I'm losing my mind trying to adjust the line spacing inside a single text block... I tried so many tuto's unsuccessfully... Now I'm not far from thinking that Inkscape is too mind- and action-limiting... Thank you so much for your support ;-)
hi and welcome to the forum. There is what I call a trick to it. You need to uncheck the '?' and change the line spacing to 1. Then it will work correctly. You do have to be inside of the text block to see the menu.
@flamingolady I also created an account just to say thanks, it works perfectly. I have been battling with this for months now until I finally decided to do a search. 😃
Thanks for this guidance. I am also a beginner with Inkscape. It never ceases to amaze me how different is the operation (particularly the GUI) of different software. I have been using Visio for many years and while it is far from perfect and in fact aggravating in many ways, the interface become familiar enough to feel intuitive. (Successive software revisions hide the commands I use routinely and fill up the "ribbon" with commands that I never use.) In this case with Inkscape, I was first struggling to create an unfilled box (I was bitten by stroke width) and then fighting to reduce some excessive text line spacing. I still don't quite understand what I just now did to fix it, but if I can repeat it I think I will figure it out. Thanks again.
Bob. Happens to me a lot too! Try to remember to click on the text icon first, that way the text tool menu will appear, then you'll be able to see the '?' and line height.
It's kind of using the circle or box tool, you have to click on it before you can see the settings. I struggled with that for longer than I care to admit, lol.
Thanks a lot Flamingolady and greytomorrow. Just starting with this forum.....I dug around my computer for an image to use as my icon. I do electronics, and I found a photo of my ~55 year old wire stripper. But it got cropped into a circle..... :-( Also I thought I had an alias-username but somehow that seems to have gotten lost? Anyway I am mostly interested in drawing a block diagram to start with. I would like to think that ought to be a pretty easy task. We will see! Thanks again.
Line spacing is dictated by CSS rules, because Inkscape is a native SVG editor. This makes text line spacing complicated to manage in a user-interface.
Of course Inkscape line spacing (CSS line-height) is dictated by CSS rules, because Inkscape is an SVG editor, like (for example) Adobe Illustrator is a PostScript editor or Google's WebDesigner is an HTML editor.
That said, how does that fact complicate anything? Actually, as you probably know, it's pretty straightforward.
I want, for example, two lines of text to say "Mary had a little lamb, her fleece was white as snow", justified left, 18pt on 21pt, color a dark blue-green, hopefully in Palatino if the user has it...
An idiot like myself 🤤 can bang that out in 30 seconds. And I'm sure you know that's wasn't the only way to express that line of type. I could have used "em" or "%" or "px". I could have said "navy" or "midnight" if I didn't care to be so specific about the color. Bang that out in PostScript! 🤣
In any case, difficult or not, that "?" icon and its sister to the left, the "TT" icon were useless, unnecessarily complicated and confusing. Good riddance!
I could never understand why text manipulation has always been so difficult in Inkscape. Even in 1.0beta text still has its issues with the Text and Font panel.
Of course Inkscape line spacing (CSS line-height) is dictated by CSS rules, because Inkscape is an SVG editor, like (for example) Adobe Illustrator is a PostScript editor or Google's WebDesigner is an HTML editor.
GWD does seem to use HTML as it's native format. Ai on the other hand uses PS in its back end, but does lots of voodoo and saves all construction data in the proprietary .ai format.
I'm not saying Inkscape's first UI of the CSS text handling was elegant. It should have had a dork-mode standard, and an advanced option (currently in the .9xx UI) in preferences.
Perhaps I do not qualify as an idiot, but when I googled "CSS" I needed an explanation for the explanation. I am a semi-retired electronic design engineer who does better with transistors and amplifiers. In Inkscape, even after seeing the menu item for line spacing I was not able to reduce the spacing to what looked close to "single line" spacing. Right now it will be difficult for me to reproduce the steps I tried at that time. Actually line spacing (in lines) is the sort of parameter that seems most relatable. I think the problem with pixels is that they will not scale with the font size?
Bob. Re alias, you are correct, there is an alias name, however the forum uses your first name. Don't tell anyone but I cheated and finally put flamingolady as my first name, it's how folks know me from the other forum. Hoping they will start using the alias name as some point...
In Inkscape, even after seeing the menu item for line spacing I was not able to reduce the spacing to what looked close to "single line" spacing.
So, here is how I manage it, if the line height cannot be reduced sufficiently by the numeric entry/spinbox:
Try clicking the question-mark (un-set variable inline height).
If that does not resolve the issue, activate the Tt button ("outer" text style) and set the font height to something small and linespacing to something small and click the questionmark.
Then de-activate Tt (outer) and edit the text normally.
Of course I somehow got a good line spacing in one block of text, but I am now reading your explanation and trying to do it again. The text started out with a large font but when I shrank the font the absolute line spacing stayed constant. Clicking the ?, the Tt, the A/A, and the units I can get some minor changes in the line spacing but they are all impractically large. I do not know what I managed to do the first time a few days ago...... In case it matters, I am using Verdana font, right now 10 size.
Clicking around finally now it snapped to a reasonable line spacing, but I cannot figure out what happened. Sort of a "play with it until I get what I want" with no understanding of cause and effect.
If the line-spacing cannot be reduced to zero, some line-height or text-size is preventing it. It could be:
A character or space in the line is set to a larger size. Remedy: select all characters in the active block and select the desired type size.
The line-spacing of a character or space is set to a larger height. Remedy: select all characters in the active block and click the question-mark.
A character or space in the "Outer Text Style" is set to a larger size, and/or the line-spacing is set to a larger height. Remedy: Activate the Tt button, select all characters in the active block and set the type size to 2px, AND set the lines-spacing to zero. De-activate the Tt button and continue to compose.
I suggest ensuring the Tt button is de-activated when composing text. Use the Tt button to reset the outer style if line-spacing isn't behaving.
If you don't want to use extensions like laser tools, cad tools, plotting, grids, export tools, etc. created by thousands of 3rd party developers, go for the beta. If you want full access to extensions created over the past decade, stick with a .9xx version.
I'm sticking with the .9xx versions and learning how to deal with the line spacing. This is not rocket science.
Really? More than 2000? Can you point me to where these 2000+ may be found/downloaded? 'Cos I'm gonna count 'em! And are you sure they all are rendered useless in the new 1.0 release?
If the line-spacing cannot be reduced to zero, some line-height or text-size is preventing it. It could be: A character or space in the line is set to a larger size. Remedy: select all characters in the active block and select the desired type size. The line-spacing of a character or space is set to a larger height. Remedy: select all characters in the active block and click the question-mark. A character or space in the "Outer Text Style" is set to a larger size, and/or the line-spacing is set to a larger height. Remedy: Activate the Tt button, select all characters in the active block and set the type size to 2px, AND set the lines-spacing to zero. De-activate the Tt button and continue to compose.
So, here is how I manage it, if the line height cannot be reduced sufficiently by the numeric entry/spinbox: Try clicking the question-mark (un-set variable inline height). If that does not resolve the issue, activate the Tt button ("outer" text style) and set the font height to something small and linespacing to something small and click the questionmark. Then de-activate Tt (outer) and edit the text normally. i.e. The outer style overrides the inner style.
