Just in case you missed the news, mesh gradients are now to be part of SVG 2.0, and there is a branch for that (currently rather unstable due to Cairo bugs). Tav did its presentation on SVG Open 2011 this Monday.

Here is an update on the current state of affiars.

Great news. Been waiting to try out the mesh gradients thingy.

Building as I type this ...

Oh, this is so exciting! I had no idea it was even under developement -- thought it was still just a dream
Could anyone venture a ballpark ETA for the mesh gradient in a stable release?
(just curious)

Tavmjong Bah is a star in the opensource firmament!

brynn wrote:Could anyone venture a ballpark ETA for the mesh gradient in a stable release?

I'm not sure if it's possible. We are relying on unstable Cairo for some new stuff already, so technically it's like this:

1. Cairo releases a brand new version with all the stuff we need.
2. This version goes to distributions.
3. We freeze and release 0.49.

I could be wrong, of course.

prokoudine wrote:

brynn wrote:Could anyone venture a ballpark ETA for the mesh gradient in a stable release?

I'm not sure if it's possible. We are relying on unstable Cairo for some new stuff already, so technically it's like this:

1. Cairo releases a brand new version with all the stuff we need.
2. This version goes to distributions.
3. We freeze and release 0.49.

I could be wrong, of course.

IMHO that's - maybe - overly optimistic: the experimental gradient mesh implementation hasn't even landed in the development branch of Inkscape yet. What about getting the gradient mesh definition finalized and frozen to be included in the next SVG specification first? And implementing full support in Inkscape which doesn't get broken in later Inkscape versions and/or by the SVG 2.0 specification itself? After all, you'd want other SVG renderers (including web browsers) to be able to render Inkscape's files, too ;)

Tavmjong Bah wrote:The SVG working group has endorsed the addition of Coons Patch Mesh gradients to the SVG standard. This will satisfy the need of content creators for a more complex shadings. The exact syntax for the mesh gradients is still being worked on. [emphasis mine]

With regard to cairo: to have a stable release of cairo based on current cairo git master (which is not even available as unstable cairo snapshot release yet) might also be further away than you'd want to wait for releasing 0.49 with the new renderer (not even to mention availability of said cairo release on other platforms supported by Inkscape). With the exception of a few known issues, Inkscape's new renderer (in the development builds) does work with the current stable cairo version (1.10.2).