On Thu, 15 Jun 2006, Ruud Steltenpool wrote:
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 01:00:02 +0200 (CEST) From: Ruud Steltenpool <svg@...705...> To: inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: [Inkscape-devel] Inkscape 'breaks' SVG
Inkscape is implemented as if things that render the same (or just similar even) are the same too, thereby destroying clean code. Which is wrong and makes it near useless for coders, heavily frustrating the number 1 strong point of SVG: letting coders and clickers cooperate.
I asked about round tripping SVG before but suffice to say there is a lot of infrastructure work needed to make that possible. All we can do is wait patiently or try and contribute patches to help make it happen.
In such cases I still use Jasc Webdraw (limited but it did a great job of preserving concise clean markup) or a plain text editor.
Inkscape has a long way to go before it will be suitable for the kind of preservation of the underlying SVG which would be very useful for programmers.
If you were to use CVS diff on your files you might be able to isolate and limit the changes to your existing files but I agree with you it isn't something Inkscape was designed for and isn't currently well suited to that kind of thing. Inkscape is a great tool and useful for many things but isn't perfect for every job or all ways of working - at least not yet ;) - I hope no one claimed otherwise.
Using the XML Editor might allow you to make changes without there being quite so many knock on effects to your underlying markup.
Thanks for using Inkscape
-- Alan H.