The new Pinta project development team has announced the release of version 1.1 of its open source Paint.NET clone. This is the first release of the simple painting application from the new developer group – which refers to itself as "The 'New' Pinta Community" – since it took over the work started by Jonathan Pobst, the project's founder, after he said that he no longer had any desire to work on it.

Pinta 1.1 now includes an "images pad" to enable simpler image selection. Holding the "+" key when using the line tool now makes the line tool draw straight lines. The "Save" and "Open" dialogs now remember their last used paths, and selections can be resized. When copying in an image larger than the current canvas, users will be asked to confirm whether they want the canvas enlarged, and, when cropping, images are zoomed to fit the window. Other changes include the addition of more zooming options between 100 and 200 per cent, and the ability to open read-only files or save empty files.

The developers note that, as there were not enough testers, version 1.1 of Pinta for Mac OS X is not yet available as a stable release. Users interested in testing the Mac OS X version of Pinta and providing feedback are asked to join the project's Google Group.

Further information, including a full list of new features and fixes, can be found in the release notes. Pinta 1.1 is available to download for Ubuntu and requires Mono. Windows is also supported and requires Gtk# for Windows and Mono for Windows. Pinta is released under the MIT X11 licence. Users can place their request for future improvements and new features for Pinta at the project's UserVoice forum.

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(crve)