File Release Notes and Changelog
Release Name: 0.46
Notes:
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Inkscape 0.46
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Highlights in this release:
* Paintbucket tool
* Tweak tool
* 3D Box tool
* Live path effects
* Color management
* New SVG filters and UI
* Native PDF and AI import
* XAML import/export
* Open Clip Art Library integration (import/export)
* Stock patterns
* Bitmap editing extension effects
* Full on-canvas gradient editing
* Engraver's Toolbox in the Calligraphic tool
* Touch selection
* Dockable dialogs
* Command-line access to verbs
* Snapping made usable
* "3D" / axonometric grid
* Angled guidelines
* Conversion of objects to guidelines
* Significant speed and interactivity improvements
* Hundreds of smaller features and bugfixes
Speed and interactivity
* In this version, Inkscape starts using the cairo library for
rendering. It is now used for outline mode display which, thanks to
using cairo and other optimizations, redraws faster by about 25%.
More impressive are memory savings: thanks to cairo, in outline
mode Inkscape now takes only about 50% of the memory used by 0.45
for the same file.
* Smart redraw directionality: With complex images and/or on slow
computers, you may have noticed that Inkscape redraws the screen
image in horizontal strips, and these strips are painted in order
from top to bottom. Now the redraw always starts at your mouse
cursor location and proceed upwards and downwards from it, so that
the area near the cursor is always redrawn first. This
significantly improves program's responsiveness in some situations.
For example, when you are node-editing part of a complex path, the
entire path needs to be redrawn on each change, but now this redraw
starts from the point you're working on. Moreover, the redraw is
interruptible, so each mouse movement starts new redraw from the
mouse cursor area. As a result, during such operations those parts
that you're working on redraw often and feel snappy and responsive,
while areas further away may lag behind more.
* Faster blur for exporting and high quality on-screen rendering:
Inkscape now uses an IIR (Infinite Impulse Response) filter for
blurring with large radius. This greatly improves the speed of blur
redraw at high zooms or in high-resolution export (or simply with
very large blur radius). On the other hand, the results are an
approximation to a true Gaussian blur, so a drawing may look
slightly different from the mathematically precise blur (usually
the differences are far from visible, though). This code is mainly
based on: Recursive Gaussian Derivative Filters by L.J. van Vliet,
I.T. Young and P.W. Verbeek (see the source code for more detailed
references).
Exporting drawings with blur was particularly slow in 0.45; some
files could take hours to export. Now this is fixed, in part by
the faster algorithm mentioned above and in part by a bugfix in
the export code. Now even the quite complex files with large
blurs export at high resolution in at most a few minutes.
* Minor improvements have been made to gradient rendering
performance.
* Dragging handles and nodes as well as dragging and transforming
objects by mouse became more responsive, so that working in complex
drawings and especially editing complex paths is noticeably easier.
In particular, this fixes the annoying latency issue where a node
or a handle could follow mouse cursor even after you release mouse
button after a drag.
* Moving objects, nodes, and gradient handles by cursor keys as well
as scaling and rotating objects from keyboard and zooming by keys
are much more responsive when working with complex slow-rendering
objects. Now, if you press and hold a key, your selection/zoom
level will quickly jump to the final position instead of going
through all the intermediate steps as before.
* Moving the cursor around in a file with large and complex paths has
become much snappier and more responsive. Previously, in extreme
cases Inkscape could freeze for seconds while catching up with the
mouse cursor; such delays are now eliminated.
* Several improvements make canvas panning and scrolling smoother and
more interactive in complex slow-rendering documents:
+ When panning by the middle mouse button, Inkscape no longer
attempts to redraw the canvas while your mouse button is
pressed. Any redrawing only happens after you release the
mouse. As a result, the newly revealed parts of the canvas are
somewhat more "dirty" but the panning is smoother than before,
with few if any "hiccups".
+ Redrawing the newly exposed parts of the canvas after
scrolling, especially diagonal scrolling, is now faster
because only the exposed areas are redrawn; before, this often
resulted in the entire screen being redrawn which was much
slower.
+ Previously, if you started panning with middle button while
Inkscape is still redrawing screen in a complex drawing,
panning sometimes completely failed or moved canvas just a
little step. Now it is guaranteed to pan the canvas all the
way from mouse-press point to mouse-release point in any case,
even if sometimes it fails to show the intermediate positions.
+ When pressing and holding Ctrl+arrows to scroll canvas,
Inkscape normally accelerates scrolling so that each next
scrolling step is bigger than the previous. Previously, in
complex drawings this acceleration sometimes got interrupted,
which made scrolling annoyingly bumpy and slow. Now this is
fixed so that scrolling is smoothly accelerated even in a
slow-rendering document.
+ The default starting speed and acceleration of Ctrl+arrows
scrolling are slightly increased. (They are both settable in
Preferences.)
* Better responsiveness and more visual feedback in user interface:
+ When you zoom, the zoom control on the right end of the
statusbar now updates immediately, not after screen redraw as
before.
+ Many potentially slow commands (Save, Simplify, Combine, Break
Apart and others) now display a busy cursor and flash a
message in the statusbar (e.g. "Saving document...") while
they work.
+ The statusbar messages displayed while you're drawing a shape
or a path in Pen tool do not lag behind the mouse movements.
* Combine and Convert to paths commands are now orders of magnitude
faster when applied to a selection with hundreds or thousands of
objects.
* The time it takes to snap to objects using the selector tool has
been reduced dramatically, which is most noticeable for snapping to
complex paths.
Tools
Paint Bucket tool
The new Paint Bucket tool works exactly as you would expect: click in
any area bounded on all sides and it will fill it with color. Being a
vector tool, however, Inkscape's Paint Bucket just creates a new path
that "fills in" the area in which you clicked.
How it works
It is important to note that the tool is perceptual, not geometric.
That is, when looking for the boundaries around the point you clicked,
it takes for such boundaries any visible color changes. This means that
filling will stop at gradients, blurs, and even the color boundaries in
imported bitmaps, but will ignore any paths or other objects that are
fully (or almost) transparent or for any other reason do not stand out
from the background. In short, it will work exactly as if you were
filling a rasterized version of your image in a bitmap editor like
Photoshop or GIMP - but will give you a vector object to work with.
For example, now you can scan a pencil sketch, import the bitmap into
Inkscape, and quickly fill all its cells with colors even without
tracing the bitmap first. This is a very convenient and interactive way
of digitizing your paper drawings, making the traditional bitmap
tracing unnecessary in many cases.
Internally, the tool works by performing a bitmap-based flood fill on a
rendered version of the visible canvas, then tracing the resulting fill
using potrace and placing the traced path into the document.
It places the rendered path onto the current layer, so you can have a
layer on top (for example, "Inks") and select the layer below
("Colors") and do the fills so that they always appear below the Inks.
The resolution of the bitmap image used to perform the trace is
dependent upon your current zoom level -- the more zoomed in to an area
that you are, the higher the resolution of the bitmap-based flood fill.
So, if you are got a fill that is too imprecise, has rough corners, or
don't go into small nooks and appendices where it is supposed to go,
just undo, zoom in closer and repeat filling from the same point.
Conversely, if the fill leaks out through a small gap, zoom out to make
the gap less visible and fill again (or use the auto gap closing
parameter, see below).
Style
Like all object-creating tools, the Paint Bucket may use the last-set
style for the objects it creates (this is the default), or it can use
its own fixed style. You can switch between these modes on this tool's
page in Inkscape Preferences (Ctrl+Shift+P). As in all other tools, the
style swatch on the far right of the Controls bar shows the style that
will be used for the next fill object you create.
Controls
In the tool's Controls bar:
* Paint Bucket's perceptual fill can use either all visible colors or
specific color channels. Using the Fill by drop-down list, you can
restrict the fill algorithm to one the following channels:
+ Red
+ Green
+ Blue
+ Hue
+ Saturation
+ Lightness
+ Alpha
* The Threshold (in per cent units) controls how large must be color
difference at a point (compared to the initial click point) to stop
the fill. Zero tolerance means only the area of strictly the same
color will be filled; the larger the tolerance, the easier it will
be for the fill to leak into adjacent different-color areas. The
default value is 10%.
* Using the Grow/shrink by parameter, you can control the amount of
inset/outset to be applied to the created fill path. Setting a
positive outset causes fill paths to be larger than the filled
bitmap area (good for eliminating anti-aliasing errors), while
setting a negative outset causes the path to be smaller. This works
much the same as the Outset and Inset path commands, except it's
done automatically after every fill.
* With the Close gaps parameter, you can make the Paint Bucket tool
ignore any gaps in the area boundaries that would normally cause
the fill to spill out of the desired area. There are four settings
to auto gap:
+ None
+ Small (close gaps up to 2 pixels in size)
+ Medium (4 pixels)
+ Large (6 pixels)
Note that setting this parameter to other than None may slow
down noticeably the filling of large areas.
Shortcuts
The tool's shortcuts are:
* Single click performs filling from the click point.
* Shift+click performs filling from the click point and then unions
the resulting path with the selected path. This way, if your first
attempt did not fill in all of the desired area, you can
Shift+click the remaining corner to fill it in separately and
combine the result with the result of the previous fill.
* Ctrl+click on an object simply changes that object's fill to the
current fill color of the tool, and Shift+Ctrl+click changes the
stroke to the current stroke color.
* Click and drag performs filling from all of the points that you
pass while dragging (you will see your path visualized by a red
line). From each point, the fill spreads to the neighbors with the
colors similar to that point - in other words, it's like clicking
with this tool at each point of the drag path and unioning the
results. This lets you easily fill an area occupied by a gradient
or blur - just drag from the darkest to the lightest points in the
area you want to fill.
* Alt+click and drag works similarly to simple drag, except from each
point of the drag path, the fill spreads to the neighbors (if any)
with the colors similar to the initial point (the point where you
started the drag). This lets you fill a series of similarly-colored
yet separated areas (for example, multiple cells in a cartoon) by
starting the drag in one of those areas, and alt+dragging the tool
through all the other areas.
Tweak tool
The Tweak tool is an exciting new way to edit drawings which largely
blurs the distinction between vector and raster editing. Instead of
meticulously selecting some objects and then performing an action on
the selection, you can now select all objects (or all objects you are
interested in) and apply the Tweak tool's brush to smoothly and
naturally change the shape or style of only those objects (or parts
thereof) that the brush touches.
The area of the tool's action - its brush - is marked by an
orange-colored circular outline that moves with your mouse cursor.
However, that area actually has no sharp boundaries; the power of the
tool's action falls off gradually, following a smooth bell-shaped
profile. This makes the tool act softly and smoothly.
The tool will work on any number of selected objects; for example, you
can select all (Ctrl+A) and "smear" your entire drawing by Push mode or
paint it by Color Paint mode. You can also apply it to groups of
objects; it will go into groups and act on individual objects inside
groups. If you're trying to use it without anything selected, it will
remind you by a statusbar message to select some objects.
Width
The width of the tool's brush, in the range from 1 to 100, can be
changed by the Width control in the tool's controls bar above the
canvas. You can also change width by Left and Right arrow keys (same as
in the Calligraphy tool) at any time (including during action) as well
as Home and End. Also, as in Calligraphy tool, the visible width of the
brush is independent of zoom; simply zooming in or out is often easier
than adjusting the width if you want to cover a smaller or larger area
of the drawing.
Force
The next control is Force which adjusts the power of the action, also
in the range from 1 to 100. You can also change width by Up and Down
arrow keys at any time (including during action).
If you have a pressure-sensitive tablet and your "Use pressure" button
on the right-hand end of the controls bar is on, then the force will
also depend on how hard you actually press your pen into your tablet,
changing in the range from zero to whatever you set in the Force
control. If all you have is a mouse, then the force will be constant
but still settable by the Force control.
Path editing modes
The Tweak tool has a number of modes, selectable by toggle buttons in
the tool's Controls bar and by keyboard shortcuts. Some of these modes
change the shapes of paths while others affect the colors of objects.
