                                  ReleaseNotes

                                 Inkscape 0.42.2

In brief

   Inkscape 0.42 is our biggest release so far by the sheer number of major
   and minor features, usability improvements, and bugfixes. While some of
   the new features simply fill long-standing functionality gaps, others are
   truly revolutionary. Here are the highlights:

     * Flowed text: text objects that automatically reflow in any shape (not
       only rectangle).
     * Text selection: finally you can shift+arrow or drag over part of a
       text and apply any style to the selected span.
     * Gradient tool: a completely redesigned and much easier to use gradient
       interface, with gradient handles displayed right on canvas.
     * Effects 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: a standard facility in most graphic software, now in
       Inkscape too.
     * Colored clones: clones can now be painted differently from their
       original.
     * Tile tracing: the Tile Clones dialog can trace the existing image with
       the tiling, producing a multitude of exciting effects.
     * Grid arrange, baseline align, unclumping: new powerful ways to arrange
       objects.
     * Better PS/EPS export: gradient support, better text handling, a
       command line option for batch export.
     * Command line SVG analysis: use Inkscape 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).
     * OS X support: In addition to Linux and Windows, Inkscape 0.42 is
       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 we closed 404 bugs, some quite serious, and 165 feature
   requests. Overall, we're really excited about this version and heartily
   recommend upgrading.

Text

     * The text layout engine is completely rewritten to make it easier to
       maintain, faster, and more memory-efficient.

     * Inkscape now features a complete support for flowed text:

        * Creation of flowed text is simple. Just drag anywhere on canvas
          (except over an existing text object) using the Text tool to create
          a rectangular frame. After you release mouse, the frame is created
          and you can type text into it. (You can press Esc while dragging to
          cancel flowed text creation.)

        * Resizing a frame is as simple as dragging the handle in the bottom
          right corner to change its width or height. Drag with Ctrl to
          restrict resizing to horizontal or vertical. Such resizing can be
          done by Text tool, Node tool, or any shape tool; however, only Text
          tool also highlights the frame border when a flowed text is
          selected.

        * Transforming a flowed text is straightforward. It is selected as a
          single object including both the frame and the text, and can be
          moved, scaled, rotated etc.

     * Dragging with the Text tool creates a regular flowed text object whose
       frame is internal (does not appear as a standalone object on canvas)
       and rectangular. You can, however, create a different kind of flowed
       text: linked flowed text that can use as its frame any existing shape,
       including non-rectangular ones. It can also use a chain of frames,
       with the text flowing from one frame to the next one in chain.

        * To create a linked flowed text, select a text object and one or
          more shapes or paths, then use the Flow into Frame command (Alt+W)
          in the Text menu. When two or more shapes or paths were selected,
          they become a chain of frames for this flowed text.

        * A linked flowed text is in some ways similar to a clone. It will
          reflow when the frame is changed, but it is a separate object that
          can be moved away and transformed independently from its frame. As
          with a clone, when a linked flowed text is selected, you can use
          Shift+D in Selector to jump to its first frame (this is useful if
          the frame is invisible or locked).

        * Statusbar description of a selected object will identify regular
          text, flowed text, and linked flowed text as different kinds of
          objects.

     * Full on-canvas editing of flowed text is now possible. Just click in
       any flowed text object with text tool and type - the text will reflow
       automatically within its frame. Pressing Enter starts a new paragraph.
       Letterspacing and linespacing adjustments (but not manual kerns) work
       in flowed text as well.

     * The Unflow Text command (Alt+Shift+W) converts a flowed text into a
       single-line regular text object, cutting its link to its frame.

     * Another command, Convert to Text, also converts flowed text to a
       regular text object, but fully preserves appearance (i.e. all lines
       are kept where they were). The resulting object does not reflow
       anymore but it is still editable. It is recommended to use this
       command if you have flowed text in a document but want it to be
       viewable in SVG 1.1 renderers.

     * Text selection in Text tool now works. To select a text fragment:

        * With text editing cursor active, use Shift+arrows to select by
          character, or Ctrl+Shift+arrows to select by word, or Ctrl+A to
          select all of the current text object.

        * Drag with mouse over any text object.

        * Double click on a text to select one word, triple click to select
          one line.

     * When you have some text selected:

        * Pressing Ctrl+B/Ctrl+I applies bold/italic to the selection.

        * The Text&Font dialog applies style to the selection.

        * The Cut, Copy, and Paste Style commands apply only to the
          selection.

        * Kerning keys (Alt+arrows) shift the selection leaving the rest of
          the text in place (i.e. insert the opposite-directed kerns at the
          start and the end of the selection).

        * Letterspacing keys (Alt+<, Alt+>) adjust letterspacing only within
          the selection.

        * Rotation keys (Alt+[, Alt+]; Ctrl+[, Ctrl+]) rotate all characters
          in selection.

