We can't release like this; this is a standards-compliance issue: attaching a <textPath> to a <rect> results in a malformed SVG document.
Yep. I just added a check with an error message in statusbar.
Actually this may be an issue for more than just <rect> ... while we create ellipse/arc objects as <path>s now, I believe we still support the native <ellipse>, <circle> or whatever objects if they are already present in the document.
I'm not sure what is done with them now, but I think the best we can do is convert them to <path> on save.
There is no loss in precision because our ellipse path uses A (elliptic arc) anyway.
IMHO the <ellipse>, <rect> etc are little more than shortcuts for those who writes SVG by hand. It would be nice if we preserve them but it's not absolutely essential. And keeping everything in <path> is so much simpler and more flexible, as this textPath issue demonstrates.
For this release I think the best thing to do is to force all shapes to <path>s when text is attached to them, and document it in the errata.
Why _all_ shapes when only rects are affected? And I'm against turning it into path automatically. For now let it just display a message, and if you really need it, convert the rect to path yourself. When we switch rects to always use <path> the problem will be moot.