[CREATE] Inkscape Announces 0.42 Release :: http://www.inkscape.org :: Draw Freely.

[Jon Phillips]

July 26, 2005 - The Inkscape community today announced the release of
Inkscape 0.42, a cross-platform Open Source Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)
drawing tool.

Inkscape 0.42 is the most feature-filled release to date, with an
exceptional number of major and minor new features, usability improvements,
and bug fixes. While some of the new features simply fill long-standing
functionality gaps, others are truly revolutionary. Inkscape 0.42 is one
step closer to full SVG compliance. This release adds:

 * Flowed Text: Text objects that automatically re-flow to any shape (and
   not just a rectangle). 
 * Text Selection: One can now select part of a text and apply any style 
   to the selection, just like in a word processing application. 
 * Gradient Tool: A completely redesigned and much easier to use on-canvas 
   gradient interface with handles displayed directly in the drawing. 
 * Effects: These are now usable from within Inkscape on all platforms.
   This version ships with a collection of effects including path 
   interpolation, randomization, and various fractal algorithms. 
 * Color Swatches: This standard facility of most graphics software is now
   a part of Inkscape. 
 * Colored Clones: Clones may now be painted differently from their
   original. 
 * Tile Tracing: The Tile Clones dialog can trace an existing image with 
   tiling, producing a multitude of exciting effects. 
 * Grid Arrange, Baseline Align, Unclumping: There are new, powerful ways
   to arrange objects. 
 * Better PS/EPS Export: PostScript level 3 gradient support, better text 
   handling, and a command line option for batch export are in this
   release. 
 * Command Line SVG Analysis: Inkscape may now be used from the command
   line to query coordinates and dimensions of objects in an SVG file. 
 * Better SVG/CSS Compliance: Notably, internal CSS stylesheets are now 
   supported (read-only). 
 * Mac OS X Support: In addition to Linux and Windows, Inkscape 0.42 is
   now available as a fully self-contained dmg package for Mac OS X. 

There are also dozens of smaller features and usability enhancements
(especially in the Fill & Stroke dialog, Node tool, and drawing tools). In
this version the development community closed 404 bugs, some quite serious,
and 165 feature requests. Overall, the Inkscape developers are very excited
about this release and heartily recommend upgrading.

Thanks to Google's Summer of Code, there are four new student developers
adding new functionality to Inkscape this summer. Michael Wybrow is adding
connectors for automatic diagramming. David Yip is picking up the
development of Inkboard (http://inkboard.sf.net/) to integrate networked
collaborative editing of documents to Inkscape. Matthew Squires is adding
DXF Import and Export. Greg Steffensen is working with the Open Clip Art
Library to make a common graphical interface from the Library to Inkscape.
Thanks to the $20,000 worth of funding for these developments from Google,
the Inkscape developers are aiming to accelerate the development cycle for
the next few releases in order to promote these projects.

Download Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X packages:

     http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=93438

For many more details, see the complete Release Notes for 0.42:

     http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ReleaseNotes042

Community submitted screenshots:

     http://www.inkscape.org/screenshots/


About Inkscape

Inkscape is an open source drawing tool that uses the World Wide Web
Consortium's (W3C) scalable vector graphics format (SVG). Some supported
SVG features include basic shapes, paths, text, markers, clones, alpha
blending, transforms, gradients, and grouping. In addition, Inkscape
supports Creative Commons' metadata, node-editing, layers, complex path
operations, text-on-path, text-in-shape, and SVG XML editing. It also
imports several formats like EPS, PostScript, JPEG, PNG, BMP, and TIFF and
exports PNG as well as multiple vector-based formats.

Inkscape's main motivation is to provide the Open Source community with a
fully W3C compliant XML, SVG, and CSS2 drawing tool. Additional work
includes conversion of the codebase from C/Gtk to C++/Gtkmm, emphasizing a
lightweight core with powerful features added through an extension
mechanism, and the establishment of a friendly, open, community-oriented
development process.