"Comics in Inkscape 0.45 with John Bintz"

John Bintz writes, "hey everyone, i just finished putting together the screenshot for inkscape and how I use it with my comics -- let me know what you think:"

Computerworld: "Human touch key to open source success"

There's a mention of Inkscape and the Libre Graphics Meeting in an article at Computerworld.

Speaking of the Libre Graphics Meeting, folks from GIMP, Scribus, CREATE, and other projects are are busy setting up our next get-together in Montreal, Canada. This will be held the weekend of May 4-6, 2007. We strongly encourage all Inkscape developers and users to join us. Last year's conference was an invaluable way to meet and directly work with the key developers from Gimp, Scribus, and Blender on topics of common interest. It also proved to be an excellent way for users to learn new tricks and to share ideas directly with developers.

Stay tuned for more info, but make sure to pencil in May 4-6 on your calendars!

Inkscape Translation Progress

Here's an update on our translation status for the release branch.

Inkscape 0.45-pre2 Beta Release

Our next pre-release for Inkscape 0.45 is downloadable from the Inkscape SF site.

Changes since -pre1 are largely updates to translations and documentation. Unless there are any suprises, this will probably be the last pre-release before the final official release. Problems can be reported to Inkscape's bug tracker.

Inkscape 0.45 Hard Freeze

Aaron and I are ready at this time to declare the Hard Freeze for the 0.45 branch.

From this point until the release, please do not commit to the 0.45 release branch; all changes must be posted as patches to the patch tracker for review and integration by the release wardens (Aaron and I) or translation wardens (Arpad and Cornelius).

There are still a number of critical bugs that probably won't be fixed soon. However, we will plan on producing a 0.45.1 release at a later date where we can catch some of this.

We would also like at this time to declare String Freeze, to assist translators in finalizing their translations. If there are any remaining string issues such as non-translatable strings or fixes to existing strings, please send patches in ASAP.

Inkscape Translation Progress

The Inkscape translators have been hard at work on the 0.45 release branch generating translations. Below is our current status, which you may wish to compare with our August status.

New translations include bg (Bulgarian), km (Khmer), and th (Thai). dz (Dzongkha) and en_US@piglatin (Iglatinpay) have received significant contributions since the last time we took stats.

Inkscape 0.45-pre1 Beta Release

A preview source release of Inkscape 0.45 is now available for download.

The purpose of this release is to gain feedback from users about any serious problems that should be fixed for the 0.45 release. Please report bugs to Inkscape's bug tracker.

Inkscape 0.45 stable release branch created

Today we have branched Inkscape into a stable branch for the upcoming 0.45 release and returned HEAD to unfrozen development work.

The stable branch can be checked out via (Line wraps marked »):

svn checkout https://inkscape.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/inkscape/inkscape/branches/»
RELEASE_0_45_BRANCH inkscape-0.45-release-branch

SCALE Inkscape BOF

John Taber and other Los Angeles area inkscapers will be giving demos of the new Inkscape at the Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE) 2007, located at the Los Angeles Airport Westin, on Feb 10-11.

Inkscape About Screen

Voting has concluded on the Inkscape 0.45 About Screen contest. Congratulations are due to Molumen on his submission.

Also, thanks go out to all of the artists who participated, and who helped break in the new features! :-)

Brazillian Inkscape Site

Yemanja and Popolon pointed out a Brazillian website dedicated to Inkscape, which includes several cool new extensions for Inkscape, two new tutorials (making an animated swirl, and drawing a lightening bolt), and a gallery.

Thrice-Daily Builds

Daniel Diaz reports that the Bleeding-Edge Inkscape Factory is back up and running, producing Windows snapshot builds three times a day.

Final Voting for 0.45 About Screen Contest

A number of excellent About Screen submissions have been submitted through the DeviantArt community. That community has voted the following as the top three:

All developers are encouraged to submit a vote for one of these three images. You can do so by posting to the inkscape-devel@ mailing list. Voting is open to anyone whose name is in the Inkscape AUTHORS or TRANSLATORS file, or who is registered as a member of the Inkscape SourceForge project as of today.

Over Two Million Served

We've passed the 2 million Inkscape downloads mark this week. Thanks go out to all the users who have enjoyed Inkscape and spread the program through word of mouth to all their friends and relatives. And thanks especially go to everyone who has left their mark on Inkscape through bug reports and fixes, new features, documentation, and translations.

Note that this counts only downloads from our website at SourceForge - uncounted more people have gotten Inkscape through Linux distros, magazine CD's, and other sources. It's truly amazing to think how much artwork has come about through all the users of this program.

"A Guide to Inkscape"

Tavmjong Bah has uploaded a new version of his book "A Guide to Inkscape". A downloadable and printable PDF version is also available for $7.50 from lulu.

Happy New Year!

All of the Inkscape developers want to wish everyone a Happy and Prosperous New Year!

Inkscape 0.45 is currently frozen in preparation for release. We are in great need of testers to review the bug tracker and try to reproduce bugs listed there.

Regarding development, we could always use more developers or other contributors. Whether you can program or not, if you would like to contribute to the project, we could use your help.