On 1/19/07, Olivier Lefevre <lefevrol@...12...> wrote:
I've been trying to use Inkscape but its UI seems designed to foil attempts. Specifically when I select the rectangle drawing tool and create a shape by dragging I get one width a dashed contour that vanishes as soon as I click anywhere on the pane. There does not seem to be any way to make it stick and thus to actually get a rectangle. How dumb is that? If you need assistance just to draw a rectangle, never mind more advanced operation, something's really wrong with the UI.
You're most likely drawing it fully transparent or white, which is why it's invisible. Look at the statusbar: on the left it shows you the style of the selected object. Or, switch to the Selector tool and read the description of the selected object and see its bounding box handles. All the hints are there, just look.
If it's transparent, use the Opacity field in the statusbar to fix that. If it's white or has None for fill, click on any color to repaint it. What could be easier?
And if you're wondering why it's creating it transparent or white, then it's because you have assigned that style to some object and Inkscape has remembered it. By default, all shape tools use the last-used style for new objects, and it's a great time saver. (Although you can turn this off if you like.)
Likewise the need to use a CTRL modifier for the arrow keys to work runs counter to th expectations developed in users by every other software I can think of and is inconvenient to boot.
Inkscape is not a viewer. Its primary function is editing. Therefore, plain arrow keys are reserved for the most basic editing action: moving the selected object(s) around. Using Ctrl+arrows for scrolling canvas is an added convenience. By the way, consider that many other vector editors have no keyboard shortcuts for scrolling AT ALL; there, you can only scroll by mouse.