Roadmap

Inkscape Development Roadmap

NOTE: This is a working document showing specific near-term tasks needed for achieving milestones. The following is available in formal form at: http://www.inkscape.org/roadmap.php and the number in front of the version is in reference to the milestone.

Milestones 0-5 have been completed since the start of the Inkscape Project.

Milestone 6 - Features and Fixes - Inkscape 0.40

New/Changed Dependencies

• (DONE) Add a dependency on libgc (the Boehm conservative collector), which will be required for the AST code [mental]
• (DONE) Switch to sigc++ 2 + gtkmm 2 early in 0.40, before we start doing gtkmm-intensive stuff like the layers dialog etc. [mental]
• (DONE) Add Gtk-Wimp (for windows theming)
• (DONE) Use new file dialog when GTK 2.4 is released (but need to smooth out)

Internal

• (DONE) Create new gtkmm classes Inkscape::Dialog, Inkscape::Application, and some widgets [bryce]
• (DONE) Auto-include AUTHORS list into manpage on build [pjrm]
• (DONE) Set up automatic insertion of current application version into Inkscape man page [pjrm]
• (DONE) Change the SEGV and SIGABRT handlers to reliably autosave and put up a crash dialog
• (DONE) add support for inkscape:label attribute for author-readable object names [mental]
  • (DONE) add SPObject::defaultLabel() to return a default label string if inkscape:label is unset [bryce]
• (DONE) Implement SPItem::{locked,setLocked,visible,setVisible} [bryce]
• (DONE) Implement SPDesktop::itemIsHidden(SPItem *) for getting per-desktop visibility [mental]

Drawing

• (DONE) Implement Text on Path
• (DONE) Smoother freehand pencil tool [pjrm]
• (DONE) Make gradient management & chaining work similar to patterns [bb]
  • (DONE) Fix fill-opacity ignored with gradients [bb]
• (DONE) add support for visibility CSS property [mental]

Interface & Usability

• (DONE) Make all knots display explanations in statusbar on mouseover
• (DONE) Implement "Select Under" [bb]
• (DONE) Add shortcuts to button tooltips (at least for verbs)
• (DONE) Basic metadata/RDF support for clipart, etc.
• Rudimentary layers UI
  • Finish new gtkmm layer selector [mental]
    • (DONE) Update list upon addition/removal/reordering of layers [mental]
    • Finish show/hide lock/unlock buttons [mental]
    • Add UI for setting inkscape:label attribute [mental]
    • (DONE) Fix funky widget resizing [bryce]
    • (DONE) unselect objects when manually switching layers [mental]
  • Tie off loose ends with layer-related commands [mental]
    • Add "selection to sublayer" command and its inverse [mental, bb]
    • Make "move to next/prev layer" move selected objects to next/prev layer [mental, bb]
• UI support for visibility
  • (DONE) Implement and enable "visible" checkbox in object properties (using SPObject::{visible,setVisible} [bryce]
  • Make "intelligent" raise/lower aware of visibility status (using per-desktop SPDesktop::itemIsHidden) [bb]
  • Make selection tool and tests for item-at-point aware of per-desktop visibility [bb]
• (DONE) object label support
  • (DONE) add ability to set inkscape:label from "Item Properties" [bryce]
  • (DONE) remove id setting from "Item Properties"? [bryce]
  • (DONE) switch to using SPObject::label()/SPObject::defaultLabel() in UI where object ID is currently used [bryce]
  • search checks inkscape:label, and ignores layers [bb]
• (DONE) add (preliminary) support for "title" and "desc" elements to "Item Properties"

Documentation & Packaging

• (DONE) Split tutorials into even smaller pieces, document new stuff since 0.38
  • (DONE) shrink and subdivide Elements and Principles of Design (made smaller) [rejon]
  • (DONE) Create a new tutorial (Shapes) [bulia]
• (DONE) Push for new dependencies to be updated upstream [all]

Milestone 7 - GtkMM Architectural Change - Inkscape 0.41

Internal

• Merge the inkscape_gtkmm codebase into mainline with cmdline option to activate it [bryce]
• Complete gtkmm conversion of at least 80% of dialogs
• Clean up tool ("event context") code
• Decide on an API for extensions to interact with the XML tree

Interface & Usability

• Overhaul Gradient UI in fill/stroke - improve management and creation.
• Rework Object Properties dialog
• Implement a layer management dialog [mental]
• Make all dialogs remember on/off status across sessions [bb]
• Make dialogs more Gnome HIG compliant (increase spacing where feasible, what else?).
• Controls panel:
  • Implement Text controls
  • Implement X/Y spinbuttons for the Node controls
  • Add more spinbuttons to shape tools: center, radius, w/h, etc.
  • Make defaults settable in Preferences
• Create a CurrentColorWidget
• Steal a palette widget (from Gimp?)
• Add Gnome HIG-compliant ICON (Normal logo with NIB in it) [mental]
• Complete the cursor icons set [bb]
• Redraw old icons to look decent [bb]
• Selection and node tools: require double-click to select objects which aren't descendants of the current layer or its siblings [bb]
• Selection and node tools: double-click on group sets group as current layer (without altering inkscape:groupmode) [bb]

Milestone 8 - Design Extension Architecture - Inkscape 0.42

• This architectural change will establish a new mechanism for how features are added and maintained in the codebase. see also: ExtensionArchitectureProposals

