rejon.org is Jon Phillips.

I wanted to send a big thank you out to The Fedora Project, Max Spevack and Greg DeKoenigsberg for their support of the upcoming Libre Graphics Meeting 2008 in Poland, May 8 - 11!

Dave Neary wrote a good overview of the state of the massively successful fundraiser we put together with Pledgie.com (try it out if you want to raise money for your cause!).

It is still not too late to donate money (you can use paypal with the previous link which will help get more developers to the event. Cheers to all who gave too and linked to the various posts thus truly shedding light onto the huge community of free and open source graphics users and developers out there in the world

Download the latest copy of your favorite editor everone!!!

More from Bryce’s post:

The Inkscape community today is announcing the release of the newest
version of its open source vector graphics editor. Inkscape 0.46 is a
major update that introduces native PDF support. The implementation of
PDF support in Inkscape provides an easy, open source solution to
editing PDF documents.

Tons of new features and performance improvements are included in this
release. Dialogs now have the ability to be docked to the editing
window. Gradients can be edited completely on-canvas. The new Paint
Bucket Tool fills bounded areas with color. A new 3D Box tool helps
create perspective-correct drawings. A new Tweak tool provides an
intuitive method for editing paths and painting objects. The new Live
Path Effects feature can create “brushes” and various organic effects on
paths. Improvements to color management include support for color spaces
other than sRGB. Most SVG filters are now implemented, and a new
powerful UI is provided for editing filter stacks.

Downloading Inkscape 0.46

Inkscape 0.46 is already included by default in Ubuntu Hardy so just
install it normally. Ubuntu Gutsy users can install by adding the
following to System : Admin : Software Sources : Third-Party Software:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/inkscape.testers/ubuntu gutsy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/inkscape.testers/ubuntu gutsy main

Macintosh OS X users can download a Leopard Universal package from our
SourceForge site:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=93438

Packages for Fedora, Debian, Windows, and other platforms should be
coming soon.

For more information

Complete Release Notes for 0.46:
http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes046

Community Contributed Screenshots:
http://inkscape.org/screenshots/

Here are the example screenshots demo’ing 0.46…its hot!

Version 0.46
	The path changing modes of the new Tweak tool allow you to push, shrink, grow, attract, repel, or roughen any path, easily and naturally sculpting exciting freeform shapes. This is a lot more convenient than the Node tool not only because you don’t need to think about nodes, but also because it can work on any number of selected paths at the same time.
	The color changing modes of the new Tweak tool, paint and jitter, are very similar to the way a soft brush works in a bitmap editor. If you have a number of separate objects, you can select them all and paint over them with any fill or stroke color.
	Inkscape 0.46 comes with a selection of stock patterns, accessible via the Fill and Stroke dialog. It is now much easier and faster than before to fill a path with stripes, checkerboard, or polka dots.
	The use of effects which previously required to manually installed some Python modules is now straightforward on Mac OS X: they all work out of the box. In addition, Inkscape’s interface was made more Mac- friendly by the use of a default theme. This theme reflects the changes made in OS X system preferences (Appearance panel) and works with Graphite (as demonstrated here) or Aqua variants. For advanced users already having a custom ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file, the theme is not enforced and their personal settings are respected.
	The Paint Bucket tool works just like the Paint Bucket tool in bitmap image editors — clicking in an area fills the area with the chosen color. Unlike other editors, the Inkscape tool features some additional fill methods to help you finish your work faster.
	With SVG Filters and Inkscape’s new Live Path Effects, the available options and ease of editability to accomplish various visual effects has been greatly enhanced. The picture in this screenshot utilizes a number of features such as Tiled Clones, SVG Filters, Live Path Effects, Clipping and Masking, Multi-stop Gradients and more. This screenshot shows the parameters used on a patch of hair created with the Stitch Sub-Curves Path Effect. Additionally, you can see how handy having docked dialogs is to un-clutter the workspace with the side benefit of increased productivity. To see the full version of this picture you can click here.
	The Path along Path effect can curve a path along another path. When this effect is applied to path A (called skeleton), another path B (called pattern) can then be passed as a parameter. The result is that path B is bent along path A. With the node edit tool, path A can be editted on-canvas and the result is updated live. This provides a direct equivalent of “vector brushes” or “skeletal strokes” features in other vector editors.
	This example shows how the new hatching techniques can be used to produce a traditional line engraving from a photo. Note also that thinning/thickening can be used not only for hatchings but for sculpting arbitrary paths - easy shape morphing without the Node tool!
	Several new features were added to the Calligraphic pen to make Inkscape capable of the ancient art of line engraving. This screenshot demonstrates tracking a guide path to hatch areas quickly and uniformly; tracing background to make your pen width reflect the lightness of the background in every point; and thinning/thickening that lets you change the darkness of your hatchings at any point, or even erase parts of the drawing.
	Now all guidelines are angled. The usual horizontal and vertical guidelines have become angled at 0/90 degrees. To change to a different angle, just double-click the guideline you want to change and enter the values. You can also create a guideline with an angle of 45 degrees by dragging the guideline from the ends of the rulers. You can also create an angled guideline from a straight line. Draw this line and press Shift+G.