     * The Text&Font and Fill&Stroke dialogs now reflect the style under
       cursor or (if there's text selection) in the selection, instead of the
       style of the entire text object as before. If the selection contains
       several text spans with different styles, then the font size and
       spacing fields in Text&Font display averaged values, and the
       Fill&Stroke displays averaged color.

     * Several new text editing shortcuts:

        * Ctrl+arrows move the cursor by one word forward or backward (this
          disables the scrolling by Ctrl+arrows while you are editing text).

        * Ctrl+Home and Ctrl+End move cursor to the start/end of the text
          object, correspondingly.

        * Any character or the entire selection can be rotated by pressing
          Ctrl+[ / Ctrl+] (90 degrees rotation) or Alt+[ / Alt+] (pixel-size
          rotation, zoom in for finer adjustment).

     * International text support is greatly improved, especially for
       right-to-left scripts. See the all-new example file
       share/examples/i18n.svg.

     * Unicode entry in Text tool now conforms to ISO 14755's "basic method".
       This means you can now type Unicode code points consisting of other
       than 4 hex digits. As before, press Ctrl+U in Text tool to start
       Unicode mode. A preview of the current character is shown in the
       statusbar as you type the hex digits. To complete your input, press
       Enter. To enter more characters without leaving the Unicode mode,
       press Space instead of Enter.

     * Several usability enhancements in text editing:

        * cursor movement is visual in RTL and mixed-direction text;

        * cursor goes straight up/down rather than to the same character
          index in the line above;

        * cursor becomes italic (slanted) when in italic text.

     * A text object's baseline anchor -- at the left end of its first
       character's baseline -- is visualized as a small square mark when the
       text object is selected. This is especially useful when doing baseline
       snapping, alignment, or distribution (see below).

     * Several new text styles are supported but don't yet have a UI for
       setting them: text-align:justify, word-spacing, textpath startOffset,
       block-progression:lr.

Gradients

     * Gradient editing on canvas is now available, much more convenient and
       powerful than the old way of dragging gradient knots in the
       Fill&Stroke dialog.

        * Any number of selected objects can simultaneously display handles
          and direction lines for the linear and radial gradients in their
          fills or strokes. You can drag these handles directly in the
          drawing, to interactively adjust gradient positions.

        * Gradient handles can be enabled in the Node tool, shape tools, Text
          tool, and Dropper tool (on by default), as well as in Selector and
          Zoom tools (off by default). Use the Inkscape Preferences dialog to
          change this.

        * Any gradient handle, if dragged close to a handle of another
          gradient, will merge with that handle (drag with Shift to prevent
          merging). Dragging such a merged handle will adjust any number of
          gradients attached to it. To separate merged handles, drag them
          away one by one with Shift.

        * Radial gradients display handles in the center and at the ends of
          two radii, which allows you to move, rotate, squeeze, or stretch
          the gradient to form an arbitrary ellipse. Also, you can
          independently adjust the focus of the gradient; drag the central
          handle with Shift to separate the focus handle.

        * When dragged, handles will snap to the edges (and their
          continuations) and the central axes of the bounding boxes of all
          selected objects (drag with Shift to prevent snapping).

        * Dragging with Ctrl will snap the angle of the linear or radial
          gradient to the user-settable angle increments (default is 15
          degrees). A center of a radial gradient, dragged with Ctrl, will be
          constrained to horizontal and vertical movement relative to its
          previous position.

        * Dragging with Ctrl+Alt will move a handle along the gradient
          direction (for linear), radius (for radial), or their
          perpendiculars, allowing you e.g. to stretch or squeeze a linear
          gradient without disturbing its angle.

        * Dragging with Ctrl+Shift will scale the entire linear or radial
          gradient around its center.

        * Gradient handles for each gradient are connected by blue lines for
          fill gradient and yellow lines for stroke gradient.

     * The Gradient tool (Ctrl+F1 or the g key) is a new convenient way to
       create, edit, and manage gradients:

        * Simply drag anywhere on canvas to create a gradient on selected
          objects. Existing gradients can be edited by dragging their handles
          (not only in Gradient tool, but in any tool that has on-canvas
          gradient editing enabled). If the selected object already had a
          gradient, the new gradient will use the same colors as the old one;
          otherwise it will go from fully opaque to fully transparent with
          the color of the selected object. However if you start dragging
          from another object, the tool will pick up the gradient or the
          color of that object.

        * Instead of dragging, you can double-click an object to create a new
          gradient centered within the object's bounding box. If you have
          several objects selected, or if your selected object is behind
          another one, you can double-click with Ctrl to create gradients on
          selected object(s) without changing selection.

        * The tool's controls bar lets you choose the type of the newly
          created gradients (linear or radial) and whether they will be
          applied to the objects' fill or stroke.

        * The selected (blue) on-canvas gradient handle can be nudged by
          arrow keys with all the regular modifiers (Alt to move by 1 screen
          pixel, Shift to move by 10 times the distance). The Tab and
          Shift+Tab keys let you move selection from one handle to the next
          or previous. Pressing Esc (or a click in empty space) deselects the
          selected handle; if no handles are selected, it deselects selected
          objects.

