Inkscape Wiki - User contributions [en]

Release notes/0.46

2008-01-19T02:16:57Z

Gustavb: /* [dockable dialogs - gustav] */ A language/grammar check would be appreciated :)

=Inkscape 0.46=
'''(not released yet)'''

Highlights in this release:

* Paintbucket tool

* Tweak tool

* 3D Box tool

* Live path effects

* Color management

* New SVG filters and UI

* Native PDF and AI import

* XAML import/export

* Open Clip Art Library integration (import/export)

* Stock patterns

* Bitmap editing extension effects

* Full on-canvas gradient editing

* Engraver's Toolbox in the Calligraphic tool

* Touch selection

* Dockable dialogs

* Command-line access to verbs

* Snapping made usable

* "3D" / axonometric grid

* Angled guidelines

* Conversion of objects to guidelines

* Significant speed and interactivity improvements

* Hundreds of smaller features and bugfixes

=Speed and interactivity=

* In this version, Inkscape starts using the [http://www.cairographics.org cairo] library for rendering. It is now used for '''outline mode''' display which, thanks to using cairo and other optimizations, redraws '''faster by about 25%'''. More impressive are memory savings: thanks to cairo, in outline mode Inkscape now takes only about '''50% of the memory''' used by 0.45 for the same file.

* '''Smart redraw directionality:''' With complex images and/or on slow computers, you may have noticed that Inkscape redraws the screen image in horizontal strips, and these strips are painted in order from top to bottom. Now the redraw always starts '''at your mouse cursor location''' and proceed upwards and downwards from it, so that the area near the cursor is always redrawn first. This significantly improves program's responsiveness in some situations. For example, when you are node-editing part of a complex path, the entire path needs to be redrawn on each change, but now this redraw starts from the point you're working on. Moreover, the redraw is interruptible, so each mouse movement starts new redraw from the mouse cursor area. As a result, during such operations those parts that you're working on redraw often and feel snappy and responsive, while areas further away may lag behind more.

* '''Faster blur''' for exporting and high quality on-screen rendering: Inkscape now uses an IIR (Infinite Impulse Response) filter for blurring with large radius. This greatly improves the speed of blur redraw at high zooms or in high-resolution export (or simply with very large blur radius). On the other hand, the results are an approximation to a true Gaussian blur, so a drawing may look slightly different from the mathematically precise blur (usually the differences are far from visible, though). This code is mainly based on: ''Recursive Gaussian Derivative Filters'' by L.J. van Vliet, I.T. Young and P.W. Verbeek (see the source code for more detailed references).

:'''Exporting drawings with blur''' was particularly slow in 0.45; some files could take hours to export. Now this is fixed, in part by the faster algorithm mentioned above and in part by a bugfix in the export code. Now even the quite complex files with large blurs export at high resolution in at most a few minutes.

* Minor improvements have been made to gradient rendering performance.

* '''Dragging handles and nodes''' as well as '''dragging and transforming objects''' by mouse became more responsive, so that working in complex drawings and especially editing complex paths is noticeably easier. In particular, this fixes the annoying latency issue where a node or a handle could follow mouse cursor even after you release mouse button after a drag.

* '''Moving objects, nodes, and gradient handles by cursor keys''' as well as '''scaling and rotating objects from keyboard''' and '''zooming by keys''' are much more responsive when working with complex slow-rendering objects. Now, if you press and hold a key, your selection/zoom level will quickly jump to the final position instead of going through all the intermediate steps as before.

* '''Moving the cursor around''' in a file with large and complex paths has become much snappier and more responsive. Previously, in extreme cases Inkscape could freeze for seconds while catching up with the mouse cursor; such delays are now eliminated.

* Several improvements make '''canvas panning and scrolling''' smoother and more interactive in complex slow-rendering documents:

:* When panning by the middle mouse button, Inkscape no longer attempts to redraw the canvas while your mouse button is pressed. Any redrawing only happens after you release the mouse. As a result, the newly revealed parts of the canvas are somewhat more "dirty" but the '''panning is smoother than before''', with few if any "hiccups".

:* '''Redrawing the newly exposed parts of the canvas''' after scrolling, especially diagonal scrolling, is now faster because only the exposed areas are redrawn; before, this often resulted in the entire screen being redrawn which was much slower.

:* Previously, if you started panning with middle button while Inkscape is still redrawing screen in a complex drawing, panning sometimes completely failed or moved canvas just a little step. Now it is '''guaranteed to pan the canvas all the way''' from mouse-press point to mouse-release point in any case, even if sometimes it fails to show the intermediate positions.

:* When pressing and holding Ctrl+arrows to scroll canvas, Inkscape normally accelerates scrolling so that each next scrolling step is bigger than the previous. Previously, in complex drawings this acceleration sometimes got interrupted, which made scrolling annoyingly bumpy and slow. Now this is fixed so that '''scrolling is smoothly accelerated''' even in a slow-rendering document.

:* The default '''starting speed and acceleration''' of Ctrl+arrows scrolling are slightly increased. (They are both settable in Preferences.)

* Better responsiveness and more visual feedback in user interface:

:*When you zoom, the '''zoom control''' on the right end of the statusbar now updates immediately, not after screen redraw as before.

:*Many potentially slow commands (Save, Simplify, Combine, Break Apart and others) now display a '''busy cursor''' and flash a message in the statusbar (e.g. "Saving document...") while they work.

:*The '''statusbar messages''' displayed while you're drawing a shape or a path in Pen tool do not lag behind the mouse movements.

* '''Combine''' and '''Convert to paths''' commands are now orders of magnitude faster when applied to a selection with hundreds or thousands of objects.

* The time it takes to '''snap to objects''' using the selector tool has been reduced dramatically, which is most noticeable for snapping to complex paths.

=Tools=

==Paint Bucket tool==

The new Paint Bucket tool works exactly as you would expect: click in any area bounded on all sides and it will '''fill it with color'''. Being a vector tool, however, Inkscape's Paint Bucket just creates a new ''path'' that "fills in" the area in which you clicked.

===How it works===

It is important to note that the tool is '''perceptual''', not geometric. That is, when looking for the boundaries around the point you clicked, it takes for such boundaries any ''visible'' color changes. This means that filling will stop at gradients, blurs, and even the color boundaries in imported bitmaps, but will ignore any paths or other objects that are fully (or almost) transparent or for any other reason do not stand out from the background. In short, it will work exactly as if you were filling a rasterized version of your image in a bitmap editor like Photoshop or GIMP - but will give you a vector object to work with.

For example, now you can scan a pencil sketch, import the bitmap into Inkscape, and quickly fill all its cells with colors even without tracing the bitmap first. This is a very convenient and interactive way of digitizing your paper drawings, making the '''traditional bitmap tracing unnecessary''' in many cases.

Internally, the tool works by performing a bitmap-based flood fill on a rendered version of the visible canvas, then tracing the resulting fill using [[potrace]] and placing the traced path into the document.

It places the rendered path onto the current layer, so you can have a layer on top (for example, "Inks") and select the layer below ("Colors") and do the fills so that they always appear below the Inks.

The '''resolution''' of the bitmap image used to perform the trace is dependent upon your '''current zoom level''' -- the more zoomed in to an area that you are, the higher the resolution of the bitmap-based flood fill. So, if you are got a fill that is too imprecise, has rough corners, or don't go into small nooks and appendices where it is supposed to go, just undo, zoom in closer and repeat filling from the same point. Conversely, if the fill leaks out through a small gap, zoom out to make the gap less visible and fill again (or use the auto gap closing parameter, see below).

===Style===

Like all object-creating tools, the Paint Bucket may use the '''last-set style''' for the objects it creates (this is the default), or it can use its own '''fixed style'''. You can switch between these modes on this tool's page in Inkscape Preferences (Ctrl+Shift+P). As in all other tools, the '''style swatch''' on the far right of the Controls bar shows the style that will be used for the next fill object you create.

===Controls===

In the tool's '''Controls bar''':

* Paint Bucket's perceptual fill can use either all visible colors or specific color channels. Using the '''Fill by''' drop-down list, you can restrict the fill algorithm to one the following channels:
** Red
** Green
** Blue
** Hue
** Saturation
** Lightness
** Alpha

* The '''Threshold''' (in per cent units) controls how large must be color difference at a point (compared to the initial click point) to stop the fill. Zero tolerance means only the area of strictly the same color will be filled; the larger the tolerance, the easier it will be for the fill to leak into adjacent different-color areas. The default value is 10%.

* Using the '''Grow/shrink by''' parameter, you can control the amount of inset/outset to be applied to the created fill path. Setting a positive outset causes fill paths to be larger than the filled bitmap area (good for eliminating anti-aliasing errors), while setting a negative outset causes the path to be smaller. This works much the same as the Outset and Inset path commands, except it's done automatically after every fill.

* With the '''Close gaps''' parameter, you can make the Paint Bucket tool ignore any gaps in the area boundaries that would normally cause the fill to spill out of the desired area. There are four settings to auto gap:
** None
** Small (close gaps up to 2 pixels in size)
** Medium (4 pixels)
** Large (6 pixels)
:Note that setting this parameter to other than None may slow down noticeably the filling of large areas.

===Shortcuts===

The tool's '''shortcuts''' are:

* '''Single click''' performs filling from the click point.

* '''Shift+click''' performs filling from the click point and then unions the resulting path with the selected path. This way, if your first attempt did not fill in all of the desired area, you can Shift+click the remaining corner to fill it in separately and combine the result with the result of the previous fill.

* '''Ctrl+click''' on an object simply changes that object's fill to the current fill color of the tool, and '''Shift+Ctrl+click''' changes the stroke to the current stroke color.

* '''Click and drag''' performs filling from '''all of the points''' that you pass while dragging (you will see your path visualized by a red line). From each point, the fill spreads to the neighbors with the colors similar to that point - in other words, it's like clicking with this tool at each point of the drag path and unioning the results. This lets you easily fill an area occupied by a gradient or blur - just drag from the darkest to the lightest points in the area you want to fill.

* '''Alt+click and drag''' works similarly to simple drag, except from each point of the drag path, the fill spreads to the neighbors (if any) with the colors similar to the ''initial point'' (the point where you started the drag). This lets you fill a series of similarly-colored yet separated areas (for example, multiple cells in a cartoon) by starting the drag in one of those areas, and alt+dragging the tool through all the other areas.

==Tweak tool==

The Tweak tool is an exciting new way to edit drawings which largely blurs the
distinction between vector and raster editing. Instead of meticulously selecting some
objects and then performing an action on the selection, you can now select ''all''
objects (or all objects you are interested in) and apply the Tweak tool's brush to
smoothly and naturally change the shape or style of only those objects (or parts
thereof) ''that the brush touches''.

The area of the tool's action - its ''brush'' - is marked by an orange-colored circular
outline that moves with your mouse cursor. However, that area actually has no sharp
boundaries; the power of the tool's action falls off gradually, following a smooth
bell-shaped profile. This makes the tool act softly and smoothly.

The tool will work on any number of selected objects; for example, you can select all
(Ctrl+A) and "smear" your entire drawing by Push mode or paint it by Color Paint
mode. You can also apply it to groups of objects; it will go into groups and act on
individual objects inside groups. If you're trying to use it without anything selected,
it will remind you by a statusbar message to select some objects.

===Width===

The width of the tool's brush, in the range from 1 to 100, can be changed by the
'''Width''' control in the tool's controls bar above the canvas. You can also change
width by '''Left''' and '''Right''' arrow keys (same as in the Calligraphy tool) at any
time (including during action) as well as '''Home''' and '''End'''. Also, as in Calligraphy
tool, the visible width of the brush is independent of zoom; simply zooming in or out is
often easier than adjusting the width if you want to cover a smaller or larger area of
the drawing.

===Force===

The next control is '''Force''' which adjusts the power of the action, also in the
range from 1 to 100. You can also change width by '''Up''' and '''Down''' arrow keys at
any time (including during action).

If you have a pressure-sensitive tablet and your "Use pressure" button on the right-hand
end of the controls bar is on, then the force will also depend on how hard you actually
press your pen into your tablet, changing in the range from zero to whatever you set in
the Force control. If all you have is a mouse, then the force will be constant but still
settable by the Force control.

===Path editing modes===

The Tweak tool has a number of '''modes''', selectable by toggle buttons in the tool's
Controls bar and by keyboard shortcuts. Some of these modes change the shapes of
paths while others affect the colors of objects. All these modes share the Width and
Force controls but otherwise are quite different. Let's look at the path editing modes
first.

Unlike the Node tool, to edit paths with the Tweak tool you don't need to worry about
where the nodes of a path are and how to manipulate them. You just apply the tool's
brush to any point, and the selected paths at that point will reshape smoothly and
naturally - as if made of soft jelly - regardless of where its nodes lie. If applied to
a shape or text object, the tool converts them to paths automatically.

While not very useful for technical drawings, tweaking paths will be indispensable for
artistic uses of Inkscape - cartoons, drawings, sketches, anime, etc. This new
functionality is somewhat similar to the tools such as "Pucker" and "Bloat" in the
latest versions of Adobe Illustrator.

There are currently six path editing modes in the Tweak tool: '''Push''', '''Shrink''',
'''Grow''', '''Attract''', '''Repel''', and '''Roughen'''.

* This default mode of the tool, '''Push''', simply displaces the part of the path under the cursor in the direction of the drag. The path behaves like soft jelly, bending and bulging smoothly and naturally. It's an easy way to produce various irregular, lifelike, handmade-looking shapes starting from something as simple as an ellipse or a calligraphic stroke. For parallel-stroke hatching (engraving) done in the Calligraphy tool, pushing is an easy way to bend, pinch, or curve the entire hatching uniformly.

* The '''Shrink''' and '''Grow''' are two opposite modes that move each point of a path in a direction perpendicular to the path's surface at the point, either inwards (Shrink) or outwards (Grow). This is similar to the Inset and Outset commands, except that the Tweak tool can act on a part of a path instead of the whole path.

:For example, the visible lightness/darkness of an engraving hatching may not exactly correspond to your artistic intention. Also, the ends of Calligraphy pen strokes are often far from ideal - they may be too blunt or have unsightly bends or blobs. This is where the Tweak tool may help. Select all the strokes in a hatching pattern and apply a light Shrink action where you want the lines to become thinner (and the hatching to become lighter), up until total disappearance. If you press hard, shrinking works as an eraser, so you can easily clean the strokes' ends to make them thin, sharp, and uniform. Conversely, applying Grow makes strokes wider (i.e. the hatching becomes darker).

:Of course, shrinking and growing are useful not only for calligraphic strokes. Same as with Push, with Shrink and Grow you can '''sculpt''' any path, spawning smooth treacle-like appendages with Inflating and carving holes with Melting. Unlike the "node sculpting" mode in the Node tool, however, this does not require adding new nodes to the shape.

* The '''Attract''' and '''Repel''' modes work by moving each affected point on a path towards (Attract) or from (Repel) the cursor point. In some cases this may look similar to Shrink and Grow, but the difference is that shrinking/growing moves paths perpendicularly to the path in each point, whereas attracting/repelling moves them to or from the cursor regardless of the path shape. These modes are similar to the Pinch effect in ; you can use them for various central-symmetric distortions in parts of your paths.

* The '''Roughen''' mode does exactly this: roughens the edge of the path without changing its overall shape. Slight roughening simply makes the edge crooked and uneven; strong roughening tears and explodes the edge into random blobs and splotches. Note that this operation, especially with high Fidelity, adds a lot of nodes which increases the size of your SVG document and may slow down Inkscape considerably. In particular, pushing/melting/inflating of a roughened path becomes much slower and more difficult, so it's recommended to finalize the overall shape of a path first and roughen it, if necessary, only as the final step.

See the screenshot at [http://inkscape.org/screenshots/gallery/inkscape-0.46-tweak-path.png] for a few examples of using the path editing modes of the Tweak tool.

====Fidelity====

Any tweaking of a path slightly distorts the entire path, including even those parts
that you didn't touch. These distortions are similar to those that a Simplify command
produces. The '''Fidelity''' value (also in the range from 1 to 100, default is 50)
allows you to control the amount of these distortions. With a higher fidelity, the
distortions are less noticeable, but the path may end up having a lot of nodes which
inflates up the SVG size and slows down Inkscape.

The best value of Fidelity depends on the nature of your artwork. If you're sculpting an
amorphous blob, you can do with low fidelity of about 20. If, however, you are pushing
or inflating a text string (as a single path) and want the letters outside the distorted
area to remain crisp and clean, you will need to raise fidelity to 80 or more.

====Known problems====

Known problems with the path editing modes in Tweak tool:

# they don't work on open paths (an open path becomes closed if you tweak it);
# they are rather slow;
# they quickly eat memory; and
# they are sometimes buggy - thin calligraphic strokes may suddenly disappear or change their shape drastically as you're melting or inflating them.

For (4), it helps to increase Fidelity. Also, you can undo the bad change and try again with less pressure on the pen - if you do your thinning in several light touches instead of one heavy press, usually you will be able to get the desired result without the buggy behavior.

Also, sometimes after roughening, further tweaking of a path becomes impossible with this diagnostic:

WARNING **: Shape error in ConvertToShape: directedEulerian(a) == false

All these problems stem from the livarot library that we use for geometric manipulation of paths. Fortunately, livarot is scheduled for replacement by lib2geom, a new library now in development, so hopefully these issues will be addressed then.

===Color editing modes===

The '''Color Paint''' and '''Color Jitter''' modes, unlike the path editing modes,
change the colors of objects instead of their shapes. Yet they share enough common
features with the path editing modes to be part of the same tool: These modes also use
a circular soft-edged brush controlled by the Width and Force parameters on the Controls
bar and affected by the pen pressure (if you have a pressure-sensitive tablet).

* '''Color Paint''' applies the style of the tool to the selected objects under the brush. The style of the tool is visible in the style swatch at the rightmost end of the tool's control bar; it can be changed by clicking on the color palette or by any other style assignment command, such as Fill and Stroke dialog. ('''Note''': unlike all other tools, in Tweak tool in Color Paint mode you cannot assign style directly to selected objects; any style-setting command changes the tool's style instead.)

:The fill from the tool's style applies to the fills of the painted objects, and the stroke applies to the strokes. If the tool's style has no fill or no stroke, it won't affect fills or strokes, correspondingly. For example, if you want to color the fills of objects blue but leave their strokes untouched, assign blue fill to the tool's style (just click blue on the palette) but set its stroke to None (middle-click the Stroke swatch in the statusbar). Similarly, master opacity in the tool's style affects master opacities of the touched objects (if the O channel is on, see below).

:This mode allows you to literally paint over objects, shifting their colors towards the target style of the tool. For example, if you paint with yellow fill over a blue-filled object, the object will become greenish blue, then green, then yellowish green, and end up being exactly the yellow color you're painting with. This speed of this gradual transition depends on both Force parameter and pen pressure; also, objects touched by the periphery of the brush are less affected than those hit by the brush center. Overall, using this tool is very similar to a soft brush in a raster editor such as Gimp or Photoshop.

* '''Color Jitter''' mode does not apply any color, but instead jitters (randomizes) the colors of the objects it touches. The force of the action determines how strong is the randomization, i.e. how far the colors deviate from the original values. This mode does not use the tool's style.

Both modes work on flat fills and gradients; for gradients, the tool takes into account not only the position of the entire object with gradient, but also the position of each gradient stop relative to the brush. This means that, for example, you can change the blue color only in an object filled with blue-red gradient simply by painting over its blue end with a brush small enough to not touch the red. (Note that color tweaking does not create gradients on objects that used flat color before, but only adjusts existing gradients in the drawing.)

See the screenshot at [http://inkscape.org/screenshots/gallery/inkscape-0.46-tweak-color.png] for a few examples of using the color editing modes of the Tweak tool.

====Channels====

Color Paint and Color Jitter honor the '''Channels''' control. This control comprises
the four buttons: '''H''', '''S''', '''L''', and '''O''', which allow you to turn on and off
the tool's action on the object's hue, saturation, lightness, and opacity,
correspondingly. For example, if you want to raise the saturation of some part of your
drawing without changing the hue, select some maximum-saturation color (e.g. pure red)
and turn off all Channels buttons except S. Similarly, you can replace the hues without
affecting saturation or lightness (only H pressed), or lighten/darken all colors without
changing their hues and saturation (only L pressed). Pressing O allows you to apply the
master opacity from the tool's style to the master opacity of objects (but not fill or
stroke opacity).

====Usage notes====

Color painting with Tweak tool is similar, but not exactly analogous to bitmap
painting. Even though the tool itself works as a soft brush, it still applies its color
to vector objects, which behave as vector objects usually do. For example, if you want
to change the tint of the face in your drawing, and if a hand in the drawing is part of
the same object as the face, that hand will change its tint too even if it's located far
from the point you are painting. (We foresee a "fracture" command in one of the next
versions of Inkscape which will help you turn a monolithic object into a mosaic of small
fragments that will be then easy to paint with Tweak tool.) Still, even with this
limitation, color painting is a novel way of dealing with vector drawings which allows
you to quickly and intuitively make adjustments which would be awkward and slow with
traditional approach.

Drawings containing patterns or scatterings of small independent objects are best suited
for color painting with Tweak tool. Examples include:

* freehand drawings with Calligraphy pen, consisting of many separate strokes;

* gradient meshes imported from Adobe Illustrator files (Inkscape renders these meshes as lattices of small polygons; while there's no direct support for gradient meshes in Inkscape yet, color painting on such lattices is almost as good);

* text converted to paths and with Break Apart command applied so that each letter is a separate path;

* patterns made with the Tile Clones command; note that you need to unset the fill and/or stroke on the original object and use the Color tab to assign some initial color to the clones - this will make them paintable with the Tweak tool without unlinking.

Moreover, color tweaking can be useful for compositions with a few objects or even for
single objects. Unlike all other color selection methods, painting with the Tweak tool
implements the ''color mixing'' metaphor which is much more familiar to traditional
artists than RGB sliders or even the color wheel. For example, start with a rectagle of
pure blue color; then, pick different colors by Color Paint and apply light touches with
minimum Force and minimum pen pressure: add a little green, a little brown, a little
yellow, etc. until you have the exact hue you need. Similarly, you can whiten or blacken
any hue by admixing white or black.

You can also use color tweaking to add a tint, darken/lighten, saturate/desaturate, or
color jitter your entire drawing. Just select all in all layers, zoom out, choose a
large brush width so it covers all of the drawing, and apply a little color tweaking
(with minimum Force) that will therefore affect all visible objects.

===Keyboard shortcuts===

* '''W''', '''Shift+F2''': switch to the Tweak tool

* '''Shift+P''': switch to the Push mode

* '''Shift+S''': switch to the Shrink mode

* '''Shift+G''': switch to the Grow mode

* '''Shift+A''': switch to the Attract mode

* '''Shift+E''': switch to the Repel mode

* '''Shift+R''': switch to the Roughen mode

* '''Shift+C''': switch to the Color Paint mode

* '''Shift+J''': switch to the Color Jitter mode

* '''Left, Right, Home, End''': change width

* '''Up, Down''': change force

* '''mouse drag''': act on selected path in the current mode

* '''Ctrl+mouse drag''': temporarily switch to Shrink (while Ctrl is down)

* '''Shift+Ctrl+mouse drag''': temporarily switch to Grow (while Shift+Ctrl is down)

==3D Box tool==

Inkscape is a two-dimensional drawing tool. However, very often it is used to draw three-dimensional objects. The new '''3D box tool''' helps you create such 3D drawings by automating the most common operation: creating a three-dimensional box in a given perspective. The tool automatically ensures that all sides of the box lie on the corresponding perspective lines. We're not going to compete with Blender - but even simple things can go a long way.

Currently in the 3D box tool you can:

* draw a 3D box by dragging on canvas (use Shift+dragging without releasing the mouse button to extrude in z direction)

* adjust any of its 3 dimensions by handles

* move a 3D box "in perspective" by dragging its center; without modifiers, movement occurs within the XY-plane (press Ctrl to constrain the movement to the directions of the coordinate axes or diagonals), with Shift the box moves parallel to the Z-axis

* adjust the vanishing points of a perspective by dragging them across the canvas (see below) or toggling their states; all boxes sharing this perspective are transformed accordingly

In SVG, a 3D box is represented as a '''group''' (svg:g) with a special extension attribute (in inkscape namespace); this group contains the 6 quadrilateral '''paths''' representing the sides of the box. Only the 3D box tool treats this object as a box; for all other tools it is just a group, so you can select any of the paths by Ctrl+click, apply any style to it, delete it, etc. You can of course transform the entire box or any face in it using Selector or Node tools.

When several boxes are selected, all vanishing points of their associated perspectives are shown on the canvas. If vanishing points of different perspectives coincide, they are combined in a single "dragger". Moving this dragger moves all the vanishing points simultaneously and transforms the associated boxes accordingly. Note that some non-selected boxes may also be reshaped if their perspectives share the same vanishing point. Pressing Shift while moving the dragger can be used to only transform the selected boxes, separating their perspectives from the non-selected ones'. On the other hand, when a vanishing point being dragged comes close enough to another one, both snap together and are combined in a single dragger.

===Keyboard shortcuts===

* '''X''', '''Alt+F4''': switch to the 3D box tool

* The various kinds of parentheses, namely '''[''' ''']''', '''(''' ''')''', '''{''' '''}''', can be used to rotate infinite (i.e., parallel) perspective lines in X-, Y-, and Z-direction, respectively. Closing parentheses rotate clockwise and opening parentheses rotate counterclockwise. The angle of rotation is taken from the preferences. Pressing '''Alt''' reduces the amount of rotation to 1 screen pixel.

* When the 3D box tool is active, '''Shift+X''', '''Shift+Y''', and '''Shift+Z''' toggle perspective lines in the corresponding direction between "converging" and "parallel".

[max]

==Gradient Tool==
===Selecting multiple stops===
'''More than one gradient stop''' can be selected at a time. Shortcuts for working with multiple stop selections are generally modeled on the Node tool.
* Add a stop to the selected stops by '''Shift+click'''.
* Press '''Ctrl+A''' to select all stops in the selected objects.
* '''Shift+drag''' around stops to add them to selection.
Multiple selected stops:
*Can be moved together by '''mouse drag''' or by '''arrow keys'''. For example, creating a linear gradient, then press Ctrl+A to select all stops and use arrow keys to move the entire gradient as a whole.
*Can be deleted at the same time by pressing '''Del'''.
An always up-to-date description of the current handle selection is provided in the statusbar in the Gradient tool, including the number of selected handles (and the type of the single selected handle), as well as the total number of handles and selected objects.

===Editing intermediate stops===
'''Intermediate stops''' in gradients can be added, deleted, and edited on canvas (previously this was only possible in the Gradient Editor dialog).
*Stops can be added by '''double clicking''' or by '''Ctrl+Alt+Click''' on the gradient line. Also, you can '''drag-and-drop''' a color from the palette onto the gradient line to create a new stop with this color. Dropping a color on an existing stop changes the color of that stop.
*When two or more adjacent stops are selected, pressing '''Ins''' adds stops in the middles of all selected stop intervals.
*Intermediate stops can be '''mousedrag'''ged or moved by '''arrow keys''' along their gradient line, within the limits of the adjacent unselected stops (or end handles).
:*Dragging with '''Ctrl''' moves the selected stops snapping them to 1/10 fractions of the available range.
:*Dragging with '''Alt''' moves the selected stops depending on how close each one is to the stop being dragged, using a smooth bell-like curve similar to the node sculpting feature in Node tool. This makes it easy to approximate different gradient profiles; for example, if you have a two-stop gradient that you want to shape according to a curve profile, select both ends of the gradient, press '''Ins''' a few times to add a number of intermediate nodes, then '''Alt+drag''' a node in the middle to smoothly profile the gradient.
*Stops can also be moved by '''arrow keys''' with all the regular modifiers ('''Shift''' for 10x movement, '''Alt''' for pixel-size movement at the current zoom, '''Shift+Alt''' for 10 pixels movement at the current zoom).
*Stops can be deleted by '''Ctrl+Alt+Click''' on a stop or by the '''Del''' key for all the selected stop(s).
:*When you delete an end stop, the nearest intermediate stop becomes the new end stop of the gradient (without moving - i.e., the gradient span becomes shorter).
:*When you delete an end stop and there are no intermediate stops, the object will be painted with a solid fill taken from the color & opacity of the remaining stop.
*Pressing '''Ctrl+L''' with some intermediate stops selected attempts to ''simplify'' the selected portion of the gradient, removing those stops that can be removed without too much change in the way the gradient looks. In particular, new stops created by double-clicking or pressing Ins initially do not change the appearance of the gradient, so if you press Ctrl+L, all redundant stops that weren't moved or repainted since creation will be deleted.

===Style of gradient stops===
*When you have one of the '''gradient handles selected''', its style (color and opacity) is reflected by the selected style indicator (left of the statusbar) and the Fill&Stroke dialog. Previously, opacity of a gradient handle was reflected as fill-opacity and stroke-opacity; now it is reflected as '''master opacity''' (the "O:" spinbutton in the selected style indicator, the "Master opacity" slider in Fill&Stroke). This makes it much easier to view and change opacity of gradient handles using only the selected style indicator in the statusbar.
:*When multiple gradient stops are selected, the selected style indicator (in the statusbar) displays and controls the averaged color and opacity of the selected stops.
*When one or more gradient stops are selected, using the Copy command ('''Ctrl+C''') copies to the clipboard the style (color and opacity) of the selected stop or the averaged style of several selected stops, not the entire object with gradient as before. This means you can now copy/paste style between stops: select the source stop(s), copy, select the destination stop(s), paste style ('''Ctrl+Shift+V'''). With several selected stops, this also allows you to easily average their colors and opacities by copying them and pasting the style back onto them. (After that, redundant gradient stops can be removed by simplification with '''Ctrl+L''').
*If the selected object(s) have gradient in fill or stroke, the '''selected style indicator''' in the bottom-left corner of the editing window now displays a '''live gradient preview''' prefixed by '''R''' or '''L''' to indicate Radial or Linear gradients (instead of displaying "L Gradient" or "R Gradient" text labels as before). Also, this and other similar widget now use italic font face to indicate None and bold to indicate Unset.

===Automatic duplication of gradients===
When copy/pasting or duplicating an object with gradient, it now automatically gets a '''copy''' of the original gradient, so modifying it does not affect the source object's gradient anymore (before, you had to press the Duplicate button on the Gradient controls bar for this). The Duplicate button is therefore removed.

However, to accommodate the needs of users who have relied on sharing the same gradient definition across objects, this behavior can be optionally suppressed. The '''Prevent sharing of gradient definitions''' checkbox on the Misc tab of Inkscape Preferences is by default checked; if you uncheck it, Inkscape does not automatically copy gradient definitions for new objects, which means that copy/pasting, duplicating, pasting style, and explicit assignment of a gradient to an object via the Gradient tool controls results in a shared gradient definition, so that changing the colors or mid-stop positions of the gradient on one object (but not changing the coordinates of the end handles) affects all other objects that share the same definition.

==Calligraphy tool: Engraver's Toolbox ==

Several new features were added to the Calligraphic pen to make
Inkscape capable of the ancient art of '''line
engraving'''. Traditional engraving is a very labour-intensive
process, and while for a long time it was the only practical way
of reproducing lifelike images in black-and-white print, about a
century ago it was almost completely displaced by automatic
halftone screens. However, line engravings have their
characteristic charm, and there's no reason not to try to
resurrect this art form with the help of Inkscape.

