Inkscape is breaking my heart. I've been using it for at least one month and only had it crash one time -- I know exactly what happened to cause the crash and it made sense that the program crashed, I had a bazillion nodes on some converted text. (I am not doing anything with nodes in the two pages I discuss below, on that particular day I was just just fooling around with Inkscape that day and/or following a tutorial.)

Anyway. I'm getting to my point. For about one week, I've been working in one document (from a template I created and then saved with a new name) I finished the document. It's all text (several typefaces with font sizes 15 - 25) inside dozens of text boxes on a 20 inch by 20 inch page. The text is all black, but some of the entire text in some textboxes has been colored, I will eventually be adding more colors. I will not be using more than 5 or 6 colors.

Today, I'm beginning a new document, from the same template, and again saving the file with a new name. And OMG I have no idea what is going on but Inkscape keeps crashing. I'm pretty much doing the exact same thing from the previous document I just finished: all text inside text boxes, the text boxes vary in size, the largest is probably 4 inches by 6 inches. It's entirely possible that the crashing started when I used two different typefaces inside one text box (I did not do that at all with my previous project). I stopped doing that, but Inkscape is still crashing/freezing and I have to use Task Manager to close the program.

Obviously, it's taking me at least twice as long to do my project since I can't just type freely. Does anyone know what could be causing this?? Admittedly, it's frustrating, but it also breaks my heart because, up until today, Inkscape was working so wonderfully.

The typefaces I'm using in Inkscape are not crazy or wild. They came with the computer and I also downloaded some from Google Fonts.

I am creating textboxes and estimating how big I need them to be, occasionally while typing I may enlarge the text box, or when I'm done shrink the text box down a bit.

Can one specific typeface cause Inkscape to crash? I'm wondering if it could be Carrios Gothic SC. I was adding that text into a textbox that already had words with  different typeface and I think that is when my problems began.

I'm using Inkscape 1.3, Windows 64 bit, Windows 10.

I know I've typed a heck of a lot of information. Would love any advice or suggestions on how to get Inkscape to just work smoothly again with no crashes (or extremely infrequent crashes). I just can't understand what has happened in the past 24 hours.

versiontwopointohoh

Can one specific typeface cause Inkscape to crash?

The short answer is yes.

Sometimes a malformed font will be instant death to Inkscape. Use the Find/Replace dialog [ctrl+f] to select all text objects then use the Text tool [t] to change all fonts to Arial or Courier or any other common font. If stability is restored, you can deduce that at least one of your fonts is causing trouble.

Identifying the culprit is more tedious. Choose a text object and copy the font name into the [Find: xxx] box. [Search in > Properties] [Properties > Style] [Properties > Attribute value]. Change the font and test again. Repeat for each suspicious font.

Thanks so much for your reply.

As I think more about this situation, now I'm not sure if the typeface is the culprit.  At least twice (including today) but possibly one other time too, I used Inkscape just to make a "mood board" for the typefaces I was going to use -- all were included and those documents never ever crashed.

Also, and I know I'm going to sound like a noob when I relate this, at one point I thought I had drawn a text box, but oops I hadn't, and I typed several letters and obviously nothing appeared on the screen but I wonder if those random keystrokes (just letters, no alt or ctrl or anything) could have messed anything up. (This incident may have occured prior to me using Carrios Gothic SC, but again, that same typeface and all the others, did not cause any crashing issues when I was making my mood board.)

And by crashing, I think I more mean freezing, Inkscape just freezes.

Sigh.

P.S. I have not done your recommendation yet: "Identifying the culprit is more tedious. Choose a text object and copy the font name into the [Find: xxx] box. [Search in > Properties] [Properties > Style] [Properties > Attribute value]. Change the font and test again. Repeat for each suspicious font"

Is there something specific I am looking for, or some kind of info that is going to display?

Random keystrokes might draw something, or delete something or hide something, but I can't think of any way to make Inkscape unstable.

With a large drawing, a more efficient search algorithm may be to subdivide the content in to smaller parts for testing. Delete half the content and test. If the problem persists, delete half the remainder and test. If the problem disappears, restore the stuff you deleted and search in there.

If you upload a troublesome image, maybe somebody here will spot the problem quickly.

For now, I have replaced all Carrios Gothic SC typeface with Arial. And that has helped stabilize Inkscape significantly. So thank you for that suggestion. (I also went ahead and uninstalled/removed Carrios Gothic SC from my computer so I don't accidentally use it in the future.)

Hopefully it'll be smooth sailing going forward. ⛵🤞🖥

To the best of my recollection, I've only had Inkscape freeze up just a couple of times in the past 24 hours-ish.