        * The selected gradient handle will intercept any color/opacity
          setting commands and apply them to the corresponding stop(s) of its
          gradient(s). This means that two-stop gradients can be completely
          edited without ever opening the Gradient Editor dialog. In
          particular, you can use the following methods to change the
          color/opacity of the selected handle:

           * Dropper tool (for example, to blend a radial gradient onto
             background, select its outer handle and pick the background
             color with the dropper).

           * Paste style (if the pasted style contains both fill and stroke
             style, the stop will take the fill style).

           * Fill and stroke dialog (this allows you to set the color of
             several gradient stops at once if their handles are merged
             together; both Fill and Stroke tabs of the dialog work to set
             color on a handle).

           * Swatches dialog.

        * Double-clicking any gradient handle will open the Gradient Editor
          dialog with that handle's gradient loaded and the corresponding
          stop selected in the list.

        * For each gradient, you can choose one of the document's gradient
          definitions (sets of color/opacity stops) from the drop-down list
          in the controls bar. If a handle is selected, this list displays
          the gradient attached to that handle; otherwise it shows the
          gradient of the selected object (or "Multiple gradients" if there
          are different gradients in selection, or if the handle is a merged
          handle with different gradients attached). Correspondingly,
          choosing a gradient definition from the list applies it to the
          gradient(s) of the selected handle or, if none, to all selected
          objects.

        * The Duplicate button creates a copy of the selected gradient
          definition and applies it to the selected objects; use that when
          you have several objects sharing one gradient definition but want
          to change that. The Edit... button opens the gradient dialog where
          you can edit the gradient definition (add/move/delete stops and
          change colors and opacities of stops).

     * Before, the actual direction of the linear gradient was not always
       perpendicular to the line connecting it handles if the bounding box of
       the object was not a square. This is now fixed, though the fix only
       works for new gradients that you create (i.e. gradients in old files
       are not affected).

     * The Gradient Editor dialog can now delete the first or last stop if
       there are more than 2 stops in a gradient.

Clones, tiling, distributing, unclumping

     * Both Fill and Stroke tabs of the Fill&Stroke dialog have a new mode
       button, Unset paint (with a question mark icon). Pressing this button
       removes the fill or stroke property from the style of selected
       objects, which has the visible effect of painting the fill black and
       removing the stroke.

           The usefulness of this is that clones of such an object can
           redefine the unset fill or stroke, which means you can have clones
           painted differently from their original and from each other. Just
           use the Fill&Stroke dialog on a clone to assign it any kind of
           fill or stroke paint (flat color, gradient, etc.). Moreover, you
           can unset paint on some of the objects in a group, clone the
           group, and paint the clone; only those objects with unset paint
           will accept the paint, while others will retain their original
           paint.

     * In Selector, arbitrary transformations of clone(s) selected together
       with their original(s) now behave as expected, i.e. the selection is
       transformed as a whole. Previously, this only worked for translations
       but not scales/skews/rotates. Similarly, aligning/distributing clones
       along with their original now works as expected.

     * Tile clones dialog improvements:

        * The new Color tab allows you to change, randomize, or alternate the
          hue, saturation, and lightness of the tile color per row or per
          column. You can also set the initial color of the tiles to which
          these alterations will apply. Changing color works only if the
          clones' original (or some parts of it, if the original is a group)
          has unset fill or stroke (use the Fill&Stroke dialog to unset
          paint).

        * The new Tracing tab allows you to trace the drawing under the
          tiling. You can use it to:

           * pick color, opacity, or any or the RGB or HLS channels in the
             area covered by each tile;

           * then optionally randomize, invert, or gamma-correct the picked
             value;

           * and finally apply that value to the tile's probability of
             presence, size, color, or opacity (or any combinations of
             these).

                This makes it possible to do an infinite variety of effects
                on drawings (both vector drawings and imported bitmaps), such
                as tessellated mosaics, "impressionist paint", geometric
                grids, color separation lattices, and more (see the
                Screenshots page on our site). Also, you can use this feature
                to control the extent and the density of your tiling by
                preparing a temporary shape and tracing opacity-to-presence
                over it, or to emulate "object brush" by tiling over a stroke
                with a pattern or randomized scattering.

        * The new Unclump button attempts to reduce the local unevenness in
          distribution of the tiles. When you unclump a tiling, each tile
          tries to move to a point equidistant from its closest neighbors. If
          a single unclumping is not enough, you can press Unclump
          repeatedly, trying to achieve a balance between eliminating
          small-scale clumps and preserving large-scale features of the
          tiling. Unclumping can be applied to both randomized and regular
          tilings, changing them both into a characteristic texture which
          appears random, but not blindly random -- very similar to what a
          human would produce if asked to evenly fill a space with random
          dots. As a result, properly unclumped dot tilings remind of
          hand-made engravings.

