[CREATE] Inkscape Announces 0.44 Release :: http://www.inkscape.org

[Jon Phillips]

Inkscape Announces 0.44 Release :: http://www.inkscape.org

The Inkscape community today officially released the latest version of
its vector graphic drawing software.  Inkscape 0.44 adds many new
features, is faster and more usable, better supports SVG, is translated
into more languages (17 on last count), and adds a lot of polish and
refinement.

Major new features include Layers dialog, support for clipping and
masking, improved PDF export with transparency, configurable keyboard
shortcuts, innovative "node sculpting" capability in Node tool, and the
Outline mode. Significant gains are achieved in performance, especially
in screen rendering and Node tool.

Noticeable user interface changes include docked color swatches,
interactive style indicator in the statusbar, a redesigned preferences
dialog, a text toolbar, and new icons. Our SVG compliance has also taken
a step forward, with the added support for the <switch> tag and ICC
color profiles for images. This release also includes hundreds of
smaller features, usability enhancements and bug fixes. 
 
For several releases, a collection of extension effects was shipped with
Inkscape, but the Effects menu to access them was turned off by
default. With this release, it has become mature enough, with effects
working out of the box on all platforms, so this menu is enabled. 

The Inkscape developer community would like to thank Google for their 
sponsorship of five students to work, during the summer of 2006, on 
several Inkscape development efforts:  SVG Filters, Inkboard protocol, 
PDF export with Cairo, and memory optimization. 

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 0.44:
 
     http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Release_Notes

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 can also import EPS, PostScript, and
most bitmap formats, and exports PNG, PS, PDF and various vector
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 maintaining a
friendly, open, community-oriented development process.