Cairo 1.12.4 introduced changes which affect Inkscape stable and trunk.
Later releases (1.12.6, 1.12.8) addressed some of them for now, but not
all: Outline view mode doesn't display any visible outlines at all [1],
even with latest cairo 1.12.8 (released today).
Tests with just released cairo 1.12.8 on OS X 10.7.4 (X11 and Quartz
cairo surface backends with Inkscape 0.48.3.1 and Inkscape 0.48+devel
r11861) gave me these results:
- not fixed: outline view mode still renders invisible
affects current stable 0.48.3.1 and trunk
- fixed (since 1.12.6): invisible auxiliary paths and handles
° path outlines (red/green), node handles (blue) in
Pen, Pencil and Node tool
° circle (grey/green) indicating distance to guide path in
Calligraphy tool hatch mode
° circle (orange) indicating brush size of Tweak tool (width)
° circle (orange) indicating spray area of Spray tool (width)
° possibly others I missed in my tests
affected current stable (0.48.3.1)
- AFAICT fixed (since 1.12.8): rendering artifacts with stroked curves
affected trunk [3]
In upstream bug 56099 [2], one of the cairo developers indicates that
Inkscape needs to change how certain handles and paths are rendered via
cairo:
commit c565bad8901dbe66e1402cdc2418986e96e698e3
Author: Chris Wilson <chris@...2923...>
Date: Fri Oct 19 12:22:58 2012 +0100
pen: Relax invisibility criteria from half-tolerance to quarter-tolerance
Inkscape is one user who sets geometric tolerance to 1.25 pixels when
stroking sub-pixel lines. Whilst we wait for inkscape to set sensible
values for their tolerance, we have to allow through the current values
in order to prevent the fine strokes from disappearing.
Is there something which can or ought to done on Inkscape's side to help
affected users of current Inkscape stable [4] (AFAIK currently Fedora
18, Mageia and ArchLinux, and probably soon other distros which plan to
update to latest cairo stable)?
Likely - I don't know any details about how cairo is used in Inkscape -
there will be different changes required for the stable release branch
(release of 0.48.4 is pending, and held up only by one blocker so far)
and current trunk.
V
[1] Bug #1074612 “No display in outline mode”
<
https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/1074612>
[2] Bug 56099 - path rendering problems in 1.12.4
<
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=56099>
[3] artifacts with stroked bézier curves
<
http://lists.cairographics.org/archives/cairo/2012-September/023532.html>
<
http://lists.cairographics.org/archives/cairo/attachments/20120928/194fcb...
<
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/65084033/irc/cairo-1.12.4-stroked-paths-rendering...
[4] user comments
<
https://plus.google.com/106604070261659014786/posts/Bru4nW8wSrh>
<
https://plus.google.com/106604070261659014786/posts/3DpwXkBLRwv>