First week's 0.44-stable download statistics

Just one week after the 0.44 release our software was distributed to over 54,100 users through the SourceForge download servers. The largest share was from the Windows users, who totalled nearly 38,000 downloads. The next highest number was from the Mac users with 9,115 downloads. The Unix/Linux users scored 7,104 downloads.

Inkscape Translation Progress

Translators have made serious progress this past month. Compare this to the May 28th numbers!

Welcome Slashdot!

Pardon the slow site, particularly the screenshots and wiki, but do please enjoy the newly released Inkscape. Some packages are just starting to become available. See our downloads page or head to the SourceForge file list for the latest uploads. Note that SourceForge has been a bit unreliable lately, so if the links aren't working, please keep trying.

Inkscape 0.44 Release

The Release Wardens have blessed the official Inkscape 0.44.0 release tarball. We will be making the official announcement once packagers have had a couple days to build the release packages, but if you're in a compiling mood, please feel free to download the source today! :-)

LGM report in Linux Format Magazine

JonCruz reports, "I just picked up the June issue of Linux Format magazine (Issue 80). Their cover this time is on 'Libre Graphics', and is coverage of the LGM. Gimp, Inkscape, Scribus and Xara each got two pages. Also, Inkscape people can be seen teeny-tiny on the pic of the lecture hall on the initial page, and then recognizable later on the Xara pages checking it out."

"Oh, and I was personally very excited to see it, as it's the first time I've really been interviewed for anything significant. :-)"

"Oh, and coming up, I hear that issue 81 will probably have a good article by Jon Phillips, covering many things."

Translation Status

Matiphas reports the current status on translations:

Translations have been quite improved :
Total number of PO files: 38
Significantly translated locales: (12 with a mean translation ratio of
98%)      ca cs de es fr hu it lt ru sl zh_CN zh_TW
Global average translation ratio has raised from 49% to 55%

Inkscape 0.44 pre3

Aaron reports: "The tarball for 0.44pre3 is now available at: at:

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/inkscape/inkscape-0.43%2B0.44pre3.sig?download

As they become available, binary packages can be found at:

Let's give a round of applause to our prerelease packagers. Thanks for getting these packages up so quickly. We all appreciate your efforts."

Inkscape 0.44pre2 Released

ACSpike has uploaded a 0.44pre2 tarball to Sourceforge.

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/inkscape/inkscape-0.43%2B0.44pre2.tar.gz?download

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/inkscape/inkscape-0.43%2B0.44pre2.sig?download

We are hurling quickly toward final release. We would encourage everyone to sit down with this package for a good testing session. You can find binary pacakges for your system as they are created at:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=93438&package_id=99112&release_id=422108

Inkscape Translation Status

Translators have recently improved the following: ko (8 to 40%), nb (6 to 34%) and nn (64 to 75%) are now ramping up , zh_CN has undergone a BIG boost (5 to 99%), hu is back in the race (72 to 76% and Arpad looks like wanting to commit some other things, but failed due to down svn), lt back in the race too (82 to 90%), and sk has maybe found a new volunteer.

Inkscape Trouble with Debian Unstable

A number of Debian Unstable users have reported major problems when using Inkscape. The symptoms vary but usually involve inkscape failing to start up. This appears to affect both Inkscape 0.43, and Inkscape compiled from SVN.

Wolfram Quester, Debian's Inkscape Package Maintainer, reports that currently there are two separate issues. Neither are technically Inkscape-specific nor Debian-specific but are due to related components.

The first issue is a libgc problem. Inkscape 0.43 dead locks with the new libgc 6.7; The new inkscape-pre1 simply segfaults. If you attach to the process using strace, you get millions of:

   futex(0x10679060, FUTEX_WAIT, 2, NULL)  = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
   futex(0x10679060, FUTEX_WAIT, 2, NULL)  = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
   futex(0x10679060, FUTEX_WAIT, 2, NULL 
   Process 32245 detached

The solution for this issue is to downgrade libgc.

The second issue is seen by KDE users that have the gtk2-engines-gtk-qt package installed. Wolfi reports, 'The package is used for different theming of gtk applications under KDE. You have it if there is an item "appearance-->gtk styles and themes" in your KControl menu. It causes duplicate inclusion of themes via different rc-files. Yuya Nishihara found out that this leads to a crash if the theme uses the smooth engine of gtk. Other applications are affected by this, too.'