Hi all, long time user, first time poster I have the weirdest issue and I'm hoping somebody can point me in a direction.

When I select the text tool and click on a document I get nothing. I can start typing, and if the "Text and font" dialog is open, I can see the text showing up there as I type, but not in the document itself. If I go back to select mode and then do something that updates the page (I've been using CTRL-B and F12) then the text suddenly shows up. I'm getting the same kind of behavior in new documents with the shapes tools too, but the shapes do seem to work in existing documents or, interestingly, if I open an existing document, select and copy all, and then paste into a brand new document. Then shapes work again, but not text.

This didn't happen with a software update. This started happening when I opened a PDF with raster graphics and then tried to add text to it. I've tried uninstalling Inkscape and reinstalling it, and even doing a full system update and them un/reinstalling.

According to Help/About I'm running Inkscape 1.2 (dc2aedaf03, 2022-05-15) and I'm in Arch Linux. Any ideas on what might have caused this weirdness?

Before we get too far along, please press the Reset button in Preferences>System and restart Inkscape. 

I acknowledge your point it did not happen with an update, but maybe the condition has been hiding from the time of the update until the PDF operations brought it to light.

Chime back and let us know if that made any difference.

Nice avatar, BTW. 👍

Thanks for the quick reply! No good on the reset button. I actually already wiped out ~/.cache/inkscape/ and ~/.config/inkscape/ and still the same thing.

Fun update: It looks like if I open a new document, try adding text, and then try adding a shape the issue happens with the shape and the text. However, if I open a new document and draw a shape, then try to add text, the shape draws just fine both before and after adding text.

OK, got that out of the way.

Sounds like a canvas issue, but I'm not finding the exact behavior in the bug reports.

I'd file a bug report... the devs will have more insight.

Well, that's interesting. Your mentioning the canvas got me to thinking. I went into the document properties and turned on the checkerboard. Text immediately stopped working. I turned it back off and it stopped working again, but turning it back on didn't immediately fix it; it took a couple of toggles.

I would love to post an issue, but I don't know how to reliably reproduce the issue in the first place. Should I still post something?

You can report it as erratic... what struck me was the comment about hiding/showing rulers and/or dialogs. There are a lot of reports where canvas* behavior changes with ruler/dialog visibility.

The devs may have tips on reproducibility. 

(*the work area)

I re-installed 1.2, left the box checked to run Inkscape at the end of installation, clicked the reset button in Preferences>system, clicked on the teal fill swatch, and drew a rectangle.

This behavior started after importing a pdf document to extract an image from it.  Since then, I did all the stuff described in my first post on this thread and the things above.

I have attached screen shots of my invisible rectangle and the svg: file as well.

The first shot shows the rectangle as I saw it using the rectangle tool with the Fill dialog up to show that there was an assigned and opaque fill.  The second shot is with the selection tool with the layer dialog up to show the rectangle is the only object in the drawing.

I found something; somehow the fill opacity got set to 0.

I'll check to see if this is the case with my other drawings later (have to go now).