Internal

• Redo the internal clipboard to use an SPDocument/SPObjects rather than being simply literal copying at the SPRepr level [mental]
• Specification Document for extension system including API
• Hook up system clipboard (via gtkmm). Ensure when copying, that 'image/png' and/or 'image/svg' get on the system clipboard
• Solidify the underlying Extensions infrastructure
  • Convert Extensions to OO
  • Rename extensions to be consistent with new naming scheme
• Example extension package
• Implement support for SVG's "switch" element (SPItemGroup subclass, I think..), and the associated requiredFeatures, requiredExtensions and systemLanguage attributes (on SPItems in general)
• Look into implementing SVG filters via extensions
• Implement added Desktop file entries for GNOME 2.8 http://www.gnomedesktop.org/article.php?sid=1885&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Drawing

• Fix inverted coordinate system [mental]
• Make clones respond sensibly to original duplication [bb]
• Reenable fuzzy font matching [bb]
• Review & plan out replacement of sp-file.*
  • Implement backup functionalty for documents and preferences.xml, ideally with versioning like in Emacs
• Implement Rounding for arbitrary paths

Milestone 9 - RFE's & Extensions Implementation - Inkscape 0.43

New/Changed Dependencies

• Add a dependency on libcroco (which will be needed for the CSS portion of AST) [mental]

Internals

• Implement extension API
• Implement extension registry
• Create Extension preferences dialog
• Website tool for contributing new extensions
• Reduce open/total RFE ratio from 82% to 65%
• Implement on-canvas editing of gradients, patterns, and masks
• Create an SPObject API for tracking references and avoiding id clashes on import and interdocument copy/paste. What we need are a void SPDocument::importCopies([set of SPObjects]), and an [set of SPObjects] SPObject::dependencies() method.
• Implement gradient UI "release" handler to deal with gradient garbage collection (see bug 984854)

RFE's

• hyperlinking
• implementation of svg patterns
• implementation of clipping paths/masking
• tools: add/remove points on path, bezier drag

Maintenance

• Learn and use autoscan and autoreconf to find out which configure tests are still needed.
• Clean up configure.in
• (PARTIALLY DONE) Directory Reorganization (rejon)
  • Add doc/ to share/
• When run without installing, make it look for icon image file(s) locally so we don't get garbage icons

Testing

• Implement tests of Inkscape against the W3C test suite (0.37 loads 95% correctly without animations) [bryce]
• Implement basic 'make test' regression test support w/ at least one unit test

Milestone 10 - Import/Export Feature Enhancements - Inkscape 0.44

• Make printing work extremely reliably
• Enhance file manager
• EPS/PDF Export
• Investigate ps2ai, pstoedit and ai2svg conversion options (potential EPS support?)
• Import of native Adobe Illustrator files
• Other RFE's related to Import/Export

Milestone 11 - Style Refactoring - Inkscape 0.45

• Eliminate use of the style.h types in as much of codebase as possible, particularly display/*.
• Change to use of GQuarks instead of #defines where feasible

Milestone 12 - Bug Hunt & RFE's - Inkscape 0.46

• Reduce open/total RFE ratio to 50%
• Reduce open/total bug ratio to 5%

Milestone 13 - Drawing Feature Enhancements - Inkscape 0.47

• Object-to-object snapping / Snap points
• (DONE) Markers
• Enhanced grid system
• Inter-application cut-and-paste
• Inter-application drag-and-drop
• Clipart manager GUI
• Hyperlinking
• Load-from-URL

Milestone 14 - Style Rewrite & libcroco - Inkscape 0.48

• Replace style.cpp entirely, with a clearer and cleaner version.
• Integrate use of libcroco for handling Cascading Style Sheets.
• Palettes

Milestone 15 - Cairoification - Inkscape 0.49

• Prereq: Is renderer immune to the same kinds of numerical problems we see with our new renderer, libnr, or libart?
• Masking

Milestone 16 - Animation - Inkscape 0.50

• Prereq: We need a conceptualization of how it should work
• Implement full animation support

Milestone 17 - Extract SVG Canvas into a library - Inkscape 0.51

• Prereq: We need an API proposed for it

Milestone 18 - RFE's - Inkscape 0.52

• Reduce open/total RFE ratio to 40%
• (MAYBE) start thinking about 1.0...

Milestone [Future]

• Investigate performance measurement testing for Inkscape
• Convert all tabs into spaces (convert tabs to 4 spaces)
• Rename all 'SPFooBar' routines to 'FooBar' and put into namespaces
  • (DONE) dialogs folder
• Investigate resurrecting Bonobo component
• Rework text layout code to use PangoLayout
• Implement LittleCMS as color management system
• WebDAV/FTP support via GNOME-VFS, Neon, or the like
• Redesign the text creation/editing/handling subsystem - what would a "dream" text system be?
• Investigate SVG docs where SVG is not the default namespace used at the root -- e.g. <svg:svg xmlns:svg="http://...etc"><svg:rect.../><blah></svg:svg> -- <blah> would end up getting shoehorned into the svg namespace
• Write an Internal DTD subset describing the custom Inkscape XML elements, for validation against SVG DTD
• Ensure Inkscape does not throw away the internal DTD subsets of documents it reads
• Start thinking about 1.0 when major functionality gaps are closed (layers, color palette, gradient and mask tools, patterns, text on path and in shape, text selection, perspective transforms, SVG filters, scripting, path editing, shaped strokes)
• Implement preliminary support for iso & hex grid [njh]
• Set up backup systems http://sourceforge.net/project/admin/backup.php?group_id=93438 [bryce]
• Editable toolbars (libegg)
• Thoroughly document SPRepr
• Bidirectional text in Pango needs attention
• MakeVertical in Pango needs attention
• Implement perspective transformations via PerspectiveObject
• Improve freehand curve smoothness [pjrm, paraprax]