All these modes share the Width and Force controls but otherwise are
quite different. Let's look at the path editing modes first.
Unlike the Node tool, to edit paths with the Tweak tool you don't need
to worry about where the nodes of a path are and how to manipulate
them. You just apply the tool's brush to any point, and the selected
paths at that point will reshape smoothly and naturally - as if made of
soft jelly - regardless of where its nodes lie. If applied to a shape
or text object, the tool converts them to paths automatically.
While not very useful for technical drawings, tweaking paths will be
indispensable for artistic uses of Inkscape - cartoons, drawings,
sketches, anime, etc. This new functionality is somewhat similar to the
tools such as "Pucker" and "Bloat" in the latest versions of Adobe
Illustrator.
There are currently six path editing modes in the Tweak tool: Push,
Shrink, Grow, Attract, Repel, and Roughen.
* This default mode of the tool, Push, simply displaces the part of
the path under the cursor in the direction of the drag. The path
behaves like soft jelly, bending and bulging smoothly and
naturally. It's an easy way to produce various irregular, lifelike,
handmade-looking shapes starting from something as simple as an
ellipse or a calligraphic stroke. For parallel-stroke hatching
(engraving) done in the Calligraphy tool, pushing is an easy way to
bend, pinch, or curve the entire hatching uniformly.
* The Shrink and Grow are two opposite modes that move each point of
a path in a direction perpendicular to the path's surface at the
point, either inwards (Shrink) or outwards (Grow). This is similar
to the Inset and Outset commands, except that the Tweak tool can
act on a part of a path instead of the whole path.
For example, the visible lightness/darkness of an engraving
hatching may not exactly correspond to your artistic intention.
Also, the ends of Calligraphy pen strokes are often far from
ideal - they may be too blunt or have unsightly bends or blobs.
This is where the Tweak tool may help. Select all the strokes in
a hatching pattern and apply a light Shrink action where you
want the lines to become thinner (and the hatching to become
lighter), up until total disappearance. If you press hard,
shrinking works as an eraser, so you can easily clean the
strokes' ends to make them thin, sharp, and uniform. Conversely,
applying Grow makes strokes wider (i.e. the hatching becomes
darker).
Of course, shrinking and growing are useful not only for
calligraphic strokes. Same as with Push, with Shrink and Grow
you can sculpt any path, spawning smooth treacle-like appendages
with Inflating and carving holes with Melting. Unlike the "node
sculpting" mode in the Node tool, however, this does not require
adding new nodes to the shape.
* The Attract and Repel modes work by moving each affected point on a
path towards (Attract) or from (Repel) the cursor point. In some
cases this may look similar to Shrink and Grow, but the difference
is that shrinking/growing moves paths perpendicularly to the path
in each point, whereas attracting/repelling moves them to or from
the cursor regardless of the path shape. These modes are similar to
the Pinch effect in ; you can use them for various
central-symmetric distortions in parts of your paths.
* The Roughen mode does exactly this: roughens the edge of the path
without changing its overall shape. Slight roughening simply makes
the edge crooked and uneven; strong roughening tears and explodes
the edge into random blobs and splotches. Note that this operation,
especially with high Fidelity, adds a lot of nodes which increases
the size of your SVG document and may slow down Inkscape
considerably. In particular, pushing/melting/inflating of a
roughened path becomes much slower and more difficult, so it's
recommended to finalize the overall shape of a path first and
roughen it, if necessary, only as the final step.
See the screenshot at [136][1] for a few examples of using the path
editing modes of the Tweak tool.
Fidelity
Any tweaking of a path slightly distorts the entire path, including
even those parts that you didn't touch. These distortions are similar
to those that a Simplify command produces. The Fidelity value (also in
the range from 1 to 100, default is 50) allows you to control the
amount of these distortions. With a higher fidelity, the distortions
are less noticeable, but the path may end up having a lot of nodes
which inflates up the SVG size and slows down Inkscape.
The best value of Fidelity depends on the nature of your artwork. If
you're sculpting an amorphous blob, you can do with low fidelity of
about 20. If, however, you are pushing or inflating a text string (as a
single path) and want the letters outside the distorted area to remain
crisp and clean, you will need to raise fidelity to 80 or more.
Known problems
Known problems with the path editing modes in Tweak tool:
1. they don't work on open paths (an open path becomes closed if you
tweak it);
2. they are rather slow;
3. they quickly eat memory; and
4. they are sometimes buggy - thin calligraphic strokes may suddenly
disappear or change their shape drastically as you're melting or
inflating them.
For (4), it helps to increase Fidelity. Also, you can undo the bad
change and try again with less pressure on the pen - if you do your
thinning in several light touches instead of one heavy press, usually
you will be able to get the desired result without the buggy behavior.
Also, sometimes after roughening, further tweaking of a path becomes
impossible with this diagnostic:
WARNING **: Shape error in ConvertToShape: directedEulerian(a) == false
All these problems stem from the livarot library that we use for
geometric manipulation of paths. Fortunately, livarot is scheduled for
replacement by lib2geom, a new library now in development, so hopefully
these issues will be addressed then.
Color editing modes
The Color Paint and Color Jitter modes, unlike the path editing modes,
change the colors of objects instead of their shapes. Yet they share
enough common features with the path editing modes to be part of the
same tool: These modes also use a circular soft-edged brush controlled
by the Width and Force parameters on the Controls bar and affected by
the pen pressure (if you have a pressure-sensitive tablet).
* Color Paint applies the style of the tool to the selected objects
under the brush. The style of the tool is visible in the style
swatch at the rightmost end of the tool's control bar; it can be
changed by clicking on the color palette or by any other style
assignment command, such as Fill and Stroke dialog. (Note: unlike
all other tools, in Tweak tool in Color Paint mode you cannot
assign style directly to selected objects; any style-setting
command changes the tool's style instead.)
The fill from the tool's style applies to the fills of the
painted objects, and the stroke applies to the strokes. If the
tool's style has no fill or no stroke, it won't affect fills or
strokes, correspondingly. For example, if you want to color the
fills of objects blue but leave their strokes untouched, assign
blue fill to the tool's style (just click blue on the palette)
but set its stroke to None (middle-click the Stroke swatch in
the statusbar). Similarly, master opacity in the tool's style
affects master opacities of the touched objects (if the O
channel is on, see below).
This mode allows you to literally paint over objects, shifting
their colors towards the target style of the tool. For example,
if you paint with yellow fill over a blue-filled object, the
object will become greenish blue, then green, then yellowish
green, and end up being exactly the yellow color you're painting
with. This speed of this gradual transition depends on both
Force parameter and pen pressure; also, objects touched by the
periphery of the brush are less affected than those hit by the
brush center. Overall, using this tool is very similar to a soft
brush in a raster editor such as Gimp or Photoshop.
* Color Jitter mode does not apply any color, but instead jitters
(randomizes) the colors of the objects it touches. The force of the
action determines how strong is the randomization, i.e. how far the
colors deviate from the original values. This mode does not use the
tool's style.
Both modes work on flat fills and gradients; for gradients, the tool
takes into account not only the position of the entire object with
gradient, but also the position of each gradient stop relative to the
brush. This means that, for example, you can change the blue color only
in an object filled with blue-red gradient simply by painting over its
blue end with a brush small enough to not touch the red. (Note that
color tweaking does not create gradients on objects that used flat
color before, but only adjusts existing gradients in the drawing.)
See the screenshot at [140][2] for a few examples of using the color
editing modes of the Tweak tool.
Channels
Color Paint and Color Jitter honor the Channels control. This control
comprises the four buttons: H, S, L, and O, which allow you to turn on
and off the tool's action on the object's hue, saturation, lightness,
and opacity, correspondingly. For example, if you want to raise the
saturation of some part of your drawing without changing the hue,
select some maximum-saturation color (e.g. pure red) and turn off all
Channels buttons except S. Similarly, you can replace the hues without
affecting saturation or lightness (only H pressed), or lighten/darken
all colors without changing their hues and saturation (only L pressed).
Pressing O allows you to apply the master opacity from the tool's style
to the master opacity of objects (but not fill or stroke opacity).
Usage notes
Color painting with Tweak tool is similar, but not exactly analogous to
bitmap painting. Even though the tool itself works as a soft brush, it
still applies its color to vector objects, which behave as vector
objects usually do. For example, if you want to change the tint of the
face in your drawing, and if a hand in the drawing is part of the same
object as the face, that hand will change its tint too even if it's
located far from the point you are painting. (We foresee a "fracture"
command in one of the next versions of Inkscape which will help you
turn a monolithic object into a mosaic of small fragments that will be
then easy to paint with Tweak tool.) Still, even with this limitation,
color painting is a novel way of dealing with vector drawings which
allows you to quickly and intuitively make adjustments which would be
awkward and slow with traditional approach.
Drawings containing patterns or scatterings of small independent
objects are best suited for color painting with Tweak tool. Examples
include:
* freehand drawings with Calligraphy pen, consisting of many separate
strokes;
* gradient meshes imported from Adobe Illustrator files (Inkscape
renders these meshes as lattices of small polygons; while there's
no direct support for gradient meshes in Inkscape yet, color
painting on such lattices is almost as good);
* text converted to paths and with Break Apart command applied so
that each letter is a separate path;
* patterns made with the Tile Clones command; note that you need to
unset the fill and/or stroke on the original object and use the
Color tab to assign some initial color to the clones - this will
make them paintable with the Tweak tool without unlinking.
Moreover, color tweaking can be useful for compositions with a few
objects or even for single objects. Unlike all other color selection
methods, painting with the Tweak tool implements the color mixing
metaphor which is much more familiar to traditional artists than RGB
sliders or even the color wheel. For example, start with a rectagle of
pure blue color; then, pick different colors by Color Paint and apply
light touches with minimum Force and minimum pen pressure: add a little
green, a little brown, a little yellow, etc. until you have the exact
hue you need. Similarly, you can whiten or blacken any hue by admixing
white or black.
You can also use color tweaking to add a tint, darken/lighten,
saturate/desaturate, or color jitter your entire drawing. Just select
all in all layers, zoom out, choose a large brush width so it covers
all of the drawing, and apply a little color tweaking (with minimum
Force) that will therefore affect all visible objects.
Keyboard shortcuts
* W, Shift+F2: switch to the Tweak tool
* Shift+P: switch to the Push mode
* Shift+S: switch to the Shrink mode
* Shift+G: switch to the Grow mode
* Shift+A: switch to the Attract mode
* Shift+E: switch to the Repel mode
* Shift+R: switch to the Roughen mode
* Shift+C: switch to the Color Paint mode
* Shift+J: switch to the Color Jitter mode
* Left, Right, Home, End: change width
* Up, Down: change force
* mouse drag: act on selected path in the current mode
* Ctrl+mouse drag: temporarily switch to Shrink (while Ctrl is down)
* Shift+Ctrl+mouse drag: temporarily switch to Grow (while Shift+Ctrl
is down)
3D Box tool
Inkscape is a two-dimensional drawing tool. However, very often it is
used to create drawings or objects that appear three-dimensional. The
new 3D box tool helps you create such drawings by automating the most
common operation: creating a box in a given 3D perspective. The tool
automatically ensures that all sides of the box lie on the
corresponding perspective lines. We're not going to compete with
Blender - but even simple things can go a long way.
Currently in the 3D Box tool you can:
* Draw a 3D box by dragging on canvas; Shift+drag without releasing
the mouse button to extrude in Z direction.
* Adjust any of its 3 dimensions by handles. The 4 handles on the
front X/Y side resize it, the four ones on the back X/Y side
expand/contract the box in Z direction. With Shift, the functions
of handles on front and back sides are reversed. With Ctrl, the
side-resizing handles snap to the coordinate axes or diagonals.
* Move a 3D box "in perspective" by dragging its center; without
modifiers, movement occurs within the XY-plane (press Ctrl to
constrain the movement to the directions of the coordinate axes or
diagonals), with Shift the box moves parallel to the Z-axis.
* Adjust the vanishing points of a perspective by dragging them on
the canvas (see below) or toggling their states; all boxes sharing
this perspective are affected by a vanishing point move.