A brief visual guide to the new functionality can be seen on
these screenshots:

http://inkscape.org/screenshots/gallery/inkscape-0.46-engraving1.png

http://inkscape.org/screenshots/gallery/inkscape-0.46-engraving2.png

===Tracking a guide path with Ctrl===

One of the most common operations in line engraving is
'''hatching''' (or sometimes ''cross-hatching'' when several
hatching grids cross): filling a space with many parallel
straight or variously curved lines (usually of varying width to
represent a gradual shading). You could try to achieve a similar
effect with e.g. path interpolation (blending), but it is rather
cumbersome and limited; manual drawing of hatch lines, on the
other hand, is tedious and nearly impossible to do
uniformly. Now Inkscape provides "assisted hatching" by
'''tracking a guide path''', allowing you to hatch quickly and
uniformly and at the same time giving you sufficient manual
control over the process.

Here's how to do this. First, select the '''guide path''' that
you will track. It may be another calligraphic stroke, any path
or shape, or even a letter of a text object. Then switch to
Calligraphic pen, select the desired parameters (line width,
angle, fixation etc.) and, before starting to draw, press
Ctrl. You will see a gray '''track circle''' centered at your
mouse pointer and touching the closest point on the selected
guide path. (If you have no guide path selected, a statusbar
message will tell you to select it.)

Now move your mouse close to the guide path, so that the track
circle radius is equal to the desired spacing of your hatch
pattern, and start drawing along the guide path. At that moment,
the radius of the circle gets locked; now the circle slides
along the guide path - and the actual stroke is drawn by the
center of the tracking circle, ''not'' by your mouse point. As
a result, you are getting a smooth stroke going parallel to the
guide path and always at the same distance from it.

When the stroke is ready, release your mouse button (or lift
your tablet pen) but '''do not let go of the Ctrl key''' because
as long as you have it pressed, the tool remembers the hatch
spacing you set when you started drawing. Now, you have just
created a new stroke and, as usual with Inkscape tools, it gets
selected instead of what was selected before. In our case, this
means that the newly drawn stroke itself becomes the new guide
path. Next, you can draw a second stroke along the first one,
then a third one along the second, etc. Eventually you can fill
any desired space with uniform hatching.

Alternatively, if you uncheck "Select new path" in the Calligraphy tool preferences, newly created strokes will not be selected, so your original guide path will be kept selected. In this mode, Inkscape will increase the tracking distance after each created stroke so that you can create uniformly spaced hatching by tracking a single guide path.

The attachment to the guide path is not absolute. If you stray
your mouse pointer far enough from the guide path, you will be
able to tear it off (the track circle turns from green to red)
and move freely. This is intentional; this feature allows you,
for example, to continue drawing a stroke past the end of a
guide stroke, thus making your hatching cover a wider area than
the initial guide path. Special care is taken to make such
tearing off as smooth as possible and to suppress violent jerks,
but this is not always possible; the general advice is to not
try to hatch too fast. If jerking and unintended tearoffs still
bother you, try increasing the Mass parameter.

Also, special code is in place to prevent flipovers - accidental
jumps to the other side of the guide path. Brief flipovers are
suppressed, but if you intentionally go over to the other side
and stay there, eventually Inkscape will obey and your tracking
stroke will also flip over to follow you.

Tracking a guide also allows some slight feedback by gradually
changing the tracking distance in response to your drawing
behavior. Thus, if you're consistently trying to draw closer or
farther from the guide than the current tracking distance, the
distance will correspondingly decrease or increase, so you will
get a hatching that is slightly spacing in or out. (The effect
is very slight, however, so as not to become a nuisance.) Also,
note that since tracking follows the edge of the stroke, strokes
of varying width (such as those tracing background, see below)
will result in gradual bending of the hatching pattern as you
proceed.

===Tracing background by stroke width===

There is a new toggle button on the Calligraphy tool's controls
bar, '''Trace background'''. When on, the width of your pen
depends on the lightness of the background under the stroke in
each point, so that white translates into the minimum stoke
width (1) and black translates to the maximum (which is set by the
Width parameter). This can work alone or in combination with
pressure sensitivity, depending on whether the "Use pressure" button
is also toggled.

This feature allows you to not only hatch over an imported
bitmap image or any drawing, but to do so automatically
reproducing the highlights and shades of the background with
your strokes becoming lighter and heavier as needed.

===Misc features===

* For consistency with other drawing tools, drawing with '''Shift''' in Calligraphy tool automatically '''unions''' the newly created stroke with whatever paths were selected (and selects the result). Thus, you can do a series of overlapping Shift+strokes to create one unioned path object instead of separate objects as before.

* To facilitate changing the Width parameter, the Home/End keys in Calligraphy tool switch you to the minimum (1) and maximum (100) width, correspondingly. (This is in addition to the Left/Right arrow keys that change Width by 1; remember also that you can press Alt+X, type any width, and press Enter.)

==Selector==

* A new selection mode is available: '''selecting by touch'''. In this mode, you draw a freehand path across the objects; when you release mouse button, all objects that are touched by this path get selected. This mode is very convenient in situations where you need to select objects so intermingled that selecting them by the rectangular rubberband is too difficult and so numerous that click-selecting them one by one is too tedious.

:To activate selecting by touch, whenever you are drawing a rubberband rectangle, just press '''Alt''' to switch it to the touch mode. The rectangle will disappear and a red ''touch path'' will be shown instead. When dragging from an empty space, you can press '''Alt''' first and then start to drag to get the touch mode (note that your selection must be empty, otherwise Alt+dragging will move the selected objects instead). To start a touch selection from a point over an object, or to add to existing selection by touching, press '''Shift+Alt''' and then start to drag.

* Previously, the only way to switch selection from scale mode to rotate mode or back was to click on it, which was rather inconvenient when the selected object is in a group or under other objects. Now you can switch modes with keyboard as well by pressing '''Shift+S''' in Selector tool.

* Draging the '''scale handles with Alt''' now scales selection by an integer factor, i.e. up to '''2''', '''3''', '''4''', etc. times the original size or down to '''1/2'''. '''1/3''', '''1/4''', etc. of the original size (in any of the two dimensions independently). This way you can, for example, mirror any object around one of the edges of its box. (This replaces the old and rarely used "slow" scaling mode with Alt.)

* '''Horizontal/vertical flipping''': So far, flipping a selection made it flip within its bounding box, so that the latter remained fixed. In the move/scale mode of the selector tool, this behaviour remains unchanged. However, in rotate/shear mode flipping now happens about an (imaginary) vertical/horizontal axis through the rotation center. This is very handy, since the latter can be freely dragged around and snaps to all kinds of objects if desired.

* '''Objects to Marker''' was added to the objects menu, which converts the current selection to a marker, with the center point of the selection being set to the center of the marker.

==Node tool==

* If any of the nodes in the currently selected path is mouseovered, then horizontal/vertical flipping ('H' and 'V' keys), stepwise rotation ('[' and ']' keys) and scaling ('<' and '>' keys) now all use this specific node as center/axis. If there is no mouseovered node, the center of the bounding box is used instead (as is currently the case unconditionally). Nodes that are covered by one of their handles are also detected as mouseovered.

* [helper path display - johan]
** this is deactivated for normal paths now. only paths with LPE applied will show it. should there be a button to turn it on for normal paths aswell?

* As a long-requested feature, two entry fields are added to the toolbar which allow precise editing of the coordinates of selected nodes.

==Rectangle Tool==

* '''Ctrl+dragging''' now also allows the creation of rectangles with sides constrained to the '''golden ratio''' (approx. 1 : 1.618034), not only integer ratios.

==Ellipse Tool==

* It is now easy to create ellipses/circles passing through particular points. Normally, the starting and ending point of the mouse drag mark the corners of the '''bounding box'''. Now the '''Alt''' modifier can be used to enlarge the ellipse so that its '''circumference''' passes through these two points.

* '''Ctrl+Alt+drag''' is an exception from this rule. It creates a perfect circle whose diameter is defined by the starting and ending point of the drag.

==Text tool==
* [text toolbar - deadchip?]
* If text contains a tref element, the text tool's behavior may not be as expected. Please see [[#The tref Element]]

==Dropper Tool==

The shortcut 'D' is now used to toggle (not just switch to) the dropper tool - much like space is used to toggle the selector tool. That is, pressing 'D' a second time switches back to the tool used before.

=SVG features=

==The tref element==

Inkscape can now correctly open files with '''tref''' elements, and new tref elements can be created manually in the XML editor.

The actual character data contained in a text element can either be embedded directly, or it can be the character content of an element referenced by a '''tref'''.

While the textual content from the referenced element will be stripped of any markup before being used by the '''tref''', the '''tref''' element can itself have the same attributes as a '''tspan'''. In fact, when rendered, it is as though the '''tref''' element is replaced by a '''tspan''' with the same attributes, and the referenced character data is embedded in that '''tspan'''.

The property '''xlink:href''' is used to refer to another element whose character data will be used. Any element can be referred to except an ancestor of the '''tref'''. When any of the text contained in the referred element changes, the '''tref''' will immediately be updated to display the new data.

Existing tref elements can be converted into tspan elements with '''Edit > Clone > Unlink Clone'''. If more than one '''tref''' is contained within a selection, all '''trefs''' will be converted into '''tspans'''. All attributes applied to the '''tref''' will be retained in the new '''tspan'''.

A '''tref''' element can be mixed with any other elements allowed to be contained by a text element.

The cloned character data rendered by the '''tref''' may not be edited, but any characters surrounding it can be changed. Styles cannot be applied to a subset of the cloned characters, but if all are selected, a style can be applied to the '''tref'''.

==SVG filters==

===New filters supported===

* The '''feBlend''' filter primitive gives us image blending modes, like in many image manipulation programs. These modes are screen, multiply, darken and lighten. There's a caveat, though: when blending an object against an semi-transparent background, the background will be accumulated twice, resulting in thicker objects under the bounding box of blended object. This is a limitation of current version of SVG format, not a bug in Inkscape.

* The '''feColorMatrix''' filter primitive applies a matrix transformation to colour of each rendered pixel. This allows for effects like turning object to grayscale, modifying colour saturation and changing colour hue.

* The '''feComposite''' filter primitive composites two images using one of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter-Duff Porter-Duff blending modes] (described in paper Compositing Digital Images by T. Porter and T. Duff, published in SIGGRAPH '84 Conference Proceedings, Association for Computing Machinery, Volume 18, Number 3, July 1984) or the aritmetic mode described in SVG standard. Porter-Duff blending modes are essentially logical operations between the images. For example, xor mode shows the areas, where either one of the objects is, but not the areas where both of the objects are. Arithmetic mode lets you specify coefficients k1-k4 for blending equation (result colour) = k1 * (first input colour) * (second input colour) + k2 * (first input colour) + k3 * (second input colour) + k4.

* The '''feConvolveMatrix''' lets you specify a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolution Convolution] to be applied on the image. Common effects created using convolution matrices are blur, sharpening, embossing and edge detection. There's a fairly good explanation and some example matrices at [http://www.gamedev.net/reference/programming/features/imageproc/page2.asp www.gamedev.net/reference/programming/features/imageproc/page2.asp]. Note that while gaussian blur can be created using this filter primitive, the special gaussian blur primitive is faster and resolution-independent.

* Filter primitives '''feDiffuseLighting''' and '''feSpecularLighting''' create lighting maps for the object in input image. SVG doesn't have concept of third dimension, so these filters use alpha channel of input image as a height map: the more opaque given point in input image is, the nearer spectator it is considered to be. There exists an example for using these in Inkscape distribution, in share/examples/lighting_effects.svg or [http://inkscape.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/*checkout*/inkscape/inkscape/trunk/share/examples/lighting_effects.svg?revision=15523 in SVN]

* The '''feDisplacementMap''' filter primitive displaces the pixels in the first input using the second input as a displacement map, that shows from how far the pixel should come from. Classical examples are whirl and pinch effects, that can be found in most image manipulation programs and even in some screensavers, where this kind off effect is moving around screen, twisting desktop beneath it.

* The '''feFlood''' filter primitive fills its region with a given color and opacity. It can be used as an auxiliary tool, usualy in combination with other filter primitives, in order to facilitate some common color handling operations.



* The '''feMerge''' filter primitive composites several temporary images inside the filter primitive to a single image. It uses normal alpha compositing for this. This is equivalent to using several feBlend primitives in 'normal' mode or several feComposite primitives in 'over' -mode.

* The '''feMorphology''' filter primitive provides erode and dilate effects, that are common in image manipulation programs. With erode, darker and more transparent areas spread to lighter and more opaque areas, whereas with dilate lighter and more opaque areas spread to darker and more transparent areas. For single-colour objects, this basically means, erode makes the object thinner and dilate makes it thicker.

* The '''feOffset''' filter primitive offsets the image by an user-defined amount. For example, this is useful for drop shadows, where the shadow is in a slightly different position than the actual object.

* The '''feTurbulence''' filter primitive renders [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perlin_noise Perlin noise]. This kind of noise is useful in simulating several nature phenomena like clouds, fire and smoke and in generating complex textures like marble or granite.

See also wiki page [[Filter Effects]] for more info on filters in Inkscape in general.

===Filters UI===

* New dialog for creating and modifying filter effects ('''Object>Filter Effects...''')
* The list at the left of the dialog displays all filters currently in the document.
** New filters can be added with the '''Add''' button beneath the list
** Right-clicking a filter for the pop-up menu allows duplicating or removing a filter.
** Double-clicking a filter will apply it to all selected objects
** A black dot is placed next to whatever filter is applied to the selected objects. If more than one filter is in use by selected objects, an unfilled dot is used instead.
* The second list, at the left of the dialog, displays the '''filter primitives''' that are contained within the currently-selected filter.
** New primitives can be added by selecting the primitive type from the combo box beneath the list, and then pressing the '''Add''' button.
** Right-clicking a primitive for the pop-up menu allows duplicating or removing a primitive.
** Primitives can be rearranged by clicking and dragging any filter in the list.
** When a filter is selected, the '''Settings''' group at the bottom of the dialog will change to display the attributes available for that primitive. Changing a setting results in an immediate update to the document.
** The "in" and "in2" attributes for filters that support them are not shown in the '''Settings''' group. These input connections are displayed graphically in the list, under the '''Connections''' column.
*** Inputs for a particular filter are displayed as triangles. Depending on the primitive type, there may be one or two inputs (or more for Merge primitives.) Connections can be created by clicking on a triangle and dragging.
*** There are six standard input types that can be used for any primitive input; Source Graphic, Source Alpha, Background Image, Background Alpha, Fill Paint, and Stroke Paint. These are displayed vertically on the far right of the list. Click and drag from an input triangle to one of the standard inputs to connect them.
*** Primitives can also be connected to other primitives by clicking an input triangle and dragging upwards to another primitive. A primitive can only be connected to one higher up the list.
*** Single-clicking on an input triangle will unset it, returning it to the default. If it is on a Merge primitive, the input will be deleted.
*** Merge inputs have an empty input at the end. Dragging a connection from this input will add a new input to the primitive.

=Live Path Effects (LPE)=

'''Live path effects''' (not to be confused with extension effects or SVG filters) are a new way to non-destructively modify path and shape objects. Path effects affect the path data of an object but not its style. The original path is preserved and can be edited directly on-canvas, and the path effect applied to it will be updated live.

In this version, we include several path effects that are analogous to the corresponding extension effects (such as Path along Path effect and Pattern along Path that replaces the extension of the same name). The most important advantage of path effects is that they are, indeed, live - you can still edit the original path and the effect will update in real time (unlike the extension effects which were one-time one-way transformations). In the future, we plan to reimplement most if not all of path-changing extensions as live path effects.

Live path effects were developed by Johan Engelen as part of the GSoC 2007.

==Details about operation==
The following schematic tries to explain how LPE work.

original style ------------> output style
original path --> LPE --> output path
^
|
parameters

The original style and path are from the path that the effect is applied on. The output is what is visible on screen. What is very important to notice is that output style equals original style.

The parameters can be paths, numbers, points, text, in principle anything.

==Applying effects==
Path effects are applied through the Path Effects dialog (opened from the Path menu, or by pressing Ctrl+Shift+7. This dialog is also used for controlling the effect's parameters and for removing effects.

When a path with a path effect applied is selected, the statusbar description mentions that, for example "'''Path''' (4 nodes, path effect)".

There is a special Paste Path Effect command (Ctrl+7) that can be used to copy effects from one path to another.

==Editing effect parameters==
When switching to the node edit tool (F2), the original path can be edited. The original path is shown as a red helper path. Normal path operations, like simplify, still work.

Some parameters of effects can be edited on-canvas. For example, path parameters can be node-edited, by pressing the "edit on-canvas" button in the Path Effects dialog. Press "7" to cycle through the different on-canvas editable parameters. This way, one can edit the parameters without opening the Path Effects dialog. The statusbar tells the name of the parameters that is currently being shown.

==Available effects==

===Path along path===
The Path along Path effect can curve a path along another path. When this effect is applied to a path, it can be bend along another path (called ''bend path''). With the node edit tool, both the original path and the bend path can be changed on-canvas and the result is updated live. This provides a direct equivalent of "vector brushes" or "skeletal strokes" features in other vector editors.

In the effect's control panel in the Path Effects dialog, you can select how many copies of the original path are put along the bend path (either '''single''' or '''repeated''') and whether it is '''stretched''' to fill the bend path. In this dialog you'll also find a button to edit the bend path on-canvas and a button to '''paste''' a new bend path from clipboard. A possible workflow is this: you select and copy the new bend path to the clipboard, then select the path you want to bend, apply the Path along path effect, and paste the bend path with the paste button next to 'bend path'.

Example file: live-path-effects-pathalongpath.svg

===Pattern along path===
The Pattern along Path effect can curve a path along another path. When this effect is applied to path A (called ''skeleton''), another path B (called ''pattern'') can then be passed as a parameter. The result is that path B is bent along path A. With the node edit tool, path A can be changed on-canvas and the result is updated live. This provides a direct equivalent of "vector brushes" or "skeletal strokes" features in other vector editors.

In the effect's control panel in the Path Effects dialog, you can select how many copies of the pattern are attached (either '''single''' or '''repeated''') and whether the pattern is '''stretched''' to fill the skeleton path. You can also choose the pattern for the selected skeleton [either directly or] by '''pasting''' it from clipboard (that is, you select and copy to the clipboard the pattern, then select the skeleton, apply the Path along path effect, and paste the pattern). The '''Scale width''' parameter allows you to change the width of the pattern applied to the path.

Example file: live-path-effects-pathalongpath.svg

===Stitch Subcurves===
The Stitch Subcurves effect connects points from two subpaths of the path with straight line or curved segments, i.e. the stitches. It looks a lot like the Effect Lines from Expression 3. The result is also referred to as "String Art". For some examples of string art, see http://members.shaw.ca/jillbritton/string_art/jbstringart.htm.

The shape of the connecting paths can controlled by the stroke path parameter. This could be used to draw 'hair-shaped' connecting paths with sharp end-tips. Other controls include the number of paths, the variation in spacing between the connecting paths (clustering) and also whether the start and end points of the stitches should like exactly on the original subcurves or can stray randomly around them. Finally the width of the stroke path can be varied.

Note that this effect can only be applied to a path with two subpaths in it, hence 'subcurve' in the name. Use Path > Combine to create such a path from two separate paths.

Example file: live-path-effects-curvestitch.svg

Example file showing cooperation between Stitch Subcurves and Path along Path: live-path-effects-curvestitch-hair.svg

===Gears===
The Gears effect is a toy effect. It generates a chain of interconnected gears from the path that has the effect applied to it. The nodes of the path define the centers of the gears. The first 3 nodes are special; the first defines the start angle of the chain, the second defines the center of the first gear and the third knot specifies the radius of the first gear. That is, to create a chain of 2 gears, you will need a path with 4 nodes; for 3 gears, 5 nodes, and so on.

Example file: live-path-effects-gears.svg

==Development of new effects==
One of the goals of the Summer of Code project was to make it easy to create new effects. There is a framework that greatly simplifies effect implementation; very little code is needed to get the effect hooked into Inkscape. This leaves valuable time for the actual effect to be implemented. See the http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/MakingLivePathEffects wiki page for an explanation of how to get started with your own effect!

[johan]

=Extension effects=

== Live preview ==

* '''Live preview of effects''': Using the async behavior (see below), as soon as the parameters dialog for an effect is shown, the script is executed in the background and the screen updates as soon as it's finished. This can result is seemingly faster execution if no parameters are changed. If some parameters are adjusted, the script is restarted. This allows you to see immediately the effects of any parameter change without pressing the OK button on the effect's dialog.

* '''Spawn Glib API''': Scripting extension have been moved to the Glib spawn API to ensure that parameters and variables aren't interpreted by a shell. This also means that scripting extensions are executed in a separate process asynchronously allowing the GTK main loop to continue to execute.

* '''Progress dialog''': While an extension is working on a document, a small dialog is shown allowing the user to cancel the execution.

== New and improved effects ==

* The new '''Modify Path > Edge 3D''' extension creates black, grey and white paths around a shape, then blurs and clips them for a 3D effect.

* The new '''Render > Barcode''' extension creates a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcode barcode]. Supported types include EAN13, EAN8, UPC-A, UPC-E, UPC-5, Code39, Code39Ext, Code93, Code128, and RM4SCC.

* The new '''Render > Gear''' extension creates a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gear mechanical gear] given the number of teeth, the circular pitch (in px units), and the pressure angle.

* The new '''Render > [[Spirograph]]''' extension creates intricate mathematical curves akin to the classic [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirograph mechanical Spirograph toy] (see [http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/images/Spirograph_Samples.svg samples]).

* A group of new effects in the '''Text''' submenu performs various case conversions on selected text objects: converting to UPPERCASE, lowercase, Sentence case, Title Case, as well as flipping case (switching uppercase to lowercase and vice versa) and rANdoMiZInG cAse. If no texts are selected, the effect works on all texts in the document.

* Another effect in the Text submenu, '''Replace text''', performs search-and-replace on the selected text objects or (if nothing is selected) on all texts in the document. Searching is case sensitive. You can use this effect to globally delete all occurrences of some text fragment by replacing it with empty string. Conversely, if you search for an empty string and replace it with some string, this string will be inserted after every character of your text; for example, you can space out a text by replacing in it an empty string with a single space.

* A new effect, '''Replace color''' in the Color submenu, simply replaces one RRGGBB-specified color to another within selection or, if there's no selection, in the entire document. As with other effects in that submenu, the replacement affects fill, stroke, and gradient colors, but not colors of bitmaps.

*The new '''Color > Randomize''' extension allows you to change the color via hue, saturation and lightness check boxes. This is useful if you want to colorize lots of shapes at the same time.

*The '''Whirl''' extension uses the center of view as the center of whirl, so you don't have to enter the center coordinates numerically.

*The '''Render > Grid''' extension has got an extended range of grid spacings, from 0.1 to 1000 px.

*The '''Render > Function Plotter''' extension can now plot using polar coordinates.

*The '''Generate Template > Perfect-Bound Cover''' extension creates templates for wraparound covers for perfect-bound books using US size and paper weight measurements. This extension will resize the document to include the width, height, spine width, and bleed measurements that are provided to the extensions, so it should be the first operation done before designing.

== XSLT effects ==

* '''XSLT''' is now supported for input, output and effect extensions. This is used to support the XAML file format (both import and export) and the Adobe Illustrator SVG import which removes Adobe's stuff from SVG.

== ImageMagick effects ==

New raster operations available through the effects drop-down menu, powered by the ImageMagick library. For any of these effects to work, you need to have an '''image object selected''' in the drawing.

* '''Adaptive Threshold''' applies adaptive thresholding to the bitmap. Average color of rectangle provided by '''width''' and '''height''' used as threshold value. Use '''offset''' to apply a different threshold than the average.

* '''Add Noise''' adds random noise of certain types to the bitmap.

* '''Blur''' blurs the bitmap, using '''radius''' as the amount of blur. Higher radius means more blur. (Note that unlike the vector Gaussian blur of objects, this bitmap blur will not extend the edges of the image, so it may appear truncated at the edges.)

* '''Channel''' extracts the specified channel from the bitmap.

* '''Charcoal''' applies a charcoal drawing style to a bitmap. Radius controls the width (or detail) of charcoal strokes. Higher '''radius''' means lower detail. '''Sigma''': the higher it is, the less defined the charcoal is.

* '''Colorize''' overlays the bitmap with a given color at a given intensity.

* '''Contrast''' lightly enhances the contrast (difference between lights and darks) of a bitmap.

* '''Cycle Colormap''' cycles the colormap of a bitmap.

* '''Despeckle''' reduce the speckle noise in a bitmap.

* '''Edge''' hilights edges in a bitmap.

* '''Emboss''' embosses a bitmap, hilighting edges with 3D effect.

* '''Enhance''' enhance a bitmap, minimizing noise.

* '''Equalize''' equalizes a bitmap. Histogram equalization.

* '''Flop''' mirrors a bitmap, reflecting each scanline in the horizontal direction.

* '''Gaussian Blur''' blurs a bitmap, more strongly than regular blur.

* '''Implode''' sucks everything towards the center of the bitmap.

* '''Level''' scales values falling between the given '''Black Point''' to '''White Point''' range to the full color range.

* '''Level Channel''' acts the same way as level but for only one channel.

* '''Median Filter''' filters a a bitmap by replacing each pixel component with the median color in a circular neighborhood

* '''Modulate''' adjusts the percent hue, saturation, and brightness of a bitmap.

* '''Negate''' takes the inverse of a bitmap.

* '''Normalize''' normalizes a bitmap, expanding color range to the full possible range of color.

* '''Oil Paint''' stylizes a bitmap so that it appears to be painted with oils.

* '''Opacity''' modifies the opacity channel of a bitmap.

* '''Raise''' alters the lightness of the edges of a bitmap to create a raised appearance, much like a frame.

* '''Reduce Noise''' reduces noise in a bitmap by using a noise peak elimination filter.

* '''Shade''' shades a bitmap by simulating a distant light source

* '''Sharpen''' sharpens a bitmap.

* '''Solarize''' solarizes a bitmap, like overexposing photographic film.

* '''Spread''' randomly spread pixels in a bitmap within the radius of '''amount'''.

* '''Swirl''' swirls the bitmap around the center point.

* '''Threshold''' thresholds a bitmap.

* '''Unsharpmask''' sharpens a bitmap using an unsharp mask algorithm.

* '''Wave''' alters a bitmap along the sine wave.

These effects are part of the Google Summer of Code 2007, coded by Christopher Brown.

== Misc ==

* All Python effects are switched from the old and unmaintained PyXML library to the new powerful [http://codespeak.net/lxml/ lxml] library.

* A new parameter, '''precision''' is added to the parameter definitions in the [[MakingAnINX|inx file format]], allowing you to set the number of digits in that parameter's spinbutton in the effect UI.

= Stock patterns =

Since a few versions ago, Inkscape supports patterns in fill and stroke. However, up to now the only way to apply a pattern was by creating it in the document using the Object(s) to Pattern command, which wasn't very convenient. Now, if you switch an object's fill or stroke to pattern using the Fill&Stroke dialog, you will get a drop-down list with a number of predefined '''stock patterns''' that you can apply simply by selecting them from the list:

*A selection of plain '''stripes''' differing by the ratio of the stripe width to gap width (for example, the "Stripes 1:2" pattern has gaps twice as wide as stripes), in the range from 4:1 to 1:64. All stripes patterns are in two versions: with black stripes and with white stripes (gaps are always transparent).

*Two '''checkerboard''' patterns with black and white odd squares (even squares are transparent)

*'''Packed circles''': a hexagonal pattern of black circles with transparent gaps.

*'''Polka dots''': a scattering of dots designed to look randomly but evenly distributed so as to mask the regularity of the repeating pattern. There are three size variants of this pattern (small, medium, and large dots) and two color variants (black and white dots).

*'''Wavy''' is a pattern of wavy lines.

*'''Camouflage''' is a green-toned protective pattern such as that used by the military.

*'''Ermine''' is the traditional heraldic pattern representing stylized stoat furs with black tails.

*Three bitmap patterns: '''sand''', '''cloth''', and '''old paint''' are based on seamless photographic tiles and allow you to add some natural texture to your drawing. All of them are grayscale, so you can make objects with these textures semitransparent and overlay them over other colored objects to "texturize" them.

After applying a stock pattern, switch to Node tool to edit the location, scale, and rotation of the pattern via on-canvas handles.

All stock patterns are stored in the file <code>patterns/patterns.svg</code> in Inkscape's <code>share</code> directory (typically <code>/usr/share/inkscape</code> on Linux, <code>inkscape-dir/share</code> on Windows). You can add your own patterns to this file or replace it with any other SVG file containing the patterns you need.

=Color management=

== Calibrated SVG color including CMYK ==

Inkscape now supports color-managed color definitions that use a colorspace other than sRGB (for example Adobe RGB, or calibrated CMYK colors). In the SVG file, this is done using the
optional "icc-color(...)" paint components as described in section 11.2 "Specifying paint" of the SVG 1.1 specification
[http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG11/painting.html#SpecifyingPaint]. A fallback sRGB value will be used, for non color-managed workflows. This allows for the use of calibrated color spaces, including using CMYK values that are preserved across applications.

The new CMS color selector tab allows these colors to be edited.

== Display adjustment ==

In Inkscape Preferences, Color Management tab, there's are new options for enabling display adjustment; you can select any calibration profile (an ICC file) suitable for your display. Options for rendering intent can also be chosen.

=== Per-window adjustment ===
Display adjustment is enabled and disabled per each editing window. This allows for simultaneous viewing of adjusted and unadjusted views of a single document by using multiple windows. There is a toggle at the bottom-right corner of the scrollbars that allows for turning on and off display adjustment. It also will be disabled to provide visible feedback when no profile is set to be available for adjustment.

=== XICC Support ===
On X11-based systems (i.e. Unix and Mac OSX), use of [[http://www.burtonini.com/computing/x-icc-profiles-spec-latest.html ICC Profiles In X Specification]] (or XICC) can be enabled. Support for version 0.2 of this specification has been implemented. Enabling this option by choosing to retrieve profiles from the display will switch Inkscape to using profiles attached to screens at runtime. These allow display adjustment to be changed on the fly, and to be set and cleared per-monitor. This is especially helpful with more than a single monitor.

Other Open Source software such as [http://www.gimp.org/ GIMP] support XICC. This allows all aware applications to be adjusted by setting a profile only once.

=== Multi-monitor aware ===
When XICC support is enabled, windows will adjust to the proper profile as they are moved across monitors. Also, as the windows are moved onto monitors with no profile attached, the adjustment toggle will become disabled. When the windows are moved onto screens that do have profiles, the toggle will become enabled.

== Soft Proofing ==

In Inkscape Preferences, Color Management tab, there's a new option for enabling output device preview; you can select any calibration profile (an ICC file) suitable for your output device. Options for rendering intent can also be chosen, along with out of gamut warnings.

=Snapping=

* Snapping has been implemented or improved for:

:* '''Newly created shapes'''

:* '''Skewing''' of objects

:* '''Handles''' of objects, incl. '''gradients'''

:* '''Images''', '''ellipses''', and '''clones'''

:* Text boxes, which snap to '''text baselines''' again

:* Objects, for which snapping now optionally considers the '''rotation center'''

:* Objects, which now allow for '''constrained snapping'''

:* '''Guides''', which now snap while dragging them

:* '''Axonometric grids'''

:* '''Angled guide lines'''

:* '''Bounding boxes''', of which now all four corners snap

* Other snapping fixes and improvements include:

:* It is now possible to snap to '''intersections''' of e.g. gridlines with guidelines, and of line segments.

:* The '''snapping preferences dialog''' has been restyled to make it more intuitive.

:* Inkscape now has a global snapping toggle, which has been added to the view-menu and is accessible through a shortcut

:* Inkscape now allows for controlling the snapping per grid when multiple grids are being used

:* Snapping distance is now set in screen pixels and is therefore '''independent of zoom'''.

:* Snapping of objects has been made more clean, by only snapping '''bounding box corners to bounding boxes''', and '''nodes to other nodes and paths'''.

:* The time it takes to snap to objects using the selector tool has been reduced significantly.

