Inkscape 0.44 - Faster, Bigger, Better

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

Comments

Firefox Users

[timeOday]

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

Re:Firefox Users

[njh]

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

Re:Firefox Users

[consonant]

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

Re:Tried it.

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the problem with the SVG it produces?

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

Who's the genius?

[TheModelEskimo]

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

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

Re:Illustrator

[t_allardyce]

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

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

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