Inkscape 0.47 Makes Drawing Freely Easier
The Inkscape team has come out after a year's time with a new release of their vector drawing program. It provides not only new features but countless detailed enhancements.
One of the important and long-awaited new functions in Inkscape is autosave, which secures work done in incremental backups and should make data loss a thing of the past. PostScript and EPS imports are also significantly better, allowing for more professional applications.
The coolest new drawing tool is possibly Spiro splines, which define curvilinear paths and are available in the pen, pencil and node tools.
Some further important new features include:
- Auto smooth nodes, a new node type that smooths paths.
- Reworked snapping system with a Snapping toolbar and corresponding grids for drawing elements.
- New path effects that can be assigned to groups.
- Many new filters in the Filter Editor.
- Spell-checker for text elements.
- Countless new and improved extensions.
- New dialog for exporting to SVG format.
The Inkscape 0.47 release notes include the full details. Source code and official packages are ready for download from the project page. Apart from Linux versions, there are binaries for Mac OS X and Windows. Most distros will also have their own packages in short time.
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