For Sketch 3.6 we have focussed on two important areas: Text rendering, and SVG importing and exporting, besides the usual collection of improvements and bug fixes. We hope you’ll enjoy using this update.
Text Improvements
- Sketch now maintains consistent baseline spacing for paragraphs with a fixed line height
- When changing the typeface or font size for a text layer, the layer is repositioned to maintain the first baseline position
- Baseline snapping for multi-line text now uses the first baseline rather than the last
- Text layer character spacing can now be set to “auto”, allowing the font’s native kerning to be applied
- New text layers use “auto” line height rather than inheriting what was previously used
- Text layer “auto” line height is now distinct from fixed line height of the same value, and the Inspector now shows the “auto” value as its placeholder
- Text in the font weight menu is now vertically centred
- Glyphs for fonts that use swashes such as Zapfino are no longer clipped when editing
- The Type › Underline menu item now works as expected for selected text layers as well as selections when editing
- Fixes a bug where the insertion point was missing when editing right-aligned text
- Fixes a bug where text would not always be properly italicised when using the shortcuts from the menu
- Text rendering is no longer sub-pixel anti-aliased for performance reasons, and improved consistency with mobile platforms
SVG Support Improvements
- SVG export now exports much more compact SVG files by doing away with unnecessary prefixes
- SVG importing and exporting now supports blend modes
- SVG export is improved by now also including shadows on groups in the export
- Fixes a bug where font weight information was lost when exporting to SVG
- Fixes a bug where rounded corners in polygons are not exported properly to SVG
Performance Improvements
- Improves performance when using Sketch on an external display
- Improves general drawing performance and reduces power consumption
- Improves performance when hovering layers for selecting them in complex documents
- Improves scrolling and zooming performance in the Canvas
- Improves zooming performance in complex documents
- Improves application performance using improved caching
- Improves performance when opening large documents
Enhancements
- Improves the masking toolbar item and makes the contextual ‘Use Mask’ menu item smarter too
- Improved pasting behaviour by now pasting on above any selected layers
- Improves importing of retina or high-DPI images into Sketch by automatically scaling them down to their logical size
- Added an item to the menu to make a layer exportable
- Convert to Outlines and Vectorize Stroke have been merged into a single action to avoid confusion
- Names for the Pixel Fitting, and Round to Pixel actions are now consistent
- Shapes combined using Boolean Operations now have predictable names
- The file format now includes metadata to indicate whether it has been autosaved or not
- The Pencil tool has a new cursor to distinguish it better from the Pen tool
- Updated icons in the Layer List slightly for better consistency
Bug Fixes
- Fixes a crash where Sketch could crash when displaying the Open panel on external displays
- Fixes a rare crash where documents wouldn’t open if they contained incorrect text style objects
- Fixes a regression which prevented legacy plugins being installed by double-clicking
- Fixes a bug where older documents may not have opened correctly
- Fixes a bug where opening multiple complex documents could halt Sketch
- Fixes a bug where the Export panel would not warn users when they were about to export two layers with the same name
- Fixes a bug where inserting the same preset Artboard multiple times would give them the same name
- Fixes a bug where flattening an Artboard to a bitmap would not include its background
- Fixes a bug where dragging images into the Canvas could have them end up in unexpected places
- Fixes a bug where Sketch could crash when loading documents with certain color profiles
- Fixes a bug where scaling a layer could have unexpected results if a text field in the Inspector still had focus
- Fixes a bug where Sketch could crash unexpectedly when in trial-mode
- Fixes a bug where Artboards with truncated titles would still be selectable in their truncated area
- Fixes a bug where Artboards in the Layer List would be automatically collapsed when they didn’t contain selected layers
- Fixes a bug where the color popover would prevent zoom gestures in the Canvas
- Fixes a bug where rendering would not update when the color popover is open
- Fixes a bug where moving layers would be very slow in Sketch when the font panel was open
- Fixes a bug where converting text in multiple Artboards to outlines would cause layers to jump between Artboards
- Fixes a bug where importing PDF files or copying data from Adobe Illustrator with certain color profiles could crash Sketch
- Fixes a bug where outlining a path would lose the name of the layer
- Fixes a bug where ungrouping rotated groups could result in some layers appearing flipped
- Fixes a bug where image layers could change in size after editing
- Fixes a bug where back-tabbing through vector points in the shape editor could skip some points
- When changing a text layer, the line height or spacing now operates on the paragraph enclosing the selection
- Renaming a layer is now disabled when the Layer List is hidden
- Fixes for various other crashes
Rendering
- Fixes a refresh issue when toggling masks on or off
- Fixes a bug where Slices wouldn’t export the background color of an Artboard
- Fixes a bug which prevented the Canvas redrawing correctly when dragging some text layers
- Noise patterns are now more accurate when zoomed in