When several boxes are selected, all vanishing points of their
associated perspectives are shown on the canvas. If vanishing points of
different perspectives coincide, they are combined in a single
"dragger". Moving this dragger moves all the vanishing points
simultaneously and transforms the associated boxes accordingly. Note
that some non-selected boxes may also be reshaped if their perspectives
share the same vanishing point. Pressing Shift while moving the dragger
can be used to only transform the selected boxes, separating their
perspectives from the non-selected ones'. On the other hand, when a
vanishing point being dragged comes close enough to another one, both
snap together and are combined in a single dragger.
In SVG, a 3D box is represented as a group (svg:g) with a special
extension attribute (in Inkscape's namespace); this group contains the
6 quadrilateral paths representing the sides of the box. Only the 3D
box tool treats this object as a box; for all other tools it is just a
group, so you can select any of the paths by Ctrl+click, apply any
style to it, delete it, etc. You can of course transform the entire box
or any face in it using Selector or Node tools.
Keyboard shortcuts
* X, Shift+F4: switch to the 3D box tool
* The various kinds of parentheses, namely [ ], ( ), { }, can be used
to rotate infinite (i.e., parallel) perspective lines in X-, Y-,
and Z-direction, respectively. Closing parentheses rotate clockwise
and opening parentheses rotate counterclockwise. The angle of
rotation is taken from the preferences. Pressing Alt reduces the
amount of rotation to 1 screen pixel.
* When the 3D box tool is active, Shift+X, Shift+Y, and Shift+Z
toggle perspective lines in the corresponding direction between
"converging" and "parallel".
Gradient Tool
Selecting multiple stops
More than one gradient stop can be selected at a time. Shortcuts for
working with multiple stop selections are generally modeled on the Node
tool.
* Add a stop to the selected stops by Shift+click.
* Press Ctrl+A to select all stops in the selected objects.
* Shift+drag around stops to add them to selection.
Multiple selected stops:
* Can be moved together by mouse drag or by arrow keys. For example,
creating a linear gradient, then press Ctrl+A to select all stops
and use arrow keys to move the entire gradient as a whole.
* Can be deleted at the same time by pressing Del.
An always up-to-date description of the current handle selection is
provided in the statusbar in the Gradient tool, including the number of
selected handles (and the type of the single selected handle), as well
as the total number of handles and selected objects.
Editing intermediate stops
Intermediate stops in gradients can be added, deleted, and edited on
canvas (previously this was only possible in the Gradient Editor
dialog).
* Stops can be added by double clicking or by Ctrl+Alt+Click on the
gradient line. Also, you can drag-and-drop a color from the palette
onto the gradient line to create a new stop with this color.
Dropping a color on an existing stop changes the color of that
stop.
* When two or more adjacent stops are selected, pressing Ins adds
stops in the middles of all selected stop intervals.
* Intermediate stops can be mousedragged or moved by arrow keys along
their gradient line, within the limits of the adjacent unselected
stops (or end handles).
+ Dragging with Ctrl moves the selected stops snapping them to
1/10 fractions of the available range.
+ Dragging with Alt moves the selected stops depending on how
close each one is to the stop being dragged, using a smooth
bell-like curve similar to the node sculpting feature in Node
tool. This makes it easy to approximate different gradient
profiles; for example, if you have a two-stop gradient that
you want to shape according to a curve profile, select both
ends of the gradient, press Ins a few times to add a number of
intermediate nodes, then Alt+drag a node in the middle to
smoothly profile the gradient.
* Stops can also be moved by arrow keys with all the regular
modifiers (Shift for 10x movement, Alt for pixel-size movement at
the current zoom, Shift+Alt for 10 pixels movement at the current
zoom).
* Stops can be deleted by Ctrl+Alt+Click on a stop or by the Del key
for all the selected stop(s).
+ When you delete an end stop, the nearest intermediate stop
becomes the new end stop of the gradient (without moving -
i.e., the gradient span becomes shorter).
+ When you delete an end stop and there are no intermediate
stops, the object will be painted with a solid fill taken from
the color & opacity of the remaining stop.
* Pressing Ctrl+L with some intermediate stops selected attempts to
simplify the selected portion of the gradient, removing those stops
that can be removed without too much change in the way the gradient
looks. In particular, new stops created by double-clicking or
pressing Ins initially do not change the appearance of the
gradient, so if you press Ctrl+L, all redundant stops that weren't
moved or repainted since creation will be deleted.
Style of gradient stops
* When you have one of the gradient handles selected, its style
(color and opacity) is reflected by the selected style indicator
(left of the statusbar) and the Fill&Stroke dialog. Previously,
opacity of a gradient handle was reflected as fill-opacity and
stroke-opacity; now it is reflected as master opacity (the "O:"
spinbutton in the selected style indicator, the "Master opacity"
slider in Fill&Stroke). This makes it much easier to view and
change opacity of gradient handles using only the selected style
indicator in the statusbar.
+ When multiple gradient stops are selected, the selected style
indicator (in the statusbar) displays and controls the
averaged color and opacity of the selected stops.
* When one or more gradient stops are selected, using the Copy
command (Ctrl+C) copies to the clipboard the style (color and
opacity) of the selected stop or the averaged style of several
selected stops, not the entire object with gradient as before. This
means you can now copy/paste style between stops: select the source
stop(s), copy, select the destination stop(s), paste style
(Ctrl+Shift+V). With several selected stops, this also allows you
to easily average their colors and opacities by copying them and
pasting the style back onto them. (After that, redundant gradient
stops can be removed by simplification with Ctrl+L).
* If the selected object(s) have gradient in fill or stroke, the
selected style indicator in the bottom-left corner of the editing
window now displays a live gradient preview prefixed by R or L to
indicate Radial or Linear gradients (instead of displaying "L
Gradient" or "R Gradient" text labels as before). Also, this and
other similar widget now use italic font face to indicate None and
bold to indicate Unset.
Automatic duplication of gradients
When copy/pasting or duplicating an object with gradient, it now
automatically gets a copy of the original gradient, so modifying it
does not affect the source object's gradient anymore (before, you had
to press the Duplicate button on the Gradient controls bar for this).
The Duplicate button is therefore removed.
However, to accommodate the needs of users who have relied on sharing
the same gradient definition across objects, this behavior can be
optionally suppressed. The Prevent sharing of gradient definitions
checkbox on the Misc tab of Inkscape Preferences is by default checked;
if you uncheck it, Inkscape does not automatically copy gradient
definitions for new objects, which means that copy/pasting,
duplicating, pasting style, and explicit assignment of a gradient to an
object via the Gradient tool controls results in a shared gradient
definition, so that changing the colors or mid-stop positions of the
gradient on one object (but not changing the coordinates of the end
handles) affects all other objects that share the same definition.
Calligraphy tool: Engraver's Toolbox
Several new features were added to the Calligraphic pen to make
Inkscape capable of the ancient art of line engraving. Traditional
engraving is a very labour-intensive process, and while for a long time
it was the only practical way of reproducing lifelike images in
black-and-white print, about a century ago it was almost completely
displaced by automatic halftone screens. However, line engravings have
their characteristic charm, and there's no reason not to try to
resurrect this art form with the help of Inkscape.
A brief visual guide to the new functionality can be seen on these
screenshots:
http://inkscape.org/screenshots/gallery/inkscape-0.46-engraving1.png
http://inkscape.org/screenshots/gallery/inkscape-0.46-engraving2.png
Tracking a guide path with Ctrl
One of the most common operations in line engraving is hatching (or
sometimes cross-hatching when several hatching grids cross): filling a
space with many parallel straight or variously curved lines (usually of
varying width to represent a gradual shading). You could try to achieve
a similar effect with e.g. path interpolation (blending), but it is
rather cumbersome and limited; manual drawing of hatch lines, on the
other hand, is tedious and nearly impossible to do uniformly. Now
Inkscape provides "assisted hatching" by tracking a guide path,
allowing you to hatch quickly and uniformly and at the same time giving
you sufficient manual control over the process.
Here's how to do this. First, select the guide path that you will
track. It may be another calligraphic stroke, any path or shape, or
even a letter of a text object. Then switch to Calligraphic pen, select
the desired parameters (line width, angle, fixation etc.) and, before
starting to draw, press Ctrl. You will see a gray track circle centered
at your mouse pointer and touching the closest point on the selected
guide path. (If you have no guide path selected, a statusbar message
will tell you to select it.)
Now move your mouse close to the guide path, so that the track circle
radius is equal to the desired spacing of your hatch pattern, and start
drawing along the guide path. At that moment, the radius of the circle
gets locked; now the circle slides along the guide path - and the
actual stroke is drawn by the center of the tracking circle, not by
your mouse point. As a result, you are getting a smooth stroke going
parallel to the guide path and always at the same distance from it.
When the stroke is ready, release your mouse button (or lift your
tablet pen) but do not let go of the Ctrl key because as long as you
have it pressed, the tool remembers the hatch spacing you set when you
started drawing. Now, you have just created a new stroke and, as usual
with Inkscape tools, it gets selected instead of what was selected
before. In our case, this means that the newly drawn stroke itself
becomes the new guide path. Next, you can draw a second stroke along
the first one, then a third one along the second, etc. Eventually you
can fill any desired space with uniform hatching.
Alternatively, if you uncheck "Select new path" in the Calligraphy tool
preferences, newly created strokes will not be selected, so your
original guide path will be kept selected. In this mode, Inkscape will
increase the tracking distance after each created stroke so that you
can create uniformly spaced hatching by tracking a single guide path.
The attachment to the guide path is not absolute. If you stray your
mouse pointer far enough from the guide path, you will be able to tear
it off (the track circle turns from green to red) and move freely. This
is intentional; this feature allows you, for example, to continue
drawing a stroke past the end of a guide stroke, thus making your
hatching cover a wider area than the initial guide path. Special care
is taken to make such tearing off as smooth as possible and to suppress
violent jerks, but this is not always possible; the general advice is
to not try to hatch too fast. If jerking and unintended tearoffs still
bother you, try increasing the Mass parameter.
Also, special code is in place to prevent flipovers - accidental jumps
to the other side of the guide path. Brief flipovers are suppressed,
but if you intentionally go over to the other side and stay there,
eventually Inkscape will obey and your tracking stroke will also flip
over to follow you.
Tracking a guide also allows some slight feedback by gradually changing
the tracking distance in response to your drawing behavior. Thus, if
you're consistently trying to draw closer or farther from the guide
than the current tracking distance, the distance will correspondingly
decrease or increase, so you will get a hatching that is slightly
spacing in or out. (The effect is very slight, however, so as not to
become a nuisance.) Also, note that since tracking follows the edge of
the stroke, strokes of varying width (such as those tracing background,
see below) will result in gradual bending of the hatching pattern as
you proceed.
Tracing background by stroke width
There is a new toggle button on the Calligraphy tool's controls bar,
Trace background. When on, the width of your pen depends on the
lightness of the background under the stroke in each point, so that
white translates into the minimum stoke width (1) and black translates
to the maximum (which is set by the Width parameter). This can work
alone or in combination with pressure sensitivity, depending on whether
the "Use pressure" button is also toggled.
This feature allows you to not only hatch over an imported bitmap image
or any drawing, but to do so automatically reproducing the highlights
and shades of the background with your strokes becoming lighter and
heavier as needed.
Misc features
* For consistency with other drawing tools, drawing with Shift in
Calligraphy tool automatically unions the newly created stroke with
whatever paths were selected (and selects the result). Thus, you
can do a series of overlapping Shift+strokes to create one unioned
path object instead of separate objects as before.
* To facilitate changing the Width parameter, the Home/End keys in
Calligraphy tool switch you to the minimum (1) and maximum (100)
width, correspondingly. (This is in addition to the Left/Right
arrow keys that change Width by 1; remember also that you can press
Alt+X, type any width, and press Enter.)
