Dear all,
I'm a new user of Inkscape and I've just subscribed to this list. I have installed Inkscape 0.42.2 on MacOS X using the standalone installer, no problem. If the developers read this message: thanks and congratulations for this wonderful software, and for the easy installation under MacOS X.
I have already used several vector graphics applications: - MacDraw (later renamed as "Draw"), limited features, but incredibly user-friendy. - Corel Draw : very powerful, but Corel stopped supporting the Mac a couple of years ago. - Freehand : I bought it several months ago but never managed to get comfortable with this software, the user interface is not very intuitive IMHO and I have been having a hard time sometimes to achieve very simple tasks.
I have started learning Inkscape with the basic tutorial at http://www.inkscape.org/doc/basic/tutorial-basic.html, and my first impression is very good, I find it quite user-friendly while being very powerful.
I have nevertheless noted a few issues that may be specific to the MacOS port:
1. The characters on the status bar, and especially the pointer position at the bottom left, are almost unreadable: really tiny, and the font used makes it even worse. Same problem for the rulers numbers. The font used also makes the menus items not very nice to read, although they are readable because they are bigger. I haven't found a way to change this in the preferences. This is my major criticism as it makes the pointer coordinates and rulers unusable.
2. Many keyboard shortcuts do not work as explained in the tutorial: - Alt+Tab will select one object after the other in the drawing, not navigate amongst windows. But Ctrl-Tab will do it so this is OK. - Shift + arrow keys on a selected object moves it by 10 times the default move, as explained. But "Shift+<" doesn't allowing a 10 times resizing, because on a Mac keyboard Shift+< is equivalent to > which scales the object up by 2 px. - Alt+arrow keys does the same as "arrow keys": movement is always 2 px, whatever the zoom factor is. - Alt+> and Alt+< do the same as > and <, whatever the zoom factor is. - "Selecting under" with Alt+click doesn't work (Alt+click zooms up!).
3. Out of the three zooming actions in the Command bar: - zoom to fit selection in window (3) - zoom to fit drawing in window (4) - zoom to fit page in window (5) only one keyboard shortcut (5) works as expected (but clicking on the icon works for all three actions).
Best regards,
Hervé