ReleaseAnnounce044

This is concept of Release Announcement for 0.44 version

Inkscape Announces 0.44 Release :: http://www.inkscape.org :: Draw Freely

The Inkscape community today officially released the latest version of its vector graphic drawing software. Inkscape 0.44 fulfils a number of user requests, supports a larger number of SVG features, is translated into more languages, and adds a lot of spit and polish.

Several noticeable changes in the user interface include a layer dialog, docked swatches, a redesigned preferences dialog, a text toolbar, and new icons. Deeper interface changes include persistent rotation centers, interactive style indication in the toolbar, configurable keyboard shortcuts, improvements in calligraphic pen, and the exciting new "node sculpting" functionality. PDF export now supports transparency.

For several releases an experimental 'Effects' plug-in system has been provided, but this has always been turned off by default. With this release, the team feels this is mature enough, so it has been changed to be on by default.

For highly complex drawings, inkscape now provides an outline mode that will improve performance. Our SVG compliance has also taken a step forward, with the implementation of the <switch> tag. ICC color profiles are implemented for images. And hundreds of other features and bug fixes.

We'd also like to thank Google for their sponsorship of five students to work on several Inkscape development efforts: SVG Filters, Inkboard protocol spec, PDF export with Cairo, and Memory Optimizations.

Download Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X packages:

    http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=93438

For many more details, see the complete Release Notes for 0.44:

    http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Release_Notes

Community submitted screenshots:

    http://www.inkscape.org/screenshots/

About Inkscape

Inkscape is an open source drawing tool that uses the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) scalable vector graphics format (SVG). Some supported SVG features include basic shapes, paths, text, markers, clones, alpha blending, transforms, gradients, and grouping. In addition, Inkscape supports Creative Commons' metadata, node-editing, layers, complex path operations, text-on-path, text-in-shape, and SVG XML editing. It also imports several formats like EPS, PostScript, JPEG, PNG, BMP, and TIFF and exports PNG as well as multiple vector-based formats.

Inkscape's main motivation is to provide the Open Source community with a fully W3C compliant XML, SVG, and CSS2 drawing tool. Additional work includes conversion of the codebase from C/Gtk to C++/Gtkmm, emphasizing a lightweight core with powerful features added through an extension mechanism, and the establishment of a friendly, open, community-oriented development process.