:* The bug where "node-to-node" snapping caused jerky movement of nodes is fixed.

:* The '''aspect ratio''' is correctly preserved while scaling objects with snapping turned on.

:* Only nodes at '''non-smooth parts''' of a path now snap.

:* The confusing "Default transformations origin" option has been removed. Now Inkscape always uses the opposite edge of the object's bounding box as the '''transformation origin''' (though the bounding box itself can now be different, see next item).

:* A new preference option has been added to specify the kind of bounding box to be used for transforming objects (see Inkscape Preferences, Tools, Selector). You can choose between the '''visual bounding box''' (which takes into account the stroke width, markers, and blur margins; this is the default behavior) or '''geometric bounding box''' (which encloses only the path itself, disregarding stroke width).

=Grids=
Grids have undergone some big changes under-the-hood. These are the visible changes:
* There is a new 3D/axonometric grid!
* A new tab in the document properties dialog, solely meant for grids; the former grid/guide tab is now solely for guides. I envision a list of guides there in the future, for easier deletion of guides etc.
* More than one grid can be active at the same time
** Each grid can be enabled/disabled separately from the document properties dialog.
* One can make grids invisible by unchecking the "Visible" checkbox in the grid's tab in the document properties dialog. Snapping is still enabled even for invisible grids!
* Multiple views on the same document share the same grids, but the grid can be turned off for each view separately. For example: one could have an overview view without grids showing. Duplicate that window and zoom in on some detail; then grids can be shown only for that view, and snapping will only happen in those views for which grids are enabled. (sorry i am not able to explain more clearly, perhaps someone else can?)
* Grid information is now stored in SVG as a child of sodipodi:namedview. Old files will be converted to this new format automatically
* The rectangular grid now has an option to show dots on gridline intersections instead of solid lines

From developer perspective:

* Implementation of new grids is much easier now; subclassing CanvasGrid and adding an entry in the is enough. Have a peek at how the rectangular grid is implemented (CanvasXYGrid).
* Note that there is no longer "the grid", there might be several grids active now!

A side effect of removal of old gridcode: apparantly the origin of the desktop rules used to be set to the origin of the grid. I find this strange: specifying a grid origin of (2,2) would have me think the origin would be at ruler location (2,2) instead of (0,0) as it is in 0.45.1.
I have commented the grid-origin correction to the ruler range, because now there is not a single grid anymore to correct it for. Isn't there a control somewhere to define the documents origin? Now the ruler origin is set to (0,0)

--johan

=Angled guidelines=

Now, Inkscape also provides angled guidelines! Double click on a guide to set its angle.

* When dragging a guideline off the rulers close to the edge, the guideline will automatically be angled. The angle is set depending on the grid.
** For the rectangular grid, the angle is 45 degrees.
** For the axonometric grid, the angle is matched to the grid. When the Ctrl-key is pressed, the angle is perpendicular to the grid lines (useful for aligning gradients).

=Creating guidelines from objects=

* Selected objects can now be converted to guidelines. To do this, either use the menu command '''"Object->Object to guides"''' or press '''Shift+G''' in Selector tool (this shortcut also works in some other tools, see below). The conversion process recurses into groups, i.e. all objects in the current selection are converted regardless if they are grouped or not.

* '''Paths''' are converted by creating one guide for each straight line segment occurring in the path (whereas curved segments are not taken into account). To make this conveniently accessible, the shortcut '''Shift+G''' works in Pen and Pencil tools, too.

* For all other objects, conversion usually happens by placing the guidelines around the object's bounding box (use the corresponding checkbox in the "Tools" page of Inkscape Preferences to switch between geometric and visual bounding box).

*For '''rectangles''' and '''3D boxes''' there is a special option in their preferences pages (checked by default) which instead allows the guidelines to be placed along the object's edges so that they imitate its true shape. This is especially useful when converting rotated or skewed rectangles (to create guidelines in a special position) or for creating 3D scenes containing other objects than just boxes. The shortcut '''Shift+G''' works in these tools as well.

=Import/Export=

==PDF and AI import==

In this version, Inkscape can natively (i.e. without any additional software) import PDF files and the newer PDF-based Adobe Illustrator files (starting from AI version 9.0).

'''Implemented features''': The new import extension can import '''paths''', '''text''', '''clippaths''', '''masked or non-masked images''', and '''softmasks'''. It supports '''pattern fills''' (XStep and YStep attributes are ignored) as well as '''linear and radial gradients''' (only those using sampled or exponential functions). '''Gradient meshes''' are imported, but they get converted to groups of small tiles (flat-colored paths) that approximate the mesh; the user can adjust the precision of this approximation.

'''PDF import settings''': After opening a PDF or AI document, the PDF Import Settings dialog shows up. Here you can select:

* the '''page''' to be imported from a multipage PDF;

* the overall '''clip region''' (which can be none or set to any of the PDF boxes, e.g. the crop box, the media box, the trim box, etc.);

* the '''precision''' for the approximation of '''gradient meshes'''; note that setting this too high may result in a huge SVG file and slow performance when importing files with gradient meshes;

* a checkbox controlling whether the '''images''' should be '''embedded''' into the resulting SVG document or saved on the current path;

* a '''preview''' of the selected page (shown if poppler-cairo is present on the system or if the selected page has a thumbnail embedded into the PDF document).

'''Text editing tips''': Any text imported from PDF or AI has each letter's precise place on the page ''fixed''. While this preserves the exact appearance (e.g. justification of text blocks) of the imported document, it makes editing such text difficult: deleting text fails to contract the text line and inserting text fails to expand it, i.e. typed letters overlay the existing letters. (However, you still can replace a letter with another letter of about the same width, although you may need to kern it into place with Alt+arrows.)

To work around this, select the text object you want to edit and use '''Text > Remove manual kerns''' command. This will remove the exact positioning information, so if the text block was justified it will lose justification, but instead you will be able to edit it as usual.

Note that there is a way to select even a single line in a text block. For this, open the XML editor, expand the <svg:text> tree branch corresponding to your text, and select any of the <svg:tspan> objects under it. Now you can remove manual kerns from this line only. After you finish editing the line, you can manually justify it back, for example by adding spaces, manual kerns (Alt+arrows), or by adjusting letterspacing (select the whole line and use Alt+> or Alt+<).

The native PDF/AI importer is based on the poppler library and was implemented by Miklós Erdélyi as part of the Google Summer of Code 2007.

==PDF export==

* A new cairo-based PDF exporter has been added to Inkscape (marked as "Cairo PDF" in the export format list). Inkscape 0.46 can export shapes, strokes, transparency, gradients, patterns, text, and images correctly to cairo. While clipping paths and masks are known to be faulty or missing. Also, unlike the old PDF exporter, the cairo-based PDF export produces compressed PDF files that are reasonably compact. cairo will write a PDF with vector graphics when possible and fall back to raster graphics when needed. What can be exported as vectors and how much of the image will be rasterized when the fallback kicks in depends on your version of cairo. cairo version 1.2 with the pdf backend compiled in is the minimum requirement for any cairo-based PDF exports, but it is highly recommended to use at least '''cairo 1.5.2''' for quality PDF export.

* A new cairo-based PostScript exporter has been added (marked as "Cairo PS" in the export format list). The cairo PS backend is not as mature as the PDF backend. It rasterizes a lot of its content. Text output does not work where it works with the PDF backend.

==CDR (CorelDraw) import==

Inkscape can use [http://www.sk1project.org/modules.php?name=Products&product=uniconvertor UniConvertor] if it's installed on your system to import documents in CDR format (CorelDraw). This feature is Unix-only at this time (since UniConvertor is Unix-only) and requires that you have Python and UniConvertor installed. As of UniConvertor 1.0rc2, only versions from 7 to X3 of the CDR format are supported, and text objects are not converted.

==XAML import/export==

* Inkscape can import vector graphics portions of XAML documents, as well as export its documents to XAML.

==Adobe Illustrator SVG clean import==

* Using this new import filter, Inkscape can open an SVG document removing any elements and attributes in the namespaces that Adobe Illustrator uses for its stuff. This will clean out everything except the actual SVG content.

==Bitmap export==

* '''Batch export''': The Bitmap Export dialog (Ctrl+Shift+E) got a new checkbox, ''Batch export all selected objects''. This checkbox is available when two or more objects are selected. If it is checked, instead of exporting selection as a whole, Inkscape exports each selected object separately into its own PNG file. This uses each object's export hints (i.e. export filename and DPI) if they are remembered from a previous export; otherwise, the filename is created from the object ID and the DPI is 90 pixels per inch. '''Caution:''' Unlike regular export, batch export overwrites all existing PNG files without warning.

:This makes it possible to implement all kinds of '''image slicing''' and automated export scenarios. For example, if you are working on a web site design, you can create a separate "export" layer. In that layer, "slice" your web page image into separate areas by creating invisible rectangles with no fill and no stroke. Select each rectangle (by Tab/Shift+Tab, or by switching to Outline mode where even an invisible rectangle can be selected by clicking on its outline) and export it into the corresponding filename (which gets saved as that object's export hint). After that, if you do any changes to your graphics, it's very easy to reexport all the slices: just switch to the "export" layer, select all in that layer (Ctrl+A), and export with the ''Batch export selected objects'' checkbox on.

* '''Hide all except selected''': A new checkbox allows you to hide in the exported image everything except selected object(s).

* The Export dialog automatically appends the '''.png''' extension to the export filename you specify.

== Open Clip Art Library import and export ==

{rejon}

=Command line=

Several new command line options are added that make Inkscape even more scriptable and automatable than before.

* --verb-list will list all the Verb IDs and their names in Inkscape. This makes writing your own menus and hotkeys much easier as you can easily find out what the choices are.

* --verb followed by a verb ID allows you to specify a verb to be called on every document opened by Inkscape initially from the command line.

* --select followed by a node ID will allow you to add a node to the list of selected objects.

* --query-all produces a comma delimited listing of all objects in the document, with their x, y, height, and width values.

These options can be used, for example, for performance testing. You could do something like this:

$ time inkscape --verb=FileClose my_complex_file.svg

to measure the time it takes to load and display the file.

Of course, with the ability to select objects, it can be much more useful than
that. You can call extension effects, or any other verb, then FileSave and
FileClose to automate all kinds of operations on your drawings.

=User interface=

== Dockable dialogs ==

Inkscape's dialog handling has been reworked in this release to allow dialogs to behave like '''dockable panels'''. The dock area that holds the user's dialogs is located right of the canvas.

Dialogs placed in the dock can easily be rearranged, resized, stacked in groups or iconified. Furthermore, a dialog can be dragged of the dock to become a floating dock in itself—this allows other dialogs to be dragged and dropped on it to form a floating group of dialogs.

The old dialog behavior (used in releases before 0.46) has been preserved as an option, and if it is preferred, one can select it under ''Windows'' > ''Dialog behavior'' in the Inkscape preferences dialog.

====Known issues====

* Some of Inkscape's dialogs are yet to be adapted to allow docking, these include the "Text and Font" dialog, the "Tiled clones" dialog, the "XML editor" and the "Object properties" dialog.

* Floating dialogs that are closed and later reopened might reappear on positions slightly different than their original ones.

* Resizing dialogs that are placed in the dock can be a bit slow and quirky.

* The total height of content the dock will in most cases remain the same when a dialog is closed/iconified, i.e. the remaining docked dialogs will fill the hole. This might not the desired behavior.

====Settings====

Three settings that control dockable dialogs behavior are present in the <code>preferences.xml</code> file under a <code>options</code> group called <code>dock</code>:

* <code>cancenterdock</code>: controls if dialogs are allowed to be stacked on top of each other to be ordered in groups. Valid values are <code>"0"</code> and <code>"1"</code>.

* <code>dockbarstyle</code>: controls what information is shown for iconified dockable dialogs. <code>"0"</code> = icons only, <code>"1"</code> = text only, <code>"2"</code> = both icons and text.

* <code>switcherstyle</code>: controls what information is shown for grouped dockable dialogs. <code>"0"</code> = icons only, <code>"1"</code> = text only, <code>"2"</code> = both icons and text.

== [toolbars - [[JonCruz]]] ==

'''Main toolbar''' on the left can now optionally use '''smaller buttons'''. With the several new tools added in this version, this may help users with small screens where the toolbar otherwise may not fit vertically. The toggle is on the Misc tab of the Inkscape Preferences dialog.

[calligraphy: menus, tooltips; star; ...]

Switched to stock GTK+ toolbars.

Extra magic secret sauce added.

== [filedialogs - [[JonCruz]]] ==

== Swatches panel, color drag-and-drop ==

* Right-clicking a color swatch now opens a context menu which allows you to apply the color to the fill or stroke of selection.

* Dragging colors from the color palette has been fixed and improved:

:* Now the dropped color is applied to '''the object on which you drop it''', regardless of whether that object is selected or not. This means you can change the color of only one object from selection without having to select it separately. (If you want to assign color to the entire selection, just click on the color swatch on the palette, not drag it.)

:* If an object has stroke and you '''drop the color over stroke''', the color is applied to stroke and not fill. (Another way to always apply color to stroke is to '''Shift+drag''' it.)

:* When gradient handles are active (e.g. in Gradient or Node tools), you can '''drop a color onto the gradient line''' to create a new gradient mid stop with this color, or '''drop a color onto an existing stop''' to recolor that stop.

==Color gestures==

A new method for quick and precise adjustment of colors is added in this version: color gestures. It works on the selected objects by grabbing the '''fill or stroke color swatch''' in the '''selected style indicator''' (on the left of the statusbar) and dragging it in various directions as described below. Note that this only works when the swatch displays a '''flat color'''; it does not work for a swatch showing "None", "N/A", or displaying a gradient (although you can select one or more gradient stops in Gradient tool and color-adjust them by color gestures just as you would do for objects). Color gestures can work on '''fill''' or '''stroke''', depending on which swatch in the selected color indicator you drag.

Color gestures work in '''HSL''' color space. Dragging without any keyboard modifiers adjusts the '''hue''' channel, dragging with '''Shift''' adjusts '''saturation''', and dragging with '''Ctrl''' adjusts '''lightness'''.

The adjustment is done by '''"rotating"''' the color swatch away from the original direction which is assumed to be '''NE at 45 degrees''' (i.e. from
the swatch diagonally into the document window). Once you click and drag the color swatch, imagine a diagonal line going from the point where you clicked in the NE direction, across the entire Inkscape window. By dragging '''below or to the right''' of that line, you decrease the corresponding color channel, to the minimum at the lower edge of the window; by dragging it above or to the left, you increase it, to the maximum at the left edge of the window. If you hover your mouse exactly over the 45 degrees line, the change will be zero.

Note that you can easily vary the '''precision''' of your adjustment. If you drag close enough to the swatch, each small movement results in a big change of the color. If you need a finer adjustment, just drag farther away from the swatch, towards the center of the Inkscape window or even to its upper right corner, where minute movements will produce very small changes in the color. In fact, this method gives you more color precision than even the color wheel in the Fill and Stroke dialog, unless you expand that dialog to fill the entire screen which is rarely practical.

The mouse '''cursor''' changes when you're doing color gestures, reflecting the channel currently adjusted and indicating the directions for increasing and decreasing the value. Also, watch the '''statusbar''' which will indicate, as you drag, the channel you are adjusting, the original value of that channel, the new value, and the difference.

You can '''switch channels while you drag'''. That is, you don't need to
drag it again and again from the swatch if you want to adjust all three channels - you can do it all in one drag, by pressing and releasing Ctrl and Shift as necessary. Note that when you change the keyboard modifiers during drag, the position of the zero-change line is temporarily changed to go through the current mouse position; this is done so that there are no sudden changes in color if you are switching modifiers away from the original 45-degree line.

The '''Alt''' modifier is special. Pressing Alt means "do nothing"; this allows you to move the mouse, without releasing, to a more convenient place from where to continue tweaking the color after letting go of Alt. As with the other modifiers, releasing Alt temporarily redefines the zero-change axis to go through the point where Alt was released. For example, imagine you made your color darker by Ctrl+dragging towards the bottom edge of the window and you now need to make it less saturated. You cannot however Shift+drag it any lower because there's just not enough room for that. In that situation, without releasing the mouse, Alt+drag it upwards to a convenient spot and then Shift+drag downwards as needed. Also, you can start dragging from the swatch with Alt pressed to avoid changing the color while you take a more convenient position for adjustments.

For example, you can select a green rectangle and first turn it into greenish-blue by dragging away from the Fill swatch and slightly above the 45 degrees line; then, without releasing the mouse, press Ctrl and drag a bit to the right to darken the color; then press Shift, release Ctrl, and adjust saturation. You can press or release Ctrl and Shift as many times as necessary during a single drag; when you are finally satisfied with your color, release the mouse to commit the change.

Apart from precise adjustments, you can use color gestures to very quickly perform some common color transformations:

* Ctrl+drag the swatch to the right and down to paint all selected objects black.

* Ctrl+drag the swatch upwards and to the left to paint all selected objects white.

* Shift+drag the swatch to the right and down to desaturate the color of selected objects.

* Shift+drag the swatch upwards and to the left to maximize saturation of the color of selected objects.

Note that when several objects or gradient stops with different colors are selected, the selected style indicator shows their '''averaged''' color. If you adjust that color by gesturing, the changed color will be assigned back to all selected objects/stops, in effect eliminating any difference between them. If you want to adjust many different-colored objects preserving their relative differences, use the color modes of the Tweak tool or color adjustment extension effects.

This new technique requires some getting used to, but once you get the idea it is quite convenient, fast, and precise.

== Print dialog integration ==

* '''Print Dialog''': The GTK Unix Print Dialog has been hooked up! From the dialog, you can select any of the Postscript-capable printers known to your system and configure them as with any other GTK application.

== Saving window geometry globally ==

Previously, window geometry (size and position of document windows) could only be saved into the document (so that each document stored its own window geometry). Now, a new option is added to save the geometry of the last used window to the preferences and apply this geometry to all new windows. Thus, with the "Save geometry to preferences" option enabled, new windows will open with the shape of the most recent previous window. This mode also remembers and restores the maximized/fullscreen state (unlike geometry saved to documents).

== Preserving zoom/view of reverted documents ==

When reverting files to their previously saved state, the current zoom factor/panning is now retained (as opposed to reverted to the saved state, too, as it was the case before). This less interrupts the workflow when one is working on some detail in the drawing.

== Bounding box option moved ==

The preferences option to select between "visual" and "geometric" bounding box was moved in Inkscape Preferences dialog from the "Selector" page to "Tools" page (since it applies more globally than just in Selector tool).

== New ways to scroll and zoom ==

* You can now enable Space+mouse drag to pan canvas, as it does in Adobe Illustrator. This mode is enabled by the '''Left mouse button pans when Space is pressed''' checkbox in the Scrolling tab of the Inksape Preferences dialog. By default it is off and pressing the spacebar key switches you to Selector and back, as it always did in Inkscape.

* By default, rotating the mouse wheel scrolls the canvas vertically and Ctrl+wheel zooms in and out. Now, if you turn on the '''Mouse wheel zooms by default''' checkbox in the Scrolling tab of the Inksape Preferences dialog, this behavior is reversed: mouse wheel zooms without Ctrl and scrolls with Ctrl. This new mode should be familiar for users of AutoCAD and CorelDraw.

* In the Zoom tool, right mouse button always zooms out instead of calling the context menu (which is rather useless in this tool anyway).

== Using other keys in place of Alt ==

* Many Linux users have found the use of '''Alt-drag''' and '''Alt+click''' in Inkscape problematical because this shortcut is often captured by window managers. In 0.46, instead of disabling of the window manager shortcut as suggested in [http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/FAQ#How_to_make_Alt.2Bclick_and_Alt.2Bdrag_work_on_Linux.3F the FAQ], you can change a setting in your preferences.xml file called <code>mapalt</code> in the <code>options</code> group. This numerical value ranges from 1 to 5; 1 indicates no change, any other value refers to some special key on a keyboard, such as '''Alt Gr''', the '''Windows''' key, etc. The specific mapping of these values to the keys on your keyboard can be viewed and/or editied by '''xkeycaps''', available from [http://www.jwz.org/xkeycaps www.jwz.org]. The value associated with a particular key is shown in that program at the top of the screen beside the word "Modifiers" when the mouse is held over a key on the main display.

== GTK theme on OS X ==

A GTK theme is now included in Inkscape.app bundle on OS X. If the user does not have any personal customization (e.g. in a .gtkrc-2.0 file) this theme is used. It reflects the OS X settings for "Appearance" and "Highlight Color" set in System Preferences > Appearance.

=Other changes and improvements=

* '''Gnome VFS Improvements''': Gnome VFS Non-Local files are now usable through all of our file choosers in Open, Save and Export. This compile-time option allowed people to open any Gnome-VFS-based URI from the command-line in the past, but not non-local resources (WebDAV, SFTP, etc) and this now allows for all the lovely possibilities Gnome-VFS provides.

* In previous versions, Inkscape didn't allow you to '''group a single object.''' Yet in some cases, this operation is useful (for example, to blur the clipped edged of an object, or apply more than one clippath/mask to an object). Now this limitation is removed; just select any single object and group it to get a single-object group.

* The somewhat cryptic "F:" and "S:" labels in the selected style indicator (at the left end of the statusbar) and in tool's style swatches are now spelled out as '''Fill:''' and '''Stroke:'''. We believe this makes the interface, even if less space-efficient, a bit more friendly for newbies.

* The '''style swatches''' at the right end of object-creating tools' control bars now open the Preferences page of the corresponding tool when clicked. Also, now these swatches display a tooltip explaining its purpose (e.g. "Style of new rectangles", "Style of new calligraphic strokes", etc.)

* On the '''Scale''' tab of the '''Transform dialog''', the numbers now show the current size of selection, not size increment as before. Correspondingly, with the % unit chosen, you see 100% displayed, and to scale it up twice, you enter 200%, not 100% as before. This is a more intuitive behavior and it's more consistent with how the W/H controls work in the Selector tool.

* After dragging a curve segment in Node tool, Inkscape no longer selects the two adjacent nodes if they were not selected before.

* The '''Tile Clones''' dialog now uses the object's defined '''rotation axis''' (which can be freely moved by Selector tool and which is saved separately for each object) for all rotations (including both symmetry rotations and the Rotation tab rotations), scales, and flips. This renders unnecessary the previous workarounds where you had to group an object with another transparent object to affect how it's rotated by the clone tiler.

* The '''Shift''' tab of the '''Tile Clones''' dialog has two new options: '''Cumulate''': when checked, each tile is shifted by the normal amount plus the cumulative shifts of all previous tiles. This is useful when placing tiles that are being scaled by a uniform amount. '''Exlude tile''': when checked, the tile width or height is not automatically included in calculating the tile's shift. This is useful when using the dialog to place clones on a circle or spiral (rather than using a shift of -100%). It is also useful when positioning tiles using the '''Exponent''' parameter.

* The '''Scale''' tab of the '''Tile Clones''' dialog has a new parameter: '''Base''' that allows placing tiles along a logarithmic spiral (as often found in nature). If the value is '''0''', the parameter is not used. Use a value less than one for a converging spiral and a value of greater than one for a diverging spiral. The actual scale is calculated as '''base''' raised to the nominal '''scale''' power.

* In '''Pencil''' and '''Calligraphic''' tools, pressing '''Esc''' or '''Ctrl+Z''' while drawing cancels the currently drawn path or stroke. When not drawing, these keys work as before (Esc deselects, Ctrl+Z undoes last action). (This is the same behavior as in the Pen tool where it was introduced in a previous version.)

* A set of new verbs has been added to allow the user to easily '''unlock all locked objects''' or '''unhide all hidden objects'''. There are two variants one that operates on the current layer and its children and one that operates globally. While searching for hidden or locked object descendants of locked layers are ignored.

* Several more '''rotation snapping increments''' are available in the Steps tab of the Inkscape Preferences dialog: 36, 22.5, 18, 12, and 0.5 degrees.

* The list of folder shortcuts in the '''Open''' dialog includes the folder with Inkscape's SVG '''examples''' for easy access. Similarly, the '''Save''' dialog has a shortcut for the user's own '''templates''' dialog making it easy to save the current document as a template (if saved as <code>default.svg</code>, it will be loaded every time you run Inkscape or create new document with Ctrl+N; with any other name, it will be added to the File > New submenu).

* For time-intensive operations such as Paint Bucket and Simplify, the system's busy wait cursor is displayed to indicate to the user that Inkscape is actively working, and not frozen.

* Several improvements in '''inkview''': busy cursor is shown while loading file, the button window stays on top and responds to keyboard shortcuts; several memleaks stopped and bugs fixed. The "slideshow mode" of the main inkscape application (-s or --slideshow command line option) is removed; use inkview instead.

* In Document Metadata dialog, updated '''Creative Commons Licenses''' to version '''3.0'''.

* Preferences have been added for setting the default metadata and licenses, so this information can be automatically filled in with new documents.

* The built-in '''Potrace''' tracing engine is upgraded to version '''1.8''' with some minor bugs fixed.

* File dialog windows (open/save) now have an '''Enable preview''' checkbox which allows you to disable the preview pane.

* In the Calligraphic pen controls, the toggle button to enable tablet pressure sensitivity is moved to the Width control, and the button for tilt sensitivity is moved to Angle, to better reflect what parameters these toggles affect.

* In Node and Gradient tools, using '''Tab/Shift+Tab''' to select next/previous node or gradient handle scrolls the canvas if necessary to show the selection.

* The option '''Import bitmap as <image>''' is removed; it was added several versions ago to allow optionally importing images as rectangles with image pattern, to make clipping the images easier. Now that you can easily use clipping paths, as well as convert any image to rectangle with pattern with Alt+I, this option is not really necessary and removed to reduce confusion. Bitmaps are always imported into SVG as an <image> element.

* Support has been added for stock patterns, in the same way that stock markers were already supported. Adding patterns to share/patterns/patterns.svg, and giving them a inkscape-stockid attribute as found on the examples already there will make them available in all Inkscape sessions from the patterns tab of the fill & stroke dialog.

* New '''fontforge_glyph.svg''' template is added for font designers who draw glyphs in Inkscape and import them into FontFoge. It is 1000x1000px large and has a horizontal guide at 200px to mark border for descenders.

* Save dialogs have been modified to clarify that they '''Save as SVG''', so people using Inkscape to edit PDF, EPS, and other file formats will be less confused at the default behavior when saving files.

* Add some new '''UML markers''', including filled and hollow diamonds and triangles.

* Inkscape application bundle on '''Mac OS X''' now has the possibility to contain '''pre-compiled python modules''' (e.g. lxml, numpy, etc.) and to use them without requiring any work from the user. Since Python itself is shipped with Mac OS X, the user only has to drag and drop Inkscape on its hard-drive and all the extensions will be '''functional immediately'''.

=Notable bugfixes=

These are bugfixes compared to 0.45.1; for a list of fixes in 0.45.1 compared to 0.45, see [[ReleaseNotes045|0.45.1 release notes]].

* The '''sodipodi:docbase''' attribute is no longer added to the root <svg> element. This attribute used to keep the latest directory that the document was saved to, and thus represented a mild privacy violation (i.e., by sharing your Inkscape SVG files you allowed others to have a peek into your directory structure). Note, however, that Inkscape does not remove this attribute from old documents it opens; if you want you can remove it yourself. Inkscape just no longer creates this attribute in new documents.

* A fix in the blur rendering code made '''exporting blurred objects to bitmap''' much faster and fixed the disappearing of blurred objects in exported bitmaps which happened for large objects in 0.45. The same fix got rid of the rendering artefacts that sometimes appeared on blurred objects during scrolling.

* Inkscape now properly quotes <code>font-family</code> values and therefore can use '''fonts''' with various '''nonalphanumeric characters''' in their names, which previously failed.

* If you have saved documents with a previous version of Inkscape which used '''right-to-left text''' (e.g. Arabic, Hebrew) then the paragraph alignment of non-flowed text has been reversed in this release. This is due to a bug in previous versions - the new behaviour is compliant with the SVG specification and compatible with other editors and viewers. To correct your images, simply reverse the paragraph alignment by selecting the text and clicking the appropriate button on the toolbar.

* A large family of bugs was exterminated where an object's style could only refer other objects (such as gradients, patterns, and filters) that come after it in the document. Now any objects can be referenced from a style regardless of their place in the document. This fixed the '''disappearance of gradients/patterns/filters''' after you undo an effect, as well as lots of assorted crashes and misrenderings (mostly on non-Inkscape SVG files).

* On Windows, '''file opening/saving dialogs''' can no longer sink under the main editor window (they now have the inkscape window set correctly as their parent window).

* '''Stock markers''' now appear in the "recently used markers" section of the marker selector dropdowns in the Fill & Stroke dialog. Before, any markers with stock id's (including markers modified by the user) were hidden, making it difficult to work with modified stock markers.

* A regression in 0.45 caused crashes when '''undo or redo''' was attempted before the previous action could complete (e.g. pressing ctrl+z while you are still drawing a rectangle). This is now fixed.

* Previously, if there was a single '''invalid property''' in a <code>style</code> attribute, the entire attribute was discarded, i.e. the object lost all styling. Now Inkscape's behavior is more compliant to the CSS specification: it ignores only the invalid property but reads in all the rest.

* Several bugs are fixed in '''searching for linked images'''. Now moving SVG documents with their associated images to a different place or a different machine should work more reliably.

* Master opacity did not apply to stroke '''markers''' as it should; fixed.

* '''Creative Commons Public Domain Declaration URI''' points to the right location now.

* Text objects didn't display the '''pattern editing handles'''; fixed.

* On Windows, the Inkscape uninstaller deleted all files under the install directory. This could lead to removing user-created files, or even other program files not related to inkscape if the install directory was C:\Program Files. The new uninstaller '''tracks all installed files and asks for confirmation before deleting any other files'''. However, installation and uninstallation process is now slower.

* Clones were wrongly unlinked when their original was moved to another layer; fixed.

* Previous versions had a problem on '''Windows Vista''' where selected menu item was invisible. Now our Windows builds use a newer version of GTK library which fixes this problem.

* Duplicating empty text objects that have just been created no longer crashes. Also, the XML editor crash related to empty text objects is fixed. A downside is that the SVG will become cluttered with empty text objects as they are no longer automatically removed. A better fix for the problem is planned.

* In Tile Clones dialog, the PMG symmetry group was created incorrectly, which is now fixed.

= Previous releases =

* [[ReleaseNotes045]]
* [[ReleaseNotes044]]
* [[ReleaseNotes043]]
* [[ReleaseNotes042]]
* [[ReleaseNotes041]]
* [[ReleaseNotes040]]
* [[ReleaseNotes039]]
* [[ReleaseNotes038]]
* [[ReleaseNotes037]]
* [[ReleaseNotes036]]
* [[ReleaseNotes035]]

[[Category:Marketing]]

Release notes/0.46

2008-01-08T21:26:51Z

Gustavb: /* [dockable dialogs - gustav] */

=Inkscape 0.46=
'''(not released yet)'''

Highlights in this release:

* Paintbucket tool

* Tweak tool

* 3D Box tool

* Live path effects

* Color management

* New SVG filters and UI

* Native PDF and AI import

* XAML import/export

* Open Clip Art Library integration (import/export)

* Stock patterns

* Bitmap editing extension effects

* Full on-canvas gradient editing

* Engraver's Toolbox in the Calligraphic tool

* Touch selection

* Dockable dialogs

* Command-line access to verbs

* Snapping made usable

* "3D" / axonometric grid

* Angled guidelines

* Significant speed and interactivity improvements

* Hundreds of smaller features and bugfixes

=Speed and interactivity=

* In this version, Inkscape starts using the [http://www.cairographics.org cairo] library for rendering. It is now used for '''outline mode''' display which, thanks to using cairo and other optimizations, redraws '''faster by about 25%'''. More impressive are memory savings: thanks to cairo, in outline mode Inkscape now takes only about '''50% of the memory''' used by 0.45 for the same file.

