An important milestone has been reached: After the many recent and not-so-recent improvements to shapes (not only stars!) I hereby announce that the four shape tools and the corresponding shape types (rects, ellipses, stars, spirals) are, in my opinion, the first component of the program to reach maturity. In other words, Inkscape shapes are clearly ahead of the competition (and by competition, I don't mean Sodipodi) both in features and in usability, implement everything that I can possibly think of, and are virtually bugless. In still other words, they are ready for 1.0.
With that in mind, I decided to document this component painstakingly and uncompromisingly. The new "Shapes" tutorial is larger than either Basic or Advanced; it contains detailed descriptions of shape tools and shape types, many creative tips for using them, and some rather beautiful examples. Enjoy:
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/*checkout*/inkscape/inkscape/share/tut...
I plan to document other components as they mature. Not-yet mature things will likely either receive a very cursory treatment in the documentation (if absolutely necessary) or not be documented at all. The reason is not only the desire to minimize rewriting as components are cleaned up, but the simple fact that I hate to write about things which are broken. Sorry. I prefer to fix things first :)
Correspondingly, the old shape-related sections are removed from the Advanced tutorial. Eventually, the Advanced tutorial will be eliminated, its pieces becoming extended tutorials, each covering a much narrower topic.