[Inkscape-devel] freehand smoothing?

People keep complaining about the unsmooth freehand drawing in Inkscape and point out Sodipodi's smooth drawing as its advantage over us:

http://linuxfr.org/2004/07/20/16864.html (see comment "Sodipodi meilleur que Inkscape ?")

I remember this problem was being attacked quite some time ago, and I was under an impression that the solution was near. Peter and Nathan were working on it, as well as the person known as paraprax on jabber. Can someone please update me on the status of that work? How far has it progressed and what is needed to finish it? I would really love to see this issue closed for the next version.