* '''Smart redraw directionality:''' With complex images and/or on slow computers, you may have noticed that Inkscape redraws the screen image in horizontal strips, and these strips are painted in order from top to bottom. Now the redraw always starts '''at your mouse cursor location''' and proceed upwards and downwards from it, so that the area near the cursor is always redrawn first. This significantly improves program's responsiveness in some situations. For example, when you are node-editing part of a complex path, the entire path needs to be redrawn on each change, but now this redraw starts from the point you're working on. Moreover, the redraw is interruptible, so each mouse movement starts new redraw from the mouse cursor area. As a result, during such operations those parts that you're working on redraw often and feel snappy and responsive, while areas further away may lag behind more.

* '''Faster blur''' for exporting and high quality on-screen rendering: Inkscape now uses an IIR (Infinite Impulse Response) filter for blurring with large radius. This greatly improves the speed of blur redraw at high zooms or in high-resolution export (or simply with very large blur radius). On the other hand, the results are an approximation to a true Gaussian blur, so a drawing may look slightly different from the mathematically precise blur (usually the differences are far from visible, though). This code is mainly based on: ''Recursive Gaussian Derivative Filters'' by L.J. van Vliet, I.T. Young and P.W. Verbeek (see the source code for more detailed references).

:'''Exporting drawings with blur''' was particularly slow in 0.45; some files could take hours to export. Now this is fixed, in part by the faster algorithm mentioned above and in part by a bugfix in the export code. Now even the quite complex files with large blurs export at high resolution in at most a few minutes.

* Minor improvements have been made to gradient rendering performance.

* '''Dragging handles and nodes''' as well as '''dragging and transforming objects''' by mouse became more responsive, so that working in complex drawings and especially editing complex paths is noticeably easier. In particular, this fixes the annoying latency issue where a node or a handle could follow mouse cursor even after you release mouse button after a drag.

* '''Moving objects, nodes, and gradient handles by cursor keys''' as well as '''scaling and rotating objects from keyboard''' and '''zooming by keys''' are much more responsive when working with complex slow-rendering objects. Now, if you press and hold a key, your selection/zoom level will quickly jump to the final position instead of going through all the intermediate steps as before.

* '''Moving the cursor around''' in a file with large and complex paths has become much snappier and more responsive. Previously, in extreme cases Inkscape could freeze for seconds while catching up with the mouse cursor; such delays are now eliminated.

* Several improvements make '''canvas panning and scrolling''' smoother and more interactive in complex slow-rendering documents:

:* When panning by the middle mouse button, Inkscape no longer attempts to redraw the canvas while your mouse button is pressed. Any redrawing only happens after you release the mouse. As a result, the newly revealed parts of the canvas are somewhat more "dirty" but the '''panning is smoother than before''', with few if any "hiccups".

:* '''Redrawing the newly exposed parts of the canvas''' after scrolling, especially diagonal scrolling, is now faster because only the exposed areas are redrawn; before, this often resulted in the entire screen being redrawn which was much slower.

:* Previously, if you started panning with middle button while Inkscape is still redrawing screen in a complex drawing, panning sometimes completely failed or moved canvas just a little step. Now it is '''guaranteed to pan the canvas all the way''' from mouse-press point to mouse-release point in any case, even if sometimes it fails to show the intermediate positions.

:* When pressing and holding Ctrl+arrows to scroll canvas, Inkscape normally accelerates scrolling so that each next scrolling step is bigger than the previous. Previously, in complex drawings this acceleration sometimes got interrupted, which made scrolling annoyingly bumpy and slow. Now this is fixed so that '''scrolling is smoothly accelerated''' even in a slow-rendering document.

:* The default '''starting speed and acceleration''' of Ctrl+arrows scrolling are slightly increased. (They are both settable in Preferences.)

* Better responsiveness and more visual feedback in user interface:

:*When you zoom, the '''zoom control''' on the right end of the statusbar now updates immediately, not after screen redraw as before.

:*Many potentially slow commands (Save, Simplify, Combine, Break Apart and others) now display a '''busy cursor''' and flash a message in the statusbar (e.g. "Saving document...") while they work.

:*The '''statusbar messages''' displayed while you're drawing a shape or a path in Pen tool do not lag behind the mouse movements.

* '''Combine''' and '''Convert to paths''' commands are now orders of magnitude faster when applied to a selection with hundreds or thousands of objects.

* The time it takes to '''snap to objects''' using the selector tool has been reduced dramatically, which is most noticeable for snapping to complex paths.

=Tools=

==Paint Bucket tool==

The new Paint Bucket tool works exactly as you would expect: click in any area bounded on all sides and it will '''fill it with color'''. Being a vector tool, however, Inkscape's Paint Bucket just creates a new ''path'' that "fills in" the area in which you clicked.

===How it works===

It is important to note that the tool is '''perceptual''', not geometric. That is, when looking for the boundaries around the point you clicked, it takes for such boundaries any ''visible'' color changes. This means that filling will stop at gradients, blurs, and even the color boundaries in imported bitmaps, but will ignore any paths or other objects that are fully (or almost) transparent or for any other reason do not stand out from the background. In short, it will work exactly as if you were filling a rasterized version of your image in a bitmap editor like Photoshop or GIMP - but will give you a vector object to work with.

For example, now you can scan a pencil sketch, import the bitmap into Inkscape, and quickly fill all its cells with colors even without tracing the bitmap first. This is a very convenient and interactive way of digitizing your paper drawings, making the '''traditional bitmap tracing unnecessary''' in many cases.

Internally, the tool works by performing a bitmap-based flood fill on a rendered version of the visible canvas, then tracing the resulting fill using [[potrace]] and placing the traced path into the document.

It places the rendered path onto the current layer, so you can have a layer on top (for example, "Inks") and select the layer below ("Colors") and do the fills so that they always appear below the Inks.

The '''resolution''' of the bitmap image used to perform the trace is dependent upon your '''current zoom level''' -- the more zoomed in to an area that you are, the higher the resolution of the bitmap-based flood fill. So, if you are got a fill that is too imprecise, has rough corners, or don't go into small nooks and appendices where it is supposed to go, just undo, zoom in closer and repeat filling from the same point. Conversely, if the fill leaks out through a small gap, zoom out to make the gap less visible and fill again (or use the auto gap closing parameter, see below).

===Style===

Like all object-creating tools, the Paint Bucket may use the '''last-set style''' for the objects it creates (this is the default), or it can use its own '''fixed style'''. You can switch between these modes on this tool's page in Inkscape Preferences (Ctrl+Shift+P). As in all other tools, the '''style swatch''' on the far right of the Controls bar shows the style that will be used for the next fill object you create.

===Controls===

In the tool's '''Controls bar''':

* Paint Bucket's perceptual fill can use either all visible colors or specific color channels. Using the '''Fill by''' drop-down list, you can restrict the fill algorithm to one the following channels:
** Red
** Green
** Blue
** Hue
** Saturation
** Lightness
** Alpha

* The '''Threshold''' (in per cent units) controls how large must be color difference at a point (compared to the initial click point) to stop the fill. Zero tolerance means only the area of strictly the same color will be filled; the larger the tolerance, the easier it will be for the fill to leak into adjacent different-color areas. The default value is 10%.

* Using the '''Grow/shrink by''' parameter, you can control the amount of inset/outset to be applied to the created fill path. Setting a positive outset causes fill paths to be larger than the filled bitmap area (good for eliminating anti-aliasing errors), while setting a negative outset causes the path to be smaller. This works much the same as the Outset and Inset path commands, except it's done automatically after every fill.

* With the '''Close gaps''' parameter, you can make the Paint Bucket tool ignore any gaps in the area boundaries that would normally cause the fill to spill out of the desired area. There are four settings to auto gap:
** None
** Small (close gaps up to 2 pixels in size)
** Medium (4 pixels)
** Large (6 pixels)
:Note that setting this parameter to other than None may slow down noticeably the filling of large areas.

===Shortcuts===

The tool's '''shortcuts''' are:

* '''Single click''' performs filling from the click point.

* '''Shift+click''' performs filling from the click point and then unions the resulting path with the selected path. This way, if your first attempt did not fill in all of the desired area, you can Shift+click the remaining corner to fill it in separately and combine the result with the result of the previous fill.

* '''Ctrl+click''' on an object simply changes that object's fill to the current fill color of the tool, and '''Shift+Ctrl+click''' changes the stroke to the current stroke color.

* '''Click and drag''' performs filling from '''all of the points''' that you pass while dragging (you will see your path visualized by a red line). From each point, the fill spreads to the neighbors with the colors similar to that point - in other words, it's like clicking with this tool at each point of the drag path and unioning the results. This lets you easily fill an area occupied by a gradient or blur - just drag from the darkest to the lightest points in the area you want to fill.

* '''Alt+click and drag''' works similarly to simple drag, except from each point of the drag path, the fill spreads to the neighbors (if any) with the colors similar to the ''initial point'' (the point where you started the drag). This lets you fill a series of similarly-colored yet separated areas (for example, multiple cells in a cartoon) by starting the drag in one of those areas, and alt+dragging the tool through all the other areas.

==Tweak tool==

The Tweak tool is an exciting new way to edit drawings which largely blurs the
distinction between vector and raster editing. Instead of meticulously selecting some
objects and then performing an action on the selection, you can now select ''all''
objects (or all objects you are interested in) and apply the Tweak tool's brush to
smoothly and naturally change the shape or style of only those objects (or parts
thereof) ''that the brush touches''.

The area of the tool's action - its ''brush'' - is marked by an orange-colored circular
outline that moves with your mouse cursor. However, that area actually has no sharp
boundaries; the power of the tool's action falls off gradually, following a smooth
bell-shaped profile. This makes the tool act softly and smoothly.

The tool will work on any number of selected objects; for example, you can select all
(Ctrl+A) and "smear" your entire drawing by Push mode or paint it by Color Paint
mode. You can also apply it to groups of objects; it will go into groups and act on
individual objects inside groups. If you're trying to use it without anything selected,
it will remind you by a statusbar message to select some objects.

===Width===

The width of the tool's brush, in the range from 1 to 100, can be changed by the
'''Width''' control in the tool's controls bar above the canvas. You can also change
width by '''Left''' and '''Right''' arrow keys (same as in the Calligraphy tool) at any
time (including during action) as well as '''Home''' and '''End'''. Also, as in Calligraphy
tool, the visible width of the brush is independent of zoom; simply zooming in or out is
often easier than adjusting the width if you want to cover a smaller or larger area of
the drawing.

===Force===

The next control is '''Force''' which adjusts the power of the action, also in the
range from 1 to 100. You can also change width by '''Up''' and '''Down''' arrow keys at
any time (including during action).

If you have a pressure-sensitive tablet and your "Use pressure" button on the right-hand
end of the controls bar is on, then the force will also depend on how hard you actually
press your pen into your tablet, changing in the range from zero to whatever you set in
the Force control. If all you have is a mouse, then the force will be constant but still
settable by the Force control.

===Path editing modes===

The Tweak tool has a number of '''modes''', selectable by toggle buttons in the tool's
Controls bar and by keyboard shortcuts. Some of these modes change the shapes of
paths while others affect the colors of objects. All these modes share the Width and
Force controls but otherwise are quite different. Let's look at the path editing modes
first.

Unlike the Node tool, to edit paths with the Tweak tool you don't need to worry about
where the nodes of a path are and how to manipulate them. You just apply the tool's
brush to any point, and the selected paths at that point will reshape smoothly and
naturally - as if made of soft jelly - regardless of where its nodes lie. If applied to
a shape or text object, the tool converts them to paths automatically.

While not very useful for technical drawings, tweaking paths will be indispensable for
artistic uses of Inkscape - cartoons, drawings, sketches, anime, etc. This new
functionality is somewhat similar to the tools such as "Pucker" and "Bloat" in the
latest versions of Adobe Illustrator.

There are currently six path editing modes in the Tweak tool: '''Push''', '''Shrink''',
'''Grow''', '''Attract''', '''Repel''', and '''Roughen'''.

* This default mode of the tool, '''Push''', simply displaces the part of the path under the cursor in the direction of the drag. The path behaves like soft jelly, bending and bulging smoothly and naturally. It's an easy way to produce various irregular, lifelike, handmade-looking shapes starting from something as simple as an ellipse or a calligraphic stroke. For parallel-stroke hatching (engraving) done in the Calligraphy tool, pushing is an easy way to bend, pinch, or curve the entire hatching uniformly.

* The '''Shrink''' and '''Grow''' are two opposite modes that move each point of a path in a direction perpendicular to the path's surface at the point, either inwards (Shrink) or outwards (Grow). This is similar to the Inset and Outset commands, except that the Tweak tool can act on a part of a path instead of the whole path.

:For example, the visible lightness/darkness of an engraving hatching may not exactly correspond to your artistic intention. Also, the ends of Calligraphy pen strokes are often far from ideal - they may be too blunt or have unsightly bends or blobs. This is where the Tweak tool may help. Select all the strokes in a hatching pattern and apply a light Shrink action where you want the lines to become thinner (and the hatching to become lighter), up until total disappearance. If you press hard, shrinking works as an eraser, so you can easily clean the strokes' ends to make them thin, sharp, and uniform. Conversely, applying Grow makes strokes wider (i.e. the hatching becomes darker).

:Of course, shrinking and growing are useful not only for calligraphic strokes. Same as with Push, with Shrink and Grow you can '''sculpt''' any path, spawning smooth treacle-like appendages with Inflating and carving holes with Melting. Unlike the "node sculpting" mode in the Node tool, however, this does not require adding new nodes to the shape.

* The '''Attract''' and '''Repel''' modes work by moving each affected point on a path towards (Attract) or from (Repel) the cursor point. In some cases this may look similar to Shrink and Grow, but the difference is that shrinking/growing moves paths perpendicularly to the path in each point, whereas attracting/repelling moves them to or from the cursor regardless of the path shape. These modes are similar to the Pinch effect in ; you can use them for various central-symmetric distortions in parts of your paths.

* The '''Roughen''' mode does exactly this: roughens the edge of the path without changing its overall shape. Slight roughening simply makes the edge crooked and uneven; strong roughening tears and explodes the edge into random blobs and splotches. Note that this operation, especially with high Fidelity, adds a lot of nodes which increases the size of your SVG document and may slow down Inkscape considerably. In particular, pushing/melting/inflating of a roughened path becomes much slower and more difficult, so it's recommended to finalize the overall shape of a path first and roughen it, if necessary, only as the final step.

See the screenshot at [http://inkscape.org/screenshots/gallery/inkscape-0.46-tweak-path.png] for a few examples of using the path editing modes of the Tweak tool.

====Fidelity====

Any tweaking of a path slightly distorts the entire path, including even those parts
that you didn't touch. These distortions are similar to those that a Simplify command
produces. The '''Fidelity''' value (also in the range from 1 to 100, default is 50)
allows you to control the amount of these distortions. With a higher fidelity, the
distortions are less noticeable, but the path may end up having a lot of nodes which
inflates up the SVG size and slows down Inkscape.

The best value of Fidelity depends on the nature of your artwork. If you're sculpting an
amorphous blob, you can do with low fidelity of about 20. If, however, you are pushing
or inflating a text string (as a single path) and want the letters outside the distorted
area to remain crisp and clean, you will need to raise fidelity to 80 or more.

====Known problems====

Known problems with the path editing modes in Tweak tool:

# they don't work on open paths (an open path becomes closed if you tweak it);
# they are rather slow;
# they quickly eat memory; and
# they are sometimes buggy - thin calligraphic strokes may suddenly disappear or change their shape drastically as you're melting or inflating them.

For (4), it helps to increase Fidelity. Also, you can undo the bad change and try again with less pressure on the pen - if you do your thinning in several light touches instead of one heavy press, usually you will be able to get the desired result without the buggy behavior.

Also, sometimes after roughening, further tweaking of a path becomes impossible with this diagnostic:

WARNING **: Shape error in ConvertToShape: directedEulerian(a) == false

All these problems stem from the livarot library that we use for geometric manipulation of paths. Fortunately, livarot is scheduled for replacement by lib2geom, a new library now in development, so hopefully these issues will be addressed then.

===Color editing modes===

The '''Color Paint''' and '''Color Jitter''' modes, unlike the path editing modes,
change the colors of objects instead of their shapes. Yet they share enough common
features with the path editing modes to be part of the same tool: These modes also use
a circular soft-edged brush controlled by the Width and Force parameters on the Controls
bar and affected by the pen pressure (if you have a pressure-sensitive tablet).

* '''Color Paint''' applies the style of the tool to the selected objects under the brush. The style of the tool is visible in the style swatch at the rightmost end of the tool's control bar; it can be changed by clicking on the color palette or by any other style assignment command, such as Fill and Stroke dialog. ('''Note''': unlike all other tools, in Tweak tool in Color Paint mode you cannot assign style directly to selected objects; any style-setting command changes the tool's style instead.)

:The fill from the tool's style applies to the fills of the painted objects, and the stroke applies to the strokes. If the tool's style has no fill or no stroke, it won't affect fills or strokes, correspondingly. For example, if you want to color the fills of objects blue but leave their strokes untouched, assign blue fill to the tool's style (just click blue on the palette) but set its stroke to None (middle-click the Stroke swatch in the statusbar). Similarly, master opacity in the tool's style affects master opacities of the touched objects (if the O channel is on, see below).

:This mode allows you to literally paint over objects, shifting their colors towards the target style of the tool. For example, if you paint with yellow fill over a blue-filled object, the object will become greenish blue, then green, then yellowish green, and end up being exactly the yellow color you're painting with. This speed of this gradual transition depends on both Force parameter and pen pressure; also, objects touched by the periphery of the brush are less affected than those hit by the brush center. Overall, using this tool is very similar to a soft brush in a raster editor such as Gimp or Photoshop.

* '''Color Jitter''' mode does not apply any color, but instead jitters (randomizes) the colors of the objects it touches. The force of the action determines how strong is the randomization, i.e. how far the colors deviate from the original values. This mode does not use the tool's style.

Both modes work on flat fills and gradients; for gradients, the tool takes into account not only the position of the entire object with gradient, but also the position of each gradient stop relative to the brush. This means that, for example, you can change the blue color only in an object filled with blue-red gradient simply by painting over its blue end with a brush small enough to not touch the red. (Note that color tweaking does not create gradients on objects that used flat color before, but only adjusts existing gradients in the drawing.)

See the screenshot at [http://inkscape.org/screenshots/gallery/inkscape-0.46-tweak-color.png] for a few examples of using the color editing modes of the Tweak tool.

====Channels====

Color Paint and Color Jitter honor the '''Channels''' control. This control comprises
the four buttons: '''H''', '''S''', '''L''', and '''O''', which allow you to turn on and off
the tool's action on the object's hue, saturation, lightness, and opacity,
correspondingly. For example, if you want to raise the saturation of some part of your
drawing without changing the hue, select some maximum-saturation color (e.g. pure red)
and turn off all Channels buttons except S. Similarly, you can replace the hues without
affecting saturation or lightness (only H pressed), or lighten/darken all colors without
changing their hues and saturation (only L pressed). Pressing O allows you to apply the
master opacity from the tool's style to the master opacity of objects (but not fill or
stroke opacity).

====Usage notes====

Color painting with Tweak tool is similar, but not exactly analogous to bitmap
painting. Even though the tool itself works as a soft brush, it still applies its color
to vector objects, which behave as vector objects usually do. For example, if you want
to change the tint of the face in your drawing, and if a hand in the drawing is part of
the same object as the face, that hand will change its tint too even if it's located far
from the point you are painting. (We foresee a "fracture" command in one of the next
versions of Inkscape which will help you turn a monolithic object into a mosaic of small
fragments that will be then easy to paint with Tweak tool.) Still, even with this
limitation, color painting is a novel way of dealing with vector drawings which allows
you to quickly and intuitively make adjustments which would be awkward and slow with
traditional approach.

Drawings containing patterns or scatterings of small independent objects are best suited
for color painting with Tweak tool. Examples include:

* freehand drawings with Calligraphy pen, consisting of many separate strokes;

* gradient meshes imported from Adobe Illustrator files (Inkscape renders these meshes as lattices of small polygons; while there's no direct support for gradient meshes in Inkscape yet, color painting on such lattices is almost as good);

* text converted to paths and with Break Apart command applied so that each letter is a separate path;

* patterns made with the Tile Clones command; note that you need to unset the fill and/or stroke on the original object and use the Color tab to assign some initial color to the clones - this will make them paintable with the Tweak tool without unlinking.

Moreover, color tweaking can be useful for compositions with a few objects or even for
single objects. Unlike all other color selection methods, painting with the Tweak tool
implements the ''color mixing'' metaphor which is much more familiar to traditional
artists than RGB sliders or even the color wheel. For example, start with a rectagle of
pure blue color; then, pick different colors by Color Paint and apply light touches with
minimum Force and minimum pen pressure: add a little green, a little brown, a little
yellow, etc. until you have the exact hue you need. Similarly, you can whiten or blacken
any hue by admixing white or black.

You can also use color tweaking to add a tint, darken/lighten, saturate/desaturate, or
color jitter your entire drawing. Just select all in all layers, zoom out, choose a
large brush width so it covers all of the drawing, and apply a little color tweaking
(with minimum Force) that will therefore affect all visible objects.

===Keyboard shortcuts===

* '''W''', '''Shift+F2''': switch to the Tweak tool

* '''Shift+P''': switch to the Push mode

* '''Shift+S''': switch to the Shrink mode

* '''Shift+G''': switch to the Grow mode

* '''Shift+A''': switch to the Attract mode

* '''Shift+E''': switch to the Repel mode

* '''Shift+R''': switch to the Roughen mode

* '''Shift+C''': switch to the Color Paint mode

* '''Shift+J''': switch to the Color Jitter mode

* '''Left, Right, Home, End''': change width

* '''Up, Down''': change force

* '''mouse drag''': act on selected path in the current mode

* '''Ctrl+mouse drag''': temporarily switch to Shrink (while Ctrl is down)

* '''Shift+Ctrl+mouse drag''': temporarily switch to Grow (while Shift+Ctrl is down)

==3D Box tool==

Inkscape is a two-dimensional drawing tool. However, very often it is used to draw three-dimensional objects. The new '''3D box tool''' helps you create such 3D drawings by automating the most common operation: creating a three-dimensional box in a given perspective. The tool automatically ensures that all sides of the box lie on the corresponding perspective lines. We're not going to compete with Blender - but even simple things can go a long way.

Currently in the 3D box tool you can:

* draw a 3D box by dragging on canvas (use Shift+dragging without releasing the mouse button to extrude in z direction)

* adjust any of its 3 dimensions by handles

* move a 3D box "in perspective" by dragging its center; without modifiers, movement occurs within the XY-plane (press Ctrl to constrain the movement to the directions of the coordinate axes or diagonals), with Shift the box moves parallel to the Z-axis

* adjust the vanishing points of a perspective by dragging them across the canvas (see below) or toggling their states; all boxes sharing this perspective are transformed accordingly

In SVG, a 3D box is represented as a '''group''' (svg:g) with a special extension attribute (in inkscape namespace); this group contains the 6 quadrilateral '''paths''' representing the sides of the box. Only the 3D box tool treats this object as a box; for all other tools it is just a group, so you can select any of the paths by Ctrl+click, apply any style to it, delete it, etc. You can of course transform the entire box or any face in it using Selector or Node tools.

When several boxes are selected, all vanishing points of their associated perspectives are shown on the canvas. If vanishing points of different perspectives coincide, they are combined in a single "dragger". Moving this dragger moves all the vanishing points simultaneously and transforms the associated boxes accordingly. Note that some non-selected boxes may also be reshaped if their perspectives share the same vanishing point. Pressing Shift while moving the dragger can be used to only transform the selected boxes, separating their perspectives from the non-selected ones'. On the other hand, when a vanishing point being dragged comes close enough to another one, both snap together and are combined in a single dragger.

===Keyboard shortcuts===

* '''X''', '''Alt+F4''': switch to the 3D box tool

* The various kinds of parentheses, namely '''[''' ''']''', '''(''' ''')''', '''{''' '''}''', can be used to rotate infinite (i.e., parallel) perspective lines in X-, Y-, and Z-direction, respectively. Closing parentheses rotate clockwise and opening parentheses rotate counterclockwise. The angle of rotation is taken from the preferences. Pressing '''Alt''' reduces the amount of rotation to 1 screen pixel.

* '''L''': toggle visibility of perspective lines

* '''A''': when perspective lines are visible, toggle between "all lines" and "only lines connected to front corners" (this can help to avoid visual clutter)

[max]

==Gradient Tool==
===Selecting multiple stops===
'''More than one gradient stop''' can be selected at a time. Shortcuts for working with multiple stop selections are generally modeled on the Node tool.
* Add a stop to the selected stops by '''Shift+click'''.
* Press '''Ctrl+A''' to select all stops in the selected objects.
* '''Shift+drag''' around stops to add them to selection.
Multiple selected stops:
*Can be moved together by '''mouse drag''' or by '''arrow keys'''. For example, creating a linear gradient, then press Ctrl+A to select all stops and use arrow keys to move the entire gradient as a whole.
*Can be deleted at the same time by pressing '''Del'''.
An always up-to-date description of the current handle selection is provided in the statusbar in the Gradient tool, including the number of selected handles (and the type of the single selected handle), as well as the total number of handles and selected objects.

===Editing intermediate stops===
'''Intermediate stops''' in gradients can be added, deleted, and edited on canvas (previously this was only possible in the Gradient Editor dialog).
*Stops can be added by '''double clicking''' or by '''Ctrl+Alt+Click''' on the gradient line. Also, you can '''drag-and-drop''' a color from the palette onto the gradient line to create a new stop with this color. Dropping a color on an existing stop changes the color of that stop.
*When two or more adjacent stops are selected, pressing '''Ins''' adds stops in the middles of all selected stop intervals.
*Intermediate stops can be '''mousedrag'''ged or moved by '''arrow keys''' along their gradient line, within the limits of the adjacent unselected stops (or end handles).
:*Dragging with '''Ctrl''' moves the selected stops snapping them to 1/10 fractions of the available range.
:*Dragging with '''Alt''' moves the selected stops depending on how close each one is to the stop being dragged, using a smooth bell-like curve similar to the node sculpting feature in Node tool. This makes it easy to approximate different gradient profiles; for example, if you have a two-stop gradient that you want to shape according to a curve profile, select both ends of the gradient, press '''Ins''' a few times to add a number of intermediate nodes, then '''Alt+drag''' a node in the middle to smoothly profile the gradient.
*Stops can also be moved by '''arrow keys''' with all the regular modifiers ('''Shift''' for 10x movement, '''Alt''' for pixel-size movement at the current zoom, '''Shift+Alt''' for 10 pixels movement at the current zoom).
*Stops can be deleted by '''Ctrl+Alt+Click''' on a stop or by the '''Del''' key for all the selected stop(s).
:*When you delete an end stop, the nearest intermediate stop becomes the new end stop of the gradient (without moving - i.e., the gradient span becomes shorter).
:*When you delete an end stop and there are no intermediate stops, the object will be painted with a solid fill taken from the color & opacity of the remaining stop.
*Pressing '''Ctrl+L''' with some intermediate stops selected attempts to ''simplify'' the selected portion of the gradient, removing those stops that can be removed without too much change in the way the gradient looks. In particular, new stops created by double-clicking or pressing Ins initially do not change the appearance of the gradient, so if you press Ctrl+L, all redundant stops that weren't moved or repainted since creation will be deleted.

===Style of gradient stops===
*When you have one of the '''gradient handles selected''', its style (color and opacity) is reflected by the selected style indicator (left of the statusbar) and the Fill&Stroke dialog. Previously, opacity of a gradient handle was reflected as fill-opacity and stroke-opacity; now it is reflected as '''master opacity''' (the "O:" spinbutton in the selected style indicator, the "Master opacity" slider in Fill&Stroke). This makes it much easier to view and change opacity of gradient handles using only the selected style indicator in the statusbar.
:*When multiple gradient stops are selected, the selected style indicator (in the statusbar) displays and controls the averaged color and opacity of the selected stops.
*When one or more gradient stops are selected, using the Copy command ('''Ctrl+C''') copies to the clipboard the style (color and opacity) of the selected stop or the averaged style of several selected stops, not the entire object with gradient as before. This means you can now copy/paste style between stops: select the source stop(s), copy, select the destination stop(s), paste style ('''Ctrl+Shift+V'''). With several selected stops, this also allows you to easily average their colors and opacities by copying them and pasting the style back onto them. (After that, redundant gradient stops can be removed by simplification with '''Ctrl+L''').
*If the selected object(s) have gradient in fill or stroke, the '''selected style indicator''' in the bottom-left corner of the editing window now displays a '''live gradient preview''' prefixed by '''R''' or '''L''' to indicate Radial or Linear gradients (instead of displaying "L Gradient" or "R Gradient" text labels as before). Also, this and other similar widget now use italic font face to indicate None and bold to indicate Unset.

===Automatic duplication of gradients===
When copy/pasting or duplicating an object with gradient, it now automatically gets a '''copy''' of the original gradient, so modifying it does not affect the source object's gradient anymore (before, you had to press the Duplicate button on the Gradient controls bar for this). The Duplicate button is therefore removed.

However, to accommodate the needs of users who have relied on sharing the same gradient definition across objects, this behavior can be optionally suppressed. The '''Prevent sharing of gradient definitions''' checkbox on the Misc tab of Inkscape Preferences is by default checked; if you uncheck it, Inkscape does not automatically copy gradient definitions for new objects, which means that copy/pasting, duplicating, pasting style, and explicit assignment of a gradient to an object via the Gradient tool controls results in a shared gradient definition, so that changing the colors or mid-stop positions of the gradient on one object (but not changing the coordinates of the end handles) affects all other objects that share the same definition.

==Calligraphy tool: Engraver's Toolbox ==

Several new features were added to the Calligraphic pen to make
Inkscape capable of the ancient art of '''line
engraving'''. Traditional engraving is a very labour-intensive
process, and while for a long time it was the only practical way
of reproducing lifelike images in black-and-white print, about a
century ago it was almost completely displaced by automatic
halftone screens. However, line engravings have their
characteristic charm, and there's no reason not to try to
resurrect this art form with the help of Inkscape.

A brief visual guide to the new functionality can be seen on
these screenshots:

http://inkscape.org/screenshots/gallery/inkscape-0.46-engraving1.png

http://inkscape.org/screenshots/gallery/inkscape-0.46-engraving2.png

===Tracking a guide path with Ctrl===

One of the most common operations in line engraving is
'''hatching''' (or sometimes ''cross-hatching'' when several
hatching grids cross): filling a space with many parallel
straight or variously curved lines (usually of varying width to
represent a gradual shading). You could try to achieve a similar
effect with e.g. path interpolation (blending), but it is rather
cumbersome and limited; manual drawing of hatch lines, on the
other hand, is tedious and nearly impossible to do
uniformly. Now Inkscape provides "assisted hatching" by
'''tracking a guide path''', allowing you to hatch quickly and
uniformly and at the same time giving you sufficient manual
control over the process.

Here's how to do this. First, select the '''guide path''' that
you will track. It may be another calligraphic stroke, any path
or shape, or even a letter of a text object. Then switch to
Calligraphic pen, select the desired parameters (line width,
angle, fixation etc.) and, before starting to draw, press
Ctrl. You will see a gray '''track circle''' centered at your
mouse pointer and touching the closest point on the selected
guide path. (If you have no guide path selected, a statusbar
message will tell you to select it.)

Now move your mouse close to the guide path, so that the track
circle radius is equal to the desired spacing of your hatch
pattern, and start drawing along the guide path. At that moment,
the radius of the circle gets locked; now the circle slides
along the guide path - and the actual stroke is drawn by the
center of the tracking circle, ''not'' by your mouse point. As
a result, you are getting a smooth stroke going parallel to the
guide path and always at the same distance from it.

