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 area (dz and zh_TW). * Patch [ 1659404 ]: Set locale directory from environment variable * Patch [ 1657072 ]: fix for bug 1654495 * Patch [ 1654636 ]: defocus dropper checkboxes * Updated slovak translation * Adding japanese.nsh and russian.nsh into files that should go into the release tarball * 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 * Security: fixed format string overflows in dialogs (CVE-2007-1463) and whiteboard 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 object 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 can now respond to user input before it finished redrawing the screen, which greatly 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 step of it, undoing and redoing multiple actions with one click. * Several important tool features are added, notably the new selection mode in Node tool and the adjustable rounded caps in Calligraphic pen. * Bitmap tracing works better for multi-color traces, sports a redesigned dialog and 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 shortcut. * Several new commands in Help menu open various Inkscape-related pages in your default browser, making Inkscape reference information more accessible as you work. * Dozens of smaller features are added throughout the program, and hundreds of bugs are fixed. SVG filters: Gaussian blur Thanks to Google's Summer of Code program, Inkscape now has basic support for SVG filters. The only filter enabled so far is Gaussian blur. With it, you can softly and naturally blur any Inkscape objects: paths, shapes, groups, text, images. Clones inherit blurring from their original, but they can also be blurred independently from the original (you can create blurred clones with Tile Clones, too). Both the fill and stroke of an object are blurred together, creating semitransparent margins that smoothly blend into the background. Gaussian blur enables a wide range of photorealistic effects: arbitrarily shaped shades and lights, depth of field, drop shadows, glows, etc. Also, blurred objects can be used as masks for other objects to achieve the "feathered mask" effect. * To blur selected objects, open the Fill and Stroke dialog (Ctrl+Shift+F) and use the Blur slider. The blur value is a percentage, with 100% corresponding to a blurring radius (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 radius 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 can set the blur percentage per row or per column of your tiling, as well as randomize blurring and make it alternate (all the same options as for Opacity). * The quality of on-screen blur display is controlled by the Blur quality option on the new Filters tab of Inkscape Preferences (Ctrl+Shift+P). The available options range from best quality/slowest display to worst quality/fastest display, the default being in the middle of the range. Any setting except the "best quality" may introduce some rendering artifacts, especially when blurring thin strokes; on the other hand, the "best quality" setting may make Inkscape extremely slow at high zooms. These settings only affect the screen display of blurred objects; bitmap export always uses the best quality (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 then blur it (or blur it first and then clip - it makes no difference), the clipped edges will remain crisp. Often, this is what you want. If, however, you want to blur the clipped/masked edges too (possibly with a different radius), you can use grouping: group the clipped object with some other object (which you can then delete from the group) and blur the group. * A simple drop shadow is now very easy to do: just copy the object, paint the copy black, blur it, shift away a bit and lower it to the bottom. However, such a shadow does not update when you edit the foreground object. If your object is already black (or, more generally, if you want the shadow to be the same color as the object), you can clone instead of copy to make the shadow auto-updating. But what if your foreground object is not black but you need 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 clone at bottom, blur it and shift sideways. Now you can edit the unset-fill original (use Alt+click to select it) and everything will update. * If an object has a fill that you don't want to blur (e.g. pattern, or if it's a bitmap), but you just want to feather the edges, use a blurred transparency mask. For this, copy the object; paint it white; blur it as needed; scale the blurred copy down so its blur margins are entirely within the original object; select both the original and the blurred mask; do Object > Mask > Set. * Transforming a blurred object transforms its blur, too. This applies to a non-uniform scaling as well, so by squeezing a blurred object you make its blur squeezed as well. So, the easiest way to blur a path horizontally more than vertically is this: stretch it upwards without blur, then apply blur and squeeze it back into the original shape. (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 opacity gradient will look much softer and more natural when blurred. An object with a horizontal linear opacity gradient, when blurred, will look as if it's more blurred on its transparent side than on its opaque side. * A clone of a blurred object inherits the blur of the original. Therefore, such a clone can be blurred more, but you can't "unblur" it to make the clone sharper than its original (unless, of course, you unlink it). The Fill and Stroke dialog shows you the amount of the blur applied to this particular object; however, if the object is a clone of an already blurred original, the dialog does not reflect that. * Note that Firefox 2.0 does not support SVG filters, so your files will be displayed in Firefox 2.0 without blur. However, filter support has been added in the current development version and will be included in Firefox 3.0. The Opera web browser, as well as librsvg (used by Wikipedia) and Batik, support filters correctly in their current versions. Undo history * Inkscape now features a History Dialog accessible via Ctrl+Shift+H or Edit > Undo History. All changes made to the document since it was opened are recorded here. + In the dialog, changes are listed from the oldest (top) to the newest (bottom). + The type of each change is indicated by an icon and a short description. + For readability, consecutive changes of the same type are placed in a collapsible branch showing a triangle marker and the number of the hidden actions in the branch. + By clicking on an event in the list, you can easily move through the undo history, i.e. undo or redo any number of actions with one click. * The Undo and Redo commands in the Edit menu display the descriptions of the commands to be undone and redone, correspondingly. (These are the same descriptions that you see in the History dialog.) Rendering improvements * Interruptible display: Previously, Inkscape could not do anything until it finishes the current screen redraw. Now the redraw is made interruptible, so that Inkscape responds to mouse and keyboard input and can abort the current redraw and start over if you do some screen-changing operation. As a result, Inkscape now feels much snappier and more interactive. This interruptibility is fine-tuned for some continuous-drag operations (such as node dragging) so that a balance is achieved 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 (partially) 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 PageDown (shrink). Growing adds the closest unselected node to the selection; shrinking deselects the farthest selected node. There are two modes that differ by how the closest/farthest nodes are chosen: + Spatial selection (mousewheel, PageUp/PageDown): distances to nodes are measured directly, regardless of which subpath a node belongs to. + Linear selection (Ctrl+mousewheel, Ctrl+PageUp/Ctrl+PageDown): node distances are measured along the path, and only the nodes belonging to the same subpath as the hovered node are considered (i.e. other subpaths are never selected). This technique is convenient for quickly selecting an area in a complex path starting from a center - for example, for node sculpting. Dropper * Instead of the confusing toggle button, now the Controls bar for the Dropper tool has two checkboxes, Pick alpha and Set alpha, which work as follows. Suppose you have an object selected and, using Dropper, click on an object which has red (#FF0000) fill and 0.5 opacity (half-transparent). + If the "Pick alpha" checkbox is off, the selected object will get the fill color #800000 (i.e. faded-out red) and fill opacity will be at 1.0 (opaque). + If the "Pick alpha" checkbox is on but "Set alpha" is off, the selected object will get the fill color #FF0000 (red) and fill opacity will be at 1.0. + If both "Pick alpha" and "Set alpha" are on, the selected object will get the fill color #FF0000 (red) and fill opacity will be at 0.5 (half-transparent). If you Shift+click instead of click, the same changes will be made to stroke color and stroke opacity, correspondingly. Note that in no situation can Dropper change the master opacity of the selected object(s) (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 behavior in previous versions) through 1 (approximately half-circle caps) and up to 5 (long elliptic caps). Rounded caps much improve the look of low-fixation strokes, simulating a rounded pen. * The "Drag" parameter has been renamed to Wiggle with a value inversion (i.e. low drag corresponds to high wiggle, and vice versa). Increase this parameter (default is 0) to make the pen waver and wiggle in curly patterns. * As a first step towards a redesign of the tools' controls, the Controls bar of the Calligraphy pen has been upgraded. Now it no longer prevents the Inkscape window from resizing narrower than the bar. The items on the far right end of the bar 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 numeric 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 faster than by scrolling the control or typing the value into it. * With low or zero Fixation parameter, some users of tablet pens experienced "blobs" (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. Hopefully 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 (Ctrl+) switch the display mode from Normal to Outline and back. * The window title displays "(outline)" next to the file name when that editing window is in Outline mode. * An object with mask and/or clipping path, when viewed in Outline mode, now displays both the object itself and its clipping path and mask as objects, using different outline colors. By default, clippaths use green outlines, and masks use blue. * Images in Outline mode are displayed as red (by default) frames with two diagonals. * An object with no fill