        * Instead of specifying the numbers of rows and columns, you can now
          set the size of the rectangle to be filled with your tiling
          (convenient when you need to trace over a bitmap or drawing of
          certain size).

        * On all tabs, controls have been rearranged into a table-like layout
          for more convenient access. Separate controls are added for
          alternating values per row or per column, as well as for
          randomizing each value separately (e.g. now you can randomize only
          horizontal shifts but not vertical).

        * The new Exponent values on the Shift tab allow you to make rows or
          columns to exponentially converge (for values less than 1) or
          diverge (for values greater than 1). The default of 1 creates rows
          and columns spaced evenly.

        * The upper limits for scales and shifts are increased (from 100% to
          1000% of tile size), and the precision of the input fields is
          higher.

        * There's a mini-statusbar at the bottom of dialog which shows the
          number of tiled clones of the selected object.

     * Improvements in the Align & Distribute dialog:

        * The new Randomize button moves the selected objects randomly within
          the bounding box of the selection. To achieve the most eye-pleasing
          results, randomization can be followed by one or more rounds of
          unclumping (see the next item).

        * The new Unclump button works the same as in the Tile Clones dialog,
          except that it unclumps the selected objects instead of the tiled
          clones of the selected object.

        * Four new buttons let you align or distribute horizontally or
          vertically the baseline anchors of the selected text objects
          (non-texts are unaffected by these buttons). Now you can easily
          align or distribute lines of text in different fonts or sizes,
          regardless of whether they have letters with descenders (such as
          "y" or "j") or not.

        * All the icons in the dialog are redrawn in a consistent style.
          Buttons are rearranged for clarity. Tooltips are made shorter and
          easier to understand.

        * Nodes can now be aligned or distributed vertically and horizontally
          when in node editing mode.

     * With the new Grid Arrange dialog (from Object menu), Inkscape now has
       the ability to arrange selected objects into a regular grid:

        * You can define the numbers of rows/columns in the grid. When you
          change one of the numbers, the other is updated automatically based
          on the total number of selected objects.

        * You can make all rows/columns equal height/width, or you can make
          them fit the tallest/widest object in each row/column.

        * You can set the vertical and horizontal alignment of objects in
          rows and columns correspondingly.

        * You can set the row/column spacing explicitly (negative values are
          allowed), or you can make the entire grid squeeze or stretch to
          exactly fit the current selection's bounding box.

Effects

     * The Effects menu can be made visible by the checkbox labeled "Enable
       script effects" on the "Misc" tab of the Inkscape Preferences Dialog.
       This menu is not on by default because of some remaining problems with
       the extensions, but many users report that they are already quite
       usable. Most extensions that ship with Inkscape require Python to be
       installed; some require Perl; also it is now possible to use Ruby for
       programming extensions.

     * Extensions now work on Windows (if you have Windows versions of
       Python/Perl installed).

     * Script extensions can have GUIs to adjust their parameters within
       specified ranges and with specified default values. All parameters are
       remembered and restored across sessions (via the preferences.xml file
       where all other Inkscape preferences are stored).

     * Effects now correctly work with Undo/Redo and modify the "document
       changed" flag for save confirmation on exit. Effects no longer open an
       additional window to display results.

     * Scripts that return error along with data on STDERR have that data
       displayed to the user, to allow for more complete reporting of
       scripting errors.

     * A new command line parameter --extension-directory allows external
       extension installers to find the directory in which Inkscape is
       configured to look for extensions.

     * Inkscape now looks for Extensions in both the systemwide Inkscape's
       share/extensions directory and the user's extensions directory (e.g.
       ~/.inkscape/extensions on Linux).

     * Several new effects, written in Python, ship with Inkscape 0.42:

        * Connect the Dots: Places a dot and a number at each node of the
          selected path.

        * Draw Handles: Draws control handles on the nodes of the selected
          path.

        * FretFind: This is a fretboard design tool capable of designing
          multiscale and microtonal fretboards for guitars.

        * Interpolate: Blends paths and styles (flat color fills only) with a
          given number of steps; requires two paths to be selected.

        * Kochify: A two-step fractal effect. First, select a path and do
          "Kochify (Load)" to store it. Then select another path and do
          "Kochify" to replace each segment (between the nodes) of the
          selected path with the stored path. For example, if the stored path
          is an S-like curve, the path will become "wavy"; the size of the
          waves will depend on how many nodes the source path has (use the
          "Add node" button in the Node tool to add nodes between selected
          nodes, or the Simplify command to remove extra nodes).

        * Lindenmayer: Draws deterministic context-free Lindenmayer Systems.
          Creates a new path object in the 0,0 point (located off of the
          canvas).

        * Motion: Draws isometric 3D wireframe path extrusions for selected
          paths.

        * Radius Randomize: Randomly moves path nodes, node handles, or both
          within the specified radius. Operates on selected paths.