When the stroke is ready, release your mouse button (or lift
your tablet pen) but '''do not let go of the Ctrl key''' because
as long as you have it pressed, the tool remembers the hatch
spacing you set when you started drawing. Now, you have just
created a new stroke and, as usual with Inkscape tools, it gets
selected instead of what was selected before. In our case, this
means that the newly drawn stroke itself becomes the new guide
path. Next, you can draw a second stroke along the first one,
then a third one along the second, etc. Eventually you can fill
any desired space with uniform hatching.

Alternatively, if you uncheck "Select new path" in the Calligraphy tool preferences, newly created strokes will not be selected, so your original guide path will be kept selected. In this mode, Inkscape will increase the tracking distance after each created stroke so that you can create uniformly spaced hatching by tracking a single guide path.

The attachment to the guide path is not absolute. If you stray
your mouse pointer far enough from the guide path, you will be
able to tear it off (the track circle turns from green to red)
and move freely. This is intentional; this feature allows you,
for example, to continue drawing a stroke past the end of a
guide stroke, thus making your hatching cover a wider area than
the initial guide path. Special care is taken to make such
tearing off as smooth as possible and to suppress violent jerks,
but this is not always possible; the general advice is to not
try to hatch too fast. If jerking and unintended tearoffs still
bother you, try increasing the Mass parameter.

Also, special code is in place to prevent flipovers - accidental
jumps to the other side of the guide path. Brief flipovers are
suppressed, but if you intentionally go over to the other side
and stay there, eventually Inkscape will obey and your tracking
stroke will also flip over to follow you.

Tracking a guide also allows some slight feedback by gradually
changing the tracking distance in response to your drawing
behavior. Thus, if you're consistently trying to draw closer or
farther from the guide than the current tracking distance, the
distance will correspondingly decrease or increase, so you will
get a hatching that is slightly spacing in or out. (The effect
is very slight, however, so as not to become a nuisance.) Also,
note that since tracking follows the edge of the stroke, strokes
of varying width (such as those tracing background, see below)
will result in gradual bending of the hatching pattern as you
proceed.

===Tracing background by stroke width===

There is a new toggle button on the Calligraphy tool's controls
bar, '''Trace background'''. When on, the width of your pen
depends on the lightness of the background under the stroke in
each point, so that white translates into the minimum stoke
width (1) and black translates to the maximum (which is set by the
Width parameter). This can work alone or in combination with
pressure sensitivity, depending on whether the "Use pressure" button
is also toggled.

This feature allows you to not only hatch over an imported
bitmap image or any drawing, but to do so automatically
reproducing the highlights and shades of the background with
your strokes becoming lighter and heavier as needed.

===Misc features===

* For consistency with other drawing tools, drawing with '''Shift''' in Calligraphy tool automatically '''unions''' the newly created stroke with whatever paths were selected (and selects the result). Thus, you can do a series of overlapping Shift+strokes to create one unioned path object instead of separate objects as before.

* To facilitate changing the Width parameter, the Home/End keys in Calligraphy tool switch you to the minimum (1) and maximum (100) width, correspondingly. (This is in addition to the Left/Right arrow keys that change Width by 1; remember also that you can press Alt+X, type any width, and press Enter.)

==Selector==

* A new selection mode is available: '''selecting by touch'''. In this mode, you draw a freehand path across the objects; when you release mouse button, all objects that are touched by this path get selected. This mode is very convenient in situations where you need to select objects so intermingled that selecting them by the rectangular rubberband is too difficult and so numerous that click-selecting them one by one is too tedious.

:To activate selecting by touch, whenever you are drawing a rubberband rectangle, just press '''Alt''' to switch it to the touch mode. The rectangle will disappear and a red ''touch path'' will be shown instead. When dragging from an empty space, you can press '''Alt''' first and then start to drag to get the touch mode (note that your selection must be empty, otherwise Alt+dragging will move the selected objects instead). To start a touch selection from a point over an object, or to add to existing selection by touching, press '''Shift+Alt''' and then start to drag.

* Previously, the only way to switch selection from scale mode to rotate mode or back was to click on it, which was rather inconvenient when the selected object is in a group or under other objects. Now you can switch modes with keyboard as well by pressing '''Shift+S''' in Selector tool.

* Draging the '''scale handles with Alt''' now scales selection by an integer factor, i.e. up to '''2''', '''3''', '''4''', etc. times the original size or down to '''1/2'''. '''1/3''', '''1/4''', etc. of the original size (in any of the two dimensions independently). This way you can, for example, mirror any object around one of the edges of its box. (This replaces the old and rarely used "slow" scaling mode with Alt.)

* '''Horizontal/vertical flipping''': So far, flipping a selection made it flip within its bounding box, so that the latter remained fixed. In the move/scale mode of the selector tool, this behaviour remains unchanged. However, in rotate/shear mode flipping now happens about an (imaginary) vertical/horizontal axis through the rotation center. This is very handy, since the latter can be freely dragged around and snaps to all kinds of objects if desired.

* '''Objects to Marker''' was added to the objects menu, which converts the current selection to a marker, with the center point of the selection being set to the center of the marker.

==Node tool==

* If any of the nodes in the currently selected path is mouseovered, then horizontal/vertical flipping ('H' and 'V' keys), stepwise rotation ('[' and ']' keys) and scaling ('<' and '>' keys) now all use this specific node as center/axis. If there is no mouseovered node, the center of the bounding box is used instead (as is currently the case unconditionally). Nodes that are covered by one of their handles are also detected as mouseovered.

* [helper path display - johan]
** this is deactivated for normal paths now. only paths with LPE applied will show it. should there be a button to turn it on for normal paths aswell?

* As a long-requested feature, two entry fields are added to the toolbar which allow precise editing of the coordinates of selected nodes.

==Rectangle Tool==

* Ctrl+dragging now also allows the creation of rectangles with sides constrained to the golden ratio (approx. 1 : 1.618034), not only integer ratios.

==Text tool==
* [text toolbar - deadchip?]
* If text contains a tref element, the text tool's behavior may not be as expected. Please see [[#The tref Element]]

==Dropper Tool==

The shortcut 'D' is now used to toggle (not just switch to) the dropper tool - much like space is used to toggle the selector tool. That is, pressing 'D' a second time switches back to the tool used before.

=SVG features=

==The tref element==

Inkscape can now correctly open files with '''tref''' elements, and new tref elements can be created manually in the XML editor.

The actual character data contained in a text element can either be embedded directly, or it can be the character content of an element referenced by a '''tref'''.

While the textual content from the referenced element will be stripped of any markup before being used by the '''tref''', the '''tref''' element can itself have the same attributes as a '''tspan'''. In fact, when rendered, it is as though the '''tref''' element is replaced by a '''tspan''' with the same attributes, and the referenced character data is embedded in that '''tspan'''.

The property '''xlink:href''' is used to refer to another element whose character data will be used. Any element can be referred to except an ancestor of the '''tref'''. When any of the text contained in the referred element changes, the '''tref''' will immediately be updated to display the new data.

Existing tref elements can be converted into tspan elements with '''Edit > Clone > Unlink Clone'''. If more than one '''tref''' is contained within a selection, all '''trefs''' will be converted into '''tspans'''. All attributes applied to the '''tref''' will be retained in the new '''tspan'''.

A '''tref''' element can be mixed with any other elements allowed to be contained by a text element.

The cloned character data rendered by the '''tref''' may not be edited, but any characters surrounding it can be changed. Styles cannot be applied to a subset of the cloned characters, but if all are selected, a style can be applied to the '''tref'''.

==SVG filters==

===New filters supported===

* The '''feBlend''' filter primitive gives us image blending modes, like in many image manipulation programs. These modes are screen, multiply, darken and lighten. There's a caveat, though: when blending an object against an semi-transparent background, the background will be accumulated twice, resulting in thicker objects under the bounding box of blended object. This is a limitation of current version of SVG format, not a bug in Inkscape.

* The '''feColorMatrix''' filter primitive applies a matrix transformation to colour of each rendered pixel. This allows for effects like turning object to grayscale, modifying colour saturation and changing colour hue.

* The '''feComposite''' filter primitive composites two images using one of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter-Duff Porter-Duff blending modes] (described in paper Compositing Digital Images by T. Porter and T. Duff, published in SIGGRAPH '84 Conference Proceedings, Association for Computing Machinery, Volume 18, Number 3, July 1984) or the aritmetic mode described in SVG standard. Porter-Duff blending modes are essentially logical operations between the images. For example, xor mode shows the areas, where either one of the objects is, but not the areas where both of the objects are. Arithmetic mode lets you specify coefficients k1-k4 for blending equation (result colour) = k1 * (first input colour) * (second input colour) + k2 * (first input colour) + k3 * (second input colour) + k4.

* The '''feConvolveMatrix''' lets you specify a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolution Convolution] to be applied on the image. Common effects created using convolution matrices are blur, sharpening, embossing and edge detection. There's a fairly good explanation and some example matrices at [http://www.gamedev.net/reference/programming/features/imageproc/page2.asp www.gamedev.net/reference/programming/features/imageproc/page2.asp]. Note that while gaussian blur can be created using this filter primitive, the special gaussian blur primitive is faster and resolution-independent.

* Filter primitives '''feDiffuseLighting''' and '''feSpecularLighting''' create lighting maps for the object in input image. SVG doesn't have concept of third dimension, so these filters use alpha channel of input image as a height map: the more opaque given point in input image is, the nearer spectator it is considered to be. There exists an example for using these in Inkscape distribution, in share/examples/lighting_effects.svg or [http://inkscape.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/*checkout*/inkscape/inkscape/trunk/share/examples/lighting_effects.svg?revision=15523 in SVN]

* The '''feDisplacementMap''' filter primitive displaces the pixels in the first input using the second input as a displacement map, that shows from how far the pixel should come from. Classical examples are whirl and pinch effects, that can be found in most image manipulation programs and even in some screensavers, where this kind off effect is moving around screen, twisting desktop beneath it.

* The '''feImage''' filter primitive allows using external images as part of filtering chain. For example, one could use external image as a displacement map for feDisplacementMap or as a height map for lighting effects. Note that while SVG standard allows using other parts of the SVG file in this filter primitive, the current Inkscape implementation only allows external images.

* The '''feMerge''' filter primitive composites several temporary images inside the filter primitive to a single image. It uses normal alpha compositing for this. This is equivalent to using several feBlend primitives in 'normal' mode or several feComposite primitives in 'over' -mode.

* The '''feMorphology''' filter primitive provides erode and dilate effects, that are common in image manipulation programs. With erode, darker and more transparent areas spread to lighter and more opaque areas, whereas with dilate lighter and more opaque areas spread to darker and more transparent areas. For single-colour objects, this basically means, erode makes the object thinner and dilate makes it thicker.

* The '''feOffset''' filter primitive offsets the image by an user-defined amount. For example, this is useful for drop shadows, where the shadow is in a slightly different position than the actual object.

* The '''feTurbulence''' filter primitive renders [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perlin_noise Perlin noise]. This kind of noise is useful in simulating several nature phenomena like clouds, fire and smoke and in generating complex textures like marble or granite.

See also wiki page [[Filter Effects]] for more info on filters in Inkscape in general.

===Filters UI===

* New dialog for creating and modifying filter effects ('''Object>Filter Effects...''')
* The list at the left of the dialog displays all filters currently in the document.
** New filters can be added with the '''Add''' button beneath the list
** Right-clicking a filter for the pop-up menu allows duplicating or removing a filter.
** Double-clicking a filter will apply it to all selected objects
** A black dot is placed next to whatever filter is applied to the selected objects. If more than one filter is in use by selected objects, an unfilled dot is used instead.
* The second list, at the left of the dialog, displays the '''filter primitives''' that are contained within the currently-selected filter.
** New primitives can be added by selecting the primitive type from the combo box beneath the list, and then pressing the '''Add''' button.
** Right-clicking a primitive for the pop-up menu allows duplicating or removing a primitive.
** Primitives can be rearranged by clicking and dragging any filter in the list.
** When a filter is selected, the '''Settings''' group at the bottom of the dialog will change to display the attributes available for that primitive. Changing a setting results in an immediate update to the document.
** The "in" and "in2" attributes for filters that support them are not shown in the '''Settings''' group. These input connections are displayed graphically in the list, under the '''Connections''' column.
*** Inputs for a particular filter are displayed as triangles. Depending on the primitive type, there may be one or two inputs (or more for Merge primitives.) Connections can be created by clicking on a triangle and dragging.
*** There are six standard input types that can be used for any primitive input; Source Graphic, Source Alpha, Background Image, Background Alpha, Fill Paint, and Stroke Paint. These are displayed vertically on the far right of the list. Click and drag from an input triangle to one of the standard inputs to connect them.
*** Primitives can also be connected to other primitives by clicking an input triangle and dragging upwards to another primitive. A primitive can only be connected to one higher up the list.
*** Single-clicking on an input triangle will unset it, returning it to the default. If it is on a Merge primitive, the input will be deleted.
*** Merge inputs have an empty input at the end. Dragging a connection from this input will add a new input to the primitive.

=Live Path Effects (LPE)=

'''Live path effects''' (not to be confused with extension effects or SVG filters) are a new way to non-destructively modify path and shape objects. Path effects affect the path data of an object but not its style. The original path is preserved and can be edited directly on-canvas, and the path effect applied to it will be updated live.

In this version, we include several path effects that are analogous to the corresponding extension effects (such as Path along Path effect and Pattern along Path that replaces the extension of the same name). The most important advantage of path effects is that they are, indeed, live - you can still edit the original path and the effect will update in real time (unlike the extension effects which were one-time one-way transformations). In the future, we plan to reimplement most if not all of path-changing extensions as live path effects.

Live path effects were developed by Johan Engelen as part of the GSoC 2007.

==Details about operation==
The following schematic tries to explain how LPE work.

original style ------------> output style
original path --> LPE --> output path
^
|
parameters

The original style and path are from the path that the effect is applied on. The output is what is visible on screen. What is very important to notice is that output style equals original style.

The parameters can be paths, numbers, points, text, in principle anything.

==Applying effects==
Path effects are applied through the Path Effects dialog (opened from the Path menu, or by pressing Ctrl+Shift+7. This dialog is also used for controlling the effect's parameters and for removing effects.

When a path with a path effect applied is selected, the statusbar description mentions that, for example "'''Path''' (4 nodes, path effect)".

There is a special Paste Path Effect command (Ctrl+7) that can be used to copy effects from one path to another.

==Editing effect parameters==
When switching to the node edit tool (F2), the original path can be edited. The original path is shown as a red helper path. Normal path operations, like simplify, still work.

Some parameters of effects can be edited on-canvas. For example, path parameters can be node-edited, by pressing the "edit on-canvas" button in the Path Effects dialog. Press "7" to cycle through the different on-canvas editable parameters. This way, one can edit the parameters without opening the Path Effects dialog. The statusbar tells the name of the parameters that is currently being shown.

==Available effects==

===Path along path===
The Path along Path effect can curve a path along another path. When this effect is applied to a path, it can be bend along another path (called ''bend path''). With the node edit tool, both the original path and the bend path can be changed on-canvas and the result is updated live. This provides a direct equivalent of "vector brushes" or "skeletal strokes" features in other vector editors.

In the effect's control panel in the Path Effects dialog, you can select how many copies of the original path are put along the bend path (either '''single''' or '''repeated''') and whether it is '''stretched''' to fill the bend path. In this dialog you'll also find a button to edit the bend path on-canvas and a button to '''paste''' a new bend path from clipboard. A possible workflow is this: you select and copy the new bend path to the clipboard, then select the path you want to bend, apply the Path along path effect, and paste the bend path with the paste button next to 'bend path'.

Example file: live-path-effects-pathalongpath.svg

===Pattern along path===
The Pattern along Path effect can curve a path along another path. When this effect is applied to path A (called ''skeleton''), another path B (called ''pattern'') can then be passed as a parameter. The result is that path B is bent along path A. With the node edit tool, path A can be changed on-canvas and the result is updated live. This provides a direct equivalent of "vector brushes" or "skeletal strokes" features in other vector editors.

In the effect's control panel in the Path Effects dialog, you can select how many copies of the pattern are attached (either '''single''' or '''repeated''') and whether the pattern is '''stretched''' to fill the skeleton path. You can also choose the pattern for the selected skeleton [either directly or] by '''pasting''' it from clipboard (that is, you select and copy to the clipboard the pattern, then select the skeleton, apply the Path along path effect, and paste the pattern). The '''Scale width''' parameter allows you to change the width of the pattern applied to the path.

Example file: live-path-effects-pathalongpath.svg

===Stitch Subcurves===
The Stitch Subcurves effect connects points from two subpaths of the path with straight line or curved segments, i.e. the stitches. It looks a lot like the Effect Lines from Expression 3. The result is also referred to as "String Art". For some examples of string art, see http://members.shaw.ca/jillbritton/string_art/jbstringart.htm.

The shape of the connecting paths can controlled by the stroke path parameter. This could be used to draw 'hair-shaped' connecting paths with sharp end-tips. Other controls include the number of paths, the variation in spacing between the connecting paths (clustering) and also whether the start and end points of the stitches should like exactly on the original subcurves or can stray randomly around them. Finally the width of the stroke path can be varied.

Note that this effect can only be applied to a path with two subpaths in it, hence 'subcurve' in the name. Use Path > Combine to create such a path from two separate paths.

Example file: live-path-effects-curvestitch.svg

Example file showing cooperation between Stitch Subcurves and Path along Path: live-path-effects-curvestitch-hair.svg

===Gears===
The Gears effect is a toy effect. It generates a chain of interconnected gears from the path that has the effect applied to it. The nodes of the path define the centers of the gears. The first 3 nodes are special; the first defines the start angle of the chain, the second defines the center of the first gear and the third knot specifies the radius of the first gear. That is, to create a chain of 2 gears, you will need a path with 4 nodes; for 3 gears, 5 nodes, and so on.

Example file: live-path-effects-gears.svg

==Development of new effects==
One of the goals of the Summer of Code project was to make it easy to create new effects. There is a framework that greatly simplifies effect implementation; very little code is needed to get the effect hooked into Inkscape. This leaves valuable time for the actual effect to be implemented. See the http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/MakingLivePathEffects wiki page for an explanation of how to get started with your own effect!

[johan]

=Extension effects=

== Live preview ==

* '''Live preview of effects''': Using the async behavior (see below), as soon as the parameters dialog for an effect is shown, the script is executed in the background and the screen updates as soon as it's finished. This can result is seemingly faster execution if no parameters are changed. If some parameters are adjusted, the script is restarted. This allows you to see immediately the effects of any parameter change without pressing the OK button on the effect's dialog.

* '''Spawn Glib API''': Scripting extension have been moved to the Glib spawn API to ensure that parameters and variables aren't interpreted by a shell. This also means that scripting extensions are executed in a separate process asynchronously allowing the GTK main loop to continue to execute.

* '''Progress dialog''': While an extension is working on a document, a small dialog is shown allowing the user to cancel the execution.

== New and improved effects ==

* The new '''Modify Path > Edge 3D''' extension creates black, grey and white paths around a shape, then blurs and clips them for a 3D effect.

* The new '''Render > Barcode''' extension creates a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcode barcode]. Supported types include EAN13, EAN8, UPC-A, UPC-E, UPC-5, Code39, Code39Ext, Code93, Code128, and RM4SCC.

* The new '''Render > Gear''' extension creates a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gear mechanical gear] given the number of teeth, the circular pitch (in px units), and the pressure angle.

* The new '''Render > [[Spirograph]]''' extension creates intricate mathematical curves akin to the classic [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirograph mechanical Spirograph toy] (see [http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/images/Spirograph_Samples.svg samples]).

* A group of new effects in the '''Text''' submenu performs various case conversions on selected text objects: converting to UPPERCASE, lowercase, Sentence case, Title Case, as well as flipping case (switching uppercase to lowercase and vice versa) and rANdoMiZInG cAse. If no texts are selected, the effect works on all texts in the document.

* Another effect in the Text submenu, '''Replace text''', performs search-and-replace on the selected text objects or (if nothing is selected) on all texts in the document. Searching is case sensitive. You can use this effect to globally delete all occurrences of some text fragment by replacing it with empty string. Conversely, if you search for an empty string and replace it with some string, this string will be inserted after every character of your text; for example, you can space out a text by replacing in it an empty string with a single space.

* A new effect, '''Replace color''' in the Color submenu, simply replaces one RRGGBB-specified color to another within selection or, if there's no selection, in the entire document. As with other effects in that submenu, the replacement affects fill, stroke, and gradient colors, but not colors of bitmaps.

*The new '''Color > Randomize''' extension allows you to change the color via hue, saturation and lightness check boxes. This is useful if you want to colorize lots of shapes at the same time.

*The '''Whirl''' extension uses the center of view as the center of whirl, so you don't have to enter the center coordinates numerically.

*The '''Render > Grid''' extension has got an extended range of grid spacings, from 0.1 to 1000 px.

*The '''Render > Function Plotter''' extension can now plot using polar coordinates.

*The '''Generate Template > Perfect-Bound Cover''' extension creates templates for wraparound covers for perfect-bound books using US size and paper weight measurements. This extension will resize the document to include the width, height, spine width, and bleed measurements that are provided to the extensions, so it should be the first operation done before designing.

== XSLT effects ==

* '''XSLT''' is now supported for input, output and effect extensions. This is used to support the XAML file format (both import and export) and the Adobe Illustrator SVG import which removes Adobe's stuff from SVG.

== ImageMagick effects ==

New raster operations available through the effects drop-down menu, powered by the ImageMagick library. For any of these effects to work, you need to have an '''image object selected''' in the drawing.

* '''Adaptive Threshold''' applies adaptive thresholding to the bitmap. Average color of rectangle provided by '''width''' and '''height''' used as threshold value. Use '''offset''' to apply a different threshold than the average.

* '''Add Noise''' adds random noise of certain types to the bitmap.

* '''Blur''' blurs the bitmap, using '''radius''' as the amount of blur. Higher radius means more blur. (Note that unlike the vector Gaussian blur of objects, this bitmap blur will not extend the edges of the image, so it may appear truncated at the edges.)

* '''Channel''' extracts the specified channel from the bitmap.

* '''Charcoal''' applies a charcoal drawing style to a bitmap. Radius controls the width (or detail) of charcoal strokes. Higher '''radius''' means lower detail. '''Sigma''': the higher it is, the less defined the charcoal is.

* '''Colorize''' overlays the bitmap with a given color at a given intensity.

* '''Contrast''' lightly enhances the contrast (difference between lights and darks) of a bitmap.

* '''Cycle Colormap''' cycles the colormap of a bitmap.

* '''Despeckle''' reduce the speckle noise in a bitmap.

* '''Edge''' hilights edges in a bitmap.

* '''Emboss''' embosses a bitmap, hilighting edges with 3D effect.

* '''Enhance''' enhance a bitmap, minimizing noise.

* '''Equalize''' equalizes a bitmap. Histogram equalization.

* '''Flop''' mirrors a bitmap, reflecting each scanline in the horizontal direction.

* '''Gaussian Blur''' blurs a bitmap, more strongly than regular blur.

* '''Implode''' sucks everything towards the center of the bitmap.

* '''Level''' scales values falling between the given '''Black Point''' to '''White Point''' range to the full color range.

* '''Level Channel''' acts the same way as level but for only one channel.

* '''Median Filter''' filters a a bitmap by replacing each pixel component with the median color in a circular neighborhood

* '''Modulate''' adjusts the percent hue, saturation, and brightness of a bitmap.

* '''Negate''' takes the inverse of a bitmap.

* '''Normalize''' normalizes a bitmap, expanding color range to the full possible range of color.

* '''Oil Paint''' stylizes a bitmap so that it appears to be painted with oils.

* '''Opacity''' modifies the opacity channel of a bitmap.

* '''Raise''' alters the lightness of the edges of a bitmap to create a raised appearance, much like a frame.

* '''Reduce Noise''' reduces noise in a bitmap by using a noise peak elimination filter.

* '''Shade''' shades a bitmap by simulating a distant light source

* '''Sharpen''' sharpens a bitmap.

* '''Solarize''' solarizes a bitmap, like overexposing photographic film.

* '''Spread''' randomly spread pixels in a bitmap within the radius of '''amount'''.

* '''Swirl''' swirls the bitmap around the center point.

* '''Threshold''' thresholds a bitmap.

* '''Unsharpmask''' sharpens a bitmap using an unsharp mask algorithm.

* '''Wave''' alters a bitmap along the sine wave.

These effects are part of the Google Summer of Code 2007, coded by Christopher Brown.

== Misc ==

* All Python effects are switched from the old and unmaintained PyXML library to the new powerful [http://codespeak.net/lxml/ lxml] library.

* A new parameter, '''precision''' is added to the parameter definitions in the [[MakingAnINX|inx file format]], allowing you to set the number of digits in that parameter's spinbutton in the effect UI.

= Stock patterns =

Since a few versions ago, Inkscape supports patterns in fill and stroke. However, up to now the only way to apply a pattern was by creating it in the document using the Object(s) to Pattern command, which wasn't very convenient. Now, if you switch an object's fill or stroke to pattern using the Fill&Stroke dialog, you will get a drop-down list with a number of predefined '''stock patterns''' that you can apply simply by selecting them from the list:

*A selection of plain '''stripes''' differing by the ratio of the stripe width to gap width (for example, the "Stripes 1:2" pattern has gaps twice as wide as stripes), in the range from 4:1 to 1:64. All stripes patterns are in two versions: with black stripes and with white stripes (gaps are always transparent).

*Two '''checkerboard''' patterns with black and white odd squares (even squares are transparent)

*'''Packed circles''': a hexagonal pattern of black circles with transparent gaps.

*'''Polka dots''': a scattering of dots designed to look randomly but evenly distributed so as to mask the regularity of the repeating pattern. There are three size variants of this pattern (small, medium, and large dots) and two color variants (black and white dots).

*'''Wavy''' is a pattern of wavy lines.

*'''Camouflage''' is a green-toned protective pattern such as that used by the military.

*'''Ermine''' is the traditional heraldic pattern representing stylized stoat furs with black tails.

*Three bitmap patterns: '''sand''', '''cloth''', and '''old paint''' are based on seamless photographic tiles and allow you to add some natural texture to your drawing. All of them are grayscale, so you can make objects with these textures semitransparent and overlay them over other colored objects to "texturize" them.

After applying a stock pattern, switch to Node tool to edit the location, scale, and rotation of the pattern via on-canvas handles.

All stock patterns are stored in the file <code>patterns/patterns.svg</code> in Inkscape's <code>share</code> directory (typically <code>/usr/share/inkscape</code> on Linux, <code>inkscape-dir/share</code> on Windows). You can add your own patterns to this file or replace it with any other SVG file containing the patterns you need.

=Color management=

== Calibrated SVG color including CMYK ==

Inkscape now supports color-managed color definitions that use a colorspace other than sRGB (for example Adobe RGB, or calibrated CMYK colors). In the SVG file, this is done using the
optional "icc-color(...)" paint components as described in section 11.2 "Specifying paint" of the SVG 1.1 specification
[http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG11/painting.html#SpecifyingPaint]. A fallback sRGB value will be used, for non color-managed workflows. This allows for the use of calibrated color spaces, including using CMYK values that are preserved across applications.

The new CMS color selector tab allows these colors to be edited.

== Display adjustment ==

In Inkscape Preferences, Color Management tab, there's are new options for enabling display adjustment; you can select any calibration profile (an ICC file) suitable for your display. Options for rendering intent can also be chosen.

=== Per-window adjustment ===
Display adjustment is enabled and disabled per each editing window. This allows for simultaneous viewing of adjusted and unadjusted views of a single document by using multiple windows. There is a toggle at the bottom-right corner of the scrollbars that allows for turning on and off display adjustment. It also will be disabled to provide visible feedback when no profile is set to be available for adjustment.

=== XICC Support ===
On X11-based systems (i.e. Unix and Mac OSX), use of [[http://www.burtonini.com/computing/x-icc-profiles-spec-latest.html ICC Profiles In X Specification]] (or XICC) can be enabled. Support for version 0.2 of this specification has been implemented. Enabling this option by choosing to retrieve profiles from the display will switch Inkscape to using profiles attached to screens at runtime. These allow display adjustment to be changed on the fly, and to be set and cleared per-monitor. This is especially helpful with more than a single monitor.

Other Open Source software such as [http://www.gimp.org/ GIMP] support XICC. This allows all aware applications to be adjusted by setting a profile only once.

=== Multi-monitor aware ===
When XICC support is enabled, windows will adjust to the proper profile as they are moved across monitors. Also, as the windows are moved onto monitors with no profile attached, the adjustment toggle will become disabled. When the windows are moved onto screens that do have profiles, the toggle will become enabled.

== Soft Proofing ==

In Inkscape Preferences, Color Management tab, there's a new option for enabling output device preview; you can select any calibration profile (an ICC file) suitable for your output device. Options for rendering intent can also be chosen, along with out of gamut warnings.

=Snapping=

* Snapping has been implemented or improved for:

:* '''Newly created shapes'''

:* '''Skewing''' of objects

:* '''Handles''' of objects, incl. '''gradients'''

:* '''Images''' and '''clones'''

:* Text boxes, which snap to '''text baselines''' again

:* Objects, for which snapping now optionally considers the '''rotation center'''

:* Objects, which now allow for '''constrained snapping'''

:* '''Guides''', which now snap while dragging them

:* '''Axonometric grids'''

:* '''Angled guide lines'''

:* '''Bounding boxes''', of which now all four corners snap

* Other snapping fixes and improvements include:

:* It is now possible to snap to '''intersections''' of e.g. gridlines with guidelines, and of line segments.

:* The '''snapping preferences dialog''' has been restyled to make it more intuitive.

:* Inkscape now has a global snapping toggle, which has been added to the view-menu and is accessible through a shortcut

:* Inkscape now allows for controlling the snapping per grid when multiple grids are being used

:* Snapping distance is now set in screen pixels and is therefore '''independent of zoom'''.

:* Snapping of objects has been made more clean, by only snapping '''bounding box corners to bounding boxes''', and '''nodes to other nodes and paths'''.

:* The time it takes to snap to objects using the selector tool has been reduced significantly.

:* The bug where "node-to-node" snapping caused jerky movement of nodes is fixed.

:* The '''aspect ratio''' is correctly preserved while scaling objects with snapping turned on.

:* Only nodes at '''non-smooth parts''' of a path now snap.

:* The confusing "Default transformations origin" option has been removed. Now Inkscape always uses the opposite edge of the object's bounding box as the '''transformation origin''' (though the bounding box itself can now be different, see next item).

:* A new preference option has been added to specify the kind of bounding box to be used for transforming objects (see Inkscape Preferences, Tools, Selector). You can choose between the '''visual bounding box''' (which takes into account the stroke width, markers, and blur margins; this is the default behavior) or '''geometric bounding box''' (which encloses only the path itself, disregarding stroke width).

=Grids=
Grids have undergone some big changes under-the-hood. These are the visible changes:
* There is a new 3D/axonometric grid!
* A new tab in the document properties dialog, solely meant for grids; the former grid/guide tab is now solely for guides. I envision a list of guides there in the future, for easier deletion of guides etc.
* More than one grid can be active at the same time
** Each grid can be enabled/disabled separately from the document properties dialog.
* One can make grids invisible by unchecking the "Visible" checkbox in the grid's tab in the document properties dialog. Snapping is still enabled even for invisible grids!
* Multiple views on the same document share the same grids, but the grid can be turned off for each view separately. For example: one could have an overview view without grids showing. Duplicate that window and zoom in on some detail; then grids can be shown only for that view, and snapping will only happen in those views for which grids are enabled. (sorry i am not able to explain more clearly, perhaps someone else can?)
* Grid information is now stored in SVG as a child of sodipodi:namedview. Old files will be converted to this new format automatically
* The rectangular grid now has an option to show dots on gridline intersections instead of solid lines

From developer perspective:

* Implementation of new grids is much easier now; subclassing CanvasGrid and adding an entry in the is enough. Have a peek at how the rectangular grid is implemented (CanvasXYGrid).
* Note that there is no longer "the grid", there might be several grids active now!

