Inkscape Release Notes
----------------------
Please see the Inkscape website for the latest news about the project,
or the ChangeLog for further details about releases. This file contains 
the release notes for the current release.


  Inkscape 0.38


    In brief

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 


    New functionality

    * There's a complete support for horizontal and vertical kerning in
      text objects (the dx and dy attributes in SVG). Text objects with
      kerns remain fully editable.
    * New boolean operations: Division (Ctrl+/), when applied to two
      objects, cuts the bottom object into pieces along the edges of the
      top object; Cut Path (Ctrl+Alt+/) is similar, but only cuts the
      stroke of the bottom object (convenient for cutting paths without
      fill).
    * Multi-stop gradients are now fully supported: the redesigned
      gradient editor can add, delete, move, and set color/alpha for an
      arbitrary number of stops in a gradient.
    * The star tool now has a polygon mode which generates true polygons
      instead of stars with flat points, so that you don't get extra
      points when you convert to path.
    * There is a new library, libinkjar, which can read OpenOffice
      .sxw (and some .jar) files. This allows you to bundle a bunch of SVGs 
      and embedded files like .png for viewing in inkscape or inkview. 
      This is work in progress. 


    Important bugfixes

    * Inkscape's font support is cleaned up and improved. More installed
      fonts than before are now seen, displayed, and correctly applied.
      Font matcher is more intelligent yet faster and supports generic
      families and multiple family specifications, so bad font
      substitutions are now rare. Besides, Inkscape will warn you
      whenever it cannot find the exact match for the family or style
      requested by the document.
    * The new polygon intersector code fixed a number of ugly rendering
      screw-ups and lock-ups.
    * Previously, Inkscape canvas tended to "stick" after mouse release
      when you were panning a complex document by middle mouse button.
      This is now fixed.
    * Non-ASCII filenames (e.g. Cyrillic) are fully supported for all
      file operations (opening, saving, importing, exporting).
    * Problems on localized Windows systems caused by the wrong numeric
      format (comma as decimal separator in SVG) are resolved.
    * The show/hide guidelines toggle (the | key) is restored and fully
      functional.
    * The Inset and Outset commands create paths with much smaller
      distortions than before.
    * A newly created group, or a combined path, now remains at the
      level of its topmost member, instead of jumping to the top as
      before. Several other commands are also fixed to preserve the
      z-order and the parent of the object(s) they work on.
    * Copy/paste of objects with gradients now works between documents.
    * The bounding box of an object now includes stroke width (this
      fixes the truncated bitmap export and some other problems).
    * Several bugfixes were ported from Sodipodi; notably, the font size
      mismatch between Windows and Unix is now gone. 