        * Random Tree: Draws a random tree - a classic application of turtle
          geometry. Creates a new path object in the 0,0 point (located off
          of the canvas).

        * Segment Straightener: Makes curved path segments a specified
          percentage straighter by either pulling control handles toward
          their node or toward a point a third of the distance along the
          destination straight line. Operates on selected paths.

        * Wavy: Converts the selected rectangle objects into appropriately
          sized wavy lines. Allows user to specify custom equations f(x) to
          use in the plotting.

     * Apart from the effects, the share/extensions directory contains
       several helpful Python modules that you can reuse in your own
       extensions:

        * bezmisc.py: A few miscellaneous functions for Bezier math.

        * cubicsuperpath.py: An alternative path data list structure that
          converts all segments to cubic Bezier curves and stores them as
          points rather than segments.

        * ffgeom.py: Point and Segment geometry classes used in FretFind.

        * ffproc.py: Functions that place strings and frets for FretFind.

        * ffscale.py: Converts ET and Scala scale descriptions into useful
          ratio arrays.

        * inkex.py: A helper class for creating Inkscape effects.

        * pturtle.py: A path turtle class for creating Inkscape extensions
          with turtle geometry.

        * simplepath.py: Unpacks SVG path data into a simple list structure
          that mimics the textual representation.

        * simplestyle.py: Unpacks SVG style attributes into a dictionary and
          pack them back up.

Bitmap tracing

     * The code of potrace (Inkscape's built-in tracer) has been updated to
       version 1.6 which works noticeably faster. The maximum number of scans
       is now 256.

     * A tracing progress indicator has been added. Also, the during-trace
       abort feature is removed, which reduces the CPU load of polling for
       user interrupts. There is still a between-trace abort feature, so
       during long multi-pass traces, the user will be able to interrupt
       those. With the performance enhancements of the new potrace version,
       however, users hopefully won't need to interrupt single pass traces as
       much as before.

Loading, saving, export, command line

     * In PS or EPS export, Inkscape now supports gradient fills (both linear
       and radial) using PostScript Level 3 operators. Unfortunately
       PostScript (even in Level 3) does not support transparency, so this
       only works for gradients which use different opaque colors, not
       different levels of transparency of the same color (see Known Problems
       below for some more limitations).

     * Load from URL: Inkscape now includes a configure option to link
       against GNOME VFS; if this option is on (which is the default if GNOME
       VFS is found on the system), Inkscape will be able to load SVG
       documents directly from URLs. Currently this only works when used from
       the command line, e.g.

 inkscape http://openclipart.org/clipart/food/honey.svg

           This feature loads the URL directly into memory rather than to a
           temporary file.

     * When saving as SVGZ (compressed SVG), you can now choose between
       compressed Inkscape SVG and compressed plain SVG.

     * Documents can now be exported to PS or EPS from the command line
       (--export-ps and --export-eps correspondingly). For EPS export, there
       are command line options for converting text to path
       (--export-text-to-path) and setting the bounding box to the page
       instead of the drawing (--export-bbox-page).

     * Determining the dimensions of an object in an SVG document is, in
       general case, impossible without fully rendering the entire document.
       Yet this information can be very useful for various automated tasks,
       such as building composite SVG documents from objects in separate
       source documents. Now, to accomplish this, you can run Inkscape with
       one of the command line options --query-x, --query-y, --query-width or
       --query-height. The --query-id option specifies the ID of the object
       that is queried; if not given, the corresponding dimension of the
       entire drawing is returned. For example:

   $ inkscape tutorial-basic.svg --query-height
   3998.6800
   $ inkscape tutorial-basic.svg --query-y --query-id text1555
   528.94486

           The returned values are in px (SVG user units).

     * For PNG export, the new option --export-area-drawing exports the
       entire drawing (not canvas), giving you a PNG of all visible objects
       without margins.

     * Inkscape can now export documents into LaTeX with PSTricks macros.

     * The new command line option --vacuum-defs performs the "Vacuum Defs"
       command, i.e. removes the unused definitions from the <defs>
       section(s) of the document. If specified with --export-plain-svg, it
       affects the exported plain SVG file; otherwise it replaces the source
       file and exits.

Tools improvements

     * All tools that were previously able to click to select (namely Node,
       shapes, and gradient tools), can now do Shift+click (toggle selection
       for an object) and Alt+click (select under) in exactly the same way as
       the Selector tool.

     * In Selector, doubleclicking an object switches Inkscape to the
       corresponding tool (Node tool for paths, the corresponding shape tools
       for shapes, Text tool for text objects). Doubleclicking a group enters
       that group (i.e. makes it the temporary current layer); doubleclicking
       on an empty space returns to the parent layer.

     * In the Node tool:

        * Ctrl+click on a node handle retracts that handle back to its node.

