
Thanks to Google's Summer of Code program, Inkscape now has basic support for SV
G 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 w
ith Tile Clones, too). Both the fill and stroke of an object are blurred togethe
r, 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 obje
cts can be used as masks for other objects to achieve the "feathered mask" effec
t.
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 b
lurring radius (standard deviation of Gaussian function) of 1/8 of the object's
bounding box' perimeter (that is, for a square, a blur of 100% will have the rad
ius equal to half a side, which turns any shape into an amorphous cloud).
The Tile Clones dialog also supports blurring. On the Blur & opacity tab, you ca
n set the blur percentage per row or per column of your tiling, as well as rando
mize 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 o
n the new Filters tab of Inkscape Preferences (Ctrl+Shift+P). The available opti
ons range from best quality/slowest display to worst quality/fastest display, th
e 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 (and may therefore become quite slow
for images with a lot of blur).
Here are a few tips on using blur:
Masks and clipping are applied after blur. That is, if you clip an object and th
en blur it (or blur it first and then clip - it makes no difference), the clippe
d edges will remain crisp. Often, this is what you want. If, however, you want t
o 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 the
n delete from the group) and blur the group.
A simple drop shadow is now very easy to do: just copy the object, paint the cop
y black, blur it, shift away a bit and lower it to the bottom. However, such a s
hadow does not update when you edit the foreground object. If your object is alr
eady black (or, more generally, if you want the shadow to be the same color as t
he 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 an auto-updating 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 c
lone at bottom, blur it and shift sideways. Now you can edit the unset-fill orig
inal (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 the edges, use a blurred transparency mask
. For this, copy the object; paint it white; blur it as needed; scale the blurre
d 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-un
iform scaling as well, so by squeezing a blurred object you make its blur squeez
ed 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 i
nto the original shape. (This only works if the stretched path does not already
have a Transform attribute.)
You can combine blurring with gradients. For example, an ellipse with elliptic o
pacity gradient will look much softer and more natural when blurred. An object w
ith a horizontal linear opacity gradient, when blurred, will look as if it's mor
e 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 refle
ct that.
Note that Firefox 2.0 does not support SVG filters, so your files will be displa
yed in Firefox 2.0 without blur. However, filter support has been added in the c
urrent development version and will be included in Firefox 3.0. The Opera web br
owser, as well as librsvg (used by Wikipedia) and Batik, support filters correct
ly in their current versions.
Undo history
Inkscape now features a History Dialog accessible via Ctrl+Shift+H or Edit > Und
o History. All changes made to the document since it was opened are recorded her
e.
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 collapsibl
e branch showing a triangle marker and the number of the hidden actions in the b
ranch.
By clicking on an event in the list, you can easily move through the undo histor
y, 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 comm
ands 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 finis
hes the current screen redraw. Now the redraw is made interruptible, so that Ink
scape 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 f
eels much snappier and more interactive. This interruptibility is fine-tuned for
some continuous-drag operations (such as node dragging) so that a balance is ac
hieved between responsiveness and completeness of display.
Screen render is faster by 2-3% overall:
Complex drawings with transparency are faster by up to 5%.
Radial gradients are rendered faster by at least 10%.
Rendering (compositing) quality has been improved. This is most visible with (pa
rtially) transparent gradients: banding is a lot less pronounced now. Speed has
also been improved in some cases.
Display is more responsive when working at high zoom levels when using a tablet.
Tools
Node tool
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 Pa
geDown (shrink). Growing adds the closest unselected node to the selection; shri
nking deselects the farthest selected node. There are two modes that differ by h
ow 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 ar
e measured along the path, and only the nodes belonging to the same subpath as t
he hovered node are considered (i.e. other subpaths are never selected).
This technique is convenient for quickly selecting an area in a complex path sta
rting from a center - for example, for node sculpting.
Dropper
Instead of the confusing toggle button, now the Controls bar for the Dropper too
l has two checkboxes, Pick alpha and Set alpha, which work as follows. Suppose y
ou 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 w
ill 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 fi
ll 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 col
or and stroke opacity, correspondingly. Note that in no situation can Dropper ch
ange the master opacity of the selected object(s) (only the fill/stroke opacity)
, 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 behavi
or 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 (defa
ult is 0) to make the pen waver and wiggle in curly patterns.
As a first step towards a redesign of the tools' controls, the Controls bar of t
he Calligraphy pen has been upgraded. Now it no longer prevents the Inkscape win
dow from resizing narrower than the bar. The items on the far right end of the b
ar which didn't fit in a narrow window are still accessible through an expansion
menu which allows you to toggle switches, select commands, and set values of nu
meric fields. Also, each editable numeric value field has a new right-click menu
with some common values which often allows you to set a desired value much fast
er than by scrolling the control or typing the value into it.