Selector
* A new selection mode is available: selecting by touch. In this
mode, you draw a freehand path across the objects; when you release
mouse button, all objects that are touched by this path get
selected. This mode is very convenient in situations where you need
to select objects so intermingled that selecting them by the
rectangular rubberband is too difficult and so numerous that
click-selecting them one by one is too tedious.
To activate selecting by touch, whenever you are drawing a
rubberband rectangle, just press Alt to switch it to the touch
mode. The rectangle will disappear and a red touch path will be
shown instead. When dragging from an empty space, you can press
Alt first and then start to drag to get the touch mode (note
that your selection must be empty, otherwise Alt+dragging will
move the selected objects instead). To start a touch selection
from a point over an object, or to add to existing selection by
touching, press Shift+Alt and then start to drag.
* Previously, the only way to switch selection from scale mode to
rotate mode or back was to click on it, which was rather
inconvenient when the selected object is in a group or under other
objects. Now you can switch modes with keyboard as well by pressing
Shift+S in Selector tool.
* Draging the scale handles with Alt now scales selection by an
integer factor, i.e. up to 2, 3, 4, etc. times the original size or
down to 1/2. 1/3, 1/4, etc. of the original size (in any of the two
dimensions independently), as well as to -1/3, -1/2, -1, -2, -3,
etc. This way you can, for example, mirror any object around one of
the edges of its box. (This replaces the old and rarely used "slow"
scaling mode with Alt.)
* Horizontal/vertical flipping: So far, flipping a selection made it
flip within its bounding box, so that the latter remained fixed. In
the move/scale mode of the selector tool, this behaviour remains
unchanged. However, in rotate/shear mode flipping now happens about
an (imaginary) vertical/horizontal axis through the rotation
center. This is very handy, since the latter can be freely dragged
around and snaps to all kinds of objects if desired.
Node tool
* If any of the nodes in the currently selected path is mouseovered,
then horizontal/vertical flipping ('H' and 'V' keys), stepwise
rotation ('[' and ']' keys) and scaling ('<' and '>' keys) now all
use this specific node as center/axis. If there is no mouseovered
node, the center of the bounding box is used instead (as is
currently the case unconditionally). Nodes that are covered by one
of their handles are also detected as mouseovered.
* As a long-requested feature, two entry fields are added to the
toolbar which allow precise editing of the coordinates of selected
nodes.
Rectangle Tool
* Ctrl+dragging now also allows the creation of rectangles with sides
constrained to the golden ratio (approx. 1 : 1.618034), not only
integer ratios.
Ellipse Tool
* It is now easy to create ellipses/circles passing through
particular points. Normally, the starting and ending point of the
mouse drag mark the corners of the bounding box. Now the Alt
modifier can be used to enlarge the ellipse so that its
circumference passes through these two points.
* Ctrl+Alt+drag is an exception from this rule. It creates a perfect
circle whose diameter is defined by the starting and ending point
of the drag.
Pen/Pencil Tools
These tools can now create single dots by Ctrl+click on the canvas.
This creates a small circle filled with the current stroke color. The
radius can be set in the Preferences of the respective tools (it is
specified as a multiple of the current stroke width). Shift+Ctrl+click
creates a dot twice the specified size, and Alt+Ctrl+click varies the
size of the created dots randomly.
Dropper Tool
The shortcut 'D' is now used to toggle (not just switch to) the dropper
tool - much like space is used to toggle the selector tool. That is,
pressing 'D' a second time switches back to the tool used before.
SVG features
The tref element
Inkscape can now correctly open files with tref elements, and new tref
elements can be created manually in the XML editor.
The actual character data contained in a text element can either be
embedded directly, or it can be the character content of an element
referenced by a tref.
While the textual content from the referenced element will be stripped
of any markup before being used by the tref, the tref element can
itself have the same attributes as a tspan. In fact, when rendered, it
is as though the tref element is replaced by a tspan with the same
attributes, and the referenced character data is embedded in that
tspan.
The property xlink:href is used to refer to another element whose
character data will be used. Any element can be referred to except an
ancestor of the tref. When any of the text contained in the referred
element changes, the tref will immediately be updated to display the
new data.
Existing tref elements can be converted into tspan elements with Edit >
Clone > Unlink Clone. If more than one tref is contained within a
selection, all trefs will be converted into tspans. All attributes
applied to the tref will be retained in the new tspan.
A tref element can be mixed with any other elements allowed to be
contained by a text element.
The cloned character data rendered by the tref may not be edited, but
any characters surrounding it can be changed. Styles cannot be applied
to a subset of the cloned characters, but if all are selected, a style
can be applied to the tref.
SVG filters
New filters supported
* The feBlend filter primitive gives us image blending modes, like in
many image manipulation programs. These modes are screen, multiply,
darken and lighten. There's a caveat, though: when blending an
object against an semi-transparent background, the background will
be accumulated twice, resulting in thicker objects under the
bounding box of blended object. This is a limitation of current
version of SVG format, not a bug in Inkscape.
* The feColorMatrix filter primitive applies a matrix transformation
to colour of each rendered pixel. This allows for effects like
turning object to grayscale, modifying colour saturation and
changing colour hue.
* The feComposite filter primitive composites two images using one of
the Porter-Duff blending modes (described in paper Compositing
Digital Images by T. Porter and T. Duff, published in SIGGRAPH '84
Conference Proceedings, Association for Computing Machinery, Volume
18, Number 3, July 1984) or the aritmetic mode described in SVG
standard. Porter-Duff blending modes are essentially logical
operations between the images. For example, xor mode shows the
areas, where either one of the objects is, but not the areas where
both of the objects are. Arithmetic mode lets you specify
coefficients k1-k4 for blending equation (result colour) = k1 *
(first input colour) * (second input colour) + k2 * (first input
colour) + k3 * (second input colour) + k4.
* The feConvolveMatrix lets you specify a Convolution to be
applied on the image. Common effects created using convolution
matrices are blur, sharpening, embossing and edge detection.
There's a fairly good explanation and some example matrices at
www.gamedev.net/reference/programming/features/imageproc/page2
.asp. Note that while gaussian blur can be created using this
filter primitive, the special gaussian blur primitive is faster and
resolution-independent.
* Filter primitives feDiffuseLighting and feSpecularLighting create
lighting maps for the object in input image. SVG doesn't have
concept of third dimension, so these filters use alpha channel of
input image as a height map: the more opaque given point in input
image is, the nearer spectator it is considered to be. There exists
an example for using these in Inkscape distribution, in
share/examples/lighting_effects.svg or in SVN
* The feDisplacementMap filter primitive displaces the pixels in the
first input using the second input as a displacement map, that
shows from how far the pixel should come from. Classical examples
are whirl and pinch effects, that can be found in most image
manipulation programs and even in some screensavers, where this
kind off effect is moving around screen, twisting desktop beneath
it.
* The feFlood filter primitive fills its region with a given color
and opacity. It can be used as an auxiliary tool, usualy in
combination with other filter primitives, in order to facilitate
some common color handling operations.
* The feImage filter primitive allows using external images as part
of filtering chain. For example, one could use external image as a
displacement map for feDisplacementMap or as a height map for
lighting effects. Note that while SVG standard allows using other
parts of the SVG file in this filter primitive, the current
Inkscape implementation only allows external images.
* The feMerge filter primitive composites several temporary images
inside the filter primitive to a single image. It uses normal alpha
compositing for this. This is equivalent to using several feBlend
primitives in 'normal' mode or several feComposite primitives in
'over' -mode.
* The feMorphology filter primitive provides erode and dilate
effects, that are common in image manipulation programs. With
erode, darker and more transparent areas spread to lighter and more
opaque areas, whereas with dilate lighter and more opaque areas
spread to darker and more transparent areas. For single-colour
objects, this basically means, erode makes the object thinner and
dilate makes it thicker.
* The feOffset filter primitive offsets the image by an user-defined
amount. For example, this is useful for drop shadows, where the
shadow is in a slightly different position than the actual object.
* The feTurbulence filter primitive renders Perlin noise. This
kind of noise is useful in simulating several nature phenomena like
clouds, fire and smoke and in generating complex textures like
marble or granite.
See also wiki page Filter Effects for more info on filters in
Inkscape in general.
Filters UI
* New dialog for creating and modifying filter effects (Object>Filter
Effects...)
* The list at the left of the dialog displays all filters currently
in the document.
+ New filters can be added with the Add button beneath the list
+ Right-clicking a filter for the pop-up menu allows duplicating
or removing a filter.
+ Double-clicking a filter will apply it to all selected objects
+ A black dot is placed next to whatever filter is applied to
the selected objects. If more than one filter is in use by
selected objects, an unfilled dot is used instead.
* The second list, at the left of the dialog, displays the filter
primitives that are contained within the currently-selected filter.
+ New primitives can be added by selecting the primitive type
from the combo box beneath the list, and then pressing the Add
button.
+ Right-clicking a primitive for the pop-up menu allows
duplicating or removing a primitive.
+ Primitives can be rearranged by clicking and dragging any
filter in the list.
+ When a filter is selected, the Settings group at the bottom of
the dialog will change to display the attributes available for
that primitive. Changing a setting results in an immediate
update to the document.
+ The "in" and "in2" attributes for filters that support them
are not shown in the Settings group. These input connections
are displayed graphically in the list, under the Connections
column.
o Inputs for a particular filter are displayed as
triangles. Depending on the primitive type, there may be
one or two inputs (or more for Merge primitives.)
Connections can be created by clicking on a triangle and
dragging.
o There are six standard input types that can be used for
any primitive input; Source Graphic, Source Alpha,
Background Image, Background Alpha, Fill Paint, and
Stroke Paint. These are displayed vertically on the far
right of the list. Click and drag from an input triangle
to one of the standard inputs to connect them.
o Primitives can also be connected to other primitives by
clicking an input triangle and dragging upwards to
another primitive. A primitive can only be connected to
one higher up the list.
o Single-clicking on an input triangle will unset it,
returning it to the default. If it is on a Merge
primitive, the input will be deleted.
o Merge inputs have an empty input at the end. Dragging a
connection from this input will add a new input to the
primitive.
Live Path Effects (LPE)
Live path effects (not to be confused with extension effects or SVG
filters) are a new way to non-destructively modify path and shape
objects. Path effects affect the path data of an object but not its
style. The original path is preserved and can be edited directly
on-canvas, and the path effect applied to it will be updated live.
In this version, we include several path effects that are analogous to
the corresponding extension effects (such as Path along Path effect and
Pattern along Path that replaces the extension of the same name). The
most important advantage of path effects is that they are, indeed, live
- you can still edit the original path and the effect will update in
real time (unlike the extension effects which were one-time one-way
transformations). In the future, we plan to reimplement most if not all
of path-changing extensions as live path effects.
Live path effects were developed by Johan Engelen as part of the GSoC
2007.
Details about operation
The following schematic tries to explain how LPE work.
original style ------------> output style
original path --> LPE --> output path
^
|
parameters
The original style and path are from the path that the effect is
applied on. The output is what is visible on screen. What is very
important to notice is that output style equals original style.
The parameters can be paths, numbers, points, text, in principle
anything.
Applying effects
Path effects are applied through the Path Effects dialog (opened from
the Path menu, or by pressing Ctrl+Shift+7. This dialog is also used
for controlling the effect's parameters and for removing effects.
When a path with a path effect applied is selected, the statusbar
description mentions that, for example "Path (4 nodes, path effect)".
There is a special Paste Path Effect command (Ctrl+7) that can be used
to copy effects from one path to another.
Editing effect parameters
When switching to the node edit tool (F2), the original path can be
edited. The original path is shown as a red helper path. Normal path
operations, like simplify, still work.
Some parameters of effects can be edited on-canvas. For example, path
parameters can be node-edited, by pressing the "edit on-canvas" button
in the Path Effects dialog. Press "7" to cycle through the different
on-canvas editable parameters. This way, one can edit the parameters
without opening the Path Effects dialog. The statusbar tells the name
of the parameters that is currently being shown.
Available effects
Path along path
The Path along Path effect can curve a path along another path. When
this effect is applied to a path, it can be bend along another path
(called bend path). With the node edit tool, both the original path and
the bend path can be changed on-canvas and the result is updated live.
