Release notes/0.46

Inkscape 0.46

• Smart redraw: 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 sequentially top to bottom. Now this direction is automatically changed based on where your mouse cursor is. In particular, if mouse is closer to the bottom of the area to redraw, strips will be painted in the bottom-to-top order. This significantly improves the responsiveness and interactivity in some situations. For example, when you are node-editing the bottom part of a complex path, the entire path needs to be redrawn on each change, but now this redraw starts from the bottom and therefore the you see the effect of your changes at once - i.e. while screen redraw may still lag behind your mouse movement, this lag is less noticeable.

• [gradient tool redesign: Inkscape/gradientgoodness - johan]

• [faster blur - jasper]

• [sculpt profiles - bbyak]

• [more filters - kiirala, haa_rodrigues]

• [toolbars - jonxruz]

• [text toolbar - deadchip]

• [print dialog - kees]

• 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). So now this limitation is removed.

• [if enabled! - mental] A new cairo-based PDF exporter has been added to Inkscape. 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. 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.

• 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.

• In Gradient tool, 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.

• 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.

• 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.