Gee, Tyler...from the way you describe it, it sure seems like it.
The 0.92.x system for text styling is a Chinese water torture. You have grown used to it over the years. It is an acceptable price to pay, and I'm being generous. It in itself is not an acceptable solution. I remember screwing with that voodoo about clicking this icon then that icon while saying an incantation and holding a chicken's foot. I can't understand how you're defending it, bright as you are.
Name me any other graphics program that makes you jump through hoops like that just to set a line of type? Photoshop? Illustrator? GIMP? Blender? Krita? Scribus? LibreOffice? Microsoft Office?
You're lucky (and smart): you've apparently figured out how that inexplicably arcane and byzantine system works. But you can't expect anybody else who doesn't have an engineering/CS degree or your experience with Inkscape to agree with you. And even so, you'd be hard pressed.
My gosh I seem to have stirred up something! I am highly sympathetic to greytomorrow's agreement with my experience, although perhaps the sarcasm is more than what is called for. I can personally take some transistors, diodes, wire and some other very basic parts and make a working power supply. But if I were to try to explain the process to a beautician or car mechanic, I would not expect that person to be then able to make a power supply. That seems analogous (if somewhat exaggerated) to the font line spacing discussion. To me, an extension is something belongs on a ladder or an electric power cord. I guess I am not much closer to using software extensions than you are to designing a power supply. I have barely started with Inkscape. I understand that I am using revision (is it 0.92?). But if this difficulty in implementing what should be a basic task (adjusting text line spacing) is representative of what is ahead of me in using Inkscape, then perhaps I need to try some other software. So my thinking is that I will probably try 1.0.
FYI I got into trying open source software with KiCad which is for designing electronic circuit boards. With that I now have my neck stuck out into a non-released "nightly build" version. This means that the significant work which I have put into an existing circuit board design can probably not be "backed out" into an earlier version, and I hope that my design work will be forward compatible. Having done that, it seems to me that trying the 1.0 Beta version of Inkscape will be an easy stretch.
Thanks everyone for contributing to this discussion.
OK; I have downloaded inkscape-1.0beta2_2020-04-08_ca36898-x64, and I see that I need to uninstall the old version before installing the new one. I have had 7zip on my pc as of years ago. That is OK. But.......
1) Do I need to unzip the zip file before install? and
2) Which .exe file I should launch to begin the installation? README.md says "For installation, please see: [INSTALL.md](INSTALL.md)" but I do not see this file in the zip.
I am a Win10 user and am skeptical about using a significant software application which does not go through a proper "install" process (??). (small utilities such as MoveMouse might be OK.) I used to have mild success in "screwing" with older versions of Windows, such as simply removing the files for "office assistant" (remember Clipit?) and that worked OK some of the time. But I don't want to get my Win10 registry fouled up.
Greytomorrow......do you mean that instead of uninstalling 0.92 I should simply replace the old Inkscape.exe with the new one? Hmmmmm there are a lot of other files which came with the download.
As I mentioned above I am using a "nightly build" of KiCad and I think that is sort of like a beta version. I did get an install executable with that download. I have certainly experienced bumps in the road with it but not much regret.
But I think Tyler is reading the "tea leaves" and inferring that perhaps I am not the right person to be using beta versions of 1.0. The one thing is that so far I have little created work to lose so I am not worried about that. But to uninstall 1.0 and re-install 0.92.....I am not sure what will happen if I try to uninstall, and I never installed. I am not doing this yet.......
CAVEAT, BOB! I haven't laid hands on Windows since at least Windows 7 so take caution. Possibly a Windows Inkscape user can chime in to correct any mistakes I've made.
Bob, as I said before, unzip the 7z archive to somewhere (forgive me, I'm no longer familiar with WIndows' directory structure), you can even unzip it to the desktop if you so desire. Then, navigate in that newly-unzipped folder to /bin/inkscape.exe. If I'm not mistaken, you can right-click that file "inkscape.exe" and choose "Create shortcut" or however it is called these days. Then you can drag that shortcut to your desktop. Easy...like trig! 🤣 And don't worry yourself about "a lot of other files". All your programs have "a lot of other files that came with the download"! 😁 The only real difference here is that none of it is hidden from you as in a normal Windows "wizard" install.
I don't believe you have to delete the old Inkscape to use the beta (90% sure). But if you dbl-click an .svg file directly in Explorer I'm not sure which Inkscape will open...most likely the beta, but again, I'm not a Windows user.
I hope I was clear. Remember, pal...it's BETA! If you're new with Inkscape though, it shouldn't matter too much. If you're uncomfortable with any of this, don't do it!
@TylerDurden The developer who has spent so much time looking after the extensions code for 1.0 (and building this forum) takes your snub as a challenge. I have compiled all inkscape extensions found in github (identifying all inx files that mention the inx xml namespace). That gives us 996 raw results over 100 pages. From that, we have 260 unique inx ids, but 163 of them are inkscape's internal ids, so maybe people have been modding our extensions without relabelling them. (But that's just bad form). That leaves 97 unique, non-core inkscape extensions.
19 are greygreen effects (looks like the same package, next_page, prev_page etc), 8 are evilmadscience eggbot extensions, some board game extensions, some sewing extensions, a couple of triangle extensions. Interesting things we should make sure still work in Inkscape 1.0 for sure.
We actually reached out to extension writers to help them port to python3 (first priority) and to the inkex 1.0 API (second priory) where possible. If the hundreds or thousands of extensions are not maintained, there's very little we can actively do except process them for inclusion in the core extensions (which we do), invite new maintainers to join and host extensions in our extras group on gitlab so we can resuscitate them.
I know you don't mean much by your criticism, but it cuts deep because of the excessive amount of time by several people over two years. Not just in trying cool new stuff, but in thinking carefully and mindfully about the API, the future and the past. Most extensions that support python3 should still work thanks to efforts to test and retest old extensions against the deprecated API. as far as python2 support goes, that's not on us, python2 is dead now. dead snakes.
I think it is not directed at me, but anyway I am a hardware designer and not a software person. There are about 50 terms used in this post which I do not understand. So the idea of a python being a snake makes much more sense than our state governor being a snake (refer to American news of the last 1-2 months). But beyond that this post is about 100 Km over my head. But the essence here may the idea that the software ought to be usable by us non-programmers.
Bob, some of the extra bits that help make Inkscape so awesome (extensions) were written by contributors that are not around anymore, and so those extra bits won't be updated for some time, if ever. (They were written in a code language called Python2 which has been replaced by Python3.)
I use Inkscape every day. Today, I'm using it to transfer CAD files to PDF so people can make improved face-shields for health care workers. It would not be prudent for me to be using beta software for mission-critical applications. (Inkscape .9xx is not without its demons, but they are demons I already know. )
Anyone considering using the beta of anything, should exercise due-diligence, and those encouraging others to use beta versions should encourage due-diligence as well.
