I got an idea today which I went on to quickly implement, so you can test it in CVS already.
Now when you import a bitmap into your drawing, it appears not as an <image> element but as a <rect> with pattern fill, the pattern being the image you imported. It looks the same, but the important difference is that you can easily "mask" the image by changing the shape of the rect (round corners, or convert to path and node-edit, or apply some booleans etc. just as you would with any rectangle). I think this makes it a lot more useful and I would even suggest making this a default (as it is now in CVS), although an option to create <image> as before still remains.
There are a bunch of bugs related to pattern fills currently, but I hope to clear them sooner or later. For now, set Transforms to Preserve in the preferences so that rects behave as expected when transformed.
I'd like to hear opinions on the usefulness and possible default-ness of this trick. It does not remove the necessity to have a pattern fill tool or dialog, but I think it lets you do without in the majority of situations. You can even apply the same pattern fill to other shapes by doing Copy/Paste Style (the imported rect ends up grouped as of now, so ungroup it first).
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