        * Converting a cusp node to smooth or symmetric (via Ctrl+click,
          Shift+S/Shift+Y, or a toolbar button) will, if necessary, convert
          adjacent path segments to curves and will outset the node's handles
          if they were retracted.

        * If a node does not show one or both handles (i.e. they are
          retracted), you can drag a handle out by dragging away from the
          node with Shift. This is often more convenient than using the
          "Convert node to smooth" or "Convert segment to curve" buttons.
          Unlike before, dragging a node without modifiers, or with any
          modifiers but Shift, will always move the node itself, not its
          retracted handle.

        * When several nodes are selected, pressing < or > scales, [ or ]
          rotates the selected nodes as if they were an "object", around the
          center of that object. (This is more consistent with the arrow keys
          which have always moved selected nodes as a whole.) So, for
          example, in a single-path silhouette portrait, you can now select
          the nodes of the nose and rotate/scale the nose as a whole without
          breaking the path into pieces. Pressing Alt with these keys gives
          pixel-sized movement depending on zoom, the same as in Selector.
          Also, you can press h or v to flip the selected nodes horizontally
          or vertically.

        * When one node is selected, pressing <, >, [, ] with left or right
          Ctrl or Alt now affects the handle towards the visually left or
          right adjacent node, correspondingly (and not the handle towards
          the previous or next node on the path, as before).

        * The statusbar tip for a single selected node now identifies end
          nodes and mentions retracted handle(s), if any. When dragging a
          node handle, statusbar reports the current angle and length of the
          handle.

        * Pressing Ctrl+A with some nodes selected will select not all nodes
          in the path but all nodes in the subpath(s) containing the selected
          node(s). To select all nodes in the path unconditionally, either
          deselect any nodes before pressing Ctrl+A, or use Select all in all
          subpaths (Ctrl+Alt+A) in Node tool (same key as Select all in all
          layers in Selector). This change has no effect for paths with
          single subpath.

        * Until you change a node's type explicitly, it is presented as a
          smooth node if its handles were collinear, and cusp node otherwise
          (not always cusp as before). This means that the majority of nodes
          created by the Freehand tool or the Trace bitmap dialog will behave
          as smooth nodes in the Node tool. If you want to make some node(s)
          cusp, select and press Shift+C.

     * In Pen and Pencil tools:

        * What was previously called the "add mode" is now always on in Pen
          and Pencil tools, i.e. the selected path always displays the end
          marks. This makes it easy to continue or close the selected path.
          The "a" key to toggle the add mode is removed.

        * If you start drawing outside the end marks of the selected path
          then, unless Shift was pressed, that path is deselected and you are
          drawing a new path (not a new subpath of the selected path as
          before). To add to the selected path, you have to start drawing
          either from one of its end marks to continue it, or in arbitrary
          place but with Shift pressed to create a new unconnected subpath.

        * If you start drawing from one end mark of a path and arrive at the
          other end mark, the path gets closed automatically (the end marks
          disappear).

     * In the Dropper tool:

        * The "pick visible/pick with alpha" switch, previously in the tool
          preferences, is now moved to the Controls panel of the tool.

        * Alt+click picks the inverse of the color at point (works with
          dragging and Shift too).

Color improvements

     * Finally we have a Swatches dialog (Ctrl+Shift+W). Clicking on a color
       swatch sets the fill color of a selection (or a selected gradient
       handle), Shift+clicking sets the stroke color. The dialog has two
       display modes (List and Grid), several swatch size options, and comes
       with 3 selectable palettes (SVG, WebSafe22, and WebHex). More palettes
       can be added by placing palette files in GIMP format into
       share/palettes.

     * In the color selector widget, the HSV tab (Hue, Saturation, Value) is
       replaced by HSL (Hue, Saturation, Lightness). The HSL color space is
       similar to HSV but is more convenient because it better reflects the
       intuitive understanding of what "saturation" and "lightness" are:

        * In HSL, the Saturation component always goes from fully saturated
          color to the equivalent gray (in HSV, with V=max, it goes from
          saturated color to white, which is counterintuitive).

        * The Lightness in HSL always spans the entire range from black
          through the chosen hue to white (in HSV, it only goes half that
          way, from black to the chosen hue).

     * The numeric entry fields for CMYK channels now work in the range
       0..100 instead of 0..255.

Miscellaneous new functionality

     * New layer commands: Move selection to layer above (Shift+PgUp) and
       Move selection to layer below (Shift+PgDn) will move the selection
       into the layer above or below the current layer (and make that layer
       current).

     * The Group command (Ctrl+G) no longer denies action when you try to
       group objects from different layers or groups. Now it pulls the
       selected objects from wherever they are in the document tree, groups
       them, and puts the group in the parent layer/group or the topmost (in
       z-order) selected object.

     * After selecting an object, you can now open the Icon Preview dialog
       (View > Icon Preview) to see how an object will look when rendered to
       various common icon sizes.

     * As a debugging aid, a memory statistics dialog (Help > About Memory)
       is now available for the morbidly curious.