    Interface and usability

    * Complete spacing/kerning control via keyboard in the text tool:
      when editing, Alt+< and Alt+> adjust letter spacing in the current
      line, Ctrl+Alt+< and Ctrl+Alt+> adjust spacing between lines, and
      Alt+arrows shift any character horizontally or vertically.
    * In text tool, clicking on a text object positions the cursor
      closest to the click, instead of at the end of the text object as
      before.
    * Node tool, text tool, and all shape tools now select objects
      regardless of grouping. This means you don't need to switch to
      selector for a Ctrl+click if you want to edit a grouped text
      object, path, or shape.
    * The shape tools (Rectangle, Ellipse, Star, and Spiral) are vastly
      more convenient to use:
          o All controls, such as the number of sides of a polygon, are
            moved from the "Tool Options" dialog to the editing window's
            top panel and are immediately accessible.
          o The top panel controls affect (any number of) the selected
            object(s) of the relevant type, not only the next created
            object as was the case with "Tool Options".
          o When you have any of the shape tools activated, the selected
            object now displays editing handles on the canvas, just like
            it did in the node tool before. This means you can draw a
            shape and edit it immediately, without switching to node tool.
          o You can now select objects by clicking (regardless of
            grouping), or deselect by Esc, while in a shape tool.
          o There's a two-way connection between the selected object and
            the top panel: dragging handles updates the relevant top
            panel controls, and editing the controls moves the handles. 
    * The Paste command (Ctrl+V) now places the pasted objects(s) right
      under the mouse cursor. The old behavior - pasting to the original
      location - is available as the Paste In Place command (Crtl+Alt+V).
    * The Raise and Lower commands reorder the selected objects only
      relative to those objects that overlap them, instead of all
      objects in the document.
    * Autoscrolling: The canvas now scrolls automatically when you drag
      an object or node, or do a rubberband selection, and go near or
      beyond the edge of the canvas. Similarly, autoscrolling keeps the
      text cursor always visible.
    * Accelerated scrolling: if you press and hold Ctrl+arrow to scroll
      canvas, Inkscape will gradually speed up scrolling. This makes
      navigating in complex documents much faster, without losing
      precision.
    * Accelerated Simplify: similar to scrolling, a single Simplify
      (Ctrl+L) does a slight simplification, but invoking it several
      times in quick succession makes it act more and more aggressively
      on the selected objects. It is thus easy to apply the exact amount
      of simplification you need for each case.
    * Scale/selection handles and the rubberband selection rectangle now
      use inversion and are therefore visible on any background. (Even
      50% gray... our inversion is smart :-) Path nodes and node/shape
      controls also use inverted elements for better visibility. Text
      editing cursor is also inverse.
    * In multi-object selections, every selected object now displays a
      small inverse diamond mark in the top left corner of its bounding
      box. This lets you see at once what objects are selected and what
      are not.
    * In the linear and radial gradient panes of the Fill and Stroke
      dialog:
          o You can press Ctrl while dragging handles to snap the linear
            gradient angle to 15 degrees increments (makes it easy to
            create strictly horizontal/vertical gradients).
          o The handles, bounding box, and gradient axes use inversion
            for better visibility.
          o The default linear gradient goes through the center of the
            object.
          o The radial gradient displays a radius handle for adjusting
            the gradient radius. 
    * The save dialog now remembers output format, can append file
      extension automatically, and warns when overwriting files. You can
      now save a file in Postscript format.
    * Many new icons are added, and many old icons are redrawn to be
      crisper, more informative, and more laconic. 


    Clipart, documentation, translations

    * Inkscape now ships with a small collection of clipart (when it
      grows big enough we may separate it into a package of its own).
    * The Inkscape tutorial is split into two parts, Basic and Advanced,
      and significantly expanded (new sections on offsets,
      simplification, compound paths, text tool, and more).
    * Two new tutorials,"Elements of design" and "Tips and Tricks," are
      added.
    * The Basic tutorial is available in Russian translation.
    * French, Hungarian, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish interface
      translations are updated. 


    Build requirements

Based on RH/FC-1/SuSE rpm builds:

    * XFree86-devel >= 4.0
    * libgnomeprintui-devel >= 2.2.0
    * libpng-devel
    * desktop-file-utils
    * gettext
    * libart_lgpl-devel >= 2.3.10
    * freetype2-devel
    * libxml2-devel >= 2.4.24
    * gtk2-devel
    * pango-devel
    * atk-devel
    * pkgconfig
    * libsigc++2 >= 1.2.5
    * perl-XML-Parser 

Note: SuSE 9.0 users need libsigc2++, which is available at :
http://guru.unixtech.be/rpm/packages/Development/libsigc++/


    Known issues

    * Saving as (or printing via) Postscript does not support gradients
      or transparency. The workaround is to export to bitmap (or print
      as bitmap).
    * Pasting text from another application into a text object on the
      canvas does not work. Workaround: open the Text dialog
      (Shift+Ctrl+T) and paste into the text editing area there, then
      click Apply.
    * Windows builds do not fully support SVGZ (gzipped SVG) format -
      they can read it but not write.
    * Windows builds may stop responding to mouse when you drag outside
      of the canvas. Workaround: press any tool switching key (e.g. F3)
      to unfreeze.
    * Windows builds still cannot handle non-ASCII characters in
      filenames or in text tool. 


    Previous releases

    * ReleaseNotes037 
      (http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ReleaseNotes037)
    * ReleaseNotes036 
      (http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ReleaseNotes036) 