With low or zero Fixation parameter, some users of tablet pens experienced "blob
s" (brief reversals of a stroke's right/left edges, causing "holes" and "bubbles
" in a calligraphic stroke), especially often at the start of a stroke. Hopefull
y this problem is now fixed without reducing the responsiveness of the tool.
Outline mode
A new menu command (View > Display Mode > Toggle) and a new keyboard shortcut (C
trl+<keypad 5>) switch the display mode from Normal to Outline and back.
The window title displays "(outline)" next to the file name when that editing wi
ndow is in Outline mode.
An object with mask and/or clipping path, when viewed in Outline mode, now displ
ays both the object itself and its clipping path and mask as objects, using diff
erent outline colors. By default, clippaths use green outlines, and masks use bl
ue.
Images in Outline mode are displayed as red (by default) frames with two diagona
ls.
An object with no fill and no stroke, invisible and not selectable by mouse clic
king in normal mode, can now be picked by a mouse click in the Outline mode usin
g its visible outline.
The bug whereby stroked shapes didn't change stroke width when switching to Outl
ine mode or back is fixed.
All outline colors are changeable by editing the "wireframecolors" group inside
"options" in the preferences file (~/.inkscape/preferences.xml). The "onlight" a
nd "ondark" attributes set the colors of the regular object outlines on light an
d dark backgrounds (default black and white correspondingly); the "images", "cli
ps", and "masks" attributes set the colors of images, clipping paths, and masks
(defaults are red, green, and blue correspondingly). Each attribute is a decimal
integer corresponding to the hex RRGGBBAA of the color.
To cater for specialized uses, such as preparing input for personal media cutter
s, Inkscape now has an option to start in the Outline mode upon launch. To enabl
e this, add the following line to your preferences.xml file:
<group id="startmode" outline="1"/>
placing it after the <group id="options"> opening tag.
Keyboard profiles
The previous release allowed sets of keybindings (keymaps) to be created for Ink
scape in the style of other applications. Two more keymaps have been added:
Adobe Illustrator
Macromedia Freehand
Of course not every feature in these other programs has a direct match to featur
es in Inkscape; so, if you can, please help us out by reporting any problems you
 may have or improvements you would like to request.
Additionally, a keymap that focuses on tablet-based illustration and drawing wor
k has been added:
right-handed-illustration.xml
This keymap places all commonly-used commands under the left hand, so that the u
ser's hands rarely leave the keyboard or the tablet/stylus.
(To enable a profile, copy it into default.xml in the same directory, overwritin
g the old file. To restore the default Inkscape set, copy inkscape.xml into defa
ult.xml.)
More of Inkscape's keys are implemented as actions and are therefore available f
or remapping via keyboard profiles. New actions include EditSelectNext and EditS
electPrev 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 i
n all tools and not only in Selector and Node tool as before).
Extension effects
Inkscape's extension effects, written in Python using the inkex utility class, a
re currently a major growth point of the project. They allow new developers to c
reate functionality very quickly, without having to learn Inkscape's huge C/C++
codebase. However, eventually we plan to move many of these effects into the cor
e of Inkscape, which will make them much faster and more interactive. From this
viewpoint, effects can be considered a quick way to prototype and test the algor
ithms and UI controls of the future Inkscape features. However, this does not pr
event effects from being genuinely useful in everyday work, and in this version
we have several excellent additions.
New effects
Pattern along path: A new powerful extension in the "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.)
Effect's parameters include:
Copies of the pattern selects one of the four modes: Single stretched: one copy
of the pattern is placed on the skeleton path and stretched/squeezed to match it
s length; Repeated stretched: as many copies as would fit are placed along the s
keleton path and stretched to fit exactly; Single and Repeated: same but without
stretching.
Deformation type can be one of: Snake bends the pattern flatly in the plane of t
he drawing, the width not depending on direction; Ribbon bends it as a vertical
ribbon or like a calligraphic stroke with maximum fixation, so that width depend
s on direction (minimum for vertical parts of the stroke, maximum for horizontal
).
Several parameters allow you to adjust spacing between the copies of the pattern
(for Multiple modes) and their offset in two directions (along the skeleton pat
h and perpendicular to it).
Normally the effect assumes that the pattern object is horizontal and bends its
horizontal axis (at mid-height) along the skeleton path. There's a checkbox that
allows you to use a vertical pattern instead.