Dr. MO, no disrespect to you or the other the devs was intended, and needn't be regarded as such... there are a lot of extensions out there that are just not gonna get updated. If I want to pick on the devs, I'll poke at the scale issue in the default.svg, but I have bigger fish to fry as mentioned above.
Thanks, TD. In any other time, "Stay away from people" sounds like a paranoid statement. These days, that may be still true but one should also consider the famous quote "only the paranoid survive." One also needs a sense of humor and your take on it gave me a chuckle. Thanks for that.
I wanted to add one thought regarding the contributions by people who are not around any more. As I have mentioned, I do hardware circuit design. It has happened more than once that I look at a working piece of hardware which I designed not so long ago, and I say, "How the heck does that work?". Figuring it out is not likely to be easier if the circuit was designed by someone else. This could be taken as an argument in favor of good documentation, but it is mainly intended as a note of sympathy for anyone trying to work with "bits" that were engineered long ago by someone else.
OK; I am using Inkscape 1.0. This screen grab shows a box with the text "Variable Gain Amplifier......" and the text menu settings. This is not too bad but I would like to further reduce the line spacing. Is it possible for me to further reduce it or am I at the minimum which Inkscape will allow?
Thank you Tyler. I have not worked on this since my post above, but I also have not seen any more definitive responses. This suggests that nobody who has a definitive answer has seen my post. My question is whether (if I unsuccessfully spend more time poking at this) should I post a bug?
I tried to install the beta on my Linux machine and it indicates 0.92.5. The text tools look the same, so I don't think I have the beta properly installed.
I'll try another method (I used the Ubuntu ppa, FWIW) and chime back if I find out anything noteworthy.
In playing with this line spacing, Inkscape 1.0 has crashed more than once. It happened just now. I have considered posting a bug, however the bug posting guidelines stipulate that the crash should be repeatable. I have not gotten over that "bar". Maybe I am consistently inconsistent or maybe there is something else going on. But I think the software should not crash as a result of adjusting line spacing, even if I set some invalid parameter.
I know I am using a beta, and I accept that crashes are one of the risks. My goal with this message is to indicate that there is something wrong here (at least because of the crashes if not because of my difficulty in adjusting spacing) and I would like to raise a yellow flag.
I will be happy to collaborate/test in trying to isolate this bug. One caveat is that right now I do not have many hours/day to play with Inkscape. So any requested tests may take me a few days to complete.
I just downloaded your file and played around with it, changing line spacing and font size and other damage 😁. When I decided to quit, Inkscape soft-crashed with an error (Segmentation fault: 11)! Don't worry about what that means...I don't know either! 🤣
If it's all right with you, I'd like to file a bug report with your file attached. Please let me know. Otherwise, if you're up to it, you can visit https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inbox/-/issues and report it yourself. It's totally up to you!
In the meantime, I suggest activating the Autosave in the Preferences panel (Preferences > Input/Output > Autosave). At least that way you can pick up pretty much where you left off, just in case of a crash.
Thanks a lot. I am encouraged by your bad news. :-) Seriously that means that it is not too difficult for others to get what I get.
Hi greytomorrow. Thanks; no problem to use my file and file a bug report. I am happy to help debug the software. There is nothing like a drunk geezer to find the mines in the minefield. 😉 Or maybe to stagger through it without hitting one.
Actually, I see now that autosave is turned OFF but regardless I am getting one such file with each crash. In fact the file that I posted was the result of me renaming the last autosave file.
It looks like the Autosave option is not specifically for crashes? In that case I prefer to leave it turned off at it is. The autosaves I get from crashes is indeed useful.
Bob, they want you down in the principal's office...again. 😁
Listen to this and see if you'd be up to the challenge (it's really no big deal). I'd like you to navigate to the \Inkscape 1.0beta2\bin\ folder. Inside you should find a file called
gdb_create_backtrace.bat
Dbl-click that bad boy. Then launch Inkscape 1.0beta2, reload the file you uploaded here and try to replicate the crash. If and when Inkscape does crash, it will write a crash report (backtrace) here...
I did find the .bat file. But please clarify where is this %userprofile% folder? I do not see any folders now with name starting with "%". Not sure if that is a legal folder name or if the folder should exist before the .bat file runs and Inkscape crashes.
OK; I got a crash. This was not quite like the previous in that the software suddenly just quit. Previous crashes were probably the "soft" crashes which you described; gave me a dialog box telling me that the software needed to shut down. Your batch file told me where to find the text file. I hope this helps.....
This raises a question. If I can automatically create a crash report, does that mean that I need to be able to reproduce the crash before I should report it? I would think that the crash report might eliminate that need. I just need to launch 1.0 beta using the batch file.........
Thanks. I wish I could add this text to my previous post 5 minutes ago.......
On the subject of the line spacing; Just now I set the line spacing to 0 but this had no result until I tried changing the font size. Once I changed the font size, the line spacing then went to zero. This is not so terrible but it is not the expected behavior. It could be that my laptop is just a little slow to react (??). It is an i5 CPU, > 5 years old with (I think) 8G of RAM but has been adequate for many tasks including circuit simulations which can be CPU intensive.
I don't have a lot of time with Inkscape at the moment so please give me a couple of days.
...and then your avalanche of replies! 🤣
Bob, I'm just kidding around with you! Let's get to business here. First off, after replying to you here, I'll add the backtrace over at GitLab.
You've obviously discovered where %USERPROFILE% is. It's just another way of saying "Bob's account". Sorry I couldn't have been more help but I'm not on a Windows box and haven't touched one since...gosh...Windows XP? How time flies.
Regarding crash and crash reports, it's always a good idea to report these things, beta or otherwise. It's a better idea if you can repeat the crash reliably. I realize you didn't download Inkscape to be a tester, you just wanna draw! 😁 Here's how I personally handle it: if I encounter the same bug three times, I assess if the program is worth my time. If yes, I usually report the bug where I can. For the one-off hiccups and crashes I taken a zen approach and just live with it, remembering back to Win95 and Mac System 7.5 when system-wide crashes happened all the time.
And BTW, your i5 laptop is more than adequate to handle Inkscape and drawings far more complicated than what you've showed. See ya later!
Thanks a lot. Yes I launched Inkscape only with the .bat file and continued with the file that I had uploaded. I think I did multiple saves while working, although I did more "try this and try that" than make actual progress on the file. I may have changed the filename however.
I have e-mailed (the webmaster??) about wanting to be able to edit previous posts........I make trouble 😁 also on another forum for open sourced "EDA" software, and that one does permit editing posts. That capability would have eliminated one or two of my posts above. It seems that I often want to modify what I have said earlier but I think I cannot do that here.
Ahhhhh yes I see that I can edit my earlier post. Sorry about so many posts above.....I now should be able to avoid that......
Before reading your post, I opened my saved file and immediately tried to reduce a line spacing. The top menu already indicated a line spacing of 0 but the actual spacing was probably > 1 line. However changing the font size at that time immediately brought the line spacing to zero, after which I could increase it. There is something odd about the software behavior but it seems that I can manage it for now.
