Inkscape 0.47 Released

derrida writes "After over a year of intensive development and refactoring, Inkscape 0.47 is out. This version of the SVG-based vector graphics editor brings improved performance and tons of new features, including: timed autosave, Spiro splines, auto-smooth nodes, Eraser tool, new modes in Tweak tool, snapping options toolbar & greater snapping abilities, new live path effects (including Envelope), over 200 preset SVG filters, new Cairo-based PS and EPS export, spell checker, many new extensions, optimized SVG code options, and much more. Additionally, it would be wrong to not mention the hundreds of bug fixes. Check out the full release notes for more information about what has changed, enjoy the screenshots, or just jump right to downloading your package for Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X." We've been following the progress of Inkscape for years (2006, 2005, 2004).

Comments

Re:Hurrah!

[palegray.net]

As a general rule, "1.0" doesn't really hold a lot of significance in the open source community with regard to actual usefulness. A heck of a lot of the (very stable) stuff I use is < 1.0.

Brilliant piece of software

[zhilla2]

As a person who uses vector drawing programs from time to time, this program was a great find. Having pirated Corel Draw installed, mostly for rubbish reasons, was also bad - for bloat reasons, law reasons - and sanity reasons. I remember that Corel then (>5 years ago) had so much bugs, slow and unresponsible, bad support for local fonts, unstable. For all my purposes Inkscape is by far better program - compact, standards compliant, fully functional, and frankly I enjoy using it much better than Corel Draw. Couple bugs yes, but brilliantly reliable compared to horrible nightmare that is (was?) Corel Draw.

Re:Brilliant piece of software

[zhilla2]

Your argument is invalid. Yes, it might not be 100% draft compatible, but at least its SVG files are perfectly readable in all the software I ever tried... from Firefox, Opera, to Photoshop and whatnot. As far as I know, Word HTML is actually readable mostly in IE. It does so on purpose - 1. Get monopoly 2. Break standards 3. Get people to use your proprietary formats / equipment 4. Profit!

Re:Hurrah!

[mcrbids]

But you forgot to say why!

Many times, developers will have a list of features that they figure are "1.0". They may not have reached all the features yet, but the features developed thusfar may be very stable.

A case in point is my own set of backup scripts (this is not) Backup Buddy. I've been using them for years, they work very well, stable even with very large sets of data. (Well into the TBs currently, managing over 100 backup sources in 24 hour rotation)

But I don't consider them "1.0" yet because I always envisioned a handy-dandy web interface for managing backup rotations, verifying backups (currently working) and recovering files 1-by-1 securely. So, I edit config files. (aw shucks)

Does it actually make standard SVGs yet?

[BitZtream]

Everytime I've looked at Inkscape in the past its idea of 'standard' SVGs is about like Word's idea of 'standard' HTML, even when you switch to the standard svg format rather than its extended version.

I'm grabbing it now, but I see nothing in the release notes about this particular issue. I see things about adding more extensions which is great and all, but I use SVG because its a documented standard that I can work with in my own software, I'd love to suggest Inkscape to others, but until its capable of producing version 1.2 SVGs with text flows that work with Apache Batik is useless. The font improvements look promising, as long as it isn't retarded and storing all text as curves.

Heres to hoping ...

Re:Does it actually make standard SVGs yet?

[BitZtream]

Please compare

http://home.hccnet.nl/th.v.d.gronde/inkscape/ResultViewer.html

to

http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/batik/status.html

My standards actually are based on some standard.

I was excited when I saw 'svg test suite compliance' in the release notes, then I looked at the test results. The omit a large portion of them and fail a massive chunk of them.

A new feature in the release notes is 'Initial SVG font support' ... Inkscape is roughly the same as using Frontpage 2000 to make web pages. Sorry I got your fanboy panties in a bunch, but reality sucks sometimes.

The closed circle

[westlake]

As a general rule, "1.0" doesn't really hold a lot of significance in the open source community with regard to actual usefulness.

It's rather a pity that so many projects like Inkscape might be overlooked by all those folks living outside the open source community.

Where Rev. 0.x = Beta state, maybe, and Alpha, more than likely. Immature. Unstable. Basic features missing or unusable.

Think of it as another handicap, like naming your premier photo editing program The GIMP - which to the outsider translates simply as "crippled" and "sexually perverse."
 

Re:The closed circle

[daid303]

I'm no artist, but I do like to create things, so I use many tools to do just about anything. But I don't want to spend many hours learning a tool, as I just want to create something quick and easy.

Now, in my years I've come across many tools. Closed source/open source, free/payed. I've used anything from mspaint to photoshop, from milkshape to 3D studio max. I've tried GIMP, Blender and Inkscape as open source tools. And quickly dumped GIMP and Blender, they are not userfriendly for entry level at all. Blender doesn't allow you to do anything unless you spend a few hours just configuring things and doing tutorials, which is a pain in the ass compared to 3D studio max (yes, you get what you pay for, 3DS Max is not cheap). Milkshape is also much easier to use then Blender, but has much less features, still I think Blender could learn from it.
About the same goes for GIMP vs Photoshop, but in that respect GIMP is much friendlier then Blender. However, photoshop still seems to have an edge in entry level usage.

And then we had Inkscape, installed, started, and go. No problems at all, didn't need to look for any alternatives. Now, I only use 10% of the features of these programs. But for everything I used I think Inkscape is the only that really should get the 1.x version stamp.

Re:0.47

[Dice]

Their roadmap states that the 1.0 milestone is "full SVG 1.1 support".

Re:Great

[beelsebob]

Dunno, but what they didn't fix was the incorrect naming of save/export.

They seem to think save is anything that outputs a vector format, and export is anything that outputs a bitmap, rather than the normal definition of save being anything you can re-open with zero loss of data, and export being things you might lose data (possibly all of it) if you try to re-import.

I lost a *lot* of time when I "saved" a load of files as pdfs, and then got told inkscape couldn't reopen them.

Re:Great

[beelsebob]

1) yes, illustrator works just fine reading/writing pdf as it's save format
2) yes, anything in the list of formats under "save" should allow me to open again... if it won't, it should be under "export" not "save".

Re:Inkscape is great

[Anonymous Coward]

Often something you can't easily tweak in R can be fixed very quickly in Inkscape.

Do you per chance work for the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia?

For those that scrolled to the bottom

[horza]

Let me summarise the thread:
* beelsebob quite rightly pointed out PDF should be under Export and not Save, since Inkscape can't load PDFs
* BitZstream wrote many rambling pieces about how it wasn't compliant with the full SVG standard, most other people found it a jolly useful piece of software and were quite happy using it
* people were generally unimpressed with bytesex's idea of merging Inkscape into GIMP
* a few lamented the demise of Artworks/Xara

Phillip.