Some examples of using this effect are shown on a screenshot at [1].
Color effects: A new group of extensions in the Color submenu of the Effects men
u 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 lightne
ss by 5%),
Brighter and Darker (adjust brightness up or down by 10%),
Desaturate,
Grayscale,
Negative,
commands for removing or swapping the Red, Green, Blue channels,
a Custom command where you can set your own formulas for modifying the color cha
nnels.
Some examples of using this effect are shown on a screenshot at [2].
Note: undoing color changes on gradients exposes a bug where an object seems to
"disappear"; this is only a display issue (caused by the order in which gradient
s and their users are restored on undo) not causing any loss of information. Als
o, on large documents and large selections with gradients, Python's XPath code m
ay get quite slow. Despite these shortcomings, we decided to add this extension,
because it's genuinely useful functionality which was so far missing in Inkscap
e.
Recent fixes in the processing of SVG <defs /> have made it possible to implemen
t the often requested Color Markers to Match Stroke effect. It is no longer nece
ssary to hand-edit XML to recolor arrowheads; just change the stroke color of yo
ur path and call this effect to recolor its markers to match.
Lorem ipsum (in "Render" submenu) is a new extension that creates the traditiona
l Latin-like random text for design mock-ups. The number of paragraphs, the numb
er of sentences per paragraph and the possible fluctuation of the number of sent
ences (for uneven paragraphs) can be adjusted. If no flowed text element is sele
cted, a new one in a new layer is created, matching the size of the canvas.
Fractalize (in "Modify Path" submenu) replaces each segment of the selected path
by a crooked line, subdivided to the given depth, with randomly displaced nodes
.
g2png: The new group-to-PNG Python extension (g2png) is an easy way to export an
y group or layer to individual PNG files. It was first created for use in the In
kscape User Manual (also available in SVN in the user_manual module) but is also
interesting for many other uses. If e.g. you have to draw a set of icons, you c
an 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 g
roup ends up in its own PNG file.
Improved effects
The Function Plotter has been extended, providing greater flexibility in x- and
y-range definition.
The Measure Path extension is improved with several new parameters added (units,
scale, precision, distance from path).
The Extract One Image extension is fixed to automatically append filename extens
ion to the created bitmap file.
The "Blur Edge" extension is renamed into Inset/Outset Halo to avoid confusion w
ith the real Gaussian blur that we now support, as well as to better describe wh
at this extension actually does: From the selected path, it creates a group of i
nset and outset paths that form a stepped "halo" around the object.
Infrastructure
3 new parameter types have been added to the extension effect UI: tabs, enumerat
ions and optiongroups (radio buttons). Examples are available of how to use thes
e parameters in INX files: 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).
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 st
ill be assigned a keyboard shortcut (by using its id as an "action" in your ~/.i
nkscape/keys/default.xml).
In an extension's INX file, you can add needs-document="no" attribute to the <ef
fect> element. This indicates that the extension does not process the current SV
G document, and Inkscape will not bother saving and restoring the document from
a temporary file which allows this extension to run faster and smoother. (This i
s used for the new open-in-default-browser Help menu commands which are technica
lly implemented as extensions.)
Export formats
AI import/export
We only support AI import and export for Adobe Illustrator 8.0 and older. This h
as been clarified in the Open and Save As lists.
PDF export
Inkscape's PDF exporter has been improved:
New features: bitmap images can be embedded; PDF files can be exported from comm
and line using the --export-pdf parameter.
Changed behavior: the pointless text to path question is gone.
Fixed bugs: save failure is now detected, miter limits are now >= 1, PDFs with t
ransparent 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 ex
ported file. As of now, this works for Type 1 fonts only, not TrueType. The opti
on is available when performing the export from the GUI as well as from the comm
and line via the --export-embed-fonts option.
EMF export
Inkscape has a limited support for exporting EMF (Enhanced Meta File) format. Th
is works only on Windows, and only exports strokes and fills with constant color
s. No text, no images, no gradients, no transparency.
SVG output
For specialized uses, several aspects of Inkscape's SVG output can now be custom
ized 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 attribu
tes:
usenamedcolors (default is 0). If nonzero, Inkscape uses symbolic color names (s
uch as "white" or "lime") and three-digit color designations (such as $dfe) wher
e appropriate; otherwise, it always uses six-digit colors (such as $d0f0e0). Not
e 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 writte
n for each number into SVG. You can lower this number to get slightly more compa
ct SVG at the expense of precision.
minimumexponent (default is -8). In transform= attributes, any number whose abso
lute 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 i
n SVG is shifted. Set this to 0 to disable indentation.
inlineattrs (default is 0). If nonzero, attributes are placed on the same line a
s 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 u
sed. This improves tracing results both for full-color photographs and for limit
ed-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 (in pixe
ls) 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 seg
ments with the given tolerance.