Don’t forget to download the new Creative Commons LiveContent 2.0 disc, burn-it, test it out, and file some bugs! There is a quick turnaround on the disc, but the build process is automated now so hopefully testing and packaging will be much simpler and ongoing. TVOL wrote:

A beta of LiveContent 2.0 is available for testing! We’ve got it up at the CC labs site (direct download) and the Fedora Spins site (torrent). Burn the DVD image to a disc and boot it up. The Creative Commons tech team has been working on an interesting content “autocuration” process for LiveContent 2.0, which automatically pulls down CC-licensed media for inclusion on the LiveDVD. Our test run is with Flickr, so check out the autocurated images from the popular photo sharing site right on the LiveContent desktop. A focus of LiveContent 2.0 is to foster the standardization of content APIs, thus allowing LiveContent (and other media projects!) to draw from CC-licensed feeds straight from the Content Directories. Check out the tech specs on Flickr’s API and look for more documentation soon about CC’s process.

This test build also contains some amazing photos from Wikimedia Commons’ Pictures of the Year. You can have your CC-licensed project featured on the disc too. We’re moving quickly with this, so hit us up with ideas for content you feel could be included. Check out the wiki page to add specific content ideas.

If you’re able to help test the LiveDVD functionality, please help us report bugs, file feature requests and submit patches at the CC SourceForge tracking page. Please provide as much information as you can, including the build number and the type of machine you’re running it on.

Once again, we thank the generous folks over at Worldlabel.com for supporting this project and helping to push for better standardization, making LiveContent an interesting tool and providing a necessary nudge toward easier content sharing. Thanks also to Fedora Project for the testing and hosting space.

LiveContent boots into Fedora 8 and runs directly from the LiveDVD. The multimedia content can also be viewed without booting into the LiveDVD. Here’s more information on burning an ISO and running a LiveDVD.

Wikipedia: List of ISO image software
wikiHow: How to Burn ISO Files to DVD

On a personal note, TVOL, Alex and Asheesh have done a fabulous job pulling together LC 2.0. It furthers my obsessions with promoting open content standards so that we can get media into all of our free and open source media players quick and easily.

Geez, my blog is a presss release blog nearly of all the projects that control my life

Russell, from worldlabel.com, is a great guy. He has helped support Open Clip Art Library and is sponsoring the CC LiveContent project that tvol (Timothy Vollmer), tannewt (Scott Shawcroft), bovinity (Alex Roberts), paulproteus (Asheesh Laroia, and rrrojer (Rebecca Rojer) have all touched in some way. Russell has started a blog, and he posted this great item today:

First, an abandoned 12-week-old macaque develops a friendship with a white pigeon in China…read more.

Then, as reported by Reuters news, Washington Post and other major news media outlets, A lonely baboon in a private Lithuanian zoo has adopted a chicken he saved from certain death last month and the two have formed a fast friendship. Watch the baboon take care of his new friend.