Difference between revisions of "Release notes/0.46"

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[[Category:Marketing]]
[[Category:Marketing]]
==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), as well as to '''-1/3''', '''-1/2''', '''-1''', '''-2''', '''-3''', etc. 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.
==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.
* 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.
==Pen/Pencil Tools==
These tools can now create '''single dots''' by '''Ctrl+click''' on the canvas. This creates a small circle filled with the current stroke color. The radius can be set in the Preferences of the respective tools (it is specified as a multiple of the current stroke width). '''Shift+Ctrl+click''' creates a dot twice the specified size, and '''Alt+Ctrl+click''' varies the size of the created dots randomly.
==Dropper Tool==
The shortcut 'D' is now used to <i>toggle</i> (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 '''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 <b>non-destructively modify path and shape objects</b>. 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 <b>output style equals original style</b>.
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 (<b>F2</b>), the <b>original path</b> 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. <b>Press "7" to cycle through the different on-canvas editable parameters.</b> 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 <b>Path along Path</b> 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 <b>on-canvas</b> and the result is <b>updated live</b>. 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 <b>Pattern along Path</b> 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 <b>on-canvas</b> and the result is <b>updated live</b>. 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 <b>Stitch Subcurves</b> effect connects points from two subpaths of the path with straight line or curved segments, i.e. the <i>stitches</i>. 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 <b>shape</b> of the <b>connecting paths</b> can controlled by the <b>stroke path</b> parameter. This could be used to draw 'hair-shaped' connecting paths with sharp end-tips. Other controls include the <b>number of paths</b>, the variation in spacing between the connecting paths (<b>clustering</b>) and also whether the start and end points of the stitches should like exactly on the original subcurves or can <b>stray randomly</b> 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 '<b>sub</b>curve' in the name. Use Path > Combine to create such a path from two separate paths.
Example file: live-path-effects-curvestitch.svg
===Gears===
The <b>Gears</b> 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!
=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 '''Generate from Path > Dimensions''' extension creates CAD style dimensions that are basically arrows with lengths equal to selection's bounding box and captions representing length.
* 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><i>inkscape-dir</i>/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.
=Markers=
* A new command, '''Objects to Marker''', was added to the Object menu. It converts the current selection into a marker. After you do it, the selection is deleted, but the list of markers in the Fill and Stroke dialog, Stroke style tab, now contains the new marker that you can apply to paths.
:* When creating the new marker, Inkscape assumes that the original objects are oriented as they should be on a horizontal path that goes from left to right. For example, if you create a new arrowhead that you plan to use as an end marker, make it point horizontally to the right before converting it to marker.
:* Similar to standard markers, the user-created marker will scale up and down as you change the stroke width. Its initial size (i.e. the size of the object that you have turned into a marker) corresponds to the 1 px stroke.
:* When you create a new marker, Inkscape uses the rotation center of the (first) selected object as the anchor point, i.e. the point which will coincide with the node to which that marker is attached. By default, the rotation center is in the center of the object's bounding box, which means the newly created marker will be centered around its node. If you move the rotation center, for example, to one of the corners of the object, the new marker will touch its node by that corner.
* Several new '''UML markers''' were added to the standard set, including filled and hollow diamonds and triangles.
* '''Master opacity''' did not apply to path markers as it should; this is fixed.
* '''Stock markers''', if used in the document, now appear in the "this document's markers" section at the top of the marker lists in the Fill & Stroke dialog.  Before, any markers with stock IDs (including markers modified by the user) were hidden, making it difficult to work with modified stock markers.
=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.

Revision as of 07:47, 11 August 2009

XICC Support

On X11-based systems (i.e. Unix and Mac OSX), use of [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 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.

OS support

Сolor management is supported in Linux and Mac OS X only at this time.