Hello everyone. I am using Inkscape 0.91. When I copy figure from Inkscape to word and then to pdf, the space between alphabets in text box becomes irregular. This happens when I select Picture (Inkscape SVG) in MS word. But when I select Picture (enhanced metafile), opacity cannot be applied to the background color (the background color remains dark with 100% opacity even I decrease the opacity). The alphabets spacing is correct in this case.
I also tried 1.0 but the alphabets spacing problem is also here. I am attaching my inkscape file here. Please help me in this regard. Thank you so much
Sorry to post something in a conversation. On the other hand, it is a forum, letter, not sound. So if I mind this it might even be nice.
I was looking at line spacing earlier in this thread. One of the reasons I use Inkscape, it is printing letters. Letters to send, I don't mean glyphs. It is like font-size-heaven! Ever tried to use some decent decimal number in Word?
Or OpenOffice (Libre Office too last time I tested, or other Office programs). Ok, my Word 2013 here does not take decimal numbers for font size. OpenOffice 4 portable, which I have here does, though one must accept the odd problem. Just the size that is needed doesn't work. 9,7 and 9,4. Though it is more important to have seen 9,7 as to actually use it in my opinion. Or maybe not. Anyway using Word, then publisher by an in-program import is also an option. (But this is Office 2003, which I normally basically use. It has this option in file --> import from word. Also Office 2003 can freely be downloaded from some archive site. I saw recently).
Visio has two decimals at the most.
But Inkscape has an infinite choice of numbers behind the comma/ point in English, to set!
But the line spacing. I don't have this problem at all. Version 0.92 or 1.0 It is not that I need an answer to this, but I wonder what makes up the difference between systems that some are bothered by it and some are not.
When I needed to choose another size, and I noticed this, I went on the WordPerfect site and in the chat I asked if WordPerfect can make size 9,7 or 9,4 or any of the other sizes that can't be made.
The employee kept silent for some time and then they sort of hung up the chat.
But then Scribus... Here the issue really takes off to another level. But I don't mean I necessarily need an answer about this.
Hello @TylerDurden Thank you for your help. But I am still facing the same problem when I group the objects together and copy to word. Maybe I don't know how to copy the figure to word. Can you please guide me about what you did with this figure and how to copy to word step by step. I am new here. I don't know how to use Inkscape properly. Thank you so much.
Thank you @TylerDurden . The first one with file name Load_Estimation_TD_dl_P is working. Kindly also guide me about the steps you have followed. I have also other figures to fix. Thank you so much.
Dear @TylerDurden , Your method is working well in my case. But i am facing this kind of problem when the Inkscape figure is a bit complex. And I cannot try libreoffice because I have written my paper in MS Word. Please also help me in this regard.
I often need to create documents in Microsoft Word that must be submitted as PDF. I like using Inkscape to draw the illustrations of those documents but I am unsure on what is the best strategy to optimise the quality/resolution of the figures. After reading carefully this forum and Google, it seems to me that the best two alternatives are:
1) Inserting directly the .svg file in Word. 2) Inserting the Inkscape file as .emf in Word.
In both cases the vector graphics nature of the file is preserved. However, when using (1) and converting to PDF (save file as PDF) my figures become pixelated images. And when I save some of my figures to .emf I can see that some of my colour gradients have disappeared. I also tried exporting .png with very high resolution but they won't show at all. (Saving as Cairo .png leads to a poor resolution image for my requirements)
I often need to create documents in Microsoft Word that must be submitted as PDF. I like using Inkscape to draw the illustrations of those documents but I am unsure on what is the best strategy to optimise the quality/resolution of the figures.
I'm encountering the line spacing problem within a text block, too. In both versions 1.1.1 and 1.3.2 (Linux flavor) the problem still occurs. To be precise: When I have e.g. 1.20 lines initially for the block, and if I want 1.40 as a slight extra space as as sort of paragraph spacing, it appears that actually the 1.40 is realized, but the line above is spaced to its upper neighbour with 1.27 instead of 1.20, while the line below it becomes a spacing of 1.33 (instead of 1.20). The behaviour is the same when I specify space in mm instead of lines.
The only workable solution is adding spaces to the end of a line (or the beginning, when right justified), and assign only that spaces a bigger font. However, this works only as expected when line spacing is in mm, because spacings relative to font size would extra affect the line spacings. The screenshot shows on the left side, where I have added spaces, and that its vertical expansion is greater than the rest of the text. The two text boxes are aligned to the to using the text baseline alignment tool. Use the attached SVG file for experimenting.
Setting the linespacing for the block at .2 (collapsing all the text), then add a line space between paragraphs, then highlight some characters in a paragraph and set for 1.20.
Text handling in SVG documents has gone through many changes... it will likely continue to evolve.
Thanks for reminding this, Tyler. I noticed this in the weekend somewhere above, but it seemed somewhat weird. Now that I try myself, I changed order of things. Not to collapse the whole box (at LS 0.2), but instead let it be at 1.2 and then add two empty lines with a single space in it (this space aids in selecting a part in a single line). Then specify 0.2 here and subsequently also on the other empty-line-with-a-space character in it.
However I was fiddling what made the difference with my first (failed) approach without extra lines and without space characters with extra height. Well, after some experimenting, I got it (filled lines 1,2 and empty lines 0,2 line space):
When I select two adjacent lines, you'll get the real distance between lines. In the displayed case: 0,53 lines. And selecting "meal" including the space on the next line: 0,87. Together this makes the desired exact sum of 1.2 and 0.2. The individual distances are weird, and exactly that was my initial problem when I tried to control line distance between lines all containing text as a part of the whole text box.
Beginners' Questions line spacing ???
Inkscape.org
Hi there !
I'm losing my mind trying to adjust the line spacing inside a single text block... I tried so many tuto's unsuccessfully... Now I'm not far from thinking that Inkscape is too mind- and action-limiting... Thank you so much for your support ;-)
hi and welcome to the forum. There is what I call a trick to it. You need to uncheck the '?' and change the line spacing to 1. Then it will work correctly. You do have to be inside of the text block to see the menu.
Attaching a screen shot of what to change.
@ Flamingolady thx so much !!
You are welcome, it about drove me up a tree until I figured it out!
Created an account to say thanks! this one was killing me
@flamingolady I also created an account just to say thanks, it works perfectly. I have been battling with this for months now until I finally decided to do a search. 😃
Glad you found something that works.
Hi, Flamingolady
Thanks for this guidance. I am also a beginner with Inkscape. It never ceases to amaze me how different is the operation (particularly the GUI) of different software. I have been using Visio for many years and while it is far from perfect and in fact aggravating in many ways, the interface become familiar enough to feel intuitive. (Successive software revisions hide the commands I use routinely and fill up the "ribbon" with commands that I never use.) In this case with Inkscape, I was first struggling to create an unfilled box (I was bitten by stroke width) and then fighting to reduce some excessive text line spacing. I still don't quite understand what I just now did to fix it, but if I can repeat it I think I will figure it out. Thanks again.