This provides a direct equivalent of "vector brushes" or "skeletal
strokes" features in other vector editors.
In the effect's control panel in the Path Effects dialog, you can
select how many copies of the original path are put along the bend path
(either single or repeated) and whether it is stretched to fill the
bend path. In this dialog you'll also find a button to edit the bend
path on-canvas and a button to paste a new bend path from clipboard. A
possible workflow is this: you select and copy the new bend path to the
clipboard, then select the path you want to bend, apply the Path along
path effect, and paste the bend path with the paste button next to
'bend path'.
Example file: live-path-effects-pathalongpath.svg
Pattern along path
The Pattern along Path effect can curve a path along another path. When
this effect is applied to path A (called skeleton), another path B
(called pattern) can then be passed as a parameter. The result is that
path B is bent along path A. With the node edit tool, path A can be
changed on-canvas and the result is updated live. This provides a
direct equivalent of "vector brushes" or "skeletal strokes" features in
other vector editors.
In the effect's control panel in the Path Effects dialog, you can
select how many copies of the pattern are attached (either single or
repeated) and whether the pattern is stretched to fill the skeleton
path. You can also choose the pattern for the selected skeleton [either
directly or] by pasting it from clipboard (that is, you select and copy
to the clipboard the pattern, then select the skeleton, apply the Path
along path effect, and paste the pattern). The Scale width parameter
allows you to change the width of the pattern applied to the path.
Example file: live-path-effects-pathalongpath.svg
Stitch Subcurves
The Stitch Subcurves effect connects points from two subpaths of the
path with straight line or curved segments, i.e. the stitches. It looks
a lot like the Effect Lines from Expression 3. The result is also
referred to as "String Art". For some examples of string art, see
http://members.shaw.ca/jillbritton/string_art/jbstringart.htm.
The shape of the connecting paths can controlled by the stroke path
parameter. This could be used to draw 'hair-shaped' connecting paths
with sharp end-tips. Other controls include the number of paths, the
variation in spacing between the connecting paths (clustering) and also
whether the start and end points of the stitches should like exactly on
the original subcurves or can stray randomly around them. Finally the
width of the stroke path can be varied.
Note that this effect can only be applied to a path with two subpaths
in it, hence 'subcurve' in the name. Use Path > Combine to create such
a path from two separate paths.
Example file: live-path-effects-curvestitch.svg
Gears
The Gears effect is a toy effect. It generates a chain of
interconnected gears from the path that has the effect applied to it.
The nodes of the path define the centers of the gears. The first 3
nodes are special; the first defines the start angle of the chain, the
second defines the center of the first gear and the third knot
specifies the radius of the first gear. That is, to create a chain of 2
gears, you will need a path with 4 nodes; for 3 gears, 5 nodes, and so
on.
Example file: live-path-effects-gears.svg
Development of new effects
One of the goals of the Summer of Code project was to make it easy to
create new effects. There is a framework that greatly simplifies effect
implementation; very little code is needed to get the effect hooked
into Inkscape. This leaves valuable time for the actual effect to be
implemented. See the
http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/MakingLivePathEffects wiki
page for an explanation of how to get started with your own effect!
Extension effects
Live preview
* Live preview of effects: Using the async behavior (see below), as
soon as the parameters dialog for an effect is shown, the script is
executed in the background and the screen updates as soon as it's
finished. This can result is seemingly faster execution if no
parameters are changed. If some parameters are adjusted, the script
is restarted. This allows you to see immediately the effects of any
parameter change without pressing the OK button on the effect's
dialog.
* Spawn Glib API: Scripting extension have been moved to the Glib
spawn API to ensure that parameters and variables aren't
interpreted by a shell. This also means that scripting extensions
are executed in a separate process asynchronously allowing the GTK
main loop to continue to execute.
* Progress dialog: While an extension is working on a document, a
small dialog is shown allowing the user to cancel the execution.
New and improved effects
* The new Modify Path > Edge 3D extension creates black, grey and
white paths around a shape, then blurs and clips them for a 3D
effect.
* The new Generate from Path > Dimensions extension creates CAD style
dimensions that are basically arrows with lengths equal to
selection's bounding box and captions representing length.
* The new Render > Barcode extension creates a barcode.
Supported types include EAN13, EAN8, UPC-A, UPC-E, UPC-5, Code39,
Code39Ext, Code93, Code128, and RM4SCC.
* The new Render > Gear extension creates a mechanical gear
given the number of teeth, the circular pitch (in px units), and
the pressure angle.
* The new Render > Spirograph extension creates intricate
mathematical curves akin to the classic mechanical Spirograph
toy (see samples).
* A group of new effects in the Text submenu performs various case
conversions on selected text objects: converting to UPPERCASE,
lowercase, Sentence case, Title Case, as well as flipping case
(switching uppercase to lowercase and vice versa) and rANdoMiZInG
cAse. If no texts are selected, the effect works on all texts in
the document.
* Another effect in the Text submenu, Replace text, performs
search-and-replace on the selected text objects or (if nothing is
selected) on all texts in the document. Searching is case
sensitive. You can use this effect to globally delete all
occurrences of some text fragment by replacing it with empty
string. Conversely, if you search for an empty string and replace
it with some string, this string will be inserted after every
character of your text; for example, you can space out a text by
replacing in it an empty string with a single space.
* A new effect, Replace color in the Color submenu, simply replaces
one RRGGBB-specified color to another within selection or, if
there's no selection, in the entire document. As with other effects
in that submenu, the replacement affects fill, stroke, and gradient
colors, but not colors of bitmaps.
* The new Color > Randomize extension allows you to change the color
via hue, saturation and lightness check boxes. This is useful if
you want to colorize lots of shapes at the same time.
* The Whirl extension uses the center of view as the center of whirl,
so you don't have to enter the center coordinates numerically.
* The Render > Grid extension has got an extended range of grid
spacings, from 0.1 to 1000 px.
* The Render > Function Plotter extension can now plot using polar
coordinates.
* The Generate Template > Perfect-Bound Cover extension creates
templates for wraparound covers for perfect-bound books using US
size and paper weight measurements. This extension will resize the
document to include the width, height, spine width, and bleed
measurements that are provided to the extensions, so it should be
the first operation done before designing.
XSLT effects
* XSLT is now supported for input, output and effect extensions. This
is used to support the XAML file format (both import and export)
and the Adobe Illustrator SVG import which removes Adobe's stuff
from SVG.
ImageMagick effects
New raster operations available through the effects drop-down menu,
powered by the ImageMagick library. For any of these effects to work,
you need to have an image object selected in the drawing.
* Adaptive Threshold applies adaptive thresholding to the bitmap.
Average color of rectangle provided by width and height used as
threshold value. Use offset to apply a different threshold than the
average.
* Add Noise adds random noise of certain types to the bitmap.
* Blur blurs the bitmap, using radius as the amount of blur. Higher
radius means more blur. (Note that unlike the vector Gaussian blur
of objects, this bitmap blur will not extend the edges of the
image, so it may appear truncated at the edges.)
* Channel extracts the specified channel from the bitmap.
* Charcoal applies a charcoal drawing style to a bitmap. Radius
controls the width (or detail) of charcoal strokes. Higher radius
means lower detail. Sigma: the higher it is, the less defined the
charcoal is.
* Colorize overlays the bitmap with a given color at a given
intensity.
* Contrast lightly enhances the contrast (difference between lights
and darks) of a bitmap.
* Cycle Colormap cycles the colormap of a bitmap.
* Despeckle reduce the speckle noise in a bitmap.
* Edge hilights edges in a bitmap.
* Emboss embosses a bitmap, hilighting edges with 3D effect.
* Enhance enhance a bitmap, minimizing noise.
* Equalize equalizes a bitmap. Histogram equalization.
* Flop mirrors a bitmap, reflecting each scanline in the horizontal
direction.
* Gaussian Blur blurs a bitmap, more strongly than regular blur.
* Implode sucks everything towards the center of the bitmap.
* Level scales values falling between the given Black Point to White
Point range to the full color range.
* Level Channel acts the same way as level but for only one channel.
* Median Filter filters a a bitmap by replacing each pixel component
with the median color in a circular neighborhood
* Modulate adjusts the percent hue, saturation, and brightness of a
bitmap.
* Negate takes the inverse of a bitmap.
* Normalize normalizes a bitmap, expanding color range to the full
possible range of color.
* Oil Paint stylizes a bitmap so that it appears to be painted with
oils.
* Opacity modifies the opacity channel of a bitmap.
* Raise alters the lightness of the edges of a bitmap to create a
raised appearance, much like a frame.
* Reduce Noise reduces noise in a bitmap by using a noise peak
elimination filter.
* Shade shades a bitmap by simulating a distant light source
* Sharpen sharpens a bitmap.
* Solarize solarizes a bitmap, like overexposing photographic film.
* Spread randomly spread pixels in a bitmap within the radius of
amount.
* Swirl swirls the bitmap around the center point.
* Threshold thresholds a bitmap.
* Unsharpmask sharpens a bitmap using an unsharp mask algorithm.
* Wave alters a bitmap along the sine wave.
These effects are part of the Google Summer of Code 2007, coded by
Christopher Brown.
Misc
* All Python effects are switched from the old and unmaintained PyXML
library to the new powerful lxml library.
* A new parameter, precision is added to the parameter definitions in
the inx file format, allowing you to set the number of digits
in that parameter's spinbutton in the effect UI.
Stock patterns
Since a few versions ago, Inkscape supports patterns in fill and
stroke. However, up to now the only way to apply a pattern was by
creating it in the document using the Object(s) to Pattern command,
which wasn't very convenient. Now, if you switch an object's fill or
stroke to pattern using the Fill&Stroke dialog, you will get a
drop-down list with a number of predefined stock patterns that you can
apply simply by selecting them from the list:
* A selection of plain stripes differing by the ratio of the stripe
width to gap width (for example, the "Stripes 1:2" pattern has gaps
twice as wide as stripes), in the range from 4:1 to 1:64. All
stripes patterns are in two versions: with black stripes and with
white stripes (gaps are always transparent).
* Two checkerboard patterns with black and white odd squares (even
squares are transparent)
* Packed circles: a hexagonal pattern of black circles with
transparent gaps.
* Polka dots: a scattering of dots designed to look randomly but
evenly distributed so as to mask the regularity of the repeating
pattern. There are three size variants of this pattern (small,
medium, and large dots) and two color variants (black and white
dots).
* Wavy is a pattern of wavy lines.
* Camouflage is a green-toned protective pattern such as that used by
the military.
* Ermine is the traditional heraldic pattern representing stylized
stoat furs with black tails.
* Three bitmap patterns: sand, cloth, and old paint are based on
seamless photographic tiles and allow you to add some natural
texture to your drawing. All of them are grayscale, so you can make
objects with these textures semitransparent and overlay them over
other colored objects to "texturize" them.
After applying a stock pattern, switch to Node tool to edit the
location, scale, and rotation of the pattern via on-canvas handles.
All stock patterns are stored in the file patterns/patterns.svg in
Inkscape's share directory (typically /usr/share/inkscape on Linux,
inkscape-dir/share on Windows). You can add your own patterns to this
file or replace it with any other SVG file containing the patterns you
need.
Markers
* A new command, Objects to Marker, was added to the Object menu. It
converts the current selection into a marker. After you do it, the
selection is deleted, but the list of markers in the Fill and
Stroke dialog, Stroke style tab, now contains the new marker that
you can apply to paths.
+ When creating the new marker, Inkscape assumes that the
original objects are oriented as they should be on a
horizontal path that goes from left to right. For example, if
you create a new arrowhead that you plan to use as an end
marker, make it point horizontally to the right before
converting it to marker.
+ Similar to standard markers, the user-created marker will
scale up and down as you change the stroke width. Its initial
size (i.e. the size of the object that you have turned into a
marker) corresponds to the 1 px stroke.
