Inkscape

Inkscape is an award winning and cross-platform software project that provides you with a professional-grade SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) editor application, which sole purpose is to be an open source and completely free alternative to commercial products with similar capabilities, such as Visio, Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator.

Features at a glance

Key features include object creation, object manipulation, fill and stroke, operations on paths, text support and rendering. It includes a pencil tool, a pen tool, calligraphy tool, a shape tool for creating rectangles, ellipses, polygons, stars and spirals, a text tool, embedded bitmaps and clone creator.

Additionally, the application allows the user to move, scale, rotate, skew, raise, lower, group and align objects, as well as to manipulate layers. Other useful tools include path markers, dashed strokes, pattern fills, color selector, color selector, gradient editor, node editor, path converter and simplification, bitmap tracing, and boolean operations.

Another interesting feature is the ability to export drawings to the PNG, PDF (Portable Document Format), OpenDocument Drawing, AutoCAD DXF (Drawing Exchange Format), PostScript, Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) and sK1 file formats.

Under the hood and supported OSes

A quick look under the hood will show that the program has been written in the C, C++ and Python programming languages, and its graphical user interface uses the cross-platform GTK+ GUI toolkit. It is a multilingual project that supports the GNU/Linux. BSD, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems.

Availability

On GNU/Linux and BSD, the application is available for download only as a source archive that must be configured, compiled and installed manually. Therefore, all Linux and BSD users are urged to instlall Inkscape from the default software repositories of their distribution.

Bottom line

Summing up, it you are a graphic designer, an illustrator or a web designer in search for , then we can tell you that Inkscape is the perfect application for you. It will run on your favorite operating system and supports almost all of the capabilities of commercial products.

What is new in this release:

• Among the most reported bugs addressed were:
• Blank pages being output when attempting to print multiple copies of a document
• The inability to cancel during the export of large files
• Application crashes caused by attempting to drag a path at a cap or line join
• Some issues with keyboard shortcut functionality on non-Latin keyboard layouts
• A few performance improvements and usability enhancements that made it into the release, include:
• New SVG export options from the command line
• Support for right-to-left text
• Improved ellipse controls
• Multi-line text support for the PDF+LaTeX export
• New render tile preferences for performance tuning
• Better startup performance for many Windows users

What is new in version :

• Better importing and exporting of EMF/WMF files, PDF/PDF+Latex documents, Visio Stencil files, and XML files
• Greater stability during printing on Windows
• Improved fill and stroke HSL color selection
• Greater stability when reverting and saving files
• Among noteworthy feature and usability improvements are:
• An additional handle at the center of rectangles, circles/ellipses, and stars, to allow quick and accurate alignment of these shapes with other objects
• A command line option for updating the file's DPI value that allows for easier processing of large file collections
• Improvements to user-defined shortcuts, including the acceptance of previously restricted special characters

What is new in version 0.92.1:

• Regression fixes:
• Many small regressions in the node tool were fixed. Here are some examples:
• Shift will turn off snapping in the node tool.
• Duplication of nodes in the node tool using Shift+D works again.
• Changing all selected segments into straight lines in the node tool using Shift+L works again.
• Changing the type of nodes to cusp will retract their handles only if all selected nodes are already cusp. This improves usability when working with selections that contain both cusp and smooth nodes.
• Important bugfixes:
• Exporting of masks has been substantially improved in all Cairo-based output formats.
• Several crash bugs in the node tool have been fixed.
• Rulers are redrawn properly with recent versions of GTK.
• Unlinking an orphaned clone no longer causes a crash.
• Problems with extensions sometimes not working at all on Mac OS X have been fixed.
• Inkscape should no longer crash due to missing icons at startup or when opening the document properties dialog.
• Shift-clicking on the top rounding handle of a rectangle will no longer cause a crash.
• Inkscape builds correctly with recent versions of Poppler.
• Known issues:
• Stamping in the node tool does not work.
• Closing an unchanged document that contains connectors might ask to save, as if the document was modified. Pressing Ctrl+Z before closing will avoid bringing up the dialog.

What is new in version 0.92:

• Regression fixes:
• Many small regressions in the node tool were fixed. Here are some examples:
• Shift will turn off snapping in the node tool.
• Duplication of nodes in the node tool using Shift+D works again.
• Changing all selected segments into straight lines in the node tool using Shift+L works again.
• Changing the type of nodes to cusp will retract their handles only if all selected nodes are already cusp. This improves usability when working with selections that contain both cusp and smooth nodes.
• Important bugfixes:
• Exporting of masks has been substantially improved in all Cairo-based output formats.
• Several crash bugs in the node tool have been fixed.
• Rulers are redrawn properly with recent versions of GTK.
• Unlinking an orphaned clone no longer causes a crash.
• Problems with extensions sometimes not working at all on Mac OS X have been fixed.
• Inkscape should no longer crash due to missing icons at startup or when opening the document properties dialog.
• Shift-clicking on the top rounding handle of a rectangle will no longer cause a crash.
• Inkscape builds correctly with recent versions of Poppler.
• Known issues:
• Stamping in the node tool does not work.
• Closing an unchanged document that contains connectors might ask to save, as if the document was modified. Pressing Ctrl+Z before closing will avoid bringing up the dialog.

What is new in version 0.91:

• Regression fixes:
• Many small regressions in the node tool were fixed. Here are some examples:
• Shift will turn off snapping in the node tool.
• Duplication of nodes in the node tool using Shift+D works again.
• Changing all selected segments into straight lines in the node tool using Shift+L works again.
• Changing the type of nodes to cusp will retract their handles only if all selected nodes are already cusp. This improves usability when working with selections that contain both cusp and smooth nodes.
• Important bugfixes:
• Exporting of masks has been substantially improved in all Cairo-based output formats.
• Several crash bugs in the node tool have been fixed.
• Rulers are redrawn properly with recent versions of GTK.
• Unlinking an orphaned clone no longer causes a crash.
• Problems with extensions sometimes not working at all on Mac OS X have been fixed.
• Inkscape should no longer crash due to missing icons at startup or when opening the document properties dialog.
• Shift-clicking on the top rounding handle of a rectangle will no longer cause a crash.
• Inkscape builds correctly with recent versions of Poppler.
• Known issues:
• Stamping in the node tool does not work.
• Closing an unchanged document that contains connectors might ask to save, as if the document was modified. Pressing Ctrl+Z before closing will avoid bringing up the dialog.