Whenever I create Text it has an outline. I obviously want text without outline by default. 

A similar problem has been reported in Text is outline only and Text with outline; however the reported solutions don't seem to work for me. 

Detailed description:

I open Inkscape, select the Text tool and type something. It will be black with black outline. At this stage, if I open the text preferences, it will show under "Style of new Objects" (translated from German version) 

Fill: Black
Contour: Unset

I then remove the outline, e.g. via "Fill and Contour". I click "Take over from current selection". At this stage the preferences "Style of new Objects" will show

Fill: Black
Contour: None

This is what I want. So far so good. 

However, it will not remember this setting after closing and reopening Inkscape.

I also tried to save into a default template. It does not save this setting.  

Hence, whenever I open Inkscape, I need to type some random text, remove the outline, set this as default and then start working. 

I'm currently on Inkscape 1.4; however this problem was also present in Inkscape 1.1 before I updated. This makes me think that it might be related to some configuration files that are not changed by a new install.  

Maybe try: Open Inkscape Preferences->Tools->Text Tool->Style of new objects and set it from your preferred text object by checking "This tool´s own style: and hit Take from selection.

FWIW, by design, new installs do not overwrite the preferences.xml in the user profile.

The preferences.xml should be overwritten by closing Inkscape, unless your install version does not access the user profile.

please:

1. Describe your OS (your computer's Operating System: Mac/Windows/Linux/etc. & version).
2. Describe if Inkscape was newly installed, or upgraded from an earlier version.
3. Describe the version of Inkscape and the installer you used (the file you downloaded from the web: .msi/.exe/.zip/appimage/other, PPA/Snap/Flatpak, dmg/other ). 

This is on Windows 8.1

Both Inkscapes (1.1 and 1.4) are new installs. They reside in their own folder respectively.

I do not remember how I installed 1.1 back in the days. For Inkscape 1.4 (86a8ad7, 2024-10-11), I used the "inkscape-1.4_2024-10-11_86a8ad7-x64.msi" downloaded from this site.

Both versions use the same preferences, i.e. C:\Users\...\AppData\Roaming\inkscape\preferences.xml

The section in that file looks like this:

    <eventcontext
       id="text"
       usecurrent="0"
       gradientdrag="1"
       font_sample="AaBbCcIiPpQq12369$€¢?.;/()"
       show_sample_in_list="1"
       use_svg2="1"
       style="font-size:11.99999985px;line-height:95%;font-family:sans-serif;-inkscape-font-specification:'sans-serif, Normal';text-decoration-color:#000000;letter-spacing:0px;word-spacing:0px;white-space:pre;shape-inside:url(#rect70975);fill:#000000;stroke-width:1.00156999;-inkscape-stroke:none;stop-color:#000000;text-orientation:auto"
       selcue="1"
       outer_style="0"
       align_mode="0"
       writing_mode="0"
       orientation_mode="0"
       direction_mode="0">
      <group
         id="lineheight"
         display_unit="9" />
    </eventcontext>

Anything wrong here? How should this section look like? 

I manually edited the preferences.xml to remove some elements from the style attribute, e.g. the stroke-width. 

However, Inkscape would overwrite my edit at startup. This means that there is another place where Inkscape stores those information. 

Also, I found that the preferences.xml is not updated when pressing the "Take over from current selection" in the text preference tab.

It is not recommended to have different versions use the same preferences.xml. Inkscape devs suggest only running one version at a time, unless using appimage, and still there may be preferences.xml confusion.

Inkscape writes to the preferences.xml at close. If it cannot find a valid preferences.xml in the user profile, it will create a new one on startup.

I suggest uninstalling all Inkscape installations and the user profile, then install 1.3.2 .msi to avoid some bugs in 1.4.

I think I solved this now. After a few iterations of editing the preferences.xml and restarting inkscape it settled to a consistent state. What's important though, is to not have any other Inkscape version in the Windows PATH variable. 

The relevant section in the preferences.xml now looks like this:

    <eventcontext
       id="text"
       usecurrent="0"
       gradientdrag="1"
       font_sample="AaBbCcIiPpQq12369$€¢?.;/()"
       show_sample_in_list="1"
       use_svg2="1"
       style="font-size:15.99998665px;line-height:95%;font-family:Arial;-inkscape-font-specification:'Arial, Normal';text-decoration-color:#000000;letter-spacing:0px;word-spacing:0px;white-space:pre;fill:#000000;stroke-width:0px;-inkscape-stroke:none;stop-color:#000000;text-orientation:auto"
       selcue="1"
       outer_style="0"
       align_mode="0"
       writing_mode="0"
       orientation_mode="0"
       direction_mode="0">
      <group
         id="lineheight"
         display_unit="9" />
    </eventcontext>