A side effect of removal of old gridcode: apparantly the origin of the desktop rules used to be set to the origin of the grid. I find this strange: specifying a grid origin of (2,2) would have me think the origin would be at ruler location (2,2) instead of (0,0) as it is in 0.45.1.
I have commented the grid-origin correction to the ruler range, because now there is not a single grid anymore to correct it for. Isn't there a control somewhere to define the documents origin? Now the ruler origin is set to (0,0)

--johan

=Angled guidelines=

Now, Inkscape also provides angled guidelines! Double click on a guide to set its angle.

* When dragging a guideline off the rulers close to the edge, the guideline will automatically be angled. The angle is set depending on the grid.
** For the rectangular grid, the angle is 45 degrees.
** For the axonometric grid, the angle is matched to the grid. When the Ctrl-key is pressed, the angle is perpendicular to the grid lines (useful for aligning gradients).

=Import/Export=

==PDF and AI import==

In this version, Inkscape can natively (i.e. without any additional software) import PDF files and the newer PDF-based Adobe Illustrator files (starting from AI version 9.0).

'''Implemented features''': The new import extension can import '''paths''', '''text''', '''clippaths''', '''masked or non-masked images''', and '''softmasks'''. It supports '''pattern fills''' (XStep and YStep attributes are ignored) as well as '''linear and radial gradients''' (only those using sampled or exponential functions). '''Gradient meshes''' are imported, but they get converted to groups of small tiles (flat-colored paths) that approximate the mesh; the user can adjust the precision of this approximation.

'''PDF import settings''': After opening a PDF or AI document, the PDF Import Settings dialog shows up. Here you can select:

* the '''page''' to be imported from a multipage PDF;

* the overall '''clip region''' (which can be none or set to any of the PDF boxes, e.g. the crop box, the media box, the trim box, etc.);

* the '''precision''' for the approximation of '''gradient meshes'''; note that setting this too high may result in a huge SVG file and slow performance when importing files with gradient meshes;

* a checkbox controlling whether the '''images''' should be '''embedded''' into the resulting SVG document or saved on the current path;

* a '''preview''' of the selected page (shown if poppler-cairo is present on the system or if the selected page has a thumbnail embedded into the PDF document).

'''Text editing tips''': Any text imported from PDF or AI has each letter's precise place on the page ''fixed''. While this preserves the exact appearance (e.g. justification of text blocks) of the imported document, it makes editing such text difficult: deleting text fails to contract the text line and inserting text fails to expand it, i.e. typed letters overlay the existing letters. (However, you still can replace a letter with another letter of about the same width, although you may need to kern it into place with Alt+arrows.)

To work around this, select the text object you want to edit and use '''Text > Remove manual kerns''' command. This will remove the exact positioning information, so if the text block was justified it will lose justification, but instead you will be able to edit it as usual.

Note that there is a way to select even a single line in a text block. For this, open the XML editor, expand the <svg:text> tree branch corresponding to your text, and select any of the <svg:tspan> objects under it. Now you can remove manual kerns from this line only. After you finish editing the line, you can manually justify it back, for example by adding spaces, manual kerns (Alt+arrows), or by adjusting letterspacing (select the whole line and use Alt+> or Alt+<).

The native PDF/AI importer is based on the poppler library and was implemented by Miklós Erdélyi as part of the Google Summer of Code 2007.

==PDF export==

* A new cairo-based PDF exporter has been added to Inkscape (marked as "Cairo PDF" in the export format list). Inkscape 0.46 can export shapes, strokes, transparency, gradients, patterns, text, and images correctly to cairo. While clipping paths and masks are known to be faulty or missing. Also, unlike the old PDF exporter, the cairo-based PDF export produces compressed PDF files that are reasonably compact. cairo will write a PDF with vector graphics when possible and fall back to raster graphics when needed. What can be exported as vectors and how much of the image will be rasterized when the fallback kicks in depends on your version of cairo. cairo version 1.2 with the pdf backend compiled in is the minimum requirement for any cairo-based PDF exports, but it is highly recommended to use at least '''cairo 1.5.2''' for quality PDF export.

* A new cairo-based PostScript exporter has been added (marked as "Cairo PS" in the export format list). The cairo PS backend is not as mature as the PDF backend. It rasterizes a lot of its content. Text output does not work where it works with the PDF backend.

==CDR (CorelDraw) import==

Inkscape can use [http://www.sk1project.org/modules.php?name=Products&product=uniconvertor UniConvertor] if it's installed on your system to import documents in CDR format (CorelDraw). This feature is Unix-only at this time (since UniConvertor is Unix-only) and requires that you have Python and UniConvertor installed. As of UniConvertor 1.0rc2, only versions from 7 to X3 of the CDR format are supported, and text objects are not converted.

==XAML import/export==

* Inkscape can import vector graphics portions of XAML documents, as well as export its documents to XAML.

==Adobe Illustrator SVG clean import==

* Using this new import filter, Inkscape can open an SVG document removing any elements and attributes in the namespaces that Adobe Illustrator uses for its stuff. This will clean out everything except the actual SVG content.

==Bitmap export==

* '''Batch export''': The Bitmap Export dialog (Ctrl+Shift+E) got a new checkbox, ''Batch export all selected objects''. This checkbox is available when two or more objects are selected. If it is checked, instead of exporting selection as a whole, Inkscape exports each selected object separately into its own PNG file. This uses each object's export hints (i.e. export filename and DPI) if they are remembered from a previous export; otherwise, the filename is created from the object ID and the DPI is 90 pixels per inch. '''Caution:''' Unlike regular export, batch export overwrites all existing PNG files without warning.

:This makes it possible to implement all kinds of '''image slicing''' and automated export scenarios. For example, if you are working on a web site design, you can create a separate "export" layer. In that layer, "slice" your web page image into separate areas by creating invisible rectangles with no fill and no stroke. Select each rectangle (by Tab/Shift+Tab, or by switching to Outline mode where even an invisible rectangle can be selected by clicking on its outline) and export it into the corresponding filename (which gets saved as that object's export hint). After that, if you do any changes to your graphics, it's very easy to reexport all the slices: just switch to the "export" layer, select all in that layer (Ctrl+A), and export with the ''Batch export selected objects'' checkbox on.

* '''Hide all except selected''': A new checkbox allows you to hide in the exported image everything except selected object(s).

* The Export dialog automatically appends the '''.png''' extension to the export filename you specify.

== Open Clip Art Library import and export ==

{rejon}

=Command line=

Several new command line options are added that make Inkscape even more scriptable and automatable than before.

* --verb-list will list all the Verb IDs and their names in Inkscape. This makes writing your own menus and hotkeys much easier as you can easily find out what the choices are.

* --verb followed by a verb ID allows you to specify a verb to be called on every document opened by Inkscape initially from the command line.

* --select followed by a node ID will allow you to add a node to the list of selected objects.

* --query-all produces a comma delimited listing of all objects in the document, with their x, y, height, and width values.

These options can be used, for example, for performance testing. You could do something like this:

$ time inkscape --verb=FileClose my_complex_file.svg

to measure the time it takes to load and display the file.

Of course, with the ability to select objects, it can be much more useful than
that. You can call extension effects, or any other verb, then FileSave and
FileClose to automate all kinds of operations on your drawings.

=User interface=

== [dockable dialogs - gustav] ==

Inkscape's dialog handling has been reworked in this release to allow dialogs to behave like '''dockable panels'''. The dock area that holds the user's dialogs is located right of the canvas.

Dialogs placed in the dock can easily be rearranged, resized, stacked in groups or iconified. Furthermore, a dialog can be dragged of the dock to become a floating dock in itself—this allows other dialogs to be dragged and dropped on it to form a floating group of dialogs.

The old dialog behavior (used in releases before 0.46) has been preserved as an option, and if it is preferred, one can select it under ''Windows'' > ''Dialog behavior'' in the Inkscape preferences dialog.

Known issues:

* Some of Inkscape's dialogs are yet to be adapted to allow docking, these include the "Text and Font" dialog, the "Tiled clones" dialog, the "XML editor" and the "Object properties" dialog.

* [Remembered positions of dockable floating dialogs is inexact.]

[options]

== [toolbars - [[JonCruz]]] ==

'''Main toolbar''' on the left can now optionally use '''smaller buttons'''. With the several new tools added in this version, this may help users with small screens where the toolbar otherwise may not fit vertically. The toggle is on the Misc tab of the Inkscape Preferences dialog.

[calligraphy: menus, tooltips; star; ...]

Switched to stock GTK+ toolbars.

Extra magic secret sauce added.

== [filedialogs - [[JonCruz]]] ==

== Swatches panel, color drag-and-drop ==

* Right-clicking a color swatch now opens a context menu which allows you to apply the color to the fill or stroke of selection.

* Dragging colors from the color palette has been fixed and improved:

:* Now the dropped color is applied to '''the object on which you drop it''', regardless of whether that object is selected or not. This means you can change the color of only one object from selection without having to select it separately. (If you want to assign color to the entire selection, just click on the color swatch on the palette, not drag it.)

:* If an object has stroke and you '''drop the color over stroke''', the color is applied to stroke and not fill. (Another way to always apply color to stroke is to '''Shift+drag''' it.)

:* When gradient handles are active (e.g. in Gradient or Node tools), you can '''drop a color onto the gradient line''' to create a new gradient mid stop with this color, or '''drop a color onto an existing stop''' to recolor that stop.

==Color gestures==

A new method for quick and precise adjustment of colors is added in this version: color gestures. It works on the selected objects by grabbing the '''fill or stroke color swatch''' in the '''selected style indicator''' (on the left of the statusbar) and dragging it in various directions as described below. Note that this only works when the swatch displays a '''flat color'''; it does not work for a swatch showing "None", "N/A", or displaying a gradient (although you can select one or more gradient stops in Gradient tool and color-adjust them by color gestures just as you would do for objects). Color gestures can work on '''fill''' or '''stroke''', depending on which swatch in the selected color indicator you drag.

Color gestures work in '''HSL''' color space. Dragging without any keyboard modifiers adjusts the '''hue''' channel, dragging with '''Shift''' adjusts '''saturation''', and dragging with '''Ctrl''' adjusts '''lightness'''.

The adjustment is done by '''"rotating"''' the color swatch away from the original direction which is assumed to be '''NE at 45 degrees''' (i.e. from
the swatch diagonally into the document window). Once you click and drag the color swatch, imagine a diagonal line going from the point where you clicked in the NE direction, across the entire Inkscape window. By dragging '''below or to the right''' of that line, you decrease the corresponding color channel, to the minimum at the lower edge of the window; by dragging it above or to the left, you increase it, to the maximum at the left edge of the window. If you hover your mouse exactly over the 45 degrees line, the change will be zero.

Note that you can easily vary the '''precision''' of your adjustment. If you drag close enough to the swatch, each small movement results in a big change of the color. If you need a finer adjustment, just drag farther away from the swatch, towards the center of the Inkscape window or even to its upper right corner, where minute movements will produce very small changes in the color. In fact, this method gives you more color precision than even the color wheel in the Fill and Stroke dialog, unless you expand that dialog to fill the entire screen which is rarely practical.

The mouse '''cursor''' changes when you're doing color gestures, reflecting the channel currently adjusted and indicating the directions for increasing and decreasing the value. Also, watch the '''statusbar''' which will indicate, as you drag, the channel you are adjusting, the original value of that channel, the new value, and the difference.

You can '''switch channels while you drag'''. That is, you don't need to
drag it again and again from the swatch if you want to adjust all three channels - you can do it all in one drag, by pressing and releasing Ctrl and Shift as necessary. Note that when you change the keyboard modifiers during drag, the position of the zero-change line is temporarily changed to go through the current mouse position; this is done so that there are no sudden changes in color if you are switching modifiers away from the original 45-degree line.

The '''Alt''' modifier is special. Pressing Alt means "do nothing"; this allows you to move the mouse, without releasing, to a more convenient place from where to continue tweaking the color after letting go of Alt. As with the other modifiers, releasing Alt temporarily redefines the zero-change axis to go through the point where Alt was released. For example, imagine you made your color darker by Ctrl+dragging towards the bottom edge of the window and you now need to make it less saturated. You cannot however Shift+drag it any lower because there's just not enough room for that. In that situation, without releasing the mouse, Alt+drag it upwards to a convenient spot and then Shift+drag downwards as needed. Also, you can start dragging from the swatch with Alt pressed to avoid changing the color while you take a more convenient position for adjustments.

For example, you can select a green rectangle and first turn it into greenish-blue by dragging away from the Fill swatch and slightly above the 45 degrees line; then, without releasing the mouse, press Ctrl and drag a bit to the right to darken the color; then press Shift, release Ctrl, and adjust saturation. You can press or release Ctrl and Shift as many times as necessary during a single drag; when you are finally satisfied with your color, release the mouse to commit the change.

Apart from precise adjustments, you can use color gestures to very quickly perform some common color transformations:

* Ctrl+drag the swatch to the right and down to paint all selected objects black.

* Ctrl+drag the swatch upwards and to the left to paint all selected objects white.

* Shift+drag the swatch to the right and down to desaturate the color of selected objects.

* Shift+drag the swatch upwards and to the left to maximize saturation of the color of selected objects.

Note that when several objects or gradient stops with different colors are selected, the selected style indicator shows their '''averaged''' color. If you adjust that color by gesturing, the changed color will be assigned back to all selected objects/stops, in effect eliminating any difference between them. If you want to adjust many different-colored objects preserving their relative differences, use the color modes of the Tweak tool or color adjustment extension effects.

This new technique requires some getting used to, but once you get the idea it is quite convenient, fast, and precise.

== Print dialog integration ==

* '''Print Dialog''': The GTK Unix Print Dialog has been hooked up! From the dialog, you can select any of the Postscript-capable printers known to your system and configure them as with any other GTK application.

== Saving window geometry globally ==

Previously, window geometry (size and position of document windows) could only be saved into the document (so that each document stored its own window geometry). Now, a new option is added to save the geometry of the last used window to the preferences and apply this geometry to all new windows. Thus, with the "Save geometry to preferences" option enabled, new windows will open with the shape of the most recent previous window. This mode also remembers and restores the maximized/fullscreen state (unlike geometry saved to documents).

== Preserving zoom/view of reverted documents ==

When reverting files to their previously saved state, the current zoom factor/panning is now retained (as opposed to reverted to the saved state, too, as it was the case before). This less interrupts the workflow when one is working on some detail in the drawing.

== New ways to scroll and zoom ==

* You can now enable Space+mouse drag to pan canvas, as it does in Adobe Illustrator. This mode is enabled by the '''Left mouse button pans when Space is pressed''' checkbox in the Scrolling tab of the Inksape Preferences dialog. By default it is off and pressing the spacebar key switches you to Selector and back, as it always did in Inkscape.

* By default, rotating the mouse wheel scrolls the canvas vertically and Ctrl+wheel zooms in and out. Now, if you turn on the '''Mouse wheel zooms by default''' checkbox in the Scrolling tab of the Inksape Preferences dialog, this behavior is reversed: mouse wheel zooms without Ctrl and scrolls with Ctrl. This new mode should be familiar for users of AutoCAD and CorelDraw.

* In the Zoom tool, right mouse button always zooms out instead of calling the context menu (which is rather useless in this tool anyway).

== Using other keys in place of Alt ==

* Many Linux users have found the use of '''Alt-drag''' and '''Alt+click''' in Inkscape problematical because this shortcut is often captured by window managers. In 0.46, instead of disabling of the window manager shortcut as suggested in [http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/FAQ#How_to_make_Alt.2Bclick_and_Alt.2Bdrag_work_on_Linux.3F the FAQ], you can change a setting in your preferences.xml file called <code>mapalt</code> in the <code>options</code> group. This numerical value ranges from 1 to 5; 1 indicates no change, any other value refers to some special key on a keyboard, such as '''Alt Gr''', the '''Windows''' key, etc. The specific mapping of these values to the keys on your keyboard can be viewed and/or editied by '''xkeycaps''', available from [http://www.jwz.org/xkeycaps www.jwz.org]. The value associated with a particular key is shown in that program at the top of the screen beside the word "Modifiers" when the mouse is held over a key on the main display.

== GTK theme on OS X ==

A GTK theme is now included in Inkscape.app bundle on OS X. If the user does not have any personal customization (e.g. in a .gtkrc-2.0 file) this theme is used. It reflects the OS X settings for "Appearance" and "Highlight Color" set in System Preferences > Appearance.

=Other changes and improvements=

* '''Gnome VFS Improvements''': Gnome VFS Non-Local files are now usable through all of our file choosers in Open, Save and Export. This compile-time option allowed people to open any Gnome-VFS-based URI from the command-line in the past, but not non-local resources (WebDAV, SFTP, etc) and this now allows for all the lovely possibilities Gnome-VFS provides.

* In previous versions, Inkscape didn't allow you to '''group a single object.''' Yet in some cases, this operation is useful (for example, to blur the clipped edged of an object, or apply more than one clippath/mask to an object). Now this limitation is removed; just select any single object and group it to get a single-object group.

* The somewhat cryptic "F:" and "S:" labels in the selected style indicator (at the left end of the statusbar) and in tool's style swatches are now spelled out as '''Fill:''' and '''Stroke:'''. We believe this makes the interface, even if less space-efficient, a bit more friendly for newbies.

* The '''style swatches''' at the right end of object-creating tools' control bars now open the Preferences page of the corresponding tool when clicked. Also, now these swatches display a tooltip explaining its purpose (e.g. "Style of new rectangles", "Style of new calligraphic strokes", etc.)

* On the '''Scale''' tab of the '''Transform dialog''', the numbers now show the current size of selection, not size increment as before. Correspondingly, with the % unit chosen, you see 100% displayed, and to scale it up twice, you enter 200%, not 100% as before. This is a more intuitive behavior and it's more consistent with how the W/H controls work in the Selector tool.

* After dragging a curve segment in Node tool, Inkscape no longer selects the two adjacent nodes if they were not selected before.

* The '''Tile Clones''' dialog now uses the object's defined '''rotation axis''' (which can be freely moved by Selector tool and which is saved separately for each object) for all rotations (including both symmetry rotations and the Rotation tab rotations), scales, and flips. This renders unnecessary the previous workarounds where you had to group an object with another transparent object to affect how it's rotated by the clone tiler.

* The '''Shift''' tab of the '''Tile Clones''' dialog has two new options: '''Cumulate''': when checked, each tile is shifted by the normal amount plus the cumulative shifts of all previous tiles. This is useful when placing tiles that are being scaled by a uniform amount. '''Exlude tile''': when checked, the tile width or height is not automatically included in calculating the tile's shift. This is useful when using the dialog to place clones on a circle or spiral (rather than using a shift of -100%). It is also useful when positioning tiles using the '''Exponent''' parameter.

* The '''Scale''' tab of the '''Tile Clones''' dialog has a new parameter: '''Base''' that allows placing tiles along a logarithmic spiral (as often found in nature). If the value is '''0''', the parameter is not used. Use a value less than one for a converging spiral and a value of greater than one for a diverging spiral. The actual scale is calculated as '''base''' raised to the nominal '''scale''' power.

* In '''Pencil''' and '''Calligraphic''' tools, pressing '''Esc''' or '''Ctrl+Z''' while drawing cancels the currently drawn path or stroke. When not drawing, these keys work as before (Esc deselects, Ctrl+Z undoes last action). (This is the same behavior as in the Pen tool where it was introduced in a previous version.)

* A set of new verbs has been added to allow the user to easily '''unlock all locked objects''' or '''unhide all hidden objects'''. There are two variants one that operates on the current layer and its children and one that operates globally. While searching for hidden or locked object descendants of locked layers are ignored.

* Several more '''rotation snapping increments''' are available in the Steps tab of the Inkscape Preferences dialog: 36, 22.5, 18, 12, and 0.5 degrees.

* The list of folder shortcuts in the '''Open''' dialog includes the folder with Inkscape's SVG '''examples''' for easy access. Similarly, the '''Save''' dialog has a shortcut for the user's own '''templates''' dialog making it easy to save the current document as a template (if saved as <code>default.svg</code>, it will be loaded every time you run Inkscape or create new document with Ctrl+N; with any other name, it will be added to the File > New submenu).

* For time-intensive operations such as Paint Bucket and Simplify, the system's busy wait cursor is displayed to indicate to the user that Inkscape is actively working, and not frozen.

* Several improvements in '''inkview''': busy cursor is shown while loading file, the button window stays on top and responds to keyboard shortcuts; several memleaks stopped and bugs fixed. The "slideshow mode" of the main inkscape application (-s or --slideshow command line option) is removed; use inkview instead.

* In Document Metadata dialog, updated '''Creative Commons Licenses''' to version '''3.0'''.

* Preferences have been added for setting the default metadata and licenses, so this information can be automatically filled in with new documents.

* The built-in '''Potrace''' tracing engine is upgraded to version '''1.8''' with some minor bugs fixed.

* File dialog windows (open/save) now have an '''Enable preview''' checkbox which allows you to disable the preview pane.

* In the Calligraphic pen controls, the toggle button to enable tablet pressure sensitivity is moved to the Width control, and the button for tilt sensitivity is moved to Angle, to better reflect what parameters these toggles affect.

* In Node and Gradient tools, using '''Tab/Shift+Tab''' to select next/previous node or gradient handle scrolls the canvas if necessary to show the selection.

* The option '''Import bitmap as <image>''' is removed; it was added several versions ago to allow optionally importing images as rectangles with image pattern, to make clipping the images easier. Now that you can easily use clipping paths, as well as convert any image to rectangle with pattern with Alt+I, this option is not really necessary and removed to reduce confusion. Bitmaps are always imported into SVG as an <image> element.

* Support has been added for stock patterns, in the same way that stock markers were already supported. Adding patterns to share/patterns/patterns.svg, and giving them a inkscape-stockid attribute as found on the examples already there will make them available in all Inkscape sessions from the patterns tab of the fill & stroke dialog.

* New '''fontforge_glyph.svg''' template is added for font designers who draw glyphs in Inkscape and import them into FontFoge. It is 1000x1000px large and has a horizontal guide at 200px to mark border for descenders.

* Save dialogs have been modified to clarify that they '''Save as SVG''', so people using Inkscape to edit PDF, EPS, and other file formats will be less confused at the default behavior when saving files.

* Add some new '''UML markers''', including filled and hollow diamonds and triangles.

=Notable bugfixes=

These are bugfixes compared to 0.45.1; for a list of fixes in 0.45.1 compared to 0.45, see [[ReleaseNotes045|0.45.1 release notes]].

* The '''sodipodi:docbase''' attribute is no longer added to the root <svg> element. This attribute used to keep the latest directory that the document was saved to, and thus represented a mild privacy violation (i.e., by sharing your Inkscape SVG files you allowed others to have a peek into your directory structure). Note, however, that Inkscape does not remove this attribute from old documents it opens; if you want you can remove it yourself. Inkscape just no longer creates this attribute in new documents.

* A fix in the blur rendering code made '''exporting blurred objects to bitmap''' much faster and fixed the disappearing of blurred objects in exported bitmaps which happened for large objects in 0.45. The same fix got rid of the rendering artefacts that sometimes appeared on blurred objects during scrolling.

* Inkscape now properly quotes <code>font-family</code> values and therefore can use '''fonts''' with various '''nonalphanumeric characters''' in their names, which previously failed.

* If you have saved documents with a previous version of Inkscape which used '''right-to-left text''' (e.g. Arabic, Hebrew) then the paragraph alignment of non-flowed text has been reversed in this release. This is due to a bug in previous versions - the new behaviour is compliant with the SVG specification and compatible with other editors and viewers. To correct your images, simply reverse the paragraph alignment by selecting the text and clicking the appropriate button on the toolbar.

* A large family of bugs was exterminated where an object's style could only refer other objects (such as gradients, patterns, and filters) that come after it in the document. Now any objects can be referenced from a style regardless of their place in the document. This fixed the '''disappearance of gradients/patterns/filters''' after you undo an effect, as well as lots of assorted crashes and misrenderings (mostly on non-Inkscape SVG files).

* On Windows, '''file opening/saving dialogs''' can no longer sink under the main editor window (they now have the inkscape window set correctly as their parent window).

* '''Stock markers''' now appear in the "recently used markers" section of the marker selector dropdowns in the Fill & Stroke dialog. Before, any markers with stock id's (including markers modified by the user) were hidden, making it difficult to work with modified stock markers.

* A regression in 0.45 caused crashes when '''undo or redo''' was attempted before the previous action could complete (e.g. pressing ctrl+z while you are still drawing a rectangle). This is now fixed.

* Previously, if there was a single '''invalid property''' in a <code>style</code> attribute, the entire attribute was discarded, i.e. the object lost all styling. Now Inkscape's behavior is more compliant to the CSS specification: it ignores only the invalid property but reads in all the rest.

* Several bugs are fixed in '''searching for linked images'''. Now moving SVG documents with their associated images to a different place or a different machine should work more reliably.

* Master opacity did not apply to stroke '''markers''' as it should; fixed.

* '''Creative Commons Public Domain Declaration URI''' points to the right location now.

* Text objects didn't display the '''pattern editing handles'''; fixed.

* On Windows, the Inkscape uninstaller deleted all files under the install directory. This could lead to removing user-created files, or even other program files not related to inkscape if the install directory was C:\Program Files. The new uninstaller '''tracks all installed files and asks for confirmation before deleting any other files'''. However, installation and uninstallation process is now slower.

* Clones were wrongly unlinked when their original was moved to another layer; fixed.

* Previous versions had a problem on '''Windows Vista''' where selected menu item was invisible. Now our Windows builds use a newer version of GTK library which fixes this problem.

* Duplicating empty text objects that have just been created no longer crashes. Also, the XML editor crash related to empty text objects is fixed. A downside is that the SVG will become cluttered with empty text objects as they are no longer automatically removed. A better fix for the problem is planned.

* In Tile Clones dialog, the PMG symmetry group was created incorrectly, which is now fixed.

= Previous releases =

* [[ReleaseNotes045]]
* [[ReleaseNotes044]]
* [[ReleaseNotes043]]
* [[ReleaseNotes042]]
* [[ReleaseNotes041]]
* [[ReleaseNotes040]]
* [[ReleaseNotes039]]
* [[ReleaseNotes038]]
* [[ReleaseNotes037]]
* [[ReleaseNotes036]]
* [[ReleaseNotes035]]

[[Category:Marketing]]

File:Inkscape dock2.png

2007-03-26T15:53:47Z

Gustavb: Screenshot of dockable dialogs interface.

Screenshot of dockable dialogs interface.

File:Dock patch 1.png

2007-03-26T15:53:09Z

Gustavb: Screenshot of dockable dialogs interface.

Screenshot of dockable dialogs interface.

Release notes/0.45

2007-01-11T09:25:06Z

Gustavb: /* Extension effects */ sp

= Inkscape 0.45: overview =

This release brings the exciting new features developed by the Google Summer of Code 2006 participants, as well as tons of other improvements across the board.

= SVG filters: Gaussian blur =

Thanks to Google's Summer of Code program, Inkscape now has basic support for [http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG11/filters.html SVG filters]. The only filter enabled so far is '''Gaussian blur'''.

With it, you can softly and naturally blur any Inkscape objects: paths, shapes, groups, text], images. Clones inherit blurring from their original, but they can also be blurred independently from the original (you can create blurred clones with Tile Clones, too). Both the fill and stroke of an object are blurred together, creating semitransparent margins that smoothly blend into the background.

Gaussian blur enables a wide range of photorealistic effects: arbitrarily shaped shades and lights, depth of field, drop shadows, glows, etc. Also, blurred objects can be used as masks for other objects to achieve the "feathered mask" effect.

* To blur selected objects, open the Fill and Stroke dialog (Ctrl+Shift+F) and use the '''Blur''' slider. The blur value is a percentage, with 100% corresponding to a blurring radius of 1/8 of the object's bounding box' perimeter (that is, for a square, a blur of 100% will have the radius equal to half a side).

* The Tile Clones dialog also supports blurring. On the '''Blur & opacity''' tab, you can set the blur percentage per row or per column of your tiling, as well as randomize blurring and make it alternate (all the same options as for Opacity).

* The quality of on-screen blur display is controlled by the '''Blur quality''' option on the new '''Filters''' tab of Inkscape Preferences (Ctrl+Shift+P). The available options range from best quality/slowest display to worst quality/fastest display, the default being in the middle of the range. Any setting except the "best quality" may introduce some rendering artifacts, especially when blurring thin strokes; on the other hand, the "best quality" setting may make Inkscape extremely slow at high zooms. These settings only affect the screen display of blurred objects; bitmap export always uses the best quality.

Here are a few tips on using blur:

* '''Masks and clipping''' are applied ''after'' blur. That is, if you clip an object and then blur it (or blur it first and then clip - it makes no difference), the clipped edges will remain crisp. Often, this is what you want. If, however, you want to blur the clipped/masked edges too (possibly with a different radius), you can use grouping: group the clipped object with some other object (which you can then delete from the group) and blur the group.

* A simple '''drop shadow''' is now very easy to do: just copy the object, paint the copy black, blur it, shift away a bit and lower it to the bottom. However, such a shadow does not update when you edit the foreground object. If your object is already black (or, more generally, if you want the shadow to be the same color as the object), you can clone instead of copy to make the shadow auto-updating. But what if your foreground object is not black but you need a black shadow? Here's a recipe: unset the object's fill (it becomes black); create ''two'' clones of it; put one clone on top and paint any color you want; put the other clone at bottom, blur it and shift sideways. Now you can edit the unset-fill original (use Alt+click to select it) and everything will update.

* If an object has a fill that you don't want to blur (e.g. pattern, or if it's a bitmap), but you just want to '''feather its edges''', use a blurred transparency mask. For this, copy the object; paint it white; blur it as needed; scale the blurred copy down so its blur margins are entirely within the original object; select both the original and the blurred mask; do Object > Mask > Set.

* Transforming a blurred object transforms its blur, too. This applies to a non-uniform scaling as well, so by squeezing a blurred object you make its blur squeezed as well. So, the easiest way to blur a path horizontally more than vertically is this: stretch it upwards without blur, then apply blur and squeeze it back into the original shape.

* You can combine '''blurring with gradients'''. For example, an ellipse with elliptic opacity gradient will look much softer and more natural when blurred. An object with a horizontal linear opacity gradient, when blurred, will look like it is more blurred on its transparent side than on its opaque side.

* A '''clone of a blurred object''' inherits the blur of the original. Therefore, such a clone can be blurred ''more'', but you can't "unblur" it to make the clone sharper than its original (unless, of course, you unlink it). The Fill and Stroke dialog shows you the amount of the blur applied to this particular object; however, if the object is a clone of an already blurred original, the dialog does not reflect that.

* Note that '''Firefox 2.0''' does not support SVG filters, so your files will be displayed in Firefox 2.0 without blur. However, support has been added in the current development version ("trunk") and will be included in Firefox 3.0. The Opera web browser, as well as librsvg (used by Wikipedia) and Batik, support filters correctly.

= Undo history =

* Inkscape now features a History Dialog accessible through Ctrl+Shift+H or Edit→Undo History. All changes to the document since it was opened are recorded here.
** In the dialog, changes are listed from the oldest (top) to the newest (bottom).
** The type of each change is indicated by an icon and a short description.
** For readability, consecutive changes of the same type are placed in a collapsable branch showing a triangle marker and the number of the hidden actions in the branch.
** By clicking on an event event in the list, you can easily move through the undo history, i.e. undo or redo any number of actions with one click.