+ When you create a new marker, Inkscape uses the rotation
center of the (first) selected object as the anchor point,
i.e. the point which will coincide with the node to which that
marker is attached. By default, the rotation center is in the
center of the object's bounding box, which means the newly
created marker will be centered around its node. If you move
the rotation center, for example, to one of the corners of the
object, the new marker will touch its node by that corner.
* Several new UML markers were added to the standard set, including
filled and hollow diamonds and triangles.
* Master opacity did not apply to path markers as it should; this is
fixed.
* Stock markers, if used in the document, now appear in the "this
document's markers" section at the top of the marker lists in the
Fill & Stroke dialog. Before, any markers with stock IDs (including
markers modified by the user) were hidden, making it difficult to
work with modified stock markers.
Color management
Calibrated SVG color including CMYK
Inkscape now supports color-managed color definitions that use a
colorspace other than sRGB (for example Adobe RGB, or calibrated CMYK
colors). In the SVG file, this is done using the optional
"icc-color(...)" paint components as described in section 11.2
"Specifying paint" of the SVG 1.1 specification [203][3]. A fallback
sRGB value will be used, for non color-managed workflows. This allows
for the use of calibrated color spaces, including using CMYK values
that are preserved across applications.
The new CMS color selector tab allows these colors to be edited.
Display adjustment
In Inkscape Preferences, Color Management tab, there's are new options
for enabling display adjustment; you can select any calibration profile
(an ICC file) suitable for your display. Options for rendering intent
can also be chosen.
Per-window adjustment
Display adjustment is enabled and disabled per each editing window.
This allows for simultaneous viewing of adjusted and unadjusted views
of a single document by using multiple windows. There is a toggle at
the bottom-right corner of the scrollbars that allows for turning on
and off display adjustment. It also will be disabled to provide visible
feedback when no profile is set to be available for adjustment.
XICC Support
On X11-based systems (i.e. Unix and Mac OSX), use of [ICC Profiles
In X Specification] (or XICC) can be enabled. Support for version 0.2
of this specification has been implemented. Enabling this option by
choosing to retrieve profiles from the display will switch Inkscape to
using profiles attached to screens at runtime. These allow display
adjustment to be changed on the fly, and to be set and cleared
per-monitor. This is especially helpful with more than a single
monitor.
Other Open Source software such as GIMP support XICC. This allows
all aware applications to be adjusted by setting a profile only once.
Multi-monitor aware
When XICC support is enabled, windows will adjust to the proper profile
as they are moved across monitors. Also, as the windows are moved onto
monitors with no profile attached, the adjustment toggle will become
disabled. When the windows are moved onto screens that do have
profiles, the toggle will become enabled.
Soft Proofing
In Inkscape Preferences, Color Management tab, there's a new option for
enabling output device preview; you can select any calibration profile
(an ICC file) suitable for your output device. Options for rendering
intent can also be chosen, along with out of gamut warnings.
Grids, guides, snapping
Grids
Grids have undergone some big changes under-the-hood. These are the
visible changes:
* There is a new 3D/axonometric grid. It consists of three sets of
parallel lines, one vertical and others at angles of +30 and -30
degrees from the horizontal. The angles of these two latter sets
and the spacing of the grid are user-settable.
* A new tab in the Document Properties dialog, Grids, is devoted
solely to grids; the former grid/guide tab is renamed Guides and is
now used only for guides. On the Grids page, you can create and
manage grids of various types in your document; so far the two
types available are Rectangular (default) and Axonometric, but more
types may be added in the future.
* More than one grid can be active at the same time:
+ Each grid can be enabled/disabled separately from the Document
Properties dialog.
* For each grid, you can hide it by unchecking the "Visible" checkbox
in the grid's tab, or disable snapping to it by unchecking
"Enabled". Note that you can have "Enabled" on and "Visible" off
(but not vice versa), in which case you snap to the invisible grid.
* Multiple views on the same document (i.e. different Inkscape
windows with the same document loaded) share the same grids, but
the grid can be turned on and off for each view separately. For
example, you could have a zoomed-out "overview" view without grids
showing. Duplicate that window and zoom in on some detail; then
grids can be shown only for that view, and snapping will only
happen in those views for which grids are enabled.
* The rectangular grid now has an option to show dots on gridline
intersections instead of solid lines.
From developer perspective:
* Implementation of new grids is much easier now by subclassing
CanvasGrid. Have a peek at how the rectangular grid is implemented
(CanvasXYGrid).
* Note that there is no longer "the grid", there might be several
grids active now!
* Grid information is now stored in SVG as a child of
sodipodi:namedview. Old files will be converted to this new format
automatically.
* An old bug is fixed: apparently the origin of the document
coordinate system used to be set to the origin of the grid. For
example, in 0.45.1 and before, specifying a grid origin of (20,20)
moved the origin or coordinates to that point, and the grid was
still starting at (0,0) in this moved coordinate system. This is
now disabled, and the coordinate origin is not affected by grid
origin.
Angled guidelines
Now, Inkscape also provides angled guidelines! Double click on a guide
to set its angle.
* When dragging a guideline off the rulers close to the end of the
ruler, the guideline will automatically be angled. The angle is set
depending on the grid.
+ For the rectangular grid, the angle is 45 degrees.
+ For the axonometric grid, the angle is matched to the grid.
When Ctrl is pressed, the angle is perpendicular to the grid
lines (useful for aligning gradients).
Creating guidelines from objects
* Selected objects can now be converted to guidelines. To do this,
either use the menu command "Object->Object to guides" or press
Shift+G in Selector tool (this shortcut also works in some other
tools, see below). The conversion process recurses into groups,
i.e. all objects in the current selection are converted regardless
if they are grouped or not.
* Created guides can be quickly deleted by Ctrl+clicking on them
(this is of course not restricted to guides created by the process
described above). Note that this only works in Selector and Node
tools, i.e., in contexts where guidelines can be manipulated with
the mouse.
* Paths are converted by creating one guide for each straight line
segment occurring in the path (whereas curved segments are not
taken into account). To make this conveniently accessible, the
shortcut Shift+G works in Pen and Pencil tools, too.
* For all other objects, conversion usually happens by placing the
guidelines around the object's bounding box (use the corresponding
checkbox in the "Tools" page of Inkscape Preferences to switch
between geometric and visual bounding box).
* For rectangles and 3D boxes there is a special option in their
preferences pages (checked by default) which instead allows the
guidelines to be placed along the object's edges so that they
imitate its true shape. This is especially useful when converting
rotated or skewed rectangles (to create guidelines in a special
position) or for creating 3D scenes containing other objects than
just boxes. The shortcut Shift+G works in these tools as well.
Snapping
* Snapping has been implemented or improved for:
+ Newly created shapes
+ Skewing of objects
+ Handles of objects, incl. gradients
+ Images, ellipses, and clones
+ Text boxes, which snap to text baselines again
+ Objects, for which snapping now optionally considers the
rotation center
+ Objects, which now allow for constrained snapping
+ Guides, which now snap while dragging them
+ Axonometric grids
+ Angled guide lines
+ Bounding boxes, of which now all four corners snap
* Other snapping fixes and improvements include:
+ It is now possible to snap to intersections of e.g. gridlines
with guidelines, and of line segments.
+ The snapping preferences dialog has been restyled to make it
more intuitive.
+ Inkscape now has a global snapping toggle, which has been
added to the view-menu and is accessible through a shortcut
+ Inkscape now allows for controlling the snapping per grid when
multiple grids are being used
+ Snapping distance is now set in screen pixels and is therefore
independent of zoom.
+ Snapping of objects has been made more clean, by only snapping
bounding box corners to bounding boxes, and nodes to other
nodes and paths.
+ The time it takes to snap to objects using the selector tool
has been reduced significantly.
+ The bug where "node-to-node" snapping caused jerky movement of
nodes is fixed.
+ The aspect ratio is correctly preserved while scaling objects
with snapping turned on.
+ Only nodes at non-smooth parts of a path now snap.
+ The confusing "Default transformations origin" option has been
removed. Now Inkscape always uses the opposite edge of the
object's bounding box as the transformation origin (though the
bounding box itself can now be different, see next item).
+ A new preference option has been added to specify the kind of
bounding box to be used for transforming objects (see Inkscape
Preferences, Tools, Selector). You can choose between the
visual bounding box (which takes into account the stroke
width, markers, and blur margins; this is the default
behavior) or geometric bounding box (which encloses only the
path itself, disregarding stroke width).
Import/Export
PDF and AI import
In this version, Inkscape can natively (i.e. without any additional
software) import PDF files and the newer PDF-based Adobe Illustrator
files (starting from AI version 9.0).
Implemented features: The new import extension can import paths, text,
clippaths, masked or non-masked images, and softmasks. It supports
pattern fills (XStep and YStep attributes are ignored) as well as
linear and radial gradients (only those using sampled or exponential
functions). Gradient meshes are imported, but they get converted to
groups of small tiles (flat-colored paths) that approximate the mesh;
the user can adjust the precision of this approximation.
PDF import settings: After opening a PDF or AI document, the PDF Import
Settings dialog shows up. Here you can select:
* the page to be imported from a multipage PDF;
* the overall clip region (which can be none or set to any of the PDF
boxes, e.g. the crop box, the media box, the trim box, etc.);
* the precision for the approximation of gradient meshes; note that
setting this too high may result in a huge SVG file and slow
performance when importing files with gradient meshes;
* a checkbox controlling whether the images should be embedded into
the resulting SVG document or saved on the current path;
* a preview of the selected page (shown if poppler-cairo is present
on the system or if the selected page has a thumbnail embedded into
the PDF document).
Text editing tips: Any text imported from PDF or AI has each letter's
precise place on the page fixed. While this preserves the exact
appearance (e.g. justification of text blocks) of the imported
document, it makes editing such text difficult: deleting text fails to
contract the text line and inserting text fails to expand it, i.e.
typed letters overlay the existing letters. (However, you still can
replace a letter with another letter of about the same width, although
you may need to kern it into place with Alt+arrows.)
To work around this, select the text object you want to edit and use
Text > Remove manual kerns command. This will remove the exact
positioning information, so if the text block was justified it will
lose justification, but instead you will be able to edit it as usual.
Note that there is a way to select even a single line in a text block.
For this, open the XML editor, expand the <svg:text> tree branch
corresponding to your text, and select any of the <svg:tspan> objects
under it. Now you can remove manual kerns from this line only. After
you finish editing the line, you can manually justify it back, for
example by adding spaces, manual kerns (Alt+arrows), or by adjusting
letterspacing (select the whole line and use Alt+> or Alt+<).
The native PDF/AI importer is based on the poppler library and was
implemented by Mikl?s Erd?lyi as part of the Google Summer of Code
2007.
PDF export
* A new cairo-based PDF exporter has been added to Inkscape (marked
as "Cairo PDF" in the export format list). Inkscape 0.46 can export
shapes, strokes, transparency, gradients, patterns, text, and
images correctly to cairo. While clipping paths and masks are known
to be faulty or missing. Also, unlike the old PDF exporter, the
cairo-based PDF export produces compressed PDF files that are
reasonably compact. cairo will write a PDF with vector graphics
when possible and fall back to raster graphics when needed. What
can be exported as vectors and how much of the image will be
rasterized when the fallback kicks in depends on your version of
cairo. cairo version 1.2 with the pdf backend compiled in is the
minimum requirement for any cairo-based PDF exports, but it is
highly recommended to use at least cairo 1.5.2 for quality PDF
export.
* A new cairo-based PostScript exporter has been added (marked as
"Cairo PS" in the export format list). The cairo PS backend is not
as mature as the PDF backend. It rasterizes a lot of its content.
Text output does not work where it works with the PDF backend.
CDR (CorelDraw) import
Inkscape can use UniConvertor if it's installed on your system to
import documents in CDR format (CorelDraw). This feature is Unix-only
at this time (since UniConvertor is Unix-only) and requires that you
have Python and UniConvertor installed. As of UniConvertor 1.1.1,
versions from 7 to X4 of the CDR format are supported, and text objects
are not converted.