Bob. Happens to me a lot too! Try to remember to click on the text icon first, that way the text tool menu will appear, then you'll be able to see the '?' and line height.
It's kind of using the circle or box tool, you have to click on it before you can see the settings. I struggled with that for longer than I care to admit, lol.
That silly and useless "?" icon for line spacing is finally GONE in 1.0 beta! Party in the streets, sing Hallelujah!
Inkscape has by far the most insane font settings of any program (and to beat Gimp is saying a lot!) 😝
Thanks a lot Flamingolady and greytomorrow. Just starting with this forum.....I dug around my computer for an image to use as my icon. I do electronics, and I found a photo of my ~55 year old wire stripper. But it got cropped into a circle..... :-( Also I thought I had an alias-username but somehow that seems to have gotten lost? Anyway I am mostly interested in drawing a block diagram to start with. I would like to think that ought to be a pretty easy task. We will see! Thanks again.
Sorry about the circle cropping, that's a design of the forum! Looks like a square on your user page though: @CannotDraw
Line spacing is dictated by CSS rules, because Inkscape is a native SVG editor. This makes text line spacing complicated to manage in a user-interface.
For details, visit: https://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Release_notes/0.92#Line_Spacing
Have a nice day.
TD
Thanks, Tyler Durden, for pressing my buttons...
Of course Inkscape line spacing (CSS line-height) is dictated by CSS rules, because Inkscape is an SVG editor, like (for example) Adobe Illustrator is a PostScript editor or Google's WebDesigner is an HTML editor.
That said, how does that fact complicate anything? Actually, as you probably know, it's pretty straightforward.
I want, for example, two lines of text to say "Mary had a little lamb, her fleece was white as snow", justified left, 18pt on 21pt, color a dark blue-green, hopefully in Palatino if the user has it...
p.mary {font:18pt/21pt Palatino, Times, serif; text-align:left; color:#00416eff}An idiot like myself 🤤 can bang that out in 30 seconds. And I'm sure you know that's wasn't the only way to express that line of type. I could have used "em" or "%" or "px". I could have said "navy" or "midnight" if I didn't care to be so specific about the color. Bang that out in PostScript! 🤣
In any case, difficult or not, that "?" icon and its sister to the left, the "TT" icon were useless, unnecessarily complicated and confusing. Good riddance!
I could never understand why text manipulation has always been so difficult in Inkscape. Even in 1.0beta text still has its issues with the Text and Font panel.
</rant>
Last thing: visit this topic here on the forums and help test Inkscape!
BTW, you, Tyler Durden, are a genius.
GWD does seem to use HTML as it's native format. Ai on the other hand uses PS in its back end, but does lots of voodoo and saves all construction data in the proprietary .ai format.
I'm not saying Inkscape's first UI of the CSS text handling was elegant. It should have had a dork-mode standard, and an advanced option (currently in the .9xx UI) in preferences.
Have a nice day.
TD
🤣🤣🤣🤣❤
Funny as that struck me, you're absolutely right!
Perhaps I do not qualify as an idiot, but when I googled "CSS" I needed an explanation for the explanation. I am a semi-retired electronic design engineer who does better with transistors and amplifiers. In Inkscape, even after seeing the menu item for line spacing I was not able to reduce the spacing to what looked close to "single line" spacing. Right now it will be difficult for me to reproduce the steps I tried at that time. Actually line spacing (in lines) is the sort of parameter that seems most relatable. I think the problem with pixels is that they will not scale with the font size?
Bob. Re alias, you are correct, there is an alias name, however the forum uses your first name. Don't tell anyone but I cheated and finally put flamingolady as my first name, it's how folks know me from the other forum. Hoping they will start using the alias name as some point...
So, here is how I manage it, if the line height cannot be reduced sufficiently by the numeric entry/spinbox:
i.e. The outer style overrides the inner style.
TD
Of course I somehow got a good line spacing in one block of text, but I am now reading your explanation and trying to do it again. The text started out with a large font but when I shrank the font the absolute line spacing stayed constant. Clicking the ?, the Tt, the A/A, and the units I can get some minor changes in the line spacing but they are all impractically large. I do not know what I managed to do the first time a few days ago...... In case it matters, I am using Verdana font, right now 10 size.
Clicking around finally now it snapped to a reasonable line spacing, but I cannot figure out what happened. Sort of a "play with it until I get what I want" with no understanding of cause and effect.
I feel your pain.
Bob, download the beta. All your line spacing troubles will melt away. No more "?" icon. No more "Tt" icon. That silliness ends with 1.0.
^^ So do more than 2,000 useful extensions.
If the line-spacing cannot be reduced to zero, some line-height or text-size is preventing it. It could be:
I suggest ensuring the Tt button is de-activated when composing text. Use the Tt button to reset the outer style if line-spacing isn't behaving.
If you don't want to use extensions like laser tools, cad tools, plotting, grids, export tools, etc. created by thousands of 3rd party developers, go for the beta. If you want full access to extensions created over the past decade, stick with a .9xx version.
I'm sticking with the .9xx versions and learning how to deal with the line spacing. This is not rocket science.
Have a nice day,
TD
Really? More than 2000? Can you point me to where these 2000+ may be found/downloaded? 'Cos I'm gonna count 'em! And are you sure they all are rendered useless in the new 1.0 release?
The punchline...
Gee, Tyler...from the way you describe it, it sure seems like it.
The 0.92.x system for text styling is a Chinese water torture. You have grown used to it over the years. It is an acceptable price to pay, and I'm being generous. It in itself is not an acceptable solution. I remember screwing with that voodoo about clicking this icon then that icon while saying an incantation and holding a chicken's foot. I can't understand how you're defending it, bright as you are.
Name me any other graphics program that makes you jump through hoops like that just to set a line of type? Photoshop? Illustrator? GIMP? Blender? Krita? Scribus? LibreOffice? Microsoft Office?
You're lucky (and smart): you've apparently figured out how that inexplicably arcane and byzantine system works. But you can't expect anybody else who doesn't have an engineering/CS degree or your experience with Inkscape to agree with you. And even so, you'd be hard pressed.
I am Jack's broken heart. 💔 Peace!
My gosh I seem to have stirred up something! I am highly sympathetic to greytomorrow's agreement with my experience, although perhaps the sarcasm is more than what is called for. I can personally take some transistors, diodes, wire and some other very basic parts and make a working power supply. But if I were to try to explain the process to a beautician or car mechanic, I would not expect that person to be then able to make a power supply. That seems analogous (if somewhat exaggerated) to the font line spacing discussion. To me, an extension is something belongs on a ladder or an electric power cord. I guess I am not much closer to using software extensions than you are to designing a power supply. I have barely started with Inkscape. I understand that I am using revision (is it 0.92?). But if this difficulty in implementing what should be a basic task (adjusting text line spacing) is representative of what is ahead of me in using Inkscape, then perhaps I need to try some other software. So my thinking is that I will probably try 1.0.