     * The Transformation Dialog now allows numerically setting the skew on
       selected objects (previously you could only move, rotate, and scale
       numerically).

Miscellaneous usability

     * The Open File dialog can now select (with Shift) and open many files
       at once.

     * There are many cosmetic improvements in the Fill & Stroke dialog. In
       particular, the fill rule control is now a pair of toggle buttons with
       intuitive icons in the top right corner (instead of a clunky drop-down
       list at the bottom).

     * All controls in Fill & Stroke, Object Properties, and Export dialogs
       now have hot keys.

     * In Document Preferences, there's a checkbox to enable or disable
       showing the page shadow. To make this change permanent for all newly
       created documents, change your default template
       (share/templates/default.svg).

     * Grid and guide snapping improvements:

        * In the "snap points" mode, a text object now snaps its baseline
          anchor (the left end of the baseline) to grid or guides. That
          anchor point is visualized as a little square mark when a text
          object is selected.

        * When several objects (or a group) are selected and the "snap
          points" mode is active, only the outermost points or nodes will
          snap, instead of all points in selection.

     * When skewing an object, Ctrl will snap the skew angle to standard
       15-degree increments (settable in preferences). The statusbar displays
       the skew angle when skewing.

     * It is now possible to considerably change the look of Inkscape by
       using alternative icon themes. For now, only one is available; it is
       the work of David Christian Berg and is provided alongside the
       standard icons.svg file in the directory share/inkscape/icons/ under
       the name David_icons.svg. A very simple HOWTO resides in the same
       directory under the name README.icons which contains basic
       instructions on how to use David's theme and how to create a new one.

     * The confusing "(root)" in the layer selector in the statusbar is not
       shown unless the document contains no layers. The "Go to root" command
       is removed from the right-click menu.

Packaging, documentation, examples

     * The new About screen (Help > About) for 0.42 was selected by popular
       vote from 42 wonderful submissions by Inkscape artists.

     * Inkscape now fully supports Mac OS X. The version 0.42 is available as
       a .dmg package for Mac OS X. The package contains a standard app
       bundle which can be installed by dragging it to the Applications
       folder like any native OS X app. It includes all libraries and depends
       only on the presence of Apple's freely available X11 user package.

     * All Inkscape tutorials are now in DocBook XML format (with SVG
       illustrations in separate files). From this single source format, the
       SVG and HTML versions of the tutorials are automatically generated;
       other formats can be added easily. This makes tutorials much easier to
       maintain and translate. In addition to the Help menu access, the HTML
       versions of all available tutorials can now be accessed at
       inkscape.org/doc. The DocBook sources and stylesheets are in the
       doc-docbook module in our CVS.

     * Inkscape now informs users of the rights granted by the license (GNU
       GPL) with the new Help menu item, "Modifying or Redistributing
       Inkscape". The license is loaded from an SVG file.

     * The Inkscape source tree now contains the spec file for building
       autopackages. Anyone can build a distribution-neutral package by
       following the instructions at CompilingAutopackage. For more
       information about autopackages see http://www.autopackage.org.

Translations

     * The default template (share/templates/default.svg) is now
       translatable, which allows each language to have its own name of the
       default layer, page size, and other settings. Templates for Czech,
       French, German and Polish are included.
     * The French translations of all tutorials are updated and converted to
       DocBook XML. The Inkscape man page and the Keys and Mouse reference
       are translated to French.
     * The Norwegian Nynorsk translation of the Basic tutorial is similarly
       updated and converted to DocBook XML.
     * All tutorials are translated to Spanish and converted to DocBook XML.
     * There are new Japanese translations of Basic, Advanced, and Shapes
       tutorials (in DocBook XML).
     * "Basic Tutorial" translated to Catalan.
     * The Inkscape Windows installer is translated into Catalan, Czech,
       French, German, Italian and Polish.
     * New Czech, Dutch, Polish and Swedish interface translation added.

SVG/CSS compliance

     * CSS stylesheets: There is now basic rendering support for documents
       using an internal stylesheet, but no editing support, and no support
       for multiple stylesheets or external stylesheets. This means that
       Inkscape can now correctly read much more SVG documents produced by
       other editors (in particular Corel Draw and Adobe Illustrator) than
       before.
     * The preserveAspectRatio attribute is now supported for the image
       element.
     * The word-spacing property is now supported for text.
     * The startOffset attribute and text-anchor now work for textPath.
     * Gradients whose stop positions do not cover the entire 0..1 range, as
       well as one-stop and zero-stop gradients, are now rendered according
       to the spec.
     * Several CSS properties (stroke-linejoin, stroke-linecap, fill-rule)
       were not inherited properly; fixed.
     * Gradient spread was not inherited from a hreffed gradient.
     * Element IDs with "." or ":" characters did not work for xlink:href
       references.
     * http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?SVG_Test_Suite_Compliance
       documents our progress in passing the W3C SVG 1.1 Test Suite. At 0.42,
       we pass 69 tests completely and 25 partially. There's also a new tool,
       svg_rendertest available from Inkscape web site, which can
       automatically test SVG rendering by Inkscape and other renderers.

