Difference between revisions of "Release notes/0.44"

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Revision as of 07:56, 11 December 2005

Inkscape 0.44

In brief

Bigger and better.

Outline mode

An Outline ("wireframe") display mode is implemented. Use the View > Display Mode > Outline to activate it. In this mode:

  • all paths and shapes are rendered as inverse (black on light background and vice versa) outlines of constant width (1 screen pixel regardless of zoom), without fill;
  • text is painted by inverse fill, without stroke;
  • bitmaps are shown as is;
  • any opacity and gradients are ignored.

The outline mode is usually not drastically faster than regular mode (usually 10% to 50% faster), and in some special cases it may even be slower. However, the value of the outline mode is not only in its speed; it is a good way to get an idea of the structure and objects of your document, and it is convenient for precision node editing and for finding "stray objects".

Selected style indicator

A new control in the left end of the statusbar lets you quickly view and change the fill and stroke of the selected objects. When you have a text selection in Text tool or a gradient handle selected in the Gradient tool, this indicator displays and changes the style of the text fragment or gradient stop, instead of the entire object (it's the same behavior as the Fill&Stroke dialog.)

  • The two indicators, labelled F: (top) and S: (bottom), display fill and stroke of the selected object(s) correspondingly. (For gradient handles, they always display the same style.)
  • Each fill/stroke indicator can display either a color+opacity swatch (the opacity shown here is the fill opacity or stroke opacity, not the master opacity) or a text label specifying N/A (nothing selected), None (no fill/stroke), Unset (unset fill/stroke), L Gradient, R Gradient, Pattern (corresponding fill/stroke types), or Different (selected objects have different fill/stroke types).
  • Additionally, each indicator may be accompanied by one of two flags, M ("multiple", meaning there are two or more objects all with the same fill/stroke) or A ("averaged", meaning there are two or more objects with different flat colors in fill/stroke, and the indicator shows the average of these colors).
  • Left-click on an indicator opens or activates the Fill&Stroke dialog with the corresponding tab (Fill or Stroke) selected.
  • Right-click on an indicator opens a popup menu with the following items:
    • Edit fill/stroke...: Opens or activates the Fill&Stroke dialog with the corresponding tab selected. (Same as left-click.)
    • Last set color: Applies to the selected objects the fill/stroke color that was last applied to anythig.
    • Last selected color: Applies to the selected objects the fill/stroke color that was last displayed in this indicator. (Allows you to easily copy fill/stroke color between objects: select source, select destination, apply "last selected color".)
    • White, Black: Sets the fill or stroke to the corresponding color (fully opaque).
    • Copy color, Paste color: Copies or pastes the fill or stroke color (when it's color) to/from the system clipboard, as text in the #rrggbb hex format.
    • Swap fill and stroke: Exchanges fill and stroke (both their types and colors, if any).
    • Make fill/stroke opaque: Removes fill or stroke transparency (not master transparency!).
    • Unset fill/stroke: Unsets fill or stroke from selected objects.
    • Remove fill/stroke: Removes fill or stroke from the selected objects.
  • Middle-click on a fill/stroke indicator removes fill/stroke from selected objects; if it is already removed (i.e. if the indicator displays "None"), it does the same as the "Last set color" command from the popup menu.
  • To the right of the fill/stroke indicators, the Opacity numeric field (labelled "O:") shows and allows you to change the master opacity of the selected object (or the averaged opacity of several selected objects). Right-clicking the numeric field opens a popup menu with preset opacity levels. Middle-clicking on the "O:" label rotates the current opacity to one of the 0 (transparent), 0.5, and 1 (opaque) values.

The zoom field and the cursor coordinates indicator have been rearranged for compactness and moved to the right end of the statusbar. [resize handle - mental]


Transform dialog

Fixes and improvements in the Transform dialog (Ctrl+Shift+M):

  • The Apply to each object separately checkbox is added, allowing you to scale/rotate/skew each selected object by the same amount, around that object's center. When off (by default), the selection is transformed as a whole. The status of this checkbox is remembered across sessions. (It has no effect on Move and Matrix tabs).
  • The Clear button resets the values on the current tab to defaults.
  • The Scale tab now allows you to specify horizontal or vertical size increments in percentage or absolute units. Also, there's a Scale proportionally checkbox which ensures that scaling preserves the width/height ratio. (If you are scaling several objects proportionally with "Apply to each object separately", you can only use the % unit to specify the scaling; otherwise each object's scale increments will have the width/height ratio of the entire selection, not of that specific object.)
  • The Skew tab can now specify the skew as an absolute displacement (e.g. for horizontal skewing of a rectangle, that means the shift of the top rectangle side relative to the bottom), as percentage displacement (e.g. a 1% horizontal skew of a rectangle means shifting the top side by 1% of the rectangle height), or as an angle (e.g. horizontal skew by 15 degrees results in the sides of a rectangle being rotated to that angle, while the top and bottom remain horizontal).
  • The Matrix tab (previously called "Transform") can either edit the current transform= matrix of an object, or post-multiply the transform= with the matrix you specify, depending on the Edit current matrix checkbox. (As it is now redundant, the transformation matrix in the Object Properties dialog is removed.)
  • The dialog now correctly watches selection changes in the active document window and updates its values accordingly.
  • The layout of the dialog is simplified, tooltips and mnemonics added for better usability.
  • Many bugs are fixed, especially in value conversions between units.