XAML import/export
* Inkscape can import vector graphics portions of XAML documents, as
well as export its documents to XAML.
Adobe Illustrator SVG clean import
* Using this new import filter, Inkscape can open an SVG document
removing any elements and attributes in the namespaces that Adobe
Illustrator uses for its stuff. This will clean out everything
except the actual SVG content.
WMF import
Now Inkscape uses UniConvertor for opening WMF files, which results in
three noticable changes:
1. imported files are editable now
2. known rendering issues are resolved
3. WMF import works on all platforms where UniConvertor works
(including Windows)
Text objects are not supported by UniConvertor as of version 1.1.1.
Bitmap export
* Batch export: The Bitmap Export dialog (Ctrl+Shift+E) got a new
checkbox, Batch export all selected objects. This checkbox is
available when two or more objects are selected. If it is checked,
instead of exporting selection as a whole, Inkscape exports each
selected object separately into its own PNG file. This uses each
object's export hints (i.e. export filename and DPI) if they are
remembered from a previous export; otherwise, the filename is
created from the object ID and the DPI is 90 pixels per inch.
Caution: Unlike regular export, batch export overwrites all
existing PNG files without warning.
This makes it possible to implement all kinds of image slicing
and automated export scenarios. For example, if you are working
on a web site design, you can create a separate "export" layer.
In that layer, "slice" your web page image into separate areas
by creating invisible rectangles with no fill and no stroke.
Select each rectangle (by Tab/Shift+Tab, or by switching to
Outline mode where even an invisible rectangle can be selected
by clicking on its outline) and export it into the corresponding
filename (which gets saved as that object's export hint). After
that, if you do any changes to your graphics, it's very easy to
reexport all the slices: just switch to the "export" layer,
select all in that layer (Ctrl+A), and export with the Batch
export selected objects checkbox on.
* Hide all except selected: A new checkbox allows you to hide in the
exported image everything except selected object(s).
* The Export dialog automatically appends the .png extension to the
export filename you specify.
Open Clip Art Library import and export
[No information on this feature available]
Command line
Several new command line options are added that make Inkscape even more
scriptable and automatable than before.
* --verb-list will list all the Verb IDs and their names in Inkscape.
This makes writing your own menus and hotkeys much easier as you
can easily find out what the choices are.
* --verb followed by a verb ID allows you to specify a verb to be
called on every document opened by Inkscape initially from the
command line.
* --select followed by a node ID will allow you to add a node to the
list of selected objects.
* --query-all produces a comma delimited listing of all objects in
the document, with their x, y, height, and width values.
These options can be used, for example, for performance testing. You
could do something like this:
$ time inkscape --verb=FileClose my_complex_file.svg
to measure the time it takes to load and display the file.
Of course, with the ability to select objects, it can be much more
useful than that. You can call extension effects, or any other verb,
then FileSave and FileClose to automate all kinds of operations on your
drawings.
User interface
Dockable dialogs
Inkscape's dialog handling has been reworked in this release to allow
dialogs to behave like dockable panels. The dock area that holds the
user's dialogs is located right of the canvas.
Dialogs placed in the dock can easily be rearranged, resized, stacked
in groups or iconified. Furthermore, a dialog can be dragged of the
dock to become a floating dock in itself--this allows other dialogs to
be dragged and dropped on it to form a floating group of dialogs.
The old dialog behavior (used in releases before 0.46) has been
preserved as an option, and if it is preferred, one can select it under
Windows > Dialog behavior in the Inkscape preferences dialog.
Known issues
* Some of Inkscape's dialogs are yet to be adapted to allow docking,
these include the "Text and Font" dialog, the "Tiled clones"
dialog, the "XML editor" and the "Object properties" dialog.
* Floating dialogs that are closed and later reopened might reappear
on positions slightly different than their original ones.
* Resizing dialogs that are placed in the dock can be a bit slow and
quirky.
* The total height of content the dock will in most cases remain the
same when a dialog is closed/iconified, i.e. the remaining docked
dialogs will fill the hole. This might not the desired behavior.
Settings
Three settings that control dockable dialogs behavior are present in
the preferences.xml file under a options group called dock:
* cancenterdock: controls if dialogs are allowed to be stacked on top
of each other to be ordered in groups. Valid values are "0" and
"1".
* dockbarstyle: controls what information is shown for iconified
dockable dialogs. "0" = icons only, "1" = text only, "2" = both
icons and text.
* switcherstyle: controls what information is shown for grouped
dockable dialogs. "0" = icons only, "1" = text only, "2" = both
icons and text.
Toolbars
Main toolbar on the left can now optionally use smaller buttons. With
the several new tools added in this version, this may help users with
small screens where the toolbar otherwise may not fit vertically. The
toggle is on the Misc tab of the Inkscape Preferences dialog.
Switching to stock GTK+ toolbars. This allows for the main window to be
made narrower, with toolbar items flowing into a popup menu as it is
resized.
File Dialogs
[No information on this feature available]
Swatches panel, color drag-and-drop
* Right-clicking a color swatch now opens a context menu which allows
you to apply the color to the fill or stroke of selection.
* Dragging colors from the color palette has been fixed and improved:
+ Now the dropped color is applied to the object on which you
drop it, regardless of whether that object is selected or not.
This means you can change the color of only one object from
selection without having to select it separately. (If you want
to assign color to the entire selection, just click on the
color swatch on the palette, not drag it.)
+ If an object has stroke and you drop the color over stroke,
the color is applied to stroke and not fill. (Another way to
always apply color to stroke is to Shift+drag it.)
+ When gradient handles are active (e.g. in Gradient or Node
tools), you can drop a color onto the gradient line to create
a new gradient mid stop with this color, or drop a color onto
an existing stop to recolor that stop.
+ A new submenu has been added to affect the shape of the
displayed swatches, allowing their preferred size to be made
thinner or wider. Among other things, this allows for more to
be seen on screen at once when made thinner.
+ Sizing of the swatches has been corrected to be properly
progressive, and now go form smaller to larger on all
platforms.
+ Space reserved for the scrollbar is no longer kept with
smaller palettes shown in the bottom of the main UI. This
allows for more working space when palettes with not many
entries are selected at smaller sizes.
Color gestures
A new method for quick and precise adjustment of colors is added in
this version: color gestures. It works on the selected objects by
grabbing the fill or stroke color swatch in the selected style
indicator (on the left of the statusbar) and dragging it in various
directions as described below. Note that this only works when the
swatch displays a flat color; it does not work for a swatch showing
"None", "N/A", or displaying a gradient (although you can select one or
more gradient stops in Gradient tool and color-adjust them by color
gestures just as you would do for objects). Color gestures can work on
fill or stroke, depending on which swatch in the selected color
indicator you drag.
Color gestures work in HSL color space. Dragging without any keyboard
modifiers adjusts the hue channel, dragging with Shift adjusts
saturation, and dragging with Ctrl adjusts lightness.
The adjustment is done by "rotating" the color swatch away from the
original direction which is assumed to be NE at 45 degrees (i.e. from
the swatch diagonally into the document window). Once you click and
drag the color swatch, imagine a diagonal line going from the point
where you clicked in the NE direction, across the entire Inkscape
window. By dragging below or to the right of that line, you decrease
the corresponding color channel, to the minimum at the lower edge of
the window; by dragging it above or to the left, you increase it, to
the maximum at the left edge of the window. If you hover your mouse
exactly over the 45 degrees line, the change will be zero.
Note that you can easily vary the precision of your adjustment. If you
drag close enough to the swatch, each small movement results in a big
change of the color. If you need a finer adjustment, just drag farther
away from the swatch, towards the center of the Inkscape window or even
to its upper right corner, where minute movements will produce very
small changes in the color. In fact, this method gives you more color
precision than even the color wheel in the Fill and Stroke dialog,
unless you expand that dialog to fill the entire screen which is rarely
practical.
The mouse cursor changes when you're doing color gestures, reflecting
the channel currently adjusted and indicating the directions for
increasing and decreasing the value. Also, watch the statusbar which
will indicate, as you drag, the channel you are adjusting, the original
value of that channel, the new value, and the difference.
You can switch channels while you drag. That is, you don't need to drag
it again and again from the swatch if you want to adjust all three
channels - you can do it all in one drag, by pressing and releasing
Ctrl and Shift as necessary. Note that when you change the keyboard
modifiers during drag, the position of the zero-change line is
temporarily changed to go through the current mouse position; this is
done so that there are no sudden changes in color if you are switching
modifiers away from the original 45-degree line.
The Alt modifier is special. Pressing Alt means "do nothing"; this
allows you to move the mouse, without releasing, to a more convenient
place from where to continue tweaking the color after letting go of
Alt. As with the other modifiers, releasing Alt temporarily redefines
the zero-change axis to go through the point where Alt was released.
For example, imagine you made your color darker by Ctrl+dragging
towards the bottom edge of the window and you now need to make it less
saturated. You cannot however Shift+drag it any lower because there's
just not enough room for that. In that situation, without releasing the
mouse, Alt+drag it upwards to a convenient spot and then Shift+drag
downwards as needed. Also, you can start dragging from the swatch with
Alt pressed to avoid changing the color while you take a more
convenient position for adjustments.
For example, you can select a green rectangle and first turn it into
greenish-blue by dragging away from the Fill swatch and slightly above
the 45 degrees line; then, without releasing the mouse, press Ctrl and
drag a bit to the right to darken the color; then press Shift, release
Ctrl, and adjust saturation. You can press or release Ctrl and Shift as
many times as necessary during a single drag; when you are finally
satisfied with your color, release the mouse to commit the change.
Apart from precise adjustments, you can use color gestures to very
quickly perform some common color transformations:
* Ctrl+drag the swatch to the right and down to paint all selected
objects black.
* Ctrl+drag the swatch upwards and to the left to paint all selected
objects white.
* Shift+drag the swatch to the right and down to desaturate the color
of selected objects.
* Shift+drag the swatch upwards and to the left to maximize
saturation of the color of selected objects.
Note that when several objects or gradient stops with different colors
are selected, the selected style indicator shows their averaged color.
If you adjust that color by gesturing, the changed color will be
assigned back to all selected objects/stops, in effect eliminating any
difference between them. If you want to adjust many different-colored
objects preserving their relative differences, use the color modes of
the Tweak tool or color adjustment extension effects.
This new technique requires some getting used to, but once you get the
idea it is quite convenient, fast, and precise.
Print dialog integration
* Print Dialog: The GTK Unix Print Dialog has been hooked up! From
the dialog, you can select any of the Postscript-capable printers
known to your system and configure them as with any other GTK
application.
Saving window geometry globally
Previously, window geometry (size and position of document windows)
could only be saved into the document (so that each document stored its
own window geometry). Now, a new option is added to save the geometry
of the last used window to the preferences and apply this geometry to
all new windows. Thus, with the "Save geometry to preferences" option
enabled, new windows will open with the shape of the most recent
previous window. This mode also remembers and restores the
maximized/fullscreen state (unlike geometry saved to documents).
Preserving zoom/view of reverted documents
When reverting files to their previously saved state, the current zoom
factor/panning is now retained (as opposed to reverted to the saved
state, too, as it was the case before). This less interrupts the
workflow when one is working on some detail in the drawing.
Bounding box option moved
The preferences option to select between "visual" and "geometric"
bounding box was moved in Inkscape Preferences dialog from the
"Selector" page to "Tools" page (since it applies more globally than
just in Selector tool).
New ways to scroll and zoom
* You can now enable Space+mouse drag to pan canvas, as it does in
Adobe Illustrator. This mode is enabled by the Left mouse button
pans when Space is pressed checkbox in the Scrolling tab of the
Inksape Preferences dialog. By default it is off and pressing the
spacebar key switches you to Selector and back, as it always did in
Inkscape.
* By default, rotating the mouse wheel scrolls the canvas vertically
and Ctrl+wheel zooms in and out. Now, if you turn on the Mouse
wheel zooms by default checkbox in the Scrolling tab of the Inksape
Preferences dialog, this behavior is reversed: mouse wheel zooms
without Ctrl and scrolls with Ctrl. This new mode should be
familiar for users of AutoCAD and CorelDraw.
