Yes Alt+I works well and about the shape management it's better than Xara which only creates a quadrangular shape not editable as the rectangle and quadrangle tool.

However tiling mode has two more features in Xara : Repeat inverted and Single tile - But I don't know if SVG allows this kind of pattern tiling ?

De : bulia byak <buliabyak@...400...>
À : Ivan Louette <ivan_louette@...48...>
Cc : J.B.C.Engelen@...1578...; steren.giannini@...400...; theadib@...1439...; inkscape-devel@...1722...forge.net; Francois.Petit@...2281...
Envoyé le : Mer 2 Décembre 2009, 16 h 05 min 49 s
Objet : Re: [Inkscape-devel] Re : New student project : better image management

On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 6:55 AM, Ivan Louette <ivan_louette@...48...> wrote:
> In Xara Xtreme for windows (4.0 and above) that's much simpler : every time
> you import an image it's automatically treated as a quadrangle with a bitmap
> fill (not as a clipped image).

Curiously, we had the exact same option: import images as fills. That
was before we even supported clipping. When clipping was made usable,
that option was removed for the sake of SVG purity: an image must be
an image. Still, turning it into a fill is as easy as pressing Alt+I.

--
bulia byak
Inkscape. Draw Freely.
http://www.inkscape.org