All controls in the Trace Bitmap dialog are reorganized to be easier to find. Th
e 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 v
arious tracing options, such as corner smoothing). The preview is placed horizon
tally to the right of the tabs. Most labels and tooltips are rewritten for clari
ty. The trace preview image is made twice larger.
Even more improvements
The opacity of objects is now displayed as percentage, from 0 to 100, both in th
e Fill & Stroke dialog (with one fractional digit) and in the statusbar style in
dicator (with no fractional digits), instead of from 0 to 1.0 as before. This ma
kes opacity values easier to read, type, and say.
A Save a copy command has been added to the file menu, similar to the 'Save a co
py' functionality of e.g. Adobe Illustrator. With this command, you can save you
r document under a new filename, but Inkscape will then "forget" it has done thi
s: later saves will be to the old filename. The default shortcut assigned to thi
s 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 (un
flowed) text. Previously, the need to convert a flowed text to text before these
operations was a stumble for many users.
Several commands were added to the Help menu, providing the long-missing access
to basic information about Inkscape and SVG right from the program: Inkscape man
ual, Command line options, FAQ, Release notes, Bug report page, and the SVG 1.1
specification. All these commands open the corresponding web pages in the user's
default web browser.
Exported PNG images have the correct resolution set in the header.
The Path -> Union (Ctrl++) operation now functions when only a single object is
selected. Use this to remove self-intersections in path objects.
We removed the "hacked" filename entry field that we had added to the Open and S
ave dialogs because starting from version 2.10, GTK+ has finally restored this f
ield 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) b
y pressing Enter, which means you can now do a quick Ctrl+O, Ctrl+V, Enter seque
nce to open the file whose path is in your clipboard (this closes a long-standin
g usability bug). Those who use older versions of GTK are advised either to upgr
ade 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. Un
less you have specific resolution or minimum size set for this command in prefer
ences.xml (<group id="createbitmap"/>), it will take the resolution hint from th
e object whose bitmap copy you are creating (in other words, it will use the res
olution that you specified for that object when exporting it via the Export Bitm
ap dialog), or the default 90 dpi if that object was not yet exported. Also, a 9
0 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 o
f 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' resolu
tion hints to work.)
Using extended input (i.e. tablet pressure and tilt) can now be disabled via Pre
ferences (Misc tab). This is intended to be a last-resort option for those platf
orm/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 has 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 u
ser 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 operat
ion.
New templates added for video formats (PAL, NTSC and HDTV 1080) as well as DVD c
over templates that were not installed in the previous version. This will help v
ideo and DVD authoring with Inkscape. The business card 85 ~54 template is now ins
talled as well.
"Other" license type was added to the metadata/license dialog so that people kno
w that they are entering a URI to an "other" license.
Examples
With all the recent additions - clipping, masking, and especially blur - Inkscap
e is now able to produce extremely photorealistic art. In the share/examples fol
der in Inkscape distribution, you will find two brand new, stunningly realistic
images of shiny cars: car.svgz by Konstantin Rotkevich and gallardo.svgz by Mich
ael Grosberg.
Inkscape 0.45 does not yet have gradient meshes. But with the addition of Gaussi
an Blur, this feature suddenly got within reach. A new example file, gradient-me
sh-experimental.svgz, explains the approach Inkscape will likely take to impleme
nt this feature in a fully SVG-compatible way.
Although Inkscape does not support animation yet, you can add any animation scri
pts and attributes to your SVG file manually in a text editor - and the file wil
l still be editable in Inkscape. Tavmjong Bah used this technique to create anim
ated-clock.svg which, when loaded in an SVG viewer supporting animation (such as
Firefox, Opera, or Batik), demonstrates the intricate moving clockwork of a wat
ch - and shows real time to boot! If loaded in Inkscape, the image is static, bu
t instead you can freely edit any of the objects.
Translations, tutorials, templates
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 a
nslatortray.
Updated British English, Catalan, Czech, Bulgarian, French, Danish, Finnish, Ger
man, Brazilian Portuguese and Thai, Vietnamese and Dzongkha translations.
A new Esperanto translation added including default document template.
Default Lithuanian template was not installed before, which is now fixed.
New tutorial "Easter Eggs" by Steve Karg.
Added Catalan default template and elements tutorial.
Russian header and footer templates for tutorials are added.
