One feature that would be really nice if one can "node-edit" an image, which crops it. What I mean is: select an image, switch to the node tool, then knots appear on the 4 corners of the image. When the knots are moved, a clipping mask is applied to the image and the knots (and corresponding path) belong to this clipping path.
sorry if the explanation is too brief. I think CorelDraw has this behavior which sounds very nice to me. See the "simple crop" procedure here http://www.engrave.ca/archives/1210.
I am planning on working on this feature, but if the students want to create it, I'm happy to let them ;) It'd be nice if the student's work could take this future behavior into account, by providing a "remove clipping path" button in the dialog for example.
Cheers, Johan