Improved Compilation

April 30, 2004 - Peter Linnell has successfully tested compilation of the codebase with the final release of GCC 3.4. "The code clean-up by mental and others has resulted in much faster compiling and far fewer warnings - even with -Wall switched on. CGG 3.4 seems faster compiling c++ code, but is much more strict about c++ code."

Clones Tamed

April 25, 2004 - Bulia has changed the clones code to allows selecting how a clone reacts when its original is moved. In the Inkscape Preferences dialog, Misc tab, you can choose between:

• Moves in parallel: Clone is translated by the same vector as its original.
• Stays unmoved: Clone preserves its position when its original is moved.
• Moves according to transform: Clone moves according to the value of its transform= attribute. For example, a rotated clone will move in a different direction than its original.

Until now, the last of the three options was the only possible one. Now the default is the "moves in parallel" option. This makes handling clones much more intuitive and convenient in design.

Clone Feature & Menu Reorganization

April 22, 2004 - A new feature called 'clone' has been added to Inkscape by Bulia Byak. This permits creating copies of a shape that mirror the original as it is changed. For example, if the original object is resized, all of the clones will resize identically. This command is available via the 'Alt+D' shortcut. 'Shift+Alt+D' permits unlinking the clone.

A clone is the Inkscape term for the svg:use object. This is similar to a duplicate, except that it's linked back to its original. You can move/scale/rotate/skew/flip each clone independently, but all other aspects (fill, stroke, path, etc) of a clone are dynamically updated from the original if the original is changed. For example, you can draw a petal, create several clones of it, position them into a flower, and node-edit the original petal - all the clone petals will be updated automatically so that the flower remains symmetric at all times.

We've also removed the Dialogs menu, with its contents shifted to other menus; each dialog is now close to other commands that deal with similar aspects of the program.

Introduction to the Inkscape 0.39 Pango Rearchitecting Effort

April 16, 2004 - The principle focus for the 0.39 release is slated to be "Pangoification". While we expect that there's going to be a number of new features, bug fixes, code cleanups, etc. our project's top objective for this release is to replace libnrtype with Pango.

"Introduction to the Inkscape 0.39 Pango Rearchitecting Effort" provides a basic introduction to this work, explaining what we currently have, what Pango does, and the what/why/how of the conversion.

Project Status 2004-04-15

April 15, 2004 - The bi-monthly status report for April 15 is online for review. We've reached number 31 on the SourceForge Most Active list. :-)

Inkscape 0.38.1 Officially Announced and Released

April 11, 2004 - The focus of this release has been our Bug Hunt. Of the 57 open bug reports at the time of our last release, only 12 remain; of the 107 bugs submitted during this bughunt, all but 17 are now closed; the ratio of open to total bugs went down from 33% to 10%. Of the 285 bugs reported since the inception of the project, fewer than 30 remain. In total, over 135 bug reports were closed during the Bug Hunt. Countless other bugs were discovered by the developers and exterminated on the spot without ever going into the tracker. We are especially appreciative of the many users who have helped us identify the various bugs and verify the solutions.

Aside from bugfixes, a good deal of new features and usability enhancements went into this release:

• Text and fonts: full kerning and spacing support, better installed font detection, better alternate font matching, better usability
• Path operations: new commands to cut paths, less distortions, better usability
• Gradients: full support for multi-stop gradients, bugfixes
• Shape tools: polygons, dramatically better usability with the top panel, bugfixes
• Libinkjar: a library for compound document support of packaged SVG and PNG files
• Pure usability: canvas autoscrolling, accelerated scrolling, inversion for visibility, more intuitive cut-and-paste, per-object selection indication, save dialog, new icons
• Paraphernalia: new and expanded tutorials, clipart, translation updates

For more details, see the Release Notes for 0.38. Also see, the Screenshots Section and don't forget to Download your packages (Linux and Windows)

0.38.1

April 10, 2004 - Two serious bugs were introduced into 0.38 in the flurry of last-day activity... luckily, our users reported them at once (thanks!). So we decided to do a bugfix release immediately, before 0.38 really took off. The 0.38.1 release is now the latest and best Inkscape available from Sourceforge. Binary packages are starting to appear, too, including a Windows package.

0.38 Release Tarball Available

April 7, 2004 - The 0.38 release has been finalized and the official tarball is available for packaging. Over 130 bugs have been closed in this release, plus a range of new features. For the details, please see the Release Notes. The tarball and packages can be downloaded from the Download Page.

We will allow a couple days for packagers to create the RPM's, Deb's, and EXE's before we make the formal announcement of this release. If you'd like to assist in packaging, please join the inkscape-devel@ list and let us know.

Goals for 0.38 Release Achieved

April 2, 2004 - We've achieved the goal set forth for the 0.38 release. The ratio of open-to-closed bug reports has been reduced from 33% to our goal of 10%, representing over 160 bugs closed during the 0.38 development cycle. Of the total of 285 bugs registered against Inkscape since the project's inception, fewer than 30 remain.