Several tutorial translations were updated, namely Catalan, Brazilian Portuguese
, Russian, German, Danish and French.
There are also new Russian and Japanese translations of Windows installer string
s.
Dependency changes
We have changed the GTK+ requirement for compilation to version 2.8. However, it
is highly recommended to use at least the version 2.10.7 because previous versi
ons contain at least one crash bug which may cause Inkscape to crash after typin
g in a value into a spinbutton.
Notable bugfixes
When deleting a node, neighboring smooth nodes are converted to cusp.
Releasing the mouse button while dragging nodes using a tablet will now always r
elease 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/Stro
ke to path, or boolean operations.
Ungrouping a group containing clipped/masked objects might sometime break the cl
ip/mask (move it away); this is fixed.
Transforming an object and its clone no longer behaves unexpectedly when they ar
e both within a transformed group.
User-supplied templates in ~/.inkscape/templates can now be SVGZ files in additi
on to SVG.
Previously, Inkscape didn't check if there's enough free memory for its pixel bu
ffers and could crash without warning due to insufficient memory e.g. upon zoomi
ng in. This problem became much worse after implementing Gaussian blur, because
rendering blurred objects at high zooms may require a pixel buffer much bigger t
han the visible canvas. Now this situation is handled more gracefully: if a disp
lay operation requires more memory than available, or more than 100Mb (which cor
responds 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,
and it never corrupts data; just zoom out (or reduce blur radius) and the disapp
eared object will show up OK.
When resizing objects, scaling numbers in the statusbar are no longer overwritte
n by other text when pressing the modifier keys (Alt, Shift, Ctrl).
To work around problems some users had with pressure-sensitive tablets (bug 1281
512), the pressure sensitivity can be disabled from the Misc tab of Inkscape Pre
ferences dialog. After that, the tablet can still be used as a regular mouse.
The layer widget in the statusbar used to lose its current layer after an effect
run; this is fixed.
When using different display resolutions or a dual screen setup, dialogs could b
e displayed off-screen; this is fixed: now Inkscape checks whether the saved pos
ition 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 v
isible, go to the bug 1250236 where a procedure is given to make the dialog visi
ble (by editing preferences.xml).
Grid and guidelines no longer vanish when changing their color.
Group transformation is now correctly re-applied when ungrouping and then undoin
g the ungroup operation.
Text dialog no longer discards the style of the selected text.
Inkscape no longer crashes when you try to unflow an empty flowed text.
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.
Known problems
Problem with "Dialogs on Top" on Windows
Although the "Dialogs on Top" option is now available on Windows (File > Inkscap
e Preferences > Windows), it does not work exactly as it should (yet!). When the
document window is minimized, the dialogs remain visible, i.e. are not minimize
d together with the document window. Because of this, it is not possible to get
the document window back by clicking its taskbar button. A workaround to this pr
oblem is to right-click the Inkscape taskbar button and select "Restore". We exp
ect that future releases of GTK will solve this problem.
Spinbuttons may crash if you have GTK+ older than 2.10.7
You may experience crashes after typing in a value into a spinbutton if you have
a version of GTK+ 2.10.6 or older. Upgrade your GTK+ to fix this. (This does no
t affect the Windows package as it comes with GTK+ 2.10.9.)
Numerical Python required for Perspective effect
This effect will not work until you install a python module called numpy (Numeri
cal Python). It can be downloaded at numpy.scipy.org. The Windows package alread
y contains this module.
Do not use a clone of an object as its clipping path/mask
In this version, you cannot use an object's clone as its clipping path or mask.
Either unlink the clone first, or clip one clone of a source object (not the sou
rce itself) by another clone of the same. Properly fixing this bug requires some
deep changes in the code and therefore was postponed until after 0.45 so as not
to delay the release.
Non-Unicode symbol fonts on Windows don't work
On Windows, symbol fonts without a Unicode map do not work. This is a limitation
of the Pango library that we use.
Problems with some Debian libgc-6.7 packages
Inkscape will hang or crash when linked with the first Debian packaged version o
f 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 t
hat you are using that version of the package or later.
Beware of defective themes on Linux
Inkscape and other Gtk programs can crash on any Linux, when the gtk2-engines-sm
ooth / libsmooth package is installed. We have filed a bug against libsmooth whi
ch is now in gtk-engine and part of gnome. Removing the package resolves the pro
blem. 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 prob
lem.
A similar crash happens if the KDE Baghira theme or the package gtk_qt_engine ar
e 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 s
ystem. Both problems also affect older versions of Inkscape.
Previous releases
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