Hi,
I've begun to update my book for 0.44. Should be a great release! But, I have run into a few bugs with a version of Inkscape from SVN a day or two ago. The following file can be used to illustrate the problems:
http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/DRAWINGS/ClipMask2.svg
The raw objects for clipping and masking are on the left, the clipped and masked objects (blue rectangles) are on the right. In the case of the first two items, the file is displayed correctly in Firefox trunk.
1. Clipping using stroked text without fill doesn't seem to work.
2. The masked object is invisible when the file is saved and reopened. The masked object can be restored by selecting the object, unmasking and remasking.
3. Sometimes the display of the gradient is not updated when the gradient tool is used to adjust it. Try editing the gradient in the above document by dragging a gradient node.
4. Not really a bug... but very confusing. The gradient editor does not switch to the gradient selected with the the gradient tool. This behavior is different from all other dialogs.
If needed, I'll file bug reports but I thought I would bring them up here first.
Tav