* The Undo and Redo commands in the Edit menu display the descriptions of the commands to be undone and redone, correspondingly. (These are the same descriptions that you see in the History dialog.)

= Rendering improvements =

* Interruptible display: Previously, Inkscape could not do anything until it finishes the current screen redraw. Now the redraw is made interruptible, so that Inkscape responds to mouse and keyboard input and can abort the current redraw and start over if you do some screen-changing operation. As a result, Inkscape now feels much snappier and more interactive. This interruptibility is fine-tuned for some interactive operations (such as node dragging) so that a balance is achieved between responsiveness and completeness of display.

* Radial gradients are rendered faster by at least 10%.

* Screen render is faster by 2-3%, up to 5% for complex drawings with transparency.

* Display is more responsive when working at high zoom levels when using a tablet.

* Rendering (compositing) quality has been improved. This is most visible with (partially) transparent gradients, banding is a lot less pronounced now. Speed has also been improved in some cases.

= Tools =

== Node tool ==

* You can grow or shrink node selection by hovering the mouse pointer over a node and using mousewheel (up = grow, down = shrink) or the keys PageUp (grow) and PageDown (shrink). ''Growing'' adds the closest unselected node to the selection; shrinking deselects the farthest selected node. There are two modes that differ by how the closest/farthest nodes are chosen:

** Spatial selection (Mousewheel, PageUp/PageDown): distances to nodes are measured directly, regardless of which subpath a node belongs to.

** Linear selection (Ctrl+Mousewheel, Ctrl+PageUp/Ctrl+PageDown): node distances are measured ''along the path'', and only the nodes belonging to the same subpath as the hovered node are considered (i.e. other subpaths are never selected).

:This technique is convenient for quickly selecting an area in a complex path starting from a center - for example, for node sculpting.

== Dropper ==

* Instead of the confusing toggle button, now the Controls bar for the Dropper tool has two checkboxes, "Pick alpha" and "Set alpha", which work as follows. Suppose you have an object selected and, using Dropper, click on an object which has red (#FF0000) fill and 0.5 opacity (half-transparent).
** If the "Pick alpha" checkbox is off, the selected object will get the fill color #800000 (i.e. faded-out red) and fill opacity will be at 1.0 (opaque).
** If the "Pick alpha" checkbox is on but "Set alpha" is off, the selected object will get the fill color #FF0000 (red) and fill opacity will be at 1.0.
** If both "Pick alpha" and "Set alpha" are on, the selected object will get the fill color #FF0000 (red) and fill opacity will be at 0.5 (half-transparent).
:If you Shift+click instead of click, the same changes will be made to stroke color and stroke opacity, correspondingly. Note that in no situation can Dropper change the master opacity of the selected object(s), although it can pick it just as it does any other kind of opacity.

== Calligraphy ==

* A new numeric parameter, Caps, controls the amount of protruding at the ends of calligraphic strokes. This parameter can range from 0 (flat caps, default behavior in previous versions) through 1 (approximately half-circle caps) and up to 5 (long elliptic caps). Rounded caps much improve the look of low-fixation strokes, simulating a rounded pen.

* The "Drag" parameter has been renamed to Wiggle with a value inversion (i.e. low drag corresponds to high wiggle, and vice versa). Increase this parameter (default is 0) to make the pen waver and wiggle in curly patterns.

= Outline mode =

* A new menu command (View > Display Mode > Toggle) and a new keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+<keypad 5>) switch the display mode from Normal to Outline and back.

* The 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:

:: <group id="startmode" outline="1"/>

:placing it after the <group id="options"> opening tag.

= PDF export =

* A new Cairo-based PDF exporter has been added to Inkscape. Inkscape 0.45 can export shapes, strokes, transparency, gradients, patterns, text, and images correctly to Cairo. While clipping paths and masks are known to be faulty or missing. Cairo will write a PDF with vector graphics when possible and fall back to raster graphics when needed. What can be exported as vectors and how much of the image will be rasterized when the fallback kicks in depends on your version of Cairo. Cairo version 1.2 with the pdf backend compiled in is the minimum requirement for any Cairo-based PDF exports.

* [removed? - mental] The native PDF exporter introduced in Inkscape 0.44 is improved along with the new Cairo-based PDF exporter. Changes since Inkscape 0.44 include: New features: bitmap images can be embedded, pdf files can be exported from commandline. Changed behaviour: the pointless text to path question is gone. Fixed bugs: save failure is now detected, miter limits are now >= 1, pdfs with transparent gradient are now embeddable, eccentric elliptic gradients fixed, dash style inheritance fixed, transparency inheritance fixed.

= PS/EPS export =

* There's a new option to embed the fonts used in the document in the PS or EPS exported file. As of now, this works for Type 1 fonts only, not TrueType. The option is available when performing the export from the GUI as well as from the command line via the <code>--export-embed-fonts</code> option.

= EMF export =

* Inkscape has a limited support for exporting EMF (Enhanced Meta File) format. This works only on Windows, and only exports strokes and fills with constant colours. No text, no images, no gradients, no transparency.

= Command line =

* The new <code>--export-pdf</code> command line parameter allows exporting an SVG image to PDF from command line.

= Keyboard profiles =

The previous release allowed sets of keybinding to be created for Inkscape in the style of other applications. Two more sets of keybindings have been added.

* Adobe Illustrator
* Macromedia Freehand

Of course not every feature in these other programs has a direct match to features in Inkscape so if you can please do help us out by reporting any problems you may have or improvements you would like to request.

Additionally, a keybinding that focuses on tablet-based illustration and drawing work has been added:

* right-handed-illustration.xml

This keybinding places all commonly-used commands under the left hand, so that the user's hands rarely leave the keyboard or the tablet/stylus.

(To enable a profile, copy it into <code>default.xml</code> in the same directory, overwriting the old file. To restore the default Inkscape set, copy <code>inkscape.xml</code> into <code>default.xml</code>.)

More of Inkscape's keys are implemented as actions and are therefore available for remapping via keyboard profiles. New actions include '''EditSelectNext''' and '''EditSelectPrev''' for selecting next/previous object or node (by default, they are bound to Tab/Shift+Tab; as a result of becoming global actions, these keys now work in all tools and not only in Selector and Node tool as before).

= Extension effects =

* 3 '''new parameter types''' have been added to the extension effect UI: tabs, enumerations and optiongroups (radiobuttons). Examples are available of how to use these parameters in the definition of extensions: the new function plotter uses tabs; enumerations are used by the 'Pattern along path' extension; and a small developer example is given to illustrate the use of optiongroups (identical to enumerations).

* A new extension, '''Render > Lorem ipsum''' creates the traditional Latin-like random text for design mock-ups. The number of paragraphs, the number of sentences per paragraph and the possible fluctuation of the number of sentences (for uneven paragraphs) can be adjusted. If no flowed text element is selected, a new one in a new layer is created, matching the size of the canvas.

* '''Pattern along path''': A new powerful extension (in "Generate from path" submenu) allows you to bend, repeat and/or stretch a pattern object (which can be a path or a group) along a "skeleton" path. This makes it easy to create a variety of patterned and shaped strokes. This obsoletes the old "Kochify" extension which is removed.

* '''Color effects''': A new group of extensions in the '''Color''' submenu of the Effects menu allows you to adjust all colors of a selection at once. These commands affect both fill and stroke colors, including gradients (but not bitmaps). The commands include a full set of '''HSL adjustments''' (increasing/decreasing hue, saturation, or lightness by 5%), '''Brighter''' and '''Darker''' (adjust brightness by up or down by 10%), '''Desaturate''', '''Grayscale''', '''Negative''', commands for removing or swapping the Red, Green, Blue channels, as well as a '''Custom''' command where you can set your own formulas for modifying the color channels. These extensions are a temporary solution; in a future version, similar functionality will be added to Inkscape core.

:Note: undoing color changes on gradients exposes a bug where an object seems to "disappear"; this is however only a display issue (caused by the order in which gradients and their users are restored on undo) not causing any loss of information. Also, on large documents and large selections with gradients, Python's XPath code may get quite slow. Despite these shortcomings, we decided to add this extension, because it's genuinely useful functionality which was so far missing in Inkscape.

* The '''Function Plotter''' has been extended, providing greater flexibility in x- and y-range definition.

* g2png: The new group-to-PNG Python extension (g2png) is an easy way to export any group or layer to individual PNG files. It was first created for use in the [http://www.le-radar.com/?mm/inkscape Inkscape User Manual] (also available in SVN's user_manual module) but is also interesting for many other uses. If e.g. you have to draw a set of icons, you can draw them in the same document, thus making copying, duplicating, cloning etc. easier. Then just create a group for each icon, and with the extension, each group ends up in its own PNG file.

* Recent fixes in the processing of SVG <defs /> have made it possible to implement the often requested '''Color Markers to Match Stroke''' effect. It is no longer necessary to spend long stretches of time hand editing XML to recolor arrow heads and other marker.

* The "Blur Edge" extension is renamed into '''Inset/Outset Halo''' to avoid confusion with the real Gaussian blur that we now support, as well as to better describe what this extension actually does: From the selected path, it creates a group of inset and outset paths that form a stepped "halo" around the object.

* The '''Extract One Image''' extension automatically appends filename extension to the created bitmap file.

* In an extension's INX file, you can specify <code><effects-menu hidden="yes"/></code> to hide that extension from the Effects menu. However, such a "hidden" extension can still be assigned a keyboard shortcut (by using its <code>id</code> as an "action" in your <code>~/.inkscape/keys/default.xml</code>).

= SVG output =

For specialized uses, several aspects of Inkscape's SVG output can now be customized via editing the preferences.xml file (there's no UI for these options). A <group id="svgoutput"> inside <group id="options"> can have the following attributes:

* usenamedcolors (default is 0). If nonzero, Inkscape uses symbolic color names (such as "white" or "lime") and three-digit color designations (such as $dfe) where appropriate; otherwise, it always uses six-digit colors (such as $d0f0e0). Note that in 0.44, the default was to use named colors, which created problems for some extension effects.

* numericprecision (default is 8). This is the number of significant digits written for each number into SVG. You can lower this number to get slightly more compact SVG at the expense of precision.

* minimumexponent (default is -8). In transform= attributes, any number whose absolute value is less than 10 to the power of minimumexponent (i.e. less than 10-8 by default) is written as 0.

* indent (default is 2) controls the number of spaces that each level of nesting in SVG is shifted. Set this to 0 to disable indentation.

* inlineattrs (default is 0). If nonzero, attributes are placed on the same line as their tags; otherwise they are separated by newlines.

= Bitmap tracing =

* A '''new color quantization algorithm''' for multiscan traces works faster (especially for large numbers of colors) and gives more adequate results with less colors used. This improves tracing results both for full-color photographs and for limited-color drawings.
* The Trace Bitmap dialog now provides access to three more tracing parameters:
** '''Suppress speckles''': If set, spots or speckles larger than the given size are suppressed in the trace.
** '''Smooth corners''': This parameter controls how much smoothing is applied to corners in the traced path.
** '''Optimize paths''': If set, trace paths are optimized by joining adjacent Bezier segments with the given tolerance.
* All controls in the Trace Bitmap dialog are reorganized to be easier to find. The dialog is redesigned to use two main tabs: '''Mode''' (where you select the tracing mode, such as brightness cutoff or color multiscan) and '''Options''' (where you set various tracing options, such as corner smoothing). The preview is placed horizontally to the right of the tabs. Most labels and tooltips are rewritten for clarity. The trace preview image is made twice larger.

= Even more improvements =

* A 'Save a copy'-function has been added to the file menu, similar to the 'Save a copy' functionality of e.g. Adobe Illustrator. With this function, you can save your document under a new filename, but Inkscape will 'forget' it has done this: later saves will be to the old filename. The default shortcut assigned to this function is: '''Shift+Ctrl+Alt+S'''.

* Text and flowed text objects behave more consistently. Now you can put a flowed text on path or (re)flow it into a shape just as you would do with a regular (unflowed) text. Previously, the need to convert a flowed text to text before these operations was a stumble for many users.

* [new Help commands]

* Exported PNG images have the correct resolution set in the headers.

* [sculpt profiles - bbyak]

* [new toolbar: squeezable, expansion menu, right-click menus - joncruz]

* The Path -> Union (Ctrl++) operation now functions when only a single object is selected. Use this to remove self-intersections from objects.

* We removed the ''"hacked"'' '''filename entry field''' that we had added to the Open and Save dialogs because starting from version 2.10, GTK+ has finally restored this field in their '''standard file dialog'''. The standard field at the top of the dialog supports type-ahead find and performs the default dialog action (open or save) by pressing Enter, which means you can now do a quick '''Ctrl+O, Ctrl+V, Enter''' sequence to open the file whose path is in your clipboard (this closes a long-standing usability bug). Those who use older versions of GTK are advised either to upgrade to 2.10 or use Ctrl+L to open a pop-up filename box. (Our Windows builds are shipped with GTK+ 2.10.)

* The '''Create Bitmap''' function (Alt+B in the default keymap) is made more useful. Unless you have specific resolution or minimum size set for this command in preferences.xml (<code><group id="createbitmap"/></code>), it will take the '''resolution hint''' from the object whose bitmap copy you are creating (in other words, it will use the resolution that you specified for that object when exporting it via the Export Bitmap dialog), or the default '''90 dpi''' if that object was not yet exported. Also, a 90 dpi bitmap (with its pixels exactly 1 px in size) will be '''snapped''' to the pixel grid. This makes it easy to use Create Bitmap for quick '''rasterization preview''' of an object or document. (Note: if you have used a previous version of Inkscape, your preferences.xml may contain <code>minsize="250"</code>; delete this for objects' resolution hints to work.)

* Using extended input (i.e. tablet pressure and tilt) can now be disabled via Preferences (Misc tab). This is intended to be a last-resort option for those platform/hardware combinations that are not properly supported by GTK. With extended input disabled, you can still use your tablet as a mouse.

* Simplify Path now had two modes when working with a group of paths: the default mode, which treats all of the paths as one large object to simplify, or the new mode, which acts the same as using Simplify on each path in a group separately. In preferences.xml, set '''options.simplifyindividualpaths''' to 1 to get the new mode.

* For long Simplify operations (more than 20 paths at a time), Inkscape provides user feedback via the status bar as to how many paths have been simplified. This change also prevents Inkscape from appearing to have locked up during the operation.

* New '''templates''' added for '''video formats''' (PAL, NTSC and HDTV 1080) as well as DVD cover templates that were not installed in the previous version. This will help video and DVD authoring with Inkscape. The business card 85×54 template is now installed as well.

* The '''opacity''' of objects is now displayed as percentage, '''from 0 to 100''', both in the Fill & Stroke dialog (with one fractional digit) and in the statusbar style indicator (with no fractional digits), instead of from 0 to 1.0 as before. This makes opacity values easier to read, type, and say.

* "Other" license type was added to the metadata/license dialog so that people know that they are entering a URI to an "other" license.

* Doxygen DoxyFile is updated.

* Thanks to patches submitted by users of our community, Inkscape can now be built on SGI IRIX 6.5.28, gcc 3.4.0 systems and on Tru64 systems.

= Examples =

* With all the recent additions - clipping, masking, and especially blur - Inkscape is now able to produce extremely photorealistic art. In the share/examples folder in Inkscape distribution, you will find two brand new, stunningly realistic images of shiny cars: car.svgz by Konstantin Rotkevich and gallardo.svgz by Michael Grosberg.

* Inkscape 0.45 does not yet have gradient meshes. But with the addition of Gaussian Blur, this feature suddenly got within reach. A new example file, gradient-mesh-experimental.svgz, explains the approach Inkscape will likely take to implement this feature in a fully SVG-compatible way.

* Although Inkscape does not support animation yet, you can add any animation scripts and attributes to your SVG file manually in a text editor - and the file will still be editable in Inkscape. Tavmjong Bah used this technique to create animated-clock.svg which, when loaded in an SVG viewer supporting animation (such as Firefox, Opera, or Batik), demonstrates the intricate moving clockwork of a watch - and shows real time to boot! If loaded in Inkscape, the image is static, but instead you can freely edit any of the objects.

= Translations =

* Remarkable improvements are in the '''Danish''', '''Finnish''', '''Nepalese''' and the '''Vietnamese''' translations of the user interface. They all jumped from 0 to over 90 percent in a very short timespan.

* All people which are familiar with '''pig latin''' are now able to use Inkscape's user interface in that language. Isthay isway oughtbray otay usway ybay away ewnay anslatortray.

* default lituanian template was not installed before, which is now fixed.

* Updated '''British English''', '''Catalan''', '''Bulgarian''' and '''Thai''' translations.

= Tutorials and Templates =

* New tutorial "Easter Eggs" by Steve Karg.

* Added Catalan default template and elements tutorial.

* Russian header and footer templates are added.

= Bugfixes =

* When deleting a node, neighboring smooth nodes are converted to cusp.

* Releasing the mouse button while dragging nodes using a tablet will now always release the nodes. Before this, a race condition could occur where dragging could continue after the mouse button was released.

* An object's mask and clipping path are now preserved after Simplify, Object/Stroke to path, or boolean operations.

* Ungrouping a group containing clipped/masked objects might sometime break the clip/mask (move it away); fixed.

* User-supplied templates in ~/.inkscape/templates can now be SVGZ files in addition to SVG.

* Previously, Inkscape didn't check if there's enough free memory for its pixel buffers and could crash without warning due to insufficient memory e.g. upon zooming in. This problem became much worse after implementing Gaussian blur, because rendering blurred objects at high zooms may require a pixel buffer much bigger than the visible canvas. Now this situation is handled more gracefully: if a display operation requires more memory than available, or more than 100Mb (which corresponds to a 5000x5000 pixel buffer), it is skipped. This may result in blurred objects "disappearing" at high zooms. This is purely a display issue, however, it never corrupts data; just zoom out (or reduce blur radius) and the disappeared object will show up OK.

* When resizing objects, scaling numbers in the statusbar are no longer overwritten by other text when pressing special keys (alt, shift, ctrl).

* To work around problems some users have had with pressure sensitive tablets ([http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1281512&group_id=93438&atid=604306 bug]), the pressure sensitivity can be disabled from the misc tab of Inkscape preferences dialogue. The tablet can then be used, though with reduced functionality.

* The layer widget in the statusbar used to lose its current layer after an effect run; this is fixed.

* When using different display resolutions or a dual screen setup, dialogs could be displayed off-screen; this is fixed: now Inkscape checks whether the saved position of the dialog is offscreen, if so it will move the dialog to the center of the screen. Note that this not solve all problems. If the dialog is still not visible, go to the [http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=604306&aid=1250236&group_id=93438 bugreport] where a procedure is given to make the dialog visible (editting preferences.xml).

* Performing a boolean union without selecting an object no longer crashes Inkscape.

* Grid and guidelines no longer vanish when changing their color.

* Group transformation is now correctly applied when ungrouping and undo'ing the ungroup.

* Text dialog no longer discards the style of the selected text.

= Known problems =

==== Problem with Dialogs on Top on Microsoft Windows (win32) ====

[Describe minimizing of document window problem, and solution: right-click taskbar button and press "Restore"]

==== OSX 10.3.9: cannot open files ====

This bug is due to a missing symbol (_statvfs) in the system library /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib on 10.3.9. The dependency is introduced by one of the gnome-vf2 modules. It is not something we can easily fix other than by not linking with gnome-vfs2, which we will do for or upcoming 0.45 release if no other solution becomes apparent. [mjwybrow]

==== Problems with some Debian libgc-6.7 packages ====

* Inkscape will hang or crash when linked with the first Debian packaged version of the Boehm garbage collection library. This problem was fixed in version 1:6.7-2 of the package. If you have libgc 6.7 on your Debian-based system, make sure that you are using that version of the package or later.

==== Beware of defective themes on Linux ====

* Inkscape and other Gtk programs can crash on any Linux, when the gtk2-engines-smooth / libsmooth package is installed. We have filed a bug against libsmooth which is now in gtk-engine and part of gnome. Removing the package resolves the problem. Update: this bug appears to be fixed in newer versions of gtk-engines. If you are affected by this problem please update to a newer version of gtk-engines. If problems persist then please inform the gtk-engines maintainers of the problem.

* A similar crash happens if the KDE Baghira theme or the package gtk_qt_engine are installed. If you experience Inkscape crashes on KDE, please try to install a different theme from Baghira, or uninstall the gtk_qt_engine package from your system. Both problems also affect older versions of Inkscape.

=== Previous releases ===

* [[ReleaseNotes044]]
* [[ReleaseNotes043]]
* [[ReleaseNotes042]]
* [[ReleaseNotes041]]
* [[ReleaseNotes040]]
* [[ReleaseNotes039]]
* [[ReleaseNotes038]]
* [[ReleaseNotes037]]
* [[ReleaseNotes036]]
* [[ReleaseNotes035]]

[[Category:Marketing]]

Developer manual

2007-01-10T21:18:13Z

Gustavb: s/cvs/svn/g

= Inkscape Developer's Manual =

== Introduction ==

For those of you just joining us, or who have been with us but are just
now getting the itch to work on Inkscape, I thought I'd give some tips
for how to get started working in the codebase based on our own
experiences.

One of the first things most people wonder is "what should I work on".
As you may have already noticed, we generally don't "assign" projects.
We figure there's plenty more work to do than people to do it, so you
may as well work on something that you're either interested in or that
adds something of benefit to you; that's extra motivation to get your
own itches scratched.

If you're really stumped though, we keep a detailed [[Roadmap]] in wiki that
you're welcome to browse through to look for ideas of things to work
on. Tasks that do not have names beside them are open for anyone to
take; if you want to take ownership of a task, just put your name beside
it. Feel free to add or reword tasks as needed, although try not to
load up the current milestone with tasks that aren't critical for the
release. Feel free to work on stuff that is several milestones down the
road; there's rarely any problem with getting stuff done sooner than
planned. ;-)

We have a process for gaining SVN commit access. The reason is that
while it is important that we keep access to the codebase open, we don't
want to be crazy and leave it wide open to any random passer-by. The
process is that we require that the person make two contributions
(patches, documentation, web collateral, etc.) and then make a request
to get account access.

In general you won't need SVN commit access in order to start doing
development, because you can work from an anonymous checkout and create
patches. If you've not done this before, you'll need to learn this
skill first (basically see docs for `svn diff`).

When you first start hacking on Inkscape code, I wouldn't recommend
taking an objective of implementing a specific feature, because you will
need some time to familiarize yourself with the codebase, and because
you won't really know what features are going to be straightforward to
implement and which will be highly challenging. Of course, if you have
the time and love adventures, this might be a fun way to go.

There are four approaches that I've seen people effectively use in
getting into the codebase:

<ul>
<li>Write code documentation. Some people who don't mind adding
comments to code or writing docs find it useful to just go through
code they're interested in working on and writing up what it does.
The codebase is in dire need of better docs, so this approach pays
dividends well into the future.
</li>

<li>Fix bugs. Tracing down the cause of reported bugs is an effective
way to gain understanding of the codebase in small chunks. Many
common bugs can be traced down and fixed in a matter of hours, and
often will identify some bit of code in need of refactoring or
extension. Note that some of our older bugs are in the system
because they're hard to fix, so you'll want to work on the more
recent ones.
</li>

<li>Chip in on a group effort. Occasionally we identify a major
refactoring effort (such as when we converted from C to C++), that
we encourage lots of people to help on, in the philosophy that many
hands makes short work. This work tends to be pretty rote so is
not hard for new folks to get involved with; it just takes time. We
generally have one of these kinds of efforts per release. It
usually isn't glamorous work, but in aggregate moves the codebase
forward in a major way.
</li>

<li>Subsystem/module work. Some people want to get their hands in the
details quick, so take the approach of developing new code separate
from the codebase, to be integrated in later. This generally tends
to take a larger time commitment than the other approaches, but can be
an effective approach in some circumstances. We have a SVN module
called 'experimental' that you're welcome to house your work until
it's ready for prime time.
</li>
</ul>

Beyond that, you're going to find the documentation for the Inkscape
code is pretty scarce. We've worked on bits and pieces but
unfortunately the vast majority of the code is undocumented. On the
plus side, often you can implement the stuff you care about after
learning only a limited portion of the codebase.

I think you'd find Inkscape an enjoyable Open Source project to work on.
There's a huge range of interesting and useful skills that can be
learned from it, plus the developers are great guys to participate with.
The project itself runs smoothly and puts a premium on keeping things
friendly and low-stress, so heated arguments are rare. The users have
been great to work with and very appreciative of even small new features
and fixes. Plus, since Inkscape is so visual in nature, it's very cool
to see how your little changes make noticeable improvements to the app
overall.

== C++ Reference ==
* FAQ (with answers) sheet. We strongly recommend that everyone read this site comprehensively. You should not need to bookmark it, it should be the first of the sites on your autocomplete list for <code>par</code>!

http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/

It is actually more in-depth than the name FAQ suggests. Many experienced C++ programmers would benefit from it.

* List of [http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/vkarvone/2004s/cplusplus/errors.html schoolboy errors]. None of these should appear in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free/Libre/Open-Source_Software FLOSS] code.

== Strings ==
Please make sure any user-visible strings are localizable. This requires wrapping them with "_(" and ")", like so:

"Select object"
becomes
_("Select object")

In case the interpretation of the string may be ambiguous or may differ according to context, you can add a context prefix (that won't be displayed) in order to eliminate the ambiguity.
"Ambiguous string"
can then become
Q_("Context|Ambiguous string")

For more complex things, please check the gettext/localization documentation.
See also http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/glib/glib-I18N.html

== Standards Compliance - Extension Namespaces ==

* Only elements and attributes from our extension namespaces that ''do not affect rendering'' may be saved in SVG documents.
* Generally, this means that extension elements and attributes should only be used to provide UI hints.
* Extension elements and attributes should ''only'' be used where an existing facility provided by XML or SVG is not sufficient.

== Global Verbs ==

Here's a readers' digest summary of how Inkscape accelerators work:

A global mapping between key combinations and integer verb IDs
(sp_verb_t) is maintained in shortcuts.cpp; these are registered using
sp_shortcut_set().

Given an sp_verb_t and an SPView, you can get an SPAction which
represents that action in that view. These mappings are currently
hard-coded in verbs.cpp.

SPActions derive from NRActiveObject, which putatively provides a
"lightweight" method of doing callbacks, versus GObject signals. I
don't completely understand how it works.

SPActions also contain the label, image, etc, used for buttons and
menuitems.

sp_shortcut_invoke() looks up the SPAction for a keypress and SPView and
invokes it automatically. SPEventContexts call it for keypresses that
they do not handle themselves.

== Garbage collection ==

As you know, many automatic garbage collectors (like libgc) only
free and recycle memory periodically. This means you may have some
extra slush that could be freed, but hasn't yet.

There are other forces at work, though...

Pretty much all allocators, whether automatic or not, whether the
system malloc() or some custom allocator like libgc's, work the
same way: they request large blocks of memory from the operating
system, then divvy those blocks into smaller ones internally to
satisfy application allocation requests.

When an application frees memory, that memory is usually recycled
internally rather than returned to the OS immediately. The reason
for this is that the large memory blocks acquired from the OS must
be completely unused before they can actually be freed.

Let's say for example that an allocator acquires 16 8MB blocks from
the OS in response to 32768 4k application allocations...

In a worst-case scenario, it's possible that the application could
free 32752 of those 4k blocks but the remaining 16 4k just happen
to be distributed across the 16 8MB blocks requested from the OS.

If that happens, from the application's point of view it may only
have 64k allocated, but as far as the OS is concerned, it's still
using 128MB!

Note that this applies to nearly all allocators in common use.

While it's unusual for things to get quite that bad, memory
fragmentation is common enough that many popular allocators (for
example Perl's) simply don't bother trying to return memory to the
OS at all (the memory will still get forcibly reclaimed by the OS
when the process exits).

[ FWIW, libgc's allocator is one of the ones that _does_ make an
effort to release memory to the OS, but it is limited by
fragmentation like any other ]

Also note that for various reasons, the statistics you get from the
OS aren't going to directly reflect the amount of heap-allocated
memory. Be careful drawing conclusions from only looking at e.g.
the output of top(1)...

(the worst thing is that due to the modern practice of
overcommitting memory, the OS may literally lie to an application
about the amount of memory it is being given, hoping the
application won't really try to use it all)

The best approach to evaluating memory usage is if you can ask the
allocator for information on memory usage directly, as that matches
the world from the point of view of the application.

leftover gradients/markers/patterns
will get automatically cleaned up when the objects that use them are
deleted.

Caveats:

* this only applies to such objects created with a build of Inkscape which post-dates this commit (June 7)

* not all automatically-created objects will necessarily be collected; the code that creates them needs to be updated to set the correct collection policy

* paint objects won't get collected until another editing operation takes place, since NRArenaShape currently holds onto an SPStyle for too long

Technical details:

Assuming its collection policy permits it, an object will be collected
if neither it nor its descendants have any outstanding inter-document
URI references (nonzero SPObject::hrefcount).

There are two "policies" for collecting orphans:

* "with-parent" - the object will only be collected if one of its ancestors is collected

* "always" - the object is always collected if unused

(a third policy might be "never", which would necessarily also prevent
that object's ancestors from ever being collected; I do not plan on
implementing it)

The policy in effect is determined by the inkscape:collect attribute.

Be careful with the "always" policy; it really only makes sense for
"private" objects that are indirectly created behind the scenes (e.g. by
selecting a fill or marker option in the GUI).

SPDocument manages a queue of objects to collect; SPObject handles the machinery for actually queueing them when their hrefcount falls (based on policy), and performing the actual collection (delete).
SPDocument::collectObjects() performs a collection pass; it's currently only called from sp_document_maybe_done().

== Inkscape Experimental SVN ==

The 'experimental' module in Inkscape SVN is provided as a kind of "scratchpad" for
working up new ideas that aren't quite ready for folding into the main codebase.
This includes architectural sketches, examples, experimental patchsets, tools & utilities, or
whatever else strikes the developer's fancy.

Please create a subdirectory within experimental/ for your work. You're welcome to either post
the stuff at the top level or create a subdirectory for yourself. Things linked in at the top level
should be considered fair game for other developers to collaborate on; items posted under
a developer's username should be considered ask-first. Same sort of idea as wiki.

One of the principles behind this module is the idea of a shared working space. Other developers
working in experimental can fairly easily see what others are working on in the tree, and perhaps
borrow or contribute ideas back and forth. Since it is by definition not 'production' code, the
work may be incomplete or in a non-compileable state, and thats O-K.

When an experiment has matured to the point of being actually useful, please move it out of
the experimental module to someplace more appropriate. Or alternatively if the experimental
work has become obsolete or irrelevant, please remove it so we can avoid having the
experimental tree get too bulky.

== Directory Organization ==

=== Distribution / Packaging Files ===

Files related to generation of distribution packages should go under inkscape/packaging, as follows:

inkscape/packaging/
common/
debian/
fedora/
fink/
mandrake/
suse/

=== "Share" Collateral ===

A variety of items are installed in addition to the program itself, and placed into a 'share' directory structured as follows:

AUTHORS
NEWS
clipart/
examples/
extensions/
fonts/
gradients/
icons/
keyboards/
markers/
palettes/
patterns/
screens/
about.svg
templates/
tutorials/

In the SVN codebase, all of these are placed in inkscape/share/ (except AUTHORS and NEWS which will be copied to share during installation. The idea is that in theory, this entire tree structure can be copied into place on the user's machine.

However, we need to provide the user some level of control over the installation. They may wish to exclude some items, or may wish to augment the default install with some items external to the Inkscape package. For example, they may wish to incorporate external clipart collections. One approach would be to install symlinks in the given component directory to the external collection. For example, if the flags package were to install into /usr/share/flags-svg/, we'd just symlink there.