Grids, guides, snapping

Grids

Grids have undergone some big changes under-the-hood. These are the visible changes:

  • There is a new 3D/axonometric grid. It consists of three sets of parallel lines, one vertical and others at angles of +30 and -30 degrees from the horizontal. The angles of these two latter sets and the spacing of the grid are user-settable.
  • A new tab in the Document Properties dialog, Grids, is devoted solely to grids; the former grid/guide tab is renamed Guides and is now used only for guides. On the Grids page, you can create and manage grids of various types in your document; so far the two types available are Rectangular (default) and Axonometric, but more types may be added in the future.
  • More than one grid can be active at the same time:
  • Each grid can be enabled/disabled separately from the Document Properties dialog.
  • For each grid, you can hide it by unchecking the "Visible" checkbox in the grid's tab, or disable snapping to it by unchecking "Enabled". Note that you can have "Enabled" on and "Visible" off (but not vice versa), in which case you snap to the invisible grid.
  • Multiple views on the same document (i.e. different Inkscape windows with the same document loaded) share the same grids, but the grid can be turned on and off for each view separately. For example, you could have a zoomed-out "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.
  • 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 by subclassing CanvasGrid. 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!
  • Grid information is now stored in SVG as a child of sodipodi:namedview. Old files will be converted to this new format automatically.
  • An old bug is fixed: apparently the origin of the document coordinate system used to be set to the origin of the grid. For example, in 0.45.1 and before, specifying a grid origin of (20,20) moved the origin or coordinates to that point, and the grid was still starting at (0,0) in this moved coordinate system. This is now disabled, and the coordinate origin is not affected by grid origin.

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 end of the ruler, 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 Ctrl 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.
  • Created guides can be quickly deleted by Ctrl+clicking on them (this is of course not restricted to guides created by the process described above). Note that this only works in Selector and Node tools, i.e., in contexts where guidelines can be manipulated with the mouse.
  • 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.

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).


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. 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 UniConvertor if it's installed on your system to import documents in CDR format (CorelDraw). This feature is Unix-only at this time and requires that you have Python and UniConvertor installed. As of UniConvertor 1.1.1, versions from 7 to X4 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.

WMF import

Now Inkscape uses UniConvertor for opening WMF files, which results in three noticable changes:

  1. imported files are editable now
  2. known rendering issues are resolved
  3. WMF import works on all platforms where UniConvertor works (including Windows)

Text objects are not supported by UniConvertor as of version 1.1.1.

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 hosting 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

Inkscape features a preliminary support for importing drawings from Open Clip Art Library.

After specifying account details in Preferences dialog (Import/Export tab) use 'File > Import From Open Clip Art Library' command to open a dialog, then search for tags and pick one of the results to merge this found drawing into your document.

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 preferences.xml file under a options group called dock:

  • cancenterdock: controls if dialogs are allowed to be stacked on top of each other to be ordered in groups. Valid values are "0" and "1".
  • dockbarstyle: controls what information is shown for iconified dockable dialogs. "0" = icons only, "1" = text only, "2" = both icons and text.
  • switcherstyle: controls what information is shown for grouped dockable dialogs. "0" = icons only, "1" = text only, "2" = both icons and text.

Toolbars

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.

Switching to stock GTK+ toolbars. This allows for the main window to be made narrower, with toolbar items flowing into a popup menu as it is resized.


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.
  • A new submenu has been added to affect the shape of the displayed swatches, allowing their preferred size to be made thinner or wider. Among other things, this allows for more to be seen on screen at once when made thinner.
  • Sizing of the swatches has been corrected to be properly progressive, and now go form smaller to larger on all platforms.
  • Space reserved for the scrollbar is no longer kept with smaller palettes shown in the bottom of the main UI. This allows for more working space when palettes with not many entries are selected at smaller sizes.

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 the FAQ, you can change a setting in your preferences.xml file called mapalt in the options 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 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.


Keyboard profiles

New profiles have been added:

  • Corel DRAW X4 (corel-draw-x4.xml)
  • Zoner Draw 5 (zoner-draw.xml)
  • ACD Systems Canvas 11 (acd-canvas.xml)

Also, profile for Adobe Illustrator has been fixed and includes bindings for tools now.

(To enable a profile, copy it into default.xml in the same directory, overwriting the old file. To restore the default Inkscape set, copy inkscape.xml into default.xml.)

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 default.svg, 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.