and no stroke, invisible and not selectable by mouse clicking in normal mode, can now be picked by a mouse click in the Outline mode using its visible outline. * The bug whereby stroked shapes didn't change stroke width when switching to Outline mode or back is fixed. * All outline colors are changeable by editing the "wireframecolors" group inside "options" in the preferences file (~/.inkscape/preferences.xml). The "onlight" and "ondark" attributes set the colors of the regular object outlines on light and dark backgrounds (default black and white correspondingly); the "images", "clips", and "masks" attributes set the colors of images, clipping paths, and masks (defaults are red, green, and blue correspondingly). Each attribute is a decimal integer corresponding to the hex RRGGBBAA of the color. * To cater for specialized uses, such as preparing input for personal media cutters, Inkscape now has an option to start in the Outline mode upon launch. To enable this, add the following line to your preferences.xml file: placing it after the opening tag. Keyboard profiles The previous release allowed sets of keybindings (keymaps) to be created for Inkscape 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 features 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 work has been added: * right-handed-illustration.xml This keymap places all commonly-used commands under the left hand, so that the user's hands rarely leave the keyboard or the tablet/stylus. (To enable a profile, copy it into default.xml in the same directory, overwriting the old file. To restore the default Inkscape set, copy inkscape.xml into default.xml.) More of Inkscape's keys are implemented as actions and are therefore available for remapping via keyboard profiles. New actions include EditSelectNext and EditSelectPrev for selecting next/previous object or node (by default, they are bound to Tab/Shift+Tab; as a result of becoming global actions, these keys now work in all tools and not only in Selector and Node tool as before). Extension effects Inkscape's extension effects, written in Python using the inkex utility class, are currently a major growth point of the project. They allow new developers to create 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 core 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 algorithms and UI controls of the future Inkscape features. However, this does not prevent 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 its length; Repeated stretched: as many copies as would fit are placed along the skeleton 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 the 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 depends 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 path 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 [64][1]. * Color effects: A new group of extensions in the Color submenu of the Effects menu allows you to adjust all colors of a selection at once. These commands affect both fill and stroke colors, including gradients (but not bitmaps). The commands include: + a full set of HSL adjustments (increasing/decreasing hue, saturation, or lightness by 5%), + Brighter and Darker (adjust brightness 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 channels. Some examples of using this effect are shown on a screenshot at [65][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 gradients and their users are restored on undo) not causing any loss of information. Also, on large documents and large selections with gradients, Python's XPath code may get quite slow. Despite these shortcomings, we decided to add this extension, because it's genuinely useful functionality which was so far missing in Inkscape. * Recent fixes in the processing of SVG have made it possible to implement the often requested Color Markers to Match Stroke effect. It is no longer necessary to hand-edit XML to recolor arrowheads; just change the stroke color of your path and call this effect to recolor its markers to match. * Lorem ipsum (in "Render" submenu) is a new extension that creates the traditional Latin-like random text for design mock-ups. The number of paragraphs, the number of sentences per paragraph and the possible fluctuation of the number of sentences (for uneven paragraphs) can be adjusted. If no flowed text element is selected, a new one in a new layer is created, matching the size of the canvas. * 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 any group or layer to individual PNG files. It was first created for use in the Inkscape 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 can draw them in the same document, thus making copying, duplicating, cloning etc. easier. Then just create a group for each icon, and with the extension, each group ends up in its own PNG file. 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 extension to the created bitmap file. * The "Blur Edge" extension is renamed into Inset/Outset Halo to avoid confusion with the real Gaussian blur that we now support, as well as to better describe what this extension actually does: From the selected path, it creates a group of inset and outset paths that form a stepped "halo" around the object. Infrastructure * 3 new parameter types have been added to the extension effect UI: tabs, enumerations and optiongroups (radio buttons). Examples are available of how to use these 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