Pencil History: Inkscape

Drawing:
- pencil tool (freehand drawing with stroked paths)
- pen tool (creating paths with Bezier curves and straight lines)
- calligraphy tool (freehand drawing with calligraphic strokes, tablet pressure/angle support)
Shape tools:
- rectangles (optionally with rounded corners)
- ellipses (optionally circles, arcs, segments)
- stars/polygons (optionally rounded and/or randomized)
- spirals
Text tool (regular multiline or flowed text)
Linked bitmap images, either imported or rasterized from selected objects (a separate utility for embedding linked images comes with the program)
Clones ("live" linked copies of objects)

Affine transformations (moving, scaling, rotating, skewing), both interactively and by specifying numeric values
Z-order operations
Grouping objects, with a way to "select in group" without ungrouping, or "enter the group" making it a temporary layer
Layers, with a way to lock and/or hide individual layers, rearrange them, etc; layers can form a hierarchical tree
Copying and pasting objects
Alignment and distribution commands, including grid arrange, randomization, unclumping
A tool to create patterns of clones, using wallpaper symmetries plus arbitrary scales, shifts, rotates, and color changes, optionally randomized
Grid and guide snapping

Node editing: moving nodes and Bezier curve handles, node alignment and distribution, scaling and rotating node groups
Converting to path (for text objects or shapes), including converting stroke to path
Boolean operations (union, intersection, difference, exclusion, division)
Path simplification, with variable threshold
Path insetting and outsetting, including dynamic and linked offset objects
Bitmap tracing (both color and b/w)

Multi-line text (SVG 1.1 )
Flowed text in frame(s) (proposed SVG 1.2 )
Full on-canvas editability, including styled text spans
Uses any outline fonts installed on the system
Can use any scripts and languages supported by the Pango library (e.g. Hebrew, Arabic, Thai, etc.)
Kerning, letterspacing, linespacing adjustments
Text on path (both text and path remain editable)

Pencil History