Jakub "Jimmac" Steiner has reviewed Inkscape 0.40 on Ubuntu Linux. http://primates.ximian.com/~jimmac/blog/Artwork/Inkscape
I've CC'ed this message to Jimmac and I'll try to quickly answer some of his questions and address the ones which are known issues. I encourage you all to read his comments which I found very interesting. I didn't want to crosspost to the user list, I'll try and remember to post the link there later when this thread is done.
You may already be familiar with Jimmac or at be familiar with his work because he's created significant amounts of artwork from Gnome and he works for Ximian. http://jimmac.musichall.cz/
The review is pretty thorough (long for a journal entry) and I wouldn't be surprised if various news sources pick up on it (but I'm not going to be the one feeding it to them).
It is great that he has finally given Inkscape a try.
Read his post first to see the praise and suggestions which I've skipped for brevity. I'll try and respond to some of his questions and criticisms:
Jimmac mentions things not being consistant with the GNU Image Manipulation Program. Hopefully as things get more configurable and more standard widgets are used (part of the plan) users will be able to resolve much of that for themselves. Some of the inconsistancies will need careful work to figure out what is really the best solution (and I'm trying not to be contraversial so I'll move on).
Layer support is ... unfinished
Work in progress
Vector icons ... good idea [but] it doesn't work in my opinion
there is workin in progress (already in CVS I believe) that allows Inkscape to use different icon themes (but it is not complete, I can elaborate more later as needed).
two rows of tabs in the tool options
mockups for a new preferences dialog were done, no tabs a bit more like the gimp. implementation seems inevitable, others may know but I wont guess when.
some sort of library [for] brushes, gradients
thats a known issue but not specifically on the roadmap http://inkscape.org/roadmap.php i think there are a few requests already filed
Deleting objects with Backspace. While Del works, my powerbook doesn't
have the del key ;).
dont think anyone has mentioned that before.
Object blending. Select two objects and pick how many inbetween states
you want or optionally a path along which to do the morph. Essential time saviour when duplicating objects
Sounds like Tweening to me. Complicated but again I'm reasonably sure there are requests for it already. Knowing the Inkscape developers someone will come along and surprise us with this feature out of nowhere.
Converting stroke into objects. Sometimes you want to have more control
about the dotted outline.
I get the feeling this might be already be possible. Anyone?
If you didn't read Jimmacs review of Inkscape http://primates.ximian.com/~jimmac/blog/Artwork/Inkscape my comments may seem out of context but I hope they were interesting/useful and I think I've managed to be (relatively) brief.
Sincerely
Alan Horkan
Free SVG Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org Dia is for Diagrams http://gnome.org/projects/dia/ Inkscape, Draw Freely http://inkscape.org Abiword is Awesome http://abisource.com