FYI I got into trying open source software with KiCad which is for designing electronic circuit boards. With that I now have my neck stuck out into a non-released "nightly build" version. This means that the significant work which I have put into an existing circuit board design can probably not be "backed out" into an earlier version, and I hope that my design work will be forward compatible. Having done that, it seems to me that trying the 1.0 Beta version of Inkscape will be an easy stretch.
Thanks everyone for contributing to this discussion.
BTW; Greytomorrow; I thought you need to be holding a toad foot and not a chicken foot? :-)
OK; I have downloaded inkscape-1.0beta2_2020-04-08_ca36898-x64, and I see that I need to uninstall the old version before installing the new one. I have had 7zip on my pc as of years ago. That is OK. But.......
1) Do I need to unzip the zip file before install? and
2) Which .exe file I should launch to begin the installation? README.md says "For installation, please see: [INSTALL.md](INSTALL.md)" but I do not see this file in the zip.
Please see INSTALL.md! 🤣🤣🤣 You don't see it because it's not included! 🤣🤣🤣
Bob, after you unzip to a location of your choice, navigate to \bin\inkscape.exe. No need for "installation", so to speak.
Please DO use the beta of 1.0, enjoy amazing FOSS vector software and forget I mentioned those scant few extensions you won't get to use. But first, please refer to my comments in this topic.
Have a nice day.
TD
Thank you. Tyler and greytomorrow.
I am a Win10 user and am skeptical about using a significant software application which does not go through a proper "install" process (??). (small utilities such as MoveMouse might be OK.) I used to have mild success in "screwing" with older versions of Windows, such as simply removing the files for "office assistant" (remember Clipit?) and that worked OK some of the time. But I don't want to get my Win10 registry fouled up.
Greytomorrow......do you mean that instead of uninstalling 0.92 I should simply replace the old Inkscape.exe with the new one? Hmmmmm there are a lot of other files which came with the download.
As I mentioned above I am using a "nightly build" of KiCad and I think that is sort of like a beta version. I did get an install executable with that download. I have certainly experienced bumps in the road with it but not much regret.
But I think Tyler is reading the "tea leaves" and inferring that perhaps I am not the right person to be using beta versions of 1.0. The one thing is that so far I have little created work to lose so I am not worried about that. But to uninstall 1.0 and re-install 0.92.....I am not sure what will happen if I try to uninstall, and I never installed. I am not doing this yet.......
Bob. Fyi. I have 92.4 and 1.0 on my laptop. You have to put them in separate folders and create a shortcut to each.
Thank you, Flamingolady. Do you mean that you have the whole file structure in each folder, or just Inkscape.exe?
CAVEAT, BOB! I haven't laid hands on Windows since at least Windows 7 so take caution. Possibly a Windows Inkscape user can chime in to correct any mistakes I've made.
Bob, as I said before, unzip the 7z archive to somewhere (forgive me, I'm no longer familiar with WIndows' directory structure), you can even unzip it to the desktop if you so desire. Then, navigate in that newly-unzipped folder to /bin/inkscape.exe. If I'm not mistaken, you can right-click that file "inkscape.exe" and choose "Create shortcut" or however it is called these days. Then you can drag that shortcut to your desktop. Easy...like trig! 🤣 And don't worry yourself about "a lot of other files". All your programs have "a lot of other files that came with the download"! 😁 The only real difference here is that none of it is hidden from you as in a normal Windows "wizard" install.
I don't believe you have to delete the old Inkscape to use the beta (90% sure). But if you dbl-click an .svg file directly in Explorer I'm not sure which Inkscape will open...most likely the beta, but again, I'm not a Windows user.
I hope I was clear. Remember, pal...it's BETA! If you're new with Inkscape though, it shouldn't matter too much. If you're uncomfortable with any of this, don't do it!
Have fun! 🎉
Bob. Yes, you can keep your old folder as is, create a new folder, and it has to have a diff name.
@TylerDurden The developer who has spent so much time looking after the extensions code for 1.0 (and building this forum) takes your snub as a challenge. I have compiled all inkscape extensions found in github (identifying all inx files that mention the inx xml namespace). That gives us 996 raw results over 100 pages. From that, we have 260 unique inx ids, but 163 of them are inkscape's internal ids, so maybe people have been modding our extensions without relabelling them. (But that's just bad form). That leaves 97 unique, non-core inkscape extensions.
19 are greygreen effects (looks like the same package, next_page, prev_page etc), 8 are evilmadscience eggbot extensions, some board game extensions, some sewing extensions, a couple of triangle extensions. Interesting things we should make sure still work in Inkscape 1.0 for sure.
We actually reached out to extension writers to help them port to python3 (first priority) and to the inkex 1.0 API (second priory) where possible. If the hundreds or thousands of extensions are not maintained, there's very little we can actively do except process them for inclusion in the core extensions (which we do), invite new maintainers to join and host extensions in our extras group on gitlab so we can resuscitate them.
I know you don't mean much by your criticism, but it cuts deep because of the excessive amount of time by several people over two years. Not just in trying cool new stuff, but in thinking carefully and mindfully about the API, the future and the past. Most extensions that support python3 should still work thanks to efforts to test and retest old extensions against the deprecated API. as far as python2 support goes, that's not on us, python2 is dead now. dead snakes.
Just FYI this Martin Owens comment above:
I think it is not directed at me, but anyway I am a hardware designer and not a software person. There are about 50 terms used in this post which I do not understand. So the idea of a python being a snake makes much more sense than our state governor being a snake (refer to American news of the last 1-2 months). But beyond that this post is about 100 Km over my head. But the essence here may the idea that the software ought to be usable by us non-programmers.
Bob, some of the extra bits that help make Inkscape so awesome (extensions) were written by contributors that are not around anymore, and so those extra bits won't be updated for some time, if ever. (They were written in a code language called Python2 which has been replaced by Python3.)
I use Inkscape every day. Today, I'm using it to transfer CAD files to PDF so people can make improved face-shields for health care workers. It would not be prudent for me to be using beta software for mission-critical applications. (Inkscape .9xx is not without its demons, but they are demons I already know. )
Anyone considering using the beta of anything, should exercise due-diligence, and those encouraging others to use beta versions should encourage due-diligence as well.
Dr. MO, no disrespect to you or the other the devs was intended, and needn't be regarded as such... there are a lot of extensions out there that are just not gonna get updated. If I want to pick on the devs, I'll poke at the scale issue in the default.svg, but I have bigger fish to fry as mentioned above.
Stay Safe, Stay Well, Stay away from people.
And Have a Nice Day.
TD
Thanks, TD. In any other time, "Stay away from people" sounds like a paranoid statement. These days, that may be still true but one should also consider the famous quote "only the paranoid survive." One also needs a sense of humor and your take on it gave me a chuckle. Thanks for that.
I wanted to add one thought regarding the contributions by people who are not around any more. As I have mentioned, I do hardware circuit design. It has happened more than once that I look at a working piece of hardware which I designed not so long ago, and I say, "How the heck does that work?". Figuring it out is not likely to be easier if the circuit was designed by someone else. This could be taken as an argument in favor of good documentation, but it is mainly intended as a note of sympathy for anyone trying to work with "bits" that were engineered long ago by someone else.
