also, my second point of interest is the node editing. one of the features i miss the most is the shortening of distance of two randomly selected nodes. in case you know Blender, after selecting vertices and pressing S to scale, their distance shortens/lengthens according to mouse movement. is there in inkscape any way of performing similar actions?


Yes, you can use < and > from you keyboard ( Add Shift or Alt to alter it)
Check it on : http://inkscape.org/doc/keys046.html