New features

In addition to the Google SOC efforts, Inkscapers have added a bunch of new features since 0.42. Here's some of the things to look forward to in 0.43:

For tablet users, Inkscape now supports pressure sensitivity and tilt support.

The Node tool has received several cool new features including path segment selection, double-clicking to add a new point to a path, and editing paths by dragging on any point. Early testers of these new node features are raving about them.

A new Whirl extension twists selected paths around the specified center point.

Summer's Night is an extension that linearly distorts a path into the destination quadrilateral.

Update on Google Summer of Code Projects

With the coming completion date for the SOC projects, we're seeing a lot of activity with new code added to the codebase.

David's Inkboard code is now integrated into Inkscape and can be activated by configuring Inkscape with the --enable-inkboard option. You'll also need to delete any existing ~/.inkscape/menu.xml file and let inkscape regenerate it. This will cause a 'Whiteboard' menu option to appear in the application.

Greg Steffensen has released several versions of the Clip Art Browser. It is a stand alone tool, available at http://developer.berlios.de/projects/ocalhelper/.

Michael Wybrow has committed his new connector tool context code to CVS. Currently it is able to create basic straight-line connectors and interact with and modify existing connectors, including reroute, detach, or attach to new shapes. Currently connectors only attach to the centre of shapes. You can mark shapes as ignored or avoided for the purpose of routing, and connectors will reroute to avoid the objects marked to avoid. Soon, lines will also re-route when shapes are dropped onto their path.

Matt Squires is working on DXF import capabilities in the form of a dxf2svg tool, and will be adding it to CVS soon. It's been lightly tested against AutoCAD and CadStd Lite. Additional testing against DXF output from other CAD programs is needed.

Join us in thanking the SOC students for their hard work; try out their new features and let them know what you think!

New RSS Feed

Inkscape news is now available via the url http://www.inkscape.org/inkscape.rss. With this new feed, we expect to be able to see more frequent news updates. This is an RSS 2.0 feed updated once hourly. If anyone needs Atom or RSS 1.0 feeds, please send bryce at bryceharrington dot org a script to convert RSS 2.0 files into those formats and it will be added.

Inkscape Book

In celebration of the 0.42.2 release, Tavmjog Bah has made a new release of his book on Inkscape. It now covers more that 90% of the Inkscape user interface. It is still a work in progress. The chapters at the beginning and end need work and it is a bit short on examples. The book documents v0.42. It will be updated for v0.43 when that release gets closer in time. You can have a look at:

http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/index.php

Inkscape 0.42.2 Released

As mentioned earlier, several people experienced issues with installing the 0.42 package on certain platforms. In the weeks since then, we've investigated and solved the vast majority of these issues, and created a patch release, 0.42.2. This release includes only bug fixes, not new features.

Website Updates

Please check out our new "Showcase" section, where we've posted a few examples of Inkscape in use. If you would like to add a new showcase, please prepare it in HTML format and send it to the development mailing list, including licensing terms (we encourage Public Domain).

Project Status 2005-08-15

New status numbers for Aug 15 show the best numbers we've ever had, including reaching as high as the #2 most active project on SourceForge.