Important bugfixes

  In 0.42.2:
     * Fixed bug when opening filenames with international characters

  In 0.42.1:
     * Stroke width spin button no longer gets "stuck"
     * Fixed crash when deleting virgin flowtext
     * Properly detect libgc at configure time
     * Fixed several text-editing crashes
     * Windows installer clears DLLs from prior installations
     * Fixed several selection-related crashes
     * Workaround for startup font issues on OS X Tiger

  In 0.42:
     * Several resource leaks are patched that caused resource exhausting and
       eventually freezing on Windows.
     * Memory leaking in the renderer has been reduced significantly.
     * The annoying "menus under dialogs" bug on Mac OSX is fixed.
     * Keyboard shortcuts with Latin letters now correctly work in a
       localized keyboard layout (e.g. Cyrillic).
     * Command line export was broken in 0.41, now fixed.
     * Rendering of round caps and joins on strokes is improved -- round caps
       are now actually round. Zero-length paths or dashes with round or
       square caps are now rendered properly.
     * Invalid files with cyclic gradient references no longer cause Inkscape
       to crash or freeze.
     * A number of bugs were fixed in i18n text (wrong kern before the last
       char in Hebrew, BIDI boundaries in flowed text, composite characters
       in Thai). A new share/examples/i18n.svg document demonstrates many
       scripts.
     * The Import command properly imports documents with layers.
     * Postscript output does not break up text into separate characters
       anymore (unless the text has non-zero kerning or letterspacing, which
       are preserved by outputting each character separately).
     * Placement of guidelines and knots was off by one pixel vertically;
       fixed.
     * The Cleanup command in Path menu, inherited unchanged from Sodipodi,
       was found to do nothing useful in some cases and outright harm in
       others, so it is removed.
     * In several dialogs, staying on top or remembering size/position across
       session was broken. These dialogs are either fixed or (such as the
       legacy "SPObject properties" dialogs) removed.
     * The Vacuum Defs command sometimes did not remove all unused
       definitions at the first go, and ignored all but the first <defs>
       section in the document; both issues are fixed now.
     * With grid snapping on, the first point created with the Pen tool is
       now snapped.

Internal progress

     * Converting Inkscape code to gtkmm has seen some progress:

          * 10 gtkmm widgets have been created.
          * A DialogManager has been introduced to handle allocation of
            dialogs.
          * A new shared dialog class Inkscape::UI::Dialog::Dialog has been
            introduced. Dialog management code such as transient behavior
            that had been scattered throughout the dialogs is now centralized
            here.
          * A number of the dialogs have been converted from gtk to gtkmm:
            Transformation, Trace, Script, Messages, Memory, and Align and
            Distribute.

     * Adding new objects to the tree is significantly optimized; as a
       result, operations like creating large clone tilings are now faster by
       at least an order of magnitude.
     * Many, many cleanups and refactorings of the XML layer. All listener
       facilities are now implemented in terms of NodeObserver rather than
       the old system.
     * Inkscape can log detailed traces of its internal document activity to
       a given file if the environment variable INKSCAPE_DEBUG_LOG is set.
     * To aid translators, we now use a mechanism allowing separate
       translations of identical strings in different contexts.
     * The SVG versions of particular elements are now propagated to their
       parents, so e.g. a document that uses SVG 1.2 features can be
       recognized as an SVG 1.2 document simply by checking the SVG version
       of the root node.

Known issues

     * Exporting gradients to PS or EPS does not work for text (unless text
       is converted to path) or for stroke paint, only for fill paint of
       shapes or paths. Also, the spread property defaults to "pad", and
       transparency is lost on PS or EPS export (e.g. you can't use a
       gradient from an opaque blue to transparent blue; as a workaround,
       replace it by a gradient from opaque blue to opaque background color).
     * While text support is overall much better in 0.42 than 0.41, text has
       a number of known areas with incorrect behaviour. For example, manual
       kerning or character rotation do not work in flowed text (this is a
       limitation of the current SVG 1.2 draft); CJK-style vertical text has
       a number of problems; "non-breaking" space and similar characters
       don't behave correctly; and similar.
     * In Gnome, dialogs are hidden behind the document window when you go
       into full screen mode (this is presumed to be a Gnome problem).

Previous releases

     * ReleaseNotes041 (http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ReleaseNotes041)
     * ReleaseNotes040 (http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ReleaseNotes040)
     * ReleaseNotes039 (http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ReleaseNotes039)
     * ReleaseNotes038 (http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ReleaseNotes038)
     * ReleaseNotes037 (http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ReleaseNotes037)
     * ReleaseNotes036 (http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ReleaseNotes036)
     * ReleaseNotes035 (http://inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ReleaseNotes035)

