Hi,

At the beginning of the year I switched to Inkscape after using Illustrator as my weapon of choice for 25 years mainly because Adobe just wasn't innovating enough to warrant me paying so much for it.

I've come across a bunch of usability issues, some are bugs, some are just inefficiencies. There's a lot, as it's taken hours to note them all down as I work and it would take hours to put them into the bug reporter.

Q1 Is there any kind of automation for making quality bug reports faster? (eg. device and screenshots, etc, should I assume there's really nothing more than a web-form and me having to compile everything per post) Also to note, I'm not clearing my preferences because it's taken me so long to get things working half decently. Things I wish just worked on install.
Q2 Is it even worth putting them in the bug report system as are these small niggles something that the dev team cares about?
Q3 Is it common that problems are due to dependencies outside of Inkscape, eg. GTK and frameworks that it's built upon, so it can't be helped because it's that project's owners that need to do something first?
Q4 As with most FOSS projects, is it really only final code that can make a difference to get the dev team's attention, there's no designs prior to someone building or adjusting a feature? (eg. is there a Penpot file somewhere?)
Q5 Inkscape or another project? - A lot of these are UX issues, where the process or flow is slow and clunky. It's not a learning curve, it's more that it takes multiple key presses to do a task and those keys cannot be remapped or a feature doesn't work properly so you need to find a work around. I'm concerned about the merit in getting into the code of Inkscape, that is desktop software which is just too limited in the updating process where energy would be better spent on a vector editing web app which is more accessible and the UI is more flexible. I guess I'm wondering what the dev team wants to achieve, does it have a user experience team/focus or is most of it's time spent squashing bugs?
Q6 How much can you override existing functionality when using extensions or are they completely standalone panels with no ability to preview changes or add UI to the canvas?

1. No.
2. Yes.
3. Occasionally
4. IIRC, devs work on branches and merge after review. Ask the devs on chat
5. See the project on GitLab and/or chat with the devs.
6. Extensions and path-effects greatly expand Inkscape functionality.

If you care to list your niggles, we can comment on any that have solutions.

Inkscape

MacBookPro M1 - Inkscape 1.3.2 (091e20e, 2023-11-25)

Critical - (Causes Crashes)
- C1. Crashes when attempting to move the panels/palettes - consistent enough I don’t move any panels now.
    - Moved a panel and left an empty window on screen, that crashed Inkscape
    - Just moved a Text Tab/Panel to the region below. crashed.
- C2. Crashes when you delete the clone source. Shouldn’t let people delete the clone source if it crashes the app! First time I was deleting all the contents of an artboard including a clone used in a halftone and it crashed. I then immediately tried to set it up again and crashed again deleting only the clone.

Intermediary (Prevents you from doing an action and likely requires a restart)
- I1. Tooltips disappear sometimes and you can’t get them back without a restart
- I2. The stroke units dropdown appears outside the palette and was inconsistent in applying when I did click it. Most of the time doesn’t work.
- I3. Sometimes, I can’t get the settings menu to ever open without a restart
- I4. The drop down menus within the text tool properties bar wouldn’t open for me. They were somehow hidden. (Text alignment, font metric)
- I5. Many windowed options/menus open with parts clipped off and you need to drag them open further to access the menu (Prefs, filter editor). What I mean is that the menu window is a larger size and the menu itself is arbitrarily clipped say 5% down from the top.
- I6. The Fliter Editor menu would clip off the filter flyout menu and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get it to render.