Mac OS X specific improvements

  • Inkscape 0.46 is officially released as a Universal (i386/ppc) binary for both OS X 10.4 Tiger and 10.5 Leopard.
  • Please note: Leopard users should update X11.app to at least version 2.1.4. X11.app updates can be downloaded from the Xquartz project.
  • The Inkscape application bundle now contains pre-compiled python modules (e.g. lxml, numpy, etc.) and uses 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 to their hard-drive and all the extensions will be functional immediately.
  • 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.
  • If Inkscape.app is already open and a file is dropped on the Inkscape dock icon, or an Inkscape file is double-clicked in the Finder, that document will now be opened, rather than this action being ignored, as happened in 0.45 and prior.

Notable bugfixes

These are bugfixes compared to 0.45.1; for a list of fixes in 0.45.1 compared to 0.45, see 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 font-family 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).
  • 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 style 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.
  • 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; it is now fixed.
  • Serious usability issues with the font size field in the Text tool's controls bar have been fixed.
  • The rulers are now correctly scaled and will align nicely with document coordinates, with or without the scrollbars displayed.

Known Issues

  • (LP: #180890) Blend modes do not work correctly over transparent backgrounds. A workaround is to place an opaque rectangle underneath the bottom-most layer.
  • (LP # 202704) Blur and other filters are very slow when applied to an object with transform= attribute with rotation or skew. To avoid this slowdown, either do not rotate/skew objects you use with filters, or apply filters only to paths (but not shapes to text) because paths, by default, get no transform= attribute when you rotate or skew them.
  • Windows printing has two known issues. In both cases the workaround is to print to bitmap (Print -> Rendering -> Bitmap).
    • (LP # 205732) Blurred objects are misaligned when printing.
    • (LP # 208217) Masked objects disappear from the page when printing.

Previous releases

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), as well as to -1/3, -1/2, -1, -2, -3, etc. 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.

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.
  • 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.

Pen/Pencil Tools

These tools can now create single dots by Ctrl+click on the canvas. This creates a small circle filled with the current stroke color. The radius can be set in the Preferences of the respective tools (it is specified as a multiple of the current stroke width). Shift+Ctrl+click creates a dot twice the specified size, and Alt+Ctrl+click varies the size of the created dots randomly.


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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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!

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 Generate from Path > Dimensions extension creates CAD style dimensions that are basically arrows with lengths equal to selection's bounding box and captions representing length.
  • The new Render > Barcode extension creates a 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 mechanical gear given the number of teeth, the circular pitch (in px units), and the pressure angle.
  • 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 lxml library.
  • A new parameter, precision is added to the parameter definitions in the 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 patterns/patterns.svg in Inkscape's share directory (typically /usr/share/inkscape on Linux, inkscape-dir/share on Windows). You can add your own patterns to this file or replace it with any other SVG file containing the patterns you need.

Markers

  • A new command, Objects to Marker, was added to the Object menu. It converts the current selection into a marker. After you do it, the selection is deleted, but the list of markers in the Fill and Stroke dialog, Stroke style tab, now contains the new marker that you can apply to paths.
  • When creating the new marker, Inkscape assumes that the original objects are oriented as they should be on a horizontal path that goes from left to right. For example, if you create a new arrowhead that you plan to use as an end marker, make it point horizontally to the right before converting it to marker.
  • Similar to standard markers, the user-created marker will scale up and down as you change the stroke width. Its initial size (i.e. the size of the object that you have turned into a marker) corresponds to the 1 px stroke.
  • When you create a new marker, Inkscape uses the rotation center of the (first) selected object as the anchor point, i.e. the point which will coincide with the node to which that marker is attached. By default, the rotation center is in the center of the object's bounding box, which means the newly created marker will be centered around its node. If you move the rotation center, for example, to one of the corners of the object, the new marker will touch its node by that corner.
  • Several new UML markers were added to the standard set, including filled and hollow diamonds and triangles.
  • Master opacity did not apply to path markers as it should; this is fixed.
  • Stock markers, if used in the document, now appear in the "this document's markers" section at the top of the marker lists in the Fill & Stroke dialog. Before, any markers with stock IDs (including markers modified by the user) were hidden, making it difficult to work with modified stock markers.

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 [1]. 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.

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