OK; I am using Inkscape 1.0. This screen grab shows a box with the text "Variable Gain Amplifier......" and the text menu settings. This is not too bad but I would like to further reduce the line spacing. Is it possible for me to further reduce it or am I at the minimum which Inkscape will allow?
I don't have 1.0, but I can't image there is not a way. Line spacing should allow down to zero at least.
Thank you Tyler. I have not worked on this since my post above, but I also have not seen any more definitive responses. This suggests that nobody who has a definitive answer has seen my post. My question is whether (if I unsuccessfully spend more time poking at this) should I post a bug?
Hi Bob,
I tried to install the beta on my Linux machine and it indicates 0.92.5. The text tools look the same, so I don't think I have the beta properly installed.
I'll try another method (I used the Ubuntu ppa, FWIW) and chime back if I find out anything noteworthy.
Have a nice day.
Ok, I have a windows install of the beta rc1 and it seems to work here: Win 8.1, 64bit, .msi installer.
What is your system info and beta version?
Thanks again, Tyler.
Well........now that I try again it seems to be working. But I cannot figure out what I am doing differently. See new screenshot.
My OS is Windows 10 Pro version 1909
Inkscape is
1.0beta2 (ca36898, 2020-04-08)
In playing with this line spacing, Inkscape 1.0 has crashed more than once. It happened just now. I have considered posting a bug, however the bug posting guidelines stipulate that the crash should be repeatable. I have not gotten over that "bar". Maybe I am consistently inconsistent or maybe there is something else going on. But I think the software should not crash as a result of adjusting line spacing, even if I set some invalid parameter.
I know I am using a beta, and I accept that crashes are one of the risks. My goal with this message is to indicate that there is something wrong here (at least because of the crashes if not because of my difficulty in adjusting spacing) and I would like to raise a yellow flag.
I will be happy to collaborate/test in trying to isolate this bug. One caveat is that right now I do not have many hours/day to play with Inkscape. So any requested tests may take me a few days to complete.
In case it might help, I have attached my .svg file.
Hi Bob,
Thank you for the file. I'll take a look when I have some time.
I also crashed Inkscape 1.0 by mucking about with the line spacing. I'll keep after it and file a report if I can establish a repeatable pattern.
Have a nice day.
TD
Hello again, Bob!
I just downloaded your file and played around with it, changing line spacing and font size and other damage 😁. When I decided to quit, Inkscape soft-crashed with an error (Segmentation fault: 11)! Don't worry about what that means...I don't know either! 🤣
If it's all right with you, I'd like to file a bug report with your file attached. Please let me know. Otherwise, if you're up to it, you can visit https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inbox/-/issues and report it yourself. It's totally up to you!
In the meantime, I suggest activating the Autosave in the Preferences panel (Preferences > Input/Output > Autosave). At least that way you can pick up pretty much where you left off, just in case of a crash.
Hi, Tyler.
Thanks a lot. I am encouraged by your bad news. :-) Seriously that means that it is not too difficult for others to get what I get.
Hi greytomorrow. Thanks; no problem to use my file and file a bug report. I am happy to help debug the software. There is nothing like a drunk geezer to find the mines in the minefield. 😉 Or maybe to stagger through it without hitting one.
Actually, I see now that autosave is turned OFF but regardless I am getting one such file with each crash. In fact the file that I posted was the result of me renaming the last autosave file.
I am glad to help debugging Inkscape 1.0.
It looks like the Autosave option is not specifically for crashes? In that case I prefer to leave it turned off at it is. The autosaves I get from crashes is indeed useful.
Bob, I just filed an issue over at GitLab. If you're interested follow this link:
https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inbox/-/issues/2445
Bob, they want you down in the principal's office...again. 😁
Listen to this and see if you'd be up to the challenge (it's really no big deal). I'd like you to navigate to the \Inkscape 1.0beta2\bin\ folder. Inside you should find a file called
gdb_create_backtrace.batDbl-click that bad boy. Then launch Inkscape 1.0beta2, reload the file you uploaded here and try to replicate the crash. If and when Inkscape does crash, it will write a crash report (backtrace) here...
%USERPROFILE%\inkscape_backtrace.txt.That %USERPROFILE% stuff is your account. Zip up that file and either post it here or at https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inbox/-/issues/2445
If you're not comfortable with this, no worries. Thanks, Bob!
Hi, greytomorrow
Thank you. I will give it a whack. Again I don't have a lot of time with Inkscape at the moment so please give me a couple of days.
I did find the .bat file. But please clarify where is this %userprofile% folder? I do not see any folders now with name starting with "%". Not sure if that is a legal folder name or if the folder should exist before the .bat file runs and Inkscape crashes.
OK; I got a crash. This was not quite like the previous in that the software suddenly just quit. Previous crashes were probably the "soft" crashes which you described; gave me a dialog box telling me that the software needed to shut down. Your batch file told me where to find the text file. I hope this helps.....
This raises a question. If I can automatically create a crash report, does that mean that I need to be able to reproduce the crash before I should report it? I would think that the crash report might eliminate that need. I just need to launch 1.0 beta using the batch file.........
Thanks. I wish I could add this text to my previous post 5 minutes ago.......
On the subject of the line spacing; Just now I set the line spacing to 0 but this had no result until I tried changing the font size. Once I changed the font size, the line spacing then went to zero. This is not so terrible but it is not the expected behavior. It could be that my laptop is just a little slow to react (??). It is an i5 CPU, > 5 years old with (I think) 8G of RAM but has been adequate for many tasks including circuit simulations which can be CPU intensive.
BOB! 🤣🤣🤣 You're killin' me! 🤣🤣🤣
...and then your avalanche of replies! 🤣
Bob, I'm just kidding around with you! Let's get to business here. First off, after replying to you here, I'll add the backtrace over at GitLab.
You've obviously discovered where %USERPROFILE% is. It's just another way of saying "Bob's account". Sorry I couldn't have been more help but I'm not on a Windows box and haven't touched one since...gosh...Windows XP? How time flies.
Regarding crash and crash reports, it's always a good idea to report these things, beta or otherwise. It's a better idea if you can repeat the crash reliably. I realize you didn't download Inkscape to be a tester, you just wanna draw! 😁 Here's how I personally handle it: if I encounter the same bug three times, I assess if the program is worth my time. If yes, I usually report the bug where I can. For the one-off hiccups and crashes I taken a zen approach and just live with it, remembering back to Win95 and Mac System 7.5 when system-wide crashes happened all the time.
And BTW, your i5 laptop is more than adequate to handle Inkscape and drawings far more complicated than what you've showed. See ya later!
Ah! One last thing: did this last crash happen while working on that same file you posted earlier?
Hi, greytomorrow
Thanks a lot. Yes I launched Inkscape only with the .bat file and continued with the file that I had uploaded. I think I did multiple saves while working, although I did more "try this and try that" than make actual progress on the file. I may have changed the filename however.
