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 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.

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 somewhat.

Our SVG compliance has also taken a step forward, with the implementation of the <switch> tag.