Transformation center retention

[sim]

Align & Distribute dialog: remove overlaps

  • There is a new button to move the selected objects enough that they don't overlap each other.

This should be a significant addition to Inkscape's usability for diagramming.

[Consider expanding this, comparing with existing Unclump and Distribute edge-to-edge buttons.]

Path effects

[acspike]

Snapping

  • [object snap - carl]
  • [highlight - mtou]
  • Guidelines are made easier to pick: now you don't need to position mouse exactly over a guideline to activate it, instead there's a small position tolerance (1 screen pixel on each side of the guideline).

Misc improvements

  • Now you can use Shift+middle button drag in any tool to zoom into an area. This works the same as simple drag in Zoom tool, but is faster because it does not require switching away from your current tool. Together with middle button drag (panning), middle button click (zoom in) and Shift+middle button click (zoom out), this completes the set of canvas navigation shortcuts available in any tool or context.
  • In Gradient tool, Shift+R reverses the gradient definition (i.e. mirrors the stop positions) without moving the gradient handles. For example, an elliptic gradient with blue center and red periphery becomes red in the center and blue in the periphery. This works on the gradient(s) of the currently selected gradient handle or, if no handle is selected, on all selected objects' gradients. (Compare with the Node tool where Shift+R reverses the direction of the selected path.) This is especially convenient for elliptic gradients which, unlike linear, you cannot simply rotate by 180 degrees for the same result.
  • When toggling one of the "transform with object" buttons (for stroke width, rounded rectangle corners, gradients, or patterns), a message is displayed in the statusbar explaining what has changed in the program's behavior.
  • Zoom commands in the View menu are moved to a submenu; the Zoom In and Zoom Out commands are added to that submenu.
  • The contents of the statusbar message are now duplicated as a tooltip that is shown when you hover the mouse over the statusbar. [TODO: need to strip from the tooltips.]
  • Whole thousands above 2000 in the rulers are now displayed as 2k, 3k, 4k etc.
  • By popular demand, in Pen tool, if a new path is being drawn but not yet finished, Ctrl+Z cancels that unfinished path (i.e. does the same as Esc), instead of undoing the previous action.
  • In Pen tool, Del works the same as Backspace to delete the last created point on the unfinished path.
  • In Node tool, the ! key inverts node selection in the current subpath(s) (i.e. subpaths with at least one selected node); Alt+! inverts in the entire path. (This is similar to how these keys work in Selector, with current subpath(s) instead of the current layer.)
  • The keyboard shortcut for "Make selected segments curves" in Node tool is changed from Shift+K to Shift+U for better mnemonics.
  • In Calligraphic tool, Esc deselects as in most other tools.
  • In Selector, Ctrl+Enter enters the selected group (making it a temporary layer). Ctrl+Backspace leaves the current layer and goes one layer up in the hierarchy (but not to root).
  • [save zip with images - acspike?]
  • [about dialog redesign - mental]
  • [icons prerendering - joncruz, mental]


Rendering speed

Thanks to optimizations in the renderer, Inkscape's screen redraw is faster by at least 10%, and in some cases (such as complex stroked/dashed paths at high zooms) up to three times faster.

Important bugfixes

  • Bounding box on text objects did not include stroke width.
  • Stroke miterlimit on text objects was misinterpreted in absolute units instead of multiplies of stroke width (resulting in miter joins rendered as bevel).
  • [win32 font backend - cyreve]
  • Setting dash pattern was broken for transformed objects, and copy/paste of style with dash pattern did not apply correctly to objects with transforms.
  • An error caused a complete extra screen redraw after each zoom operation. That is, after you press "+" in a complex drawing, Inkscape redraws, but for some time after that it remains still unresponsive because it does that second redraw (invisibly for you, i.e. nothing changes on the screen). This is fixed.
  • Gradient rendering was off by one pixel, which often resulted in visibly wrong gradient rendering for small objects or in zoom-out.
  • The SVG path parser could not handle fractional numbers with the initial dot.

Translations

  • INX files (containing the UI of the external effects) now allow the user visible strings to be translated. This means that effect dialogs, file type selections, and extension names can all be translated by translators.

Previous releases

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