Hi All,

With Inkscape 0.39 out the door, our next target is 0.40. Notice we're at #17 on SourceForge now :-)

The 0.40 development process looks like it'll be pretty much like 0.39. We have a principle development focus - conversion to Gtkmm - plus as much freeform development as can be squeezed into the time we'll have.

Gtkmm conversion looks like a lot of work, but then so did Pango, and look how swiftly the team knocked that out. ;-)

I don't know if we need "a plan" for the Gtkmm conversion; if we do, then within a few weeks we can do so.

Looking forward beyond 0.40, there are other big changes to come that we can start preparing for presently. The Extensions work is one example; the proposed spec will hopefully provide a starting point for this. Another example is the eventual rewrite of the style class and creation of a more complete CSS implementation for Inkscape. I'm also looking forward to seeing what we can do with improved testing systems and what potential Cairo holds. These are just a few of the cool things waiting in the wings.

Speaking of Cairo, I've sat in on the two talks by Keith Packard and Jim Gettys on the rearchitecture of X. Keith did his presentation in SVG, but his Cairo-based viewer was very slow rendering it, compared with inkview. :-)

A lot of interesting work is being done with X these days. In addition to Cairo (which they're hoping to see more apps pick up and use), they're also looking at LittleCMS (or something derived thereof) as a universal color management system (the one currently in X is very broken and nobody uses it.)

As to my own presentation, if anyone's interested, it's here: http://developer.osdl.org/bryce/ols_testing_presentation/

Bryce