* In the Zoom tool, right mouse button always zooms out instead of
calling the context menu (which is rather useless in this tool
anyway).
Using other keys in place of Alt
* Many Linux users have found the use of Alt-drag and Alt+click in
Inkscape problematical because this shortcut is often captured by
window managers. In 0.46, instead of disabling of the window
manager shortcut as suggested in the FAQ, you can change a
setting in your preferences.xml file called mapalt in the options
group. This numerical value ranges from 1 to 5; 1 indicates no
change, any other value refers to some special key on a keyboard,
such as Alt Gr, the Windows key, etc. The specific mapping of these
values to the keys on your keyboard can be viewed and/or editied by
xkeycaps, available from www.jwz.org. The value associated
with a particular key is shown in that program at the top of the
screen beside the word "Modifiers" when the mouse is held over a
key on the main display.
GTK theme on OS X
A GTK theme is now included in Inkscape.app bundle on OS X. If the user
does not have any personal customization (e.g. in a .gtkrc-2.0 file)
this theme is used. It reflects the OS X settings for "Appearance" and
"Highlight Color" set in System Preferences > Appearance.
Keyboard profiles
New profiles have been added:
* Corel DRAW X4 (corel-draw-x4.xml)
* Zoner Draw 5 (zoner-draw.xml)
* ACD Systems Canvas 11 (acd-canvas.xml)
Also, profile for Adobe Illustrator has been fixed and includes
bindings for tools now.
(To enable a profile, copy it into default.xml in the same directory,
overwriting the old file. To restore the default Inkscape set, copy
inkscape.xml into default.xml.)
Other changes and improvements
* Gnome VFS Improvements: Gnome VFS Non-Local files are now usable
through all of our file choosers in Open, Save and Export. This
compile-time option allowed people to open any Gnome-VFS-based URI
from the command-line in the past, but not non-local resources
(WebDAV, SFTP, etc) and this now allows for all the lovely
possibilities Gnome-VFS provides.
* In previous versions, Inkscape didn't allow you to group a single
object. Yet in some cases, this operation is useful (for example,
to blur the clipped edged of an object, or apply more than one
clippath/mask to an object). Now this limitation is removed; just
select any single object and group it to get a single-object group.
* The somewhat cryptic "F:" and "S:" labels in the selected style
indicator (at the left end of the statusbar) and in tool's style
swatches are now spelled out as Fill: and Stroke:. We believe this
makes the interface, even if less space-efficient, a bit more
friendly for newbies.
* The style swatches at the right end of object-creating tools'
control bars now open the Preferences page of the corresponding
tool when clicked. Also, now these swatches display a tooltip
explaining its purpose (e.g. "Style of new rectangles", "Style of
new calligraphic strokes", etc.)
* On the Scale tab of the Transform dialog, the numbers now show the
current size of selection, not size increment as before.
Correspondingly, with the % unit chosen, you see 100% displayed,
and to scale it up twice, you enter 200%, not 100% as before. This
is a more intuitive behavior and it's more consistent with how the
W/H controls work in the Selector tool.
* After dragging a curve segment in Node tool, Inkscape no longer
selects the two adjacent nodes if they were not selected before.
* The Tile Clones dialog now uses the object's defined rotation axis
(which can be freely moved by Selector tool and which is saved
separately for each object) for all rotations (including both
symmetry rotations and the Rotation tab rotations), scales, and
flips. This renders unnecessary the previous workarounds where you
had to group an object with another transparent object to affect
how it's rotated by the clone tiler.
* The Shift tab of the Tile Clones dialog has two new options:
Cumulate: when checked, each tile is shifted by the normal amount
plus the cumulative shifts of all previous tiles. This is useful
when placing tiles that are being scaled by a uniform amount.
Exlude tile: when checked, the tile width or height is not
automatically included in calculating the tile's shift. This is
useful when using the dialog to place clones on a circle or spiral
(rather than using a shift of -100%). It is also useful when
positioning tiles using the Exponent parameter.
* The Scale tab of the Tile Clones dialog has a new parameter: Base
that allows placing tiles along a logarithmic spiral (as often
found in nature). If the value is 0, the parameter is not used. Use
a value less than one for a converging spiral and a value of
greater than one for a diverging spiral. The actual scale is
calculated as base raised to the nominal scale power.
* In Pencil and Calligraphic tools, pressing Esc or Ctrl+Z while
drawing cancels the currently drawn path or stroke. When not
drawing, these keys work as before (Esc deselects, Ctrl+Z undoes
last action). (This is the same behavior as in the Pen tool where
it was introduced in a previous version.)
* A set of new verbs has been added to allow the user to easily
unlock all locked objects or unhide all hidden objects. There are
two variants one that operates on the current layer and its
children and one that operates globally. While searching for hidden
or locked object descendants of locked layers are ignored.
* Several more rotation snapping increments are available in the
Steps tab of the Inkscape Preferences dialog: 36, 22.5, 18, 12, and
0.5 degrees.
* The list of folder shortcuts in the Open dialog includes the folder
with Inkscape's SVG examples for easy access. Similarly, the Save
dialog has a shortcut for the user's own templates dialog making it
easy to save the current document as a template (if saved as
default.svg, it will be loaded every time you run Inkscape or
create new document with Ctrl+N; with any other name, it will be
added to the File > New submenu).
* For time-intensive operations such as Paint Bucket and Simplify,
the system's busy wait cursor is displayed to indicate to the user
that Inkscape is actively working, and not frozen.
* Several improvements in inkview: busy cursor is shown while loading
file, the button window stays on top and responds to keyboard
shortcuts; several memleaks stopped and bugs fixed. The "slideshow
mode" of the main inkscape application (-s or --slideshow command
line option) is removed; use inkview instead.
* In Document Metadata dialog, updated Creative Commons Licenses to
version 3.0.
* Preferences have been added for setting the default metadata and
licenses, so this information can be automatically filled in with
new documents.
* The built-in Potrace tracing engine is upgraded to version 1.8 with
some minor bugs fixed.
* File dialog windows (open/save) now have an Enable preview checkbox
which allows you to disable the preview pane.
* In the Calligraphic pen controls, the toggle button to enable
tablet pressure sensitivity is moved to the Width control, and the
button for tilt sensitivity is moved to Angle, to better reflect
what parameters these toggles affect.
* In Node and Gradient tools, using Tab/Shift+Tab to select
next/previous node or gradient handle scrolls the canvas if
necessary to show the selection.
* The option Import bitmap as <image> is removed; it was added
several versions ago to allow optionally importing images as
rectangles with image pattern, to make clipping the images easier.
Now that you can easily use clipping paths, as well as convert any
image to rectangle with pattern with Alt+I, this option is not
really necessary and removed to reduce confusion. Bitmaps are
always imported into SVG as an <image> element.
* Support has been added for stock patterns, in the same way that
stock markers were already supported. Adding patterns to
share/patterns/patterns.svg, and giving them a inkscape-stockid
attribute as found on the examples already there will make them
available in all Inkscape sessions from the patterns tab of the
fill & stroke dialog.
* New fontforge_glyph.svg template is added for font designers who
draw glyphs in Inkscape and import them into FontFoge. It is
1000x1000px large and has a horizontal guide at 200px to mark
border for descenders.
* Save dialogs have been modified to clarify that they Save as SVG,
so people using Inkscape to edit PDF, EPS, and other file formats
will be less confused at the default behavior when saving files.
* Inkscape application bundle on Mac OS X now has the possibility to
contain pre-compiled python modules (e.g. lxml, numpy, etc.) and to
use them without requiring any work from the user. Since Python
itself is shipped with Mac OS X, the user only has to drag and drop
Inkscape on its hard-drive and all the extensions will be
functional immediately.
Notable bugfixes
These are bugfixes compared to 0.45.1; for a list of fixes in 0.45.1
compared to 0.45, see 0.45.1 release notes.
* The sodipodi:docbase attribute is no longer added to the root <svg>
element. This attribute used to keep the latest directory that the
document was saved to, and thus represented a mild privacy
violation (i.e., by sharing your Inkscape SVG files you allowed
others to have a peek into your directory structure). Note,
however, that Inkscape does not remove this attribute from old
documents it opens; if you want you can remove it yourself.
Inkscape just no longer creates this attribute in new documents.
* A fix in the blur rendering code made exporting blurred objects to
bitmap much faster and fixed the disappearing of blurred objects in
exported bitmaps which happened for large objects in 0.45. The same
fix got rid of the rendering artefacts that sometimes appeared on
blurred objects during scrolling.
* Inkscape now properly quotes font-family values and therefore can
use fonts with various nonalphanumeric characters in their names,
which previously failed.
* If you have saved documents with a previous version of Inkscape
which used right-to-left text (e.g. Arabic, Hebrew) then the
paragraph alignment of non-flowed text has been reversed in this
release. This is due to a bug in previous versions - the new
behaviour is compliant with the SVG specification and compatible
with other editors and viewers. To correct your images, simply
reverse the paragraph alignment by selecting the text and clicking
the appropriate button on the toolbar.
* A large family of bugs was exterminated where an object's style
could only refer other objects (such as gradients, patterns, and
filters) that come after it in the document. Now any objects can be
referenced from a style regardless of their place in the document.
This fixed the disappearance of gradients/patterns/filters after
you undo an effect, as well as lots of assorted crashes and
misrenderings (mostly on non-Inkscape SVG files).
* On Windows, file opening/saving dialogs can no longer sink under
the main editor window (they now have the inkscape window set
correctly as their parent window).
* A regression in 0.45 caused crashes when undo or redo was attempted
before the previous action could complete (e.g. pressing ctrl+z
while you are still drawing a rectangle). This is now fixed.
* Previously, if there was a single invalid property in a style
attribute, the entire attribute was discarded, i.e. the object lost
all styling. Now Inkscape's behavior is more compliant to the CSS
specification: it ignores only the invalid property but reads in
all the rest.
* Several bugs are fixed in searching for linked images. Now moving
SVG documents with their associated images to a different place or
a different machine should work more reliably.
* Creative Commons Public Domain Declaration URI points to the right
location now.
* Text objects didn't display the pattern editing handles; fixed.
* On Windows, the Inkscape uninstaller deleted all files under the
install directory. This could lead to removing user-created files,
or even other program files not related to inkscape if the install
directory was C:\Program Files. The new uninstaller tracks all
installed files and asks for confirmation before deleting any other
files. However, installation and uninstallation process is now
slower.
* Clones were wrongly unlinked when their original was moved to
another layer; fixed.
* Previous versions had a problem on Windows Vista where selected
menu item was invisible. Now our Windows builds use a newer version
of GTK library which fixes this problem.
* Duplicating empty text objects that have just been created no
longer crashes. Also, the XML editor crash related to empty text
objects is fixed. A downside is that the SVG will become cluttered
with empty text objects as they are no longer automatically
removed. A better fix for the problem is planned.
* In Tile Clones dialog, the PMG symmetry group was created
incorrectly; it is now fixed.
* Serious usability issues with the font size field in the Text
tool's controls bar have been fixed.
* The rulers are now correctly scaled and will align nicely with
document coordinates, with or without the scrollbars displayed.
Known Issues
* (LP: #180890) Blend modes do not work correctly over transparent
backgrounds. A workaround is to place an opaque rectangle underneath
the bottom-most layer.
* (LP # 202704) Blur and other filters are very slow when applied to an
object with transform= attribute with rotation or skew. To avoid this
slowdown, either do not rotate/skew objects you use with filters, or
apply filters only to paths (but not shapes to text) because paths, by
default, get no transform= attribute when you rotate or skew them.
* Windows printing has two known issues. In both cases the workaround is
to print to bitmap (Print -> Rendering -> Bitmap).
- (LP # 205732) Blurred objects are misaligned when printing.
- (LP # 208217) Masked objects disappear from the page when printing.
For information on prior releases, please see:
http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Inkscape
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