<nettime-ann> [tool] Inkscape Announces 0.42 Release :: http://www.inkscape.org

["Jon Phillips" <jon@rejon.org>]

July 26, 2005 â?? The Inkscape community today announced the release of
Inkscape 0.42, a cross-platform Open Source Scalable Vector Graphics
(SVG) drawing tool.

Inkscape 0.42 is the most feature-filled release to date, with an
exceptional number of major and minor new features, usability
improvements, and bug fixes. While some of the new features simply fill
long-standing functionality gaps, others are truly revolutionary.
Inkscape 0.42 is one step closer to full SVG compliance. This release
adds:

      * Flowed Text: Text objects that automatically re-flow to any
        shape (and not just a rectangle).
      * Text Selection: One can now select part of a text and apply any
        style to the selection, just like in a word processing
        application.
      * Gradient Tool: A completely redesigned and much easier to use
        on-canvas gradient interface with handles displayed directly in
        the drawing.
      * Effects: These are now usable from within Inkscape on all
        platforms. This version ships with a collection of effects
        including path interpolation, randomization, and various fractal
        algorithms.
      * Color Swatches: This standard facility of most graphics software
        is now a part of Inkscape.
      * Colored Clones: Clones may now be painted differently from their
        original.
      * Tile Tracing: The Tile Clones dialog can trace an existing image
        with tiling, producing a multitude of exciting effects.
      * Grid Arrange, Baseline Align, Unclumping: There are new,
        powerful ways to arrange objects.
      * Better PS/EPS Export: PostScript level 3 gradient support,
        better text handling, and a command line option for batch export
        are in this release.
      * Command Line SVG Analysis: Inkscape may now be used from the
        command line to query coordinates and dimensions of objects in
        an SVG file.
      * Better SVG/CSS Compliance: Notably, internal CSS stylesheets are
        now supported (read-only).
      * Mac OS X Support: In addition to Linux and Windows, Inkscape
        0.42 is now available as a fully self-contained dmg package for
        Mac OS X. 

There are also dozens of smaller features and usability enhancements
(especially in the Fill & Stroke dialog, Node tool, and drawing tools).
In this version the development community closed 404 bugs, some quite
serious, and 165 feature requests. Overall, the Inkscape developers are
very excited about this release and heartily recommend upgrading.

Thanks to Google's Summer of Code, there are four new student developers
adding new functionality to Inkscape this summer. Michael Wybrow is
adding connectors for automatic diagramming. David Yip is picking up the
development of Inkboard (http://inkboard.sf.net/) to integrate networked
collaborative editing of documents to Inkscape. Matthew Squires is
adding DXF Import and Export. Greg Steffensen is working with the Open
Clip Art Library to make a common graphical interface from the Library
to Inkscape. Thanks to the $20,000 worth of funding for these
developments from Google, the Inkscape developers are aiming to
accelerate the development cycle for the next few releases in order to
promote these projects.

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 0.42:

     http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ReleaseNotes042

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

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