I'd like the spiral tool back too, even if it is just eyecandy I like it and as Apple have shown sometimes eyecandy is reason enough especially when Graphic Designers are large part of your target audience.
Although it is easy to get carried away and think too much about details it do think it would be very useful to think who are the archetypal target users of Inkscape?
the star, and maybe a polygon tool of some sort for n-th sided polygons.
I've been meaning to suggest that it would be useful to have a Polygon as well as a "Star" Tool (pentagram, poly* => Polygram?). It brings the feature closer to the user, easier to discover and use even and worth the slight repitition.
If the current spiral tool does not do enough to be interesting to you and you want ways to make it more poweful/usefull I am linking to an example file (svg and png) and a screenshot of the Spiral Tool from Jasc Web Draw which has lots of options (curved or flat sides, number of turns, number of rotations, linear or logarithmic expansion etc).
Although I keep mentioning Jasc Web Draw I have to say that it is a flawed program missing all kinds of details but I do think it contains a few fresh ideas and I will try and take more screenshots. I probably shouldn't speculate like this but I'd really like to see a stable Inkscape 1.0.0 [1] declared this side of six months and give them a run for their money! here are those links.
Alan's Inkscape related screenshots and files: http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~horkana/inkscape/ [2]
Picture with all kinds of Spirals in SVG format: http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~horkana/inkscape/jasc-webdraw-allkindsofSpirals01.s...
Picture with all kinds of Spirals in PNG format: http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~horkana/inkscape/jasc-webdraw-allkindsofSpirals01.p...
Screenshot of the toolbar for Spirals in Jasc Web Draw http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~horkana/inkscape/jascwebdraw1-spiral-contexttoolbar...
Hope that helps.
Sincerely
Alan Horkan http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
[1] dont underestimate the importance of a significant version number and a stable supported release (I could say a whole lot more but that is a whole other thread)
[2] I will probably change these links later but if I do chances are I'll put the files on my other web site instead (but at the moment there is just an empty directory) http://matrix.netsoc.tcd.ie/~horkana/dev/gnome/inkscape/
[3] I'm probably forgetting something ...