=== Code modules ===
Several parts of the code were written in a modular way, and they have been
accordingly placed in subdirectories of src/, while the main src directory
still contains the biggest part. To get a first overview of the modules, you
might want to have a look at these dependency graphs before you read deeper
into the source code (outside at the moment):

[http://www.ark.in-berlin.de/gri-debug.svgz]
[http://www.ark.in-berlin.de/gri-dialogs.svgz]
[http://www.ark.in-berlin.de/gri-display.svgz]
[http://www.ark.in-berlin.de/gri-io.svgz]
[http://www.ark.in-berlin.de/gri-libcroco.svgz]
[http://www.ark.in-berlin.de/gri-libnr.svgz]
[http://www.ark.in-berlin.de/gri-libnrtype.svgz]
[http://www.ark.in-berlin.de/gri-livarot.svgz]
[http://www.ark.in-berlin.de/gri-widgets.svgz]
[http://www.ark.in-berlin.de/gri-xml.svgz]

These are not all modules! For questions about how to generate these graphs
with graph-includes, please [mailto:rwst@users.sf.net].

Question on .svgz files: Is the server sending the right 'Content-Encoding:' header?
This matters to Mozilla browsers in standards compliance mode! http://jwatt.org/svg/authoring/#server-configuration

= See Also =
* [[DirectoryReorgProposal]]
* [[InkscapeJanitors]]
* [[CompilingInkscape]]

= Links =
[http://advogato.org/article/51.html Software Quality]

[[Category:Developer Documentation]]

Inkscape

2006-10-14T15:28:10Z

Gustavb: rvv

This is a freeform area for Inkscape development and discussion.
Curious about [[WikiSyntax]]?

Other languages: [[Inkscape en español|Wiki en español]], [[L'Inkscape en Català|Wiki en Català]], [[Inkscape em Português|Wiki em Português]], [[Startseite|Wiki auf Deutsch]]...

<table cellspacing="11" width="100%"><tr valign="top">
<td style="width:33%;background-color: #EFFBFF; padding:.5em; border: 1px solid #BFEEFF">
=== About Inkscape ===
* [http://www.inkscape.org/ Inkscape Homepage]
* [[About Inkscape]]
* [[InkscapeFeatures]]
* [[FAQ]] - Frequently Asked Questions
* [[ProjectInfo]]
* [[SupportedOperatingSystems]]
* [[Tools]] - Supporting Tools and Applications
* [[Galleries]]
* [[ArticlesAndPresentations]]
* [[TestimonialComments]]
* [[InkscapePopularity]]
* [[ContactInfo]] our heroes

</td><td style="width:33%;;background-color: #FFF1EF; padding:.5em; border: 1px solid #FFC7BF;margin:.5em">

=== User Documentation ===
* [[InstallHelp]]
* [[InkscapeTerminology]]
* [[UserManual]]
* [http://inkscape.org/doc/ Tutorials]
* [[InkscapeSVG|Inkscape SVG vs. Plain SVG]]
* [[GettingExtensionsWorking]]
* [[GettingEffectsWorking]]
* [[WhatEffectsDo]]
* [[UsingTheConnectorTool]]
* [[Installing Fonts as a User]]
* [[EmergencySave]]
* [[ReleaseNotes045|Release Notes]] for 0.45 (unstable)
* [[ReleaseNotes044|Release Notes]] for 0.44 and past
* [[Announcing Releases]] for 0.44 and past
* [[ArticleIntroducingInkscape0_40|Introducing Inkscape 0.40]]
* [[TricksAndTips]]
</td><td style="width:33%;background-color: #FFFAE5; padding:.5em; border: 1px solid #FFFF66; margin:.5em">

=== Help Inkscape Without Coding ===

* [[PrintingConsensusPoll]]
* [[HelpWanted]]
* [[CreatingDists]]: how to build packages
* [[WebsiteEditing]]
* [[UpdatingTrackerItems]]
* [[TutorialIdeas]]
* [[How_To_Start_A_Page]] how to use the wiki
* [[TestingInkscape]]

</td></tr></table><table cellspacing="0" width="100%" style="background-color: #FFFAE5; border-width:0em .5em; border-style:solid; border-color:white"><tr valign="top" style="padding:11px 0em 0em 11px">
<th colspan="2" align="left" style="padding:.5em 0em 0em .5em">

=== Developer Documentation ===
</th></tr><tr valign="top" align="left"><td style="width:50%;padding:.5em">
==== General ====
* [[DeveloperManual]]
* [[CompilingInkscape]]
* [[WorkingWithSVN]]
* [[HandlingPreferences]]: creating and using preference values
* [[AddSPObject]]: how to add a new SPObject type
* [[ReprListeners]]: responding to XML doc changes
* [[ErrorsAndWarnings]]: how to deal with reporting errors, warnings, and other messages
* [[DebuggingTips]]: random tips to help debug problems

* [[DeveloperTitles]]: terms for various roles in Inkscape
* [[InkscapeJanitors]]: small tasks that need doing
* [http://livarot.sourceforge.net/ Livarot]: for boolean ops
* [[ExtensionAttributes]]: currently defined attributes in Inkscape's XML namespace and what they do
* [[MakingAnExtension]]: how extension must work and how to write an INX file
* [[ExtensionsRepository]]: an Internet central for Inkscape Extensions
* [[OtherProjects]] (outside links)

</td><td style="width:50%;padding:.5em">

==== Development Discussion ====
* [[Roadmap]]: the main todo list
* [[NewFeatureProposals]]
* [[ExtensionArchitectureProposals]]
* [[Coding Style|Coding Style Discussion]]
* [[FileTypes]]
* [[ApplicationIcons]] ( Application + Interface )
* [[InkscapeColor]]
* [[PrintingSubsystem]]
* [[SVG Competitors Plan]] - MS WVG vs SVG, etc
* [[SVG Tiny Compliance]]
* [[SVG Test Suite Compliance]] - [[W3C]] full test suite
* [[CSS Support]]
* [[OpenVG]] Standard (draft)
* [[OpenDocument proposal]]
* [[Googles Summer Of Code]]
* [[UI MockupScreenshots]]
* [[lib2geom]]

</td></tr><tr valign="top" align="left"><td style="width:50%;padding:.5em">

==== User Interface Discussion ====
* [[Translation_information]]
* [[AccessibleGraphics]]
* [[ObjectManager]]
* [[DialogsReorganization]]
* [[DialogReplacement]]
* [[ModalInterfaces]]
* [[TextUsability]]: text tool /dialog dialog
* [[KeyboardShortcutsToDo]]
** [[KeyboardProfiles]]: how you can help
* [[StatusbarAPI]]
* [[Animation-(Timeline)]]
* [[Free Desktop Graphic Suite]]

</td><td style="width:50%;padding:.5em">
==== Rearchitecture Discussion ====
* [[SubsystemRearchitecture]]
* [[GtkMMification]]: replace C boilerplate with gtkmm objects
* [[PathRepresentation]]
* [[Cairoification]]
* [[ScribusInteroperability]]

</td></tr></table>

----
* [[WikiAttic]]: pages that are no longer relevant but kept for historical value

__NOTOC__

[[Category:About Inkscape]]
[[Category:User Documentation]]

SubsystemRearchitecture

2006-07-16T22:06:35Z

Gustavb: link fix

== Subsystems Summary ==

Namespace Link Audience Lib Name Directory
Inkscape::Document C++ Internal libinkdoc src/document
Inkscape::Extension C++ Internal libinkext src/extension
Inkscape::SVG::Object C++ Internal libinksvgobj src/svg/object/
Inkscape::UI C++ Internal libinkui src/ui/
Inkscape::UI::Dialogs C++ Internal libinkuidlg src/ui/dialogs
Inkscape::UI::Widgets C++ Internal libinkuiwdg src/ui/widgets
SVG::Canvas C[[/C]]++ Community libsvgcanvas src/svgcanvas
SVG::DOM C[[/C]]++ Community libsvgdom src/svgdom

Cairo C (dep) libcairo (external)
Pango C (dep) libpango (external)

== Descriptions of Proposed Subsystems ==

Inkscape::Document - This is a high level wrapper for the application's
document model, and basically just subclasses SVG::DOM, adding some
Inkscape-specific aspects.

Inkscape::Extension - This namespace encapsulates the various mechanisms
for extending the Inkscape application, including import/export
mechanisms, GUI plugins, stdin/stdout programs, language bindings, etc.

Inkscape::SVG::Object - This will include SPObject and its children

Inkscape::UI - Namespace for Inkscape-specific User Interface elements,
including view & controller aspects.

Inkscape::UI::Dialogs - dialogs for Inkscape

Inkscape::UI::Widgets - widgets that are particular to Inkscape; if they
seem to be of general use, they will be migrated into a separate library
to share with other applications in a more general fashion.

SVG::Canvas - A distinct deliverable Inkscape provides to the Open
Source community for implementing an SVG-based drawing surface, for use
in other applications. Initially will be made up of similar subsystems
shared with Inkscape but be a separate package, but ultimately should be
a packaged dependency of Inkscape.

SVG::DOM - This is a Document Object Model for SVG documents. It is the
key dependency for SVG::Canvas, and thus is also something Inkscape
provides externally to the Open Source community. Internally, it is
implemented as a C++ class hierarchy, but externally can be linked to
using either C or C++ style linkage. The externally presented API would
be standard DOM.

Cairo - Switching to Cairo will occur late in the rearchitecturing
process. We need to ensure Cairo provides the capabilities already
present in libnr. Completing other areas of rearchitecting will help
get the codebase organized for conversion of it to Cairo, without
taking undue risk in adopting a different underlying renderer.

Pango - Conversion to Pango from libnrtype may be worth doing earlier
than Cairo since the existing text system lacks many needed features,
however this will need to be researched in more depth to determine the
feasibility and cost/benefit. Unless a clear benefit is identified to
performing the change early, we should conduct the change along with the
Cairoification.

== Rearchitecturing Translation Map ==

This shows how items in the [http://www.inkscape.org/doc/devdocs.php current block diagram] would be
converted into the new subsystem architecture.

Existing Proposed
GUI
Dialogs --> Inkscape::UI::Dialogs
Widgets --> Inkscape::UI::Widgets, [[GtkDrawmm]]
XML Editor --> Inkscape::UI::Dialogs
View --> Inkscape::UI
SPAction --> Inkscape::UI
verbs --> Inkscape::UI
shortcuts --> Inkscape::UI
SVG DOM --> Inkscape::Document, libsvgdom
SVG Canvas --> libsvgcanvas
Module --> Inkscape::Module
Display --> Cairo
libnr --> Cairo
libnrtype --> Pango
SPSVGView --> SVG::Canvas
[[SPSVGViewWidget]] --> SVG::Canvas
src/svg/* --> eliminate

SPRepr -> Inkscape::XML::Node
[[SPReprDoc]] -> Inkscape::XML::Document
[[SPReprAttr]] -> Inkscape::XML::[[AttributeRecord]]
[[SPReprAction]] -> Inkscape::XML::Event
[[SPReprEventVector]] -> Inkscape::XML::[[NodeEventVector]]

Release notes/0.45

2006-07-14T11:10:46Z

Gustavb: /* Undo History Dialog */ a bit more + copy edit

= Inkscape 0.45: overview =

= Undo History Dialog =
* Inkscape now features a History Dialog accessible through [CTRL] + [SHIFT] + H or Edit→Undo History. All changes to the document since it was opened are recorded here.
* Changes are recorded from the oldest (top) to the newest (bottom).
* By clicking on an event event in the list the user can easily move through the undo history.
* The type of the change is indicated by an icon and a short description (this description is also visible by the Undo/Redo items in the Edit menu)
* To increase the readability consecutive changes of the same type are placed in a branch noted with a sign.

= Speed =

* Radial gradients are rendered faster by at least 10%.

* Screen render is faster by 2-3%, up to 5% for complex drawings with transparency.

= Command line =

* The new <code>--export-pdf</code> command line parameter allows exporting an SVG image to PDF from command line.

= Misc improvements =

* [new cursors - scislac]

* [PDF/EPS export improvements - Ulf Erikson]

* Exported PNG images have the correct resolution set in the headers.

= Bugfixes =

= Tools =

== Dropper ==

* Instead of the confusing toggle button, now the Controls bar for the Dropper tool has two checkboxes, "Pick alpha" and "Set alpha", which work as follows. Suppose you have an object selected and, using Dropper, click on an object which has red (#FF0000) fill and 0.5 opacity (half-transparent).
** If the "Pick alpha" checkbox is off, the selected object will get the fill color #800000 (i.e. faded-out red) and fill opacity will be at 1.0 (opaque).
** If the "Pick alpha" checkbox is on but "Set alpha" is off, the selected object will get the fill color #FF0000 (red) and fill opacity will be at 1.0.
** If both "Pick alpha" and "Set alpha" are on, the selected object will get the fill color #FF0000 (red) and fill opacity will be at 0.5 (half-transparent).
:If you Shift+click instead of click, the same changes will be made to stroke color and stroke opacity, correspondingly. Note that in no situation can Dropper change the master opacity of the selected object(s), although it can pick it just as it does any other kind of opacity.

= Translations =

= Known problems =
==== Problems with some Debian libgc-6.7 packages ====

* Inkscape will hang or crash when linked with the first Debian packaged version of the Boehm garbage collection library. This problem was fixed in version 1:6.7-2 of the package. If you have libgc 6.7 on your Debian-based system, make sure that you are using that version of the package or later.

==== Beware of defective themes on Linux ====

* Inkscape and other Gtk programs can crash on any Linux, when the gtk2-engines-smooth / libsmooth package is installed. We have filed a bug against libsmooth which is now in gtk-engine and part of gnome. Removing the package resolves the problem. Update: this bug appears to be fixed in newer versions of gtk-engines. If you are affected by this problem please update to a newer version of gtk-engines. If problems persist then please inform the gtk-engines maintainers of the problem.

* A similar crash happens if the KDE Baghira theme or the package gtk_qt_engine are installed. If you experience Inkscape crashes on KDE, please try to install a different theme from Baghira, or uninstall the gtk_qt_engine package from your system. Both problems also affect older versions of Inkscape.

==== Make sure to remove menus.xml if you have it ====

* If you were using certain CVS/SVN builds from autumn of 2005, you may have the file <code>menus.xml</code> hanging around in your profile directory (e.g. <code>~/.inkscape</code> 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 <code>menus.xml</code> to fix this.

=== Previous releases ===

* ReleaseNotes044 (http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes044)
* ReleaseNotes043 (http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes043)
* ReleaseNotes042 (http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes042)
* ReleaseNotes041 (http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes041)
* ReleaseNotes040 (http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes040)
* ReleaseNotes039 (http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes039)
* ReleaseNotes038 (http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes038)
* ReleaseNotes037 (http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes037)
* ReleaseNotes036 (http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes036)
* ReleaseNotes035 (http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes035)

[[Category:Marketing]]

Translation information

2006-02-07T20:50:21Z

Gustavb: /* Interface translations */ ...more

= Tutorial translations =

Inkscape tutorial sources are in [[DocBook]] format, with illustrations in SVG. If you want to translate one or more tutorials, first download the [[DocBook]] source here:

http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/inkscape/doc-docbook/

Each tutorial is in its own subdirectory. You need the *.xml file, for example basic/tutorial-basic.xml. Get it and simply replace all English text in it with the text in your language, preserving all XML markup. See README at that location for some notes on markup.

* If there's already such a file in CVS, you can edit it instead :) If there's no xml file at the above location but there's a translation of this tutorial in SVG format (in share/tutorials in Inkscape distribution), you'll need to convert it to [[DocBook]] (and probably update). Conversion can be done simply by: select the text blocks of an SVG tutorial in Inkscape, Ctrl+C, and Ctrl+V in your text editor, then add the markup.

* Save your file as <original name>.<language suffix>.xml, for example basic/tutorial-basic.es.xml for Spanish.

* Do not use symbolic entities like &aacute; (they're not defined in XML without a DTD). Instead use either numeric entities such as &#225; or simply write your text in UTF-8.

* Most illustrations don't need translations, so you leave the references to them from English XML intact. If however an illustration has some text that you want to translate, open the illustration file in Inkscape (e.g. basic/basic-f12.svg), edit it as needed, and save under a different name (e.g. basic/basic-f12-es.svg). Then change the filename reference in the XML source appropriately.

* When finished, run <a href="http://xmlsoft.org/xmllint.html">xmllint</a> on your file to make sure it's well-formed.

* Send the file to buliabyak at gmail dot com, and I'll convert it to SVG and HTML and upload it to CVS and the web site.

* If after that you want to make any changes, download the file from the above location again, because it may have changed compared to the one you have.

= Interface translations =

If you're interested in helping with providing interface translation for Inkscape,
here are a few links to help you getting started:

http://www.gtkmm.org/gtkmm2/docs/tutorial/html/ch20s03.html
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gtp/l10n-guide/
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gtp/style-guides/
http://developer.gnome.org/doc/tutorials/gnome-i18n/developer.html

Download the .po file for your language from here:

http://svn.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/inkscape/inkscape/trunk/po/

If a .po file for your language does not yet exist, then create one
by copying the inkscape.pot file that gets generated when you run make
in the codebase.

Edit the file to add or correct translations of the English strings, and
then upload your work via the [[SourceForge]] patch tracker:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=add&group_id=93438&atid=604308

(Check the Upload checkbox and add your file or patch.)

Here's how to make an absolutely up-to-date translation (in case the PO file in SVN is not up-to-date enough):

1. update your local copy of Inkscape in the usual way: "svn update"
2. "./autogen.sh"
3. "./configure"
4. enter the "po" directory: "cd po"
5. generate the current PO template: "intltool-update --pot"
6. merge your existing translations into the new POT file (inkscape.pot):
"msgmerge your_latest_PO_file inkscape.pot > new_PO_file"

Then you just need to complete the translations in the PO file that was
created in step 6.

If you want to update ALL .po files in po/, cd there and run:

make update-po

== Tools for translators ==
* emacs' po-mode (contained in the gettext distribution; the version in po-utils is old)
* kbabel (http://i18n.kde.org/tools/kbabel/)
* gtranslator (http://gtranslator.sourceforge.net/)
* GRand Unified Translation (http://www.kvdb.net/projects/grut/)
* poEdit (http://poedit.sourceforge.net/)

== A few important things to remember ==
* Some strings that can ambiguous or having several meanings according to different contexts may have a context prefix : "Context|Amibiguous string". In this case, simply translate "Ambiguous string", the "Context|" string is just a not to translate indication.
* After translating a fuzzy string (one that is marked with a ", fuzzy" comment), please remove its "fuzzy" tag -- otherwise this translation will be discarded by the build process, meaning that this string will show up untranslated. KBabel can do this automatically (see KBabel settings).
* Before publishing your work (after you have finished updating the PO file), please update the "PO-Revision-Date" and "Last-Translator" fields in the PO file header. KBabel can do this automatically.

== Review ==
This is the start of a list of places to get translation reviews done. So far:
http://www.linux.it/tp/

== Locale Testing ==
Before reporting that a locale doesn't work in Inkscape, you need to make sure that your system has that locale correctly set up. To do this, you need to generally find a way to run "locale-gen". (Under Debian this is via "dpkg-reconfigure locale".) If you set the LANG variable and check a regular tool, you should see the correct language for both the libc error (first line) and the tool error (second line):

LANG=es_MX ls -z
ls: opción inválida -- z
Pruebe `ls --help' para más información.

If it reports the regular C messages, your locale has not been correctly configured, and you'll need to find the right way to run "locale-gen" for your distribution:

LANG=es_ES ls -z
ls: invalid option -- z
Try `ls --help' for more information.

== Programmers ==
Please make sure you use [http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_mono/gettext.html#SEC150 dgettext] for any pluralized strings.

Translation information

2006-02-07T20:48:55Z

Gustavb: /* Interface translations */ cvs -> svn

= Tutorial translations =

Inkscape tutorial sources are in [[DocBook]] format, with illustrations in SVG. If you want to translate one or more tutorials, first download the [[DocBook]] source here:

http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/inkscape/doc-docbook/

Each tutorial is in its own subdirectory. You need the *.xml file, for example basic/tutorial-basic.xml. Get it and simply replace all English text in it with the text in your language, preserving all XML markup. See README at that location for some notes on markup.

* If there's already such a file in CVS, you can edit it instead :) If there's no xml file at the above location but there's a translation of this tutorial in SVG format (in share/tutorials in Inkscape distribution), you'll need to convert it to [[DocBook]] (and probably update). Conversion can be done simply by: select the text blocks of an SVG tutorial in Inkscape, Ctrl+C, and Ctrl+V in your text editor, then add the markup.

* Save your file as <original name>.<language suffix>.xml, for example basic/tutorial-basic.es.xml for Spanish.

* Do not use symbolic entities like &aacute; (they're not defined in XML without a DTD). Instead use either numeric entities such as &#225; or simply write your text in UTF-8.

* Most illustrations don't need translations, so you leave the references to them from English XML intact. If however an illustration has some text that you want to translate, open the illustration file in Inkscape (e.g. basic/basic-f12.svg), edit it as needed, and save under a different name (e.g. basic/basic-f12-es.svg). Then change the filename reference in the XML source appropriately.

* When finished, run <a href="http://xmlsoft.org/xmllint.html">xmllint</a> on your file to make sure it's well-formed.

* Send the file to buliabyak at gmail dot com, and I'll convert it to SVG and HTML and upload it to CVS and the web site.

* If after that you want to make any changes, download the file from the above location again, because it may have changed compared to the one you have.

= Interface translations =

If you're interested in helping with providing interface translation for Inkscape,
here are a few links to help you getting started:

http://www.gtkmm.org/gtkmm2/docs/tutorial/html/ch20s03.html
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gtp/l10n-guide/
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gtp/style-guides/
http://developer.gnome.org/doc/tutorials/gnome-i18n/developer.html

Download the .po file for your language from here:

http://svn.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/inkscape/inkscape/trunk/po/

If a .po file for your language does not yet exist, then create one
by copying the inkscape.pot file that gets generated when you run make
in the codebase.

Edit the file to add or correct translations of the English strings, and
then upload your work via the [[SourceForge]] patch tracker:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=add&group_id=93438&atid=604308

(Check the Upload checkbox and add your file or patch.)

Here's how to make an absolutely up-to-date translation (in case the PO file in CVS is not up-to-date enough):

1. update your local copy of Inkscape in the usual way: "cvs update"
2. "./autogen.sh"
3. "./configure"
4. enter the "po" directory: "cd po"
5. generate the current PO template: "intltool-update --pot"
6. merge your existing translations into the new POT file (inkscape.pot):
"msgmerge your_latest_PO_file inkscape.pot > new_PO_file"

Then you just need to complete the translations in the PO file that was
created in step 6.

If you want to update ALL .po files in po/, cd there and run:

make update-po

== Tools for translators ==
* emacs' po-mode (contained in the gettext distribution; the version in po-utils is old)
* kbabel (http://i18n.kde.org/tools/kbabel/)
* gtranslator (http://gtranslator.sourceforge.net/)
* GRand Unified Translation (http://www.kvdb.net/projects/grut/)
* poEdit (http://poedit.sourceforge.net/)

== A few important things to remember ==
* Some strings that can ambiguous or having several meanings according to different contexts may have a context prefix : "Context|Amibiguous string". In this case, simply translate "Ambiguous string", the "Context|" string is just a not to translate indication.
* After translating a fuzzy string (one that is marked with a ", fuzzy" comment), please remove its "fuzzy" tag -- otherwise this translation will be discarded by the build process, meaning that this string will show up untranslated. KBabel can do this automatically (see KBabel settings).
* Before publishing your work (after you have finished updating the PO file), please update the "PO-Revision-Date" and "Last-Translator" fields in the PO file header. KBabel can do this automatically.

== Review ==
This is the start of a list of places to get translation reviews done. So far:
http://www.linux.it/tp/

== Locale Testing ==
Before reporting that a locale doesn't work in Inkscape, you need to make sure that your system has that locale correctly set up. To do this, you need to generally find a way to run "locale-gen". (Under Debian this is via "dpkg-reconfigure locale".) If you set the LANG variable and check a regular tool, you should see the correct language for both the libc error (first line) and the tool error (second line):

LANG=es_MX ls -z
ls: opción inválida -- z
Pruebe `ls --help' para más información.

If it reports the regular C messages, your locale has not been correctly configured, and you'll need to find the right way to run "locale-gen" for your distribution:

LANG=es_ES ls -z
ls: invalid option -- z
Try `ls --help' for more information.

== Programmers ==
Please make sure you use [http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_mono/gettext.html#SEC150 dgettext] for any pluralized strings.

Printing consensus poll

2006-02-07T20:31:11Z

Gustavb: +no in poll

== Problem ==

Bryce has pointed out the #1 feature need for Inkscape right now is strong support for Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) and Postscript (PS) in his [http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=36054&max_rows=25&style=flat&viewmonth=200511&viewday=30 2005.11.30 email] to the Inkscape mailing lists.
This [[ConsensusPoll]] exists to enable the community to efficiently create and commit to a plan of action to resolve this issue.

== Contract ==

* >= 20 inkscape enthusiasts
* >= 4 developers with commit access
* >= 95% yes
* all conditions in plan are met
* 72 hour GO timer
* 80% cloture

[[ContractExplanation]]

Because this contract defines what it means to participate in this poll it will never be changed. If it turns out to be inadequate, this poll must be canceled and a new poll with a new contract must be drafted.

== Yes-No Poll ==

Participation in this poll is open to anyone who wants to participate.

Voting yes in this poll means that you believe the community created plan is ready for implementation, and that you will do your part to support its execution. Voting no in this poll means that you have outstanding concerns about the community created plan. You can change your vote at any time. All votes are transparent so that those voting yes can listen to the concerns of those voting no.

No ... [[BrandonCsSanders]] - Success needs to be defined (e.g., if all 20 test cases are passed ...)
Yes... [[BryceHarrington]] - Let's do it
No ... [[AlexandreProkoudine]] - There is no plan yet
No ... [[ColinMarquardt]] - There is no plan yet
No ... [[EricWilhelm]] - The plan needs salt
No ... [[MenTaLguY]] - This isn't much of a plan...
No ... [[JonCruz]] - Plan? Not quite yet
No ... [[JonPhillips]] - no plan...
No ... [[NicuBuculei]] - so far the plan is weak
No ... [[RalfWStephan]] - Where are the test cases?
No ... [[AndyFitzsimon]] - I will also pledge $50 once someone defines how we do pledges.
No ... [[TuukkaPasanen]] - There isn't good plan yet.
No ... [[EricJonas]] - There is no plan
No ... [[AdibTaraben]] theAdib - There is no plan
No ... Martin Owens - There is a plan but it's pants.
Yes ....[[Corey Burger]] -plan, what plan?
No ... [[Gustavb]] - The plan is incomplete.

(If you are voting no because the plan is incomplete, please describe what you'd like to see added or changed.)

== Pledges ==

$50 ... [[BryceHarrington]] - I will pledge $50 once someone defines how we do pledges :-)
$50 ... [[AndyFitzsimon]] - I will also pledge $50 once someone defines how we do pledges.
€50 ... [[RalfWStephan]] - whenever the plan has succeeded
$50 ... [[BrandonCsSanders]] - once the plan is done
$100 ... [[EricJonas]] - Just let me know how to pledge

== Plan ==

# Describe the [[Current PDF Support]] and the known [[PDF bugs]]
# Identify [[Required PDF Support]]
# Assemble a few dozen examples to use as [[PDF test cases]]
# Document how each of the current [[PDF tools]] (potential starting points) performs on the suite of test cases
# Determine timeframe
## Start some time in early 2006?
## Expected completion some time in mid/late 2006?
# Select developer with the right skillset
## C[[/C]]++, XML
## PDF file format
## SVG file format
## Able to work under (U.S.) contract
## [[/Other]] skillset requirements?/
# Determine what funding is needed to enable them to complete the work
# Establish a contract with the selected developer to perform the work
# When the developer is done, verify that all test cases pass, then pay developer

== Background Information ==

* [[SOC_Original_Project_Prompts]]
* [[PrintingSubsystem]]
* [[Roadmap]] (Milestone 11) Import[[/Export]] Feature Enhancements

== Adequate Technical Solutions ==

What solutions would be fine?
* Library that integrates directly in to inkscape (and scribus, ...)
** Use [[Cairo]] as the presentation layer and use its support for pdf/ps
*** This may be a first step towards an eventual migration of the backend renderer to Cairo
** See [http://poppler.freedesktop.org/ Poppler] for PDF import.
*** [http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/poppler/2005-June/000428.html pdftosvg 1]
*** [http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=14147945 pdftosvg 2]
*** [http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/poppler/2005-December/001248.html pdftosvg 3]
** Pull out the scribus pdf support into a libpdf (libpdf name has already been used) that can be shared by both scribus and Inkscape
*** Requires conversion of Qt-isms into more neutral widgetset-independent style
* Extend an existing standalone (filter) tool that can be bundled with inkscape
** [http://scratchcomputing.com/projects/uber-converter/ Uberconverter]
** [http://www.solidcode.net/pdf2svg/ pdf2svg]
** [http://www.sodipodi.com/index.php3?section=download/tools ill2svg]
** [http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanwen/public/software/ai2svg.py ai2svg]
** [http://www.accesspdf.com/pdftk/ pdftk]

== Possible Strategies ==

* Raise money and hire a developer to implement it
** Collect pledges, once we are over threshold collect funds (http://fundable.org/)
*** What should the threshhold be? $2000? $5000?
*** Still too early to decide what the threshold should be. We need to know how much it will cost first.
*** Fundable now charges a 10% fee from the amount collected
** Need to decide what the funds would be spent on ahead of time
*** 10-20% - Tester to collect test cases and put together a test suite for developer to use
*** 70-80% - Developer to write the code, document it, and make it pass the tests
*** 5-10% - Liaison to handle the paperwork, collect/distribute funds, track/report progress, and verify the work has been completed adequately
** Mercenaries that would do this for us?

*** [[BrandonCsSanders]] ... I'd do it for $2000, half up front, half once it meets spec. Caveat: it would take me six months to complete because my plate is pretty full right now and I'll be snatching a week here and a week there.
*** [[EricWilhelm]] ... This will be a lovely fit for the [[UberConverter]]. I'm guessing $5k would get it to about the same level as XAR and SVG in chromista. Caveat: Those aren't done yet. Check back in Jan. I would also be happy to oversee/direct the work of someone else wanting to write this as a pair of [[UberConverter]] connectors (crs2pdf, pdf2crs.)
*** /other mercenaries?/
* Hold a [http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?BarnRaising [[BarnRaising]]]
** at [http://RecentChangesCamp.org [[RecentChangesCamp]]] in Portland February 3-5
** other location/time?
* Wait for a volunteer to get inspired and just do it

== Questions[[/Brainstorms]] ==

* What about what inkscape earned through the Google Summer of Code? What's the status of this?
** $2000 earned; there has been no plan or consensus for what to use it for
* Does Cairo have PDF export already? What about to use cairo for just this job? and later then use cairo for the whole presentation layer? Instead of creating an interims solution?
** Yes, Cairo has PDF export capabilities; it's unknown if it's significantly better than our current (poor) pdf export functionality
** Cairo Postscript and PDF backends are still experimental and disabled by default in current stable release, but plan is to make them supported in next stable release, expected for the end of 2005. See [http://cvs.cairographics.org/*checkout*/cairo/ROADMAP Cairo ROADMAP]
** A way to test cairo capabilities would be to use librsvg HEAD. See Dom Lachowicz [http://www.advogato.org/person/cinamod/diary.html?start=91 blog entry].
* Investigate ps2ai, pstoedit and ai2svg conversion options (potential EPS support?)
* Import of native [[AdobeIllustrator]] files, which have been PDF based since Illustrator 10 (at least).
* Other [[PDF Bugs | Bugs and RFE's]] related to Import or Export?
* [[UberConverter]]