3. After creating a rectangle, I can highlight it and select 'rect properties' from the context menu where I can edit the X/Y and other properties. If I then combinethe rectangle with another shape, I can not find any way to manually edit the X/Y properties other than rather clumsily in the XML editor.

That's because a shape after any boolean operation becomes a generic path, and ceases to be any special shape it was before (such as a rect). In a general case, you cannot expect a result of a boolean operation to be anything but a path.

However, for X/Y you don't need XML editor. Switch to Selector - there are convenient spinbuttons for X, Y, W and H in the top panel under the menu. They work for any object.

Another thing I would note is that I really would like to be able to have a dialogue open to show the currently selected shape details so I can quickly sift through different shapes without opening additional dialogues. As it is, I can only open up details for individual shapes and must do so for every single one. But that's a 'feature request'. ;)

That's what the top panel is for. Currently it's mostly empty but we plan to add all kinds of tool-specific controls to it. E.g. if you have a star selected, switch to the star tool and you'll have fields for the number of rays, ratio etc. in the top panel, and these fields will reflect and affect the currently selected shape(s).

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