I have e-mailed (the webmaster??) about wanting to be able to edit previous posts........I make trouble 😁 also on another forum for open sourced "EDA" software, and that one does permit editing posts. That capability would have eliminated one or two of my posts above. It seems that I often want to modify what I have said earlier but I think I cannot do that here.
Ahhhhh yes I see that I can edit my earlier post. Sorry about so many posts above.....I now should be able to avoid that......
Hi Bob, I think I have a method to manipulate your text to your liking.
To set the line-spacing to zero (or such):
Chime back and let us know how it goes.
Be well.
TD
Hi, Tyler
Yes that seems to work.
Before reading your post, I opened my saved file and immediately tried to reduce a line spacing. The top menu already indicated a line spacing of 0 but the actual spacing was probably > 1 line. However changing the font size at that time immediately brought the line spacing to zero, after which I could increase it. There is something odd about the software behavior but it seems that I can manage it for now.
Thanks again.
That is what I'm seeing also.
I need to test it some more. It may be that older documents will need the be managed differently in 1.0, than new documents.
TD
Hello everyone. I am using Inkscape 0.91. When I copy figure from Inkscape to word and then to pdf, the space between alphabets in text box becomes irregular. This happens when I select Picture (Inkscape SVG) in MS word. But when I select Picture (enhanced metafile), opacity cannot be applied to the background color (the background color remains dark with 100% opacity even I decrease the opacity). The alphabets spacing is correct in this case.
I also tried 1.0 but the alphabets spacing problem is also here. I am attaching my inkscape file here. Please help me in this regard. Thank you so much
Here is a revised copy to test. There were some odd bits and pieces that got cleaned up.
Let us know how this version works.
Sorry to post something in a conversation. On the other hand, it is a forum, letter, not sound. So if I mind this it might even be nice.
I was looking at line spacing earlier in this thread. One of the reasons I use Inkscape, it is printing letters. Letters to send, I don't mean glyphs. It is like font-size-heaven! Ever tried to use some decent decimal number in Word?
Or OpenOffice (Libre Office too last time I tested, or other Office programs). Ok, my Word 2013 here does not take decimal numbers for font size. OpenOffice 4 portable, which I have here does, though one must accept the odd problem. Just the size that is needed doesn't work. 9,7 and 9,4. Though it is more important to have seen 9,7 as to actually use it in my opinion. Or maybe not. Anyway using Word, then publisher by an in-program import is also an option. (But this is Office 2003, which I normally basically use. It has this option in file --> import from word. Also Office 2003 can freely be downloaded from some archive site. I saw recently).
Visio has two decimals at the most.
But Inkscape has an infinite choice of numbers behind the comma/ point in English, to set!
But the line spacing. I don't have this problem at all. Version 0.92 or 1.0
It is not that I need an answer to this, but I wonder what makes up the difference between systems that some are bothered by it and some are not.
When I needed to choose another size, and I noticed this, I went on the WordPerfect site and in the chat I asked if WordPerfect can make size 9,7 or 9,4 or any of the other sizes that can't be made.
The employee kept silent for some time and then they sort of hung up the chat.
But then Scribus... Here the issue really takes off to another level. But I don't mean I necessarily need an answer about this.
Hello @TylerDurden Thank you for your help. But I am still facing the same problem when I group the objects together and copy to word. Maybe I don't know how to copy the figure to word. Can you please guide me about what you did with this figure and how to copy to word step by step. I am new here. I don't know how to use Inkscape properly. Thank you so much.
I apologize... I shared an unfinished file earlier.
Here are two files to test. Please let use know if either file is working for you. (I don't have MS Word to test. )
Thank you @TylerDurden . The first one with file name Load_Estimation_TD_dl_P is working. Kindly also guide me about the steps you have followed. I have also other figures to fix. Thank you so much.
Good!
Some modifications I made (use a copy):
With texts converted to path, line spacing may not be an issue.
Let us know how that works for you.
TD
Dear @TylerDurden , Your method is working well in my case. But i am facing this kind of problem when the Inkscape figure is a bit complex. And I cannot try libreoffice because I have written my paper in MS Word. Please also help me in this regard.
I often need to create documents in Microsoft Word that must be submitted as PDF. I like using Inkscape to draw the illustrations of those documents but I am unsure on what is the best strategy to optimise the quality/resolution of the figures. After reading carefully this forum and Google, it seems to me that the best two alternatives are:
1) Inserting directly the .svg file in Word.
2) Inserting the Inkscape file as .emf in Word.
In both cases the vector graphics nature of the file is preserved. However, when using (1) and converting to PDF (save file as PDF) my figures become pixelated images. And when I save some of my figures to .emf I can see that some of my colour gradients have disappeared. I also tried exporting .png with very high resolution but they won't show at all. (Saving as Cairo .png leads to a poor resolution image for my requirements)
Thank you
This issue will be discussed in a new topic: https://inkscape.org/forums/questions/inkscape-to-ms-word-svg-vs-eps/
3½ years after...
I'm encountering the line spacing problem within a text block, too. In both versions 1.1.1 and 1.3.2 (Linux flavor) the problem still occurs. To be precise:
When I have e.g. 1.20 lines initially for the block, and if I want 1.40 as a slight extra space as as sort of paragraph spacing, it appears that actually the 1.40 is realized, but the line above is spaced to its upper neighbour with 1.27 instead of 1.20, while the line below it becomes a spacing of 1.33 (instead of 1.20). The behaviour is the same when I specify space in mm instead of lines.
The only workable solution is adding spaces to the end of a line (or the beginning, when right justified), and assign only that spaces a bigger font. However, this works only as expected when line spacing is in mm, because spacings relative to font size would extra affect the line spacings. The screenshot shows on the left side, where I have added spaces, and that its vertical expansion is greater than the rest of the text. The two text boxes are aligned to the to using the text baseline alignment tool. Use the attached SVG file for experimenting.
The pure text layout aspect of the two text boxes are 'reported' as an additional layout workaround sample at https://inkscape.org/forums/questions/text-formatting/
There is another method... not much simpler.
Setting the linespacing for the block at .2 (collapsing all the text), then add a line space between paragraphs, then highlight some characters in a paragraph and set for 1.20.
Text handling in SVG documents has gone through many changes... it will likely continue to evolve.
Thanks for reminding this, Tyler. I noticed this in the weekend somewhere above, but it seemed somewhat weird. Now that I try myself, I changed order of things. Not to collapse the whole box (at LS 0.2), but instead let it be at 1.2 and then add two empty lines with a single space in it (this space aids in selecting a part in a single line). Then specify 0.2 here and subsequently also on the other empty-line-with-a-space character in it.
However I was fiddling what made the difference with my first (failed) approach without extra lines and without space characters with extra height.
Well, after some experimenting, I got it (filled lines 1,2 and empty lines 0,2 line space):
When I select two adjacent lines, you'll get the real distance between lines. In the displayed case: 0,53 lines. And selecting "meal" including the space on the next line: 0,87.
Together this makes the desired exact sum of 1.2 and 0.2. The individual distances are weird, and exactly that was my initial problem when I tried to control line distance between lines all containing text as a part of the whole text box.