Time Consuming (Repeated actions or actions that require multiple steps)
- The snapping is inconsistent
    - T1. Snaps to objects much further away from the object being acted on than the ones closest to it.
    - T2. When trying to use with the constrain to axis or constrain scale ratio, the snapping overrides the axis you’re on and is exclusive, as in it doesn’t work together with the constraint so you end up with deformed shapes or objects misaligned and you need to resort to the alignment panel
    - T3. Snapping doesn’t work when dragging object transformation points / origins / anchor (the crosshairs when you’re trying to rotate/mirror)
- The type tool
    - Letterspacing
        - T4. Letter-spacing should be a high level setting and not hidden in a sub-menu
        - T5. Letter-spacing would benefit from being a % based value rather than “in” or the tooltip says PX - I realise this might be something to do with SVG but this interface should manage that for me. I cannot understate the time suck that this is.
    - T6. The type settings only appear when the type tool is selected, which is frustrating when you have to switch between the Select Tool (V or S) and the Type Tool (T) when having access to those settings all the time would be good. It increases clicks and keyboard presses.
    - T7. There’s no way to exit the type editing tool without reaching to the edge of the keyboard (ESC). On Illustrator and other apps, CMD+Enter allows you to exit the editing mode. This is inconsistent with the line tool where Shift+Enter, finishes the line and ESC cancels the entire line. The equivalent behaviour in the text field should be ESC removing the entire text field. But I actually think the line tool is wrong to delete the entire line on ESC. Either way, this cannot be reassigned in the Keyboard settings.
    - T8 There’s no moving the caret to the start of the first line or end of the last line with up and down keys. (You can use CMD+Up and Down but that is more keypresses, and it would be more useful to have CMD+Up and CMD+Down reserved for moving the line up and down within the textfield as Word or other text apps do. This is amazing for notes and prioritising them.)
- Text and Font Panel/Tab
    - T9. Font picker will show styles at right whilst the font itself is off screen
    - T10. Scrollbars get in the way of the text panel lists all the time - appearing and disappearing and the way the final option is under a scrollbar.
    - Variable font support
        - T11 - Sometimes sliders are there for variable fonts, sometimes they are not
        - T12 - Doesn’t preview and the results are inconsistent (eg. Weight 100, goes to 400)
    - T13. Why is there a delete (x in a arrow pill) and a reset filter button in the “text and font”
    - T14. Sometimes when using “Apply” in “Text and Font” it then changes the stroke/fill settings which are different than what is in the fill/stroke panel, there’s no context to tell you why that is linked. For me it started fill:none and stroking all my text and I had no feedback from the system telling me why.
    - T15. The tab/panel version of the Text and Font tool is unreliable. Sometimes the apply button doesn’t do anything. The fact that the important apply key is off the screen beneath the preview, which doesn’t show the font correctly often. It also applies all of the settings together and is disconnected from the state of the text field on the screen. It seems to be for people that have the font stylings all memorised to apply to the screen. It just creates more trouble than help so I just use the top contextual tool properties bar.
- Duplicating using the spacebar
    - T16. I really want to be able to set this to the Alt+Drag duplicate model that’s standard across a range of design software. Also given the sensitivity of a Wacom, it moves a bit when you start dragging before you get the chance to press the spacebar. It’s been weeks and I can’t throw the muscle memory of Alt+Drag to duplicate. I know the alternative is to use the Ctrl+C, Ctrl+F but if you have some text in the clipboard that you want to put within a duplicated text field it’s quite a hassle.It also has me accidentally duplicating things when I’m trying to drag the canvas. I feel like this is the Right-click-to-select-from-Blender problem, want to do something because that’s how you’ve always done it but it’s completely against established interfaces. (And yes it’s kind of useful when you want to randomly place things but it’s not enough for me)
- The Pen Tool
    - T17. When using the Pen you should be able to modify a point’s handles after you’ve put down a point (released the mouse). The shift key doesn’t do anything prior to mouse down so it’d be good if that toggles retracting the handle on the last laid point (basically the same as when dragging out the point and you hold shift down).
    - T18. How to change the behaviour of the pen tool so that you can constrain to 45º axis with shift and toggle the corner with Ctrl that is standard in other design software.
    - T19. Ending a path is inconsistent. I often end up with two points on top of each other because it doesn’t pick up the start point even when I’m on top of it, thankfully there’s feedback of the node changing colour but it’s slow to change often.
- Node/vertex editing tool
    - T20. You can’t use control (or any modifier) when on the pen tool to return to the selection tool (AI, Figma)
    - T21. There is no feedback on the cursor or on the line to help you understand what is happening when you press a modifier. I do realise that there’s some text at the bottom of the page but it’d be much better to have contextual changes in the cursor itself with visuals that represent what is about to happen.
- T22. Corners path effect tab/panel doesn’t make sense how it works. If you want to edit all the corners to the same value, it’s fine but if you want to edit individual corners to a set value it isn’t connected to the actual state of what is on the canvas, so it just has the last value you used. If you want to set a corner to the same value of a previous one, you must memorise what you set it to.
- Input fields
    - T23. The lack of basic math entry in input fields across the app. I’ve noticed some fields allow it but I can’t do it on most fields I care about, eg. all the type settings.
    - T24. The default -/+ adjustment values in most fields is so useless because it either makes such huge changes or such minor changes, they’re not practical.
    - T25. Select All when within a text field doesn’t select all the text but instead all the objects on the canvas. Why this matters is because:
    - T26. Text fields are show all the trailing 0’s in a decimal when they add no value.
    - T27. I’m surprised how much I miss the preset numbers in the stroke size numerical entry field from Illustrator.
    - T28. I am hand entering numbers so often rather than making sensible quick adjustments -/+ 1 or .25 and then when I click in I’m in the middle of a big number and have to delete it all with the keyboard because select all doesn’t work.. 1.40200
- Clone Panel is so frustrating because it’s results are inconsistent
    - T29. The Rows X Columns is the inverse of Width & Height they should be consistent with X & Y movement so Columns and Rows with Width and Height.
    - T30. It’s painfully slow sometimes and it’s far too easy to create something that will crash your machine without a warning.
    - T31. It needs a live preview to help you understand what an adjustment will do.
    - T32. Sometimes it applies changes inconsistently eg. Scale is only applied to the next row, not each subsequent row.
    - T33. Create Tiled Clones Panel opened in its own window and will not close.
    - T34. Exponent is a very crude variable, if it used the Schlick curve with its two variables, it’s far more useful - easeIn, easeOut, easeInOut, etc.
    - T35. This set of problems means that I just don’t use this feature beyond Halftones which even then are asking for a crash.
- Clipping Paths
    - T36. Sometimes I can adjust the object/image being clipped within my clipping object, sometimes I can’t. There’s no apparent logic to how this works. I often end up needing to Release Clip and reclip. It’s such a pain when all you want to do is move a picture that is clipped over a bit.
- T37. Inkscape canvas disappears when resizing the app and needs to be resized again to appear again.
- T38. Sometimes copy and pasting a design removes effects from it, I found a work around by turning it into a symbol first but still. Not being able to just copy and paste something is weird.
- Keyboard Settings
    - T39. Cannot drag the columns to reveal clipped/ellipses content.
    - T40. Cannot add to existing shortcuts, must overwrite (no clear way to have more than one custom key-combo on a tool/setting)
- T41. Pattern colour, not sure how to get it to apply or change my object on the canvas.
- T42. Right click on the Fill/Stroke colour chips at the bottom and the menu that appears is far up in the canvas

