Translation Statistics

We're nearing string freeze, and here is our current translation status, averaging about 49%:

Interface translation is a great way to help Inkscape! Please see our Translation Information page for details on how to get involved, and ask questions on the Inkscape-Translator@ mailing list.

Tango Icon Theme

Michael Grosberg has produced a tango themed iconset for Inkscape. We're still bouncing ideas around on the list to optimize them, and there is not yet a consensus favoring switching to them as the default, but we hope to include them as an alternative in the Inkscape release.

New Feature: Angled Guidelines

A feature that has been requested for a long time, Angled Guidelines have been implemented by Johan. They will be usable in the next release (0.46) of Inkscape.

All guidelines are "angled", horizontal and vertical guidelines being angled at 0 or 90 degrees. To change to a different angle, just double-click the guideline you want to change and enter the values. You can also create a guideline with another angle by dragging the guideline from the ends of the rulers.

You can read the release notes for more information.

Inkscape 0.46 Frost Begins

December 21, 2007

We've made huge progress towards the Chill goals, and are now ready to move into the Frost phase.

Development is winding down, although we are granting a few frost exceptions to allow continued work for another week or so in specific areas (see below). 'make distcheck' issues have been sufficiently resolved (thanks Ted and Aaron!) Bug report triaging has gone smashingly well. The About Screen contest has kicked off. We still need to put some attention into the release notes, tutorials, and other docs, but I doubt there's any issues preventing us from moving ahead.

In the Frost phase, our objectives are as follows:

• Complete frost exception development work.
• Focus should be on bug fixes, packaging, documentation, and translation work, all of which may be committed to SVN normally.
• Gain some candidate submissions for the About Screen contest.
• Release Notes should be >90% filled in.
• Bug Hunt (details TBD)
• Post inkscape-0.46-alpha.tar.gz

The length of time we stay in Frost mode is driven by how long the Bug Hunt takes, but is expected to take on the order of a few weeks.

The Frost Exceptions for remaining features are as follows:

1. Angled guidelines, by J.B.C.Engelen (DONE): Underlying code is complete, and guidelines are rendering, but it needs a UI to allow manipulating them.
2. Python module packaging (lxml, numpy) for OSX, by jiho (ETA ___): Needs wider testing. Needs someone to build PPC packages.
3. Compilation of lib2geom on OS X 10.3 (Panther), by John Faith (ETA ___): An error is preventing builds for Panther versions of Inkscape. If this can't be resolved before release, the alternative is to drop support for this OS version.
4. Font Spec Implementation, by Gail Carmichael (DONE). Refactor patch to include some code review changes by Bulia. Also, the patch needs wider testing.
5. Win32 Uninstaller improvement, by Adib (DONE). Fix current installer to not bug user for each changed file.
6. PDF, PS export improvements, by Adib (ETA Jan 3). Implement blur as bitmap, and display a dialog with options for text-to-path, blur-as-bitmap, alpha-as-bitmap. UPDATE: Option dialog for PDF/PS exports using cairo are implemented (PDF1.4 and PS3 only). Text-to-path works, for blur as bitmap need help with converting SPItem from vector to image, alpha as bitmap being done implicitly by Cairo. UPDATE 1/13: Blur as bitmap is still in progress. Dialogs and text as path are now done.
7. Clone Tiling dialog, by Tavmjong Bah (DONE): Add a few options to Shift, Scaling, and Rotation tabs. (TBD: Bug updating blur via Blur/Opacity tab.) (Also, TBD later: some small changes for default values for turbulence and composite filters.)

Feature changes in SVN for things not on this list should be done on a branch. Any feature work not in this list committed to SVN during the Frost period may be reverted by any developer. Bug fixes, translation work, documentation updates, and packaging development may continue to be committed as normal, no permission needed yet.

About Screen Contest

December 19, 2007

The Inkscape team and community is proud to announce the About Screen contest for the upcoming release of Inkscape (0.46).

The contest begins on December 22, 2007 and the deadline is January 6th, 2008. As with the past few contests we've had, it is being done on DeviantART. You can find out more about it at Inkscape's Deviant Art site.

Additionally, if you have a DeviantART account, please show the news some "love" so we can hopefully get the story promoted to the front page.

Good Luck! Have fun! Draw Freely.

Bug Triage Update

December 11, 2007

New Bugs

Since swapping to Launchpad for tracking bugs late last month, there has been a lot of progress gained on triaging the 1800 or so open bugs. By far the biggest task is reviewing the bugs with the status of "NEW". When we switched to Launchpad, the percentage of bugs that were "NEW" was nearly 100%, but at the time of writing, the Inkscape Bug Team has reduced this number to 80%. To the left is a graph depicting the progress of The Inkscape Bug Team's triaging of the "NEW" bugs over the past week.

Open Bugs

Our number of open bugs has also seen a sharp drop, with over 100 bugs closed since we switched; mainly due to bug triagers cleaning out invalid or obsolete bugs. If you're interested in joining the Inkscape Bug Team, please join via Launchpad and read the current list of Triaging Projects on the wiki

Inkscape enters Chill for 0.46 Release

We're entering the first step of our release process for 0.46. For the Chill phase, we'll be focusing on the following:

• Development focuses on wrapping up
• Identify 'make distcheck' issues
• Triage bug reports
• Run an About Screen contest
• First draft of Release Notes
• Update tutorials and other docs

If you're interested in joining in on the release process fun, please join the inkscape-devel@ mailing list or IRC and let someone know what you'd like to help with!