Inkscape 0.44 - Faster, Bigger, Better

bbyakk writes "After 6 months of development, Inkscape 0.44 is out. This version of the SVG-based vector graphics editor brings improved performance and tons of new features: Layers dialog, docked color palette, clipping and masking, native PDF export with transparency, configurable keyboard (including Xara emulation), Outline mode for complex drawings, innovative 'node sculpting' and lots more. Check out the full release notes, enjoy the screenshots, or download your package for Windows, Linux or Mac OS X."

Firefox Users

[timeOday]

Based on the screenshots, I thought the Inkscape font rendering looked really bad. Turns out, it's only because their screenshots are quite large and Firefox squishes them down to fit on the screen. Firefox ought to use some more sophisticated downsampling algorithm instead of simply discarding rows and columns of pixels, but there you go. If you move your cursor over the pictures and get a magnifying glass, click it to see the real quality of the Inkscape images.

Re:Tried it.

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the problem with the SVG it produces?

It's not a Microsoft "standard". You've just responded to an astroturfer.

Who's the genius?

[TheModelEskimo]

So...why announce the software when you can't even download the binaries for it yet? Somebody jumped the gun. Now, 85% of the /. comments are going to be "why is it just a source tarball? Open Source sucks!!!" ...sigh...

If you want to try it out and you don't like compiling, wait another day for the official binaries, then give it a whirl - this Inkscape release really is that good. Very fast, excellent illustration tool. Congratulations to the dev team.

Re:Tried it.

[killjoe]

A subject of a cross platform open source SVG designer comes up and you reccomend a product that doesn't produce SVG, is proprietary and only runs on windows as an alternative?

Come on now, give the astro turfing a rest.

Re:Tried it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never heard an Illustrator user complain that their .ai file "wasn't readable enough".

Re:Tried it.

[SirSlud]

you wrote complex svg drawings in a simple xml editor? got a screen shot of this masterpiece?

you link to an MS app that can't output to SVG in an article about an application that is for greating SVG graphics?

I've been on slashdot for 8 years, and I never truely believed in astroturfing until your post.

Re:Firefox Users

[njh]

No idea why you got a funny, but gaussian isn't really the best choice. There are standard libraries that can do the right thing anyway (libmagick, libgdkpixbuf, etc) so perhaps you should just grab one of them and use that.

Re:Tried it.

[PhrostyMcByte]

you wrote complex svg drawings in a simple xml editor? got a screen shot of this masterpiece?

Nope. I wrote simple svg in an xml editor and previewed it in Batik [apache.org] while writing. Why? Because Inkscape produced rather odd and bloated code that made it hard to understand just by reading the xml. Maybe this new version has better output, I havn't used it for a few months. I'm not expecting perfection, but for simple stuff it's reasonable to expect Inkscape (or anything else) to produce readable output.

you link to an MS app that can't output to SVG in an article about an application that is for greating SVG graphics?
I've been on slashdot for 8 years, and I never truely believed in astroturfing until your post.

I mention a alternative I found better for vector graphics, and even caveated that it doesn't support SVG and that is what sucks about it. It's called "discussion". Feel free to bring your own alternatives and experiences to the table. But because I mention a Microsoft product in good light I must be trolling, right? FYI, Expression was a Creature House product. MS only recently acquired it.

Re:Firefox Users

[consonant]

Slashdot: Where the truth is funny, and the trolltalk is insightful ;)

Re:Illustrator

[t_allardyce]

I major feature that was missing is non-destructive shape unions, intersections and differences. These are in the pathfinder feature of Illustrator and they are pretty much a staple of any serious illustration work. I think it might kind-of be in Inkscape in this release but im not sure.

Next major feature is an effects stack which is needed in GIMP too. Both GIMP and Inkscape have really suffered from the lack of any dynamic non-destructive editing features and separation of various effects and styles from content - these are the way forward and things Photoshop and Illustrator users have had for years, you just cant seriously live without them and its a shame because non-destructive editing and separating content from style is really something the OS world embraces - obviously these two projects feel they have more important things to do, which is why no-one seriously uses either of them.

Just to give you an idea, Photoshop drop-shadow has single-handidly changed the entire web and graphic design fashion for nearly a decade, you can take any layer and add drop shadow - tweak the settings and then go back and change it any time you want, this combines with other effects to make an effects stack that is dynamically applied to layers and objects - this is a very simple principle and is so so incredibly vital I cant even begin to stress how much.

Donation?

[biscon]

Since this thread is being read by at least one of the developers, I want to say: thanks guys, you rock!.
I have recently founded a company with a few friends and Inkscape 0.44 came just in time, to address some issues
we were having editing large SVG's in 0.43. We badly needed the optimisations to the rendering engine as well
as outline mode.

We hope to make money on our product in a few months and would like to know if you take donations?.

Giving something in return for your excellent work would be nice, but we could not find the usual donation link on your site.

Anyway great work and thanks a lot :)