First Time User issues
- F1. Mesh Gradient icon is different to the manual
- F2. The “in th” setting within the Spacing menu looks more like a metric for the letter-spacing
- F3. I selected Illustrator Defaults on first installation but it was missing a lot:
    - The Illustrator shortcuts on setup should set a lot more than they do (Constrain to axis should be able to be moved to Shift, Up & down layers should be Cmd+}, Cmd+{ but then that conflicts with rotation which cannot be reset…)
    - It appears that some modifier keys are attached to things within tools that aren’t exposed to the keyboard settings (eg. Trying to set shift to lock axis interferes with other tools that contextually use shift and that you cannot remap)
    - Shift+X to swap fill and stroke
- F4. The “align and distribute” icons are really confusing. How there are two left and two top and two right? There is very little different in their form and they are not positioned according to their function. Two weeks later, I still have no idea. Also when do you want to use the “align top edges of the objects to the bottom edge of anchor”? Is there any use cases for this?
- F5. Why are there multiple places to manage fill and stroke that have weird combinations of features
- F6. The way clip paths when duplicated are actually linked! There is no warning of this. I duplicated a clip set and then went to edit the clip path and it changed both.
- F7. I can’t see where my clipping path is and I can’t appear to edit it without first unclipping (there’s a setting that for some reason is hidden by default, why not show it immediately as it’s only visible when the object is selected anyway right?)
- F8. There is no solid record of where the extensions folder is now on MacOS in Inkscape documentation. Something wouldn’t install using the extensions menu so I had to copy it in directly. In the end, I had to put it within the application itself which means I’ll lose it on next upgrade.

UI Design
- U1. Items in the toolbar at the top that are part of a toggle group appear to be separate toggles or buttons. They should show a relationship.
- U2. Pathbuilder
    - the approval button is on the left? Shouldn’t it be on the right as all the other approval and apply buttons are on the right?
    - Also is there a need for the Circle X and Circle Checkmark? This is the only place with this type of approach? It’d be good to have a consistent set of UX patterns across the software.

Wishes
- W1. I desperately want more features in the right click context menu and that they’re useful (eg. Change vertex type)
- W2. Change the colour of symbols with an override. (Eg. Make an icon once and then use it dark and light?)
- W3. There is no feedback when converting from stroke to path unless you have the Vertex tool open. There should be some feedback with the selection tool too.
- W4. I hate the cursors for a lot of the tools as they get in the way or prevent accuracy as they seem offset to the canvas, how can I change these?
- W5. I want the stroke style and colour in the same place. It’s really annoying needing to switch between tabs in the panel
- W6. Reading through the documentation on Inkscape, I see that, paraphrasing - “If there’s no clearly better way, copy Illustrator.” I really struggle with this today because Illustrator is lagging behind Figma. Figma is much more user friendly for many of the same functions and it has features out ahead of the user, like things feel like they’re in the right place or use the bare minimum keypresses to achieve actions. Figma is the new baton holder for 2D design software.
- W7. I really wish I had the resizable elements from Figma, where you can control the stretch or positioning of an element if you resize it.
- W8. I really like the pie/flick menus from Blender where I can achieve contextual tasks a lot quicker. I wish they were part of most other software.

I am also new to inkscape after using Illustrator for years. I haven't been using inkscape long enough to experience all the issues @lovemycurves has. But I *do* experience something like her C1 (though it doesn't cause a crash).

Specifically, when I drag to resize the inkscape window, it sometimes leaves the window mostly blank.  This seems to be a refresh issue — I suspect I could still perform operations on the objects if I was lucky enough to click where they were. And if I move the cursor around the window some interface elements get redrawn. Often I am able to recover by resizing the window again, but it is hit-or-miss.

Probably related to this is that while I am doing the drag resize, the window contents will flash white, like paparazzi bombarding Paris Hilton. Theory is that if I am unlucky and stop the drag during one of these white flashes, I get the blank window. This makes the whole thing similar to the old TV quiz show Press Your Luck. Google "no whammies" if you aren't familiar with that.