Rant about Inkscape

[daniel.m.tripp (Dan Tripp)]

Any Inkscape users here?

Here’s what DRIVES ME NUTS in Inkscape (I mean like smashing the keyboard and slamming the mouse in frustration).

e.g. I want to make a donut… Or a letter “e”…

Both of things are a “shape” with a hole in it…

So I create an object that’s the outline of the letter “e” (ie… not the half moon bit that’s the ‘hole’)…

Then I create the half moon bit that’s gunna be the “hole” inside the lower case “e” character…

I combine them under “Path” (Path → Combine) - so far so good…

I then hit any solid colour from the swatches - e.g. “black” - and I LOSE the f–king hole in my letter e…

I just see :

If I set it to no fill, or view to “Outline only” I can see the shape that’s supposed to be the hole, but it disappears if I fill the whole object with a solid colour… Yeah - I know a boolean geometry might do it - but I shouldn’t have to - one object over the top of the other, should become a HOLE in that object when I combine them… Makes no different which object is on top, which layer it’s it’s (and don’t get me started on layers in Inkscape - what’s the point ?)…

Here’s the “donut” example (I manually drew the bezier curves for the outside, and the inside shape, separately) :

And if I set the fill colour to black for that shape :

and there’s no F–KING HOLE in it…

[Fast.Edi (Edgar Hoffmann)]

Hi there.
Yeah, Inkscape can be annoying from time to time. As can Scribus and …
I feel you.
Have you tried to simply just “differ” the two shapes?
I have a german version only at the moment, but look at this:
I have two circles, select both of them and choose “path - Difference”

And the result is a “Donut”

Maybe this helps.
Greetings

[daniel.m.tripp (Dan Tripp)]

Cheers - yeah - that’s a boolean geometry operation…

But I shouldn’t have to do that… It should know what I’m trying to do , THIS IS THE ONLY time I want AI to make a decision for me - and it’s incapable of the most basic intuition , all AI seems to be able do is block me from Facebook for “hate speech” when I describe Scotsmen as Funny C__ts…

e.g. if I left that donut without a hole… I split two pairs of nodes apart, added some more nodes, and made them two separate lines - the resulting object will have a hole in it…

Add two nodes at the top (red arrow pointy things)

Then I split both those highlighted nodes :

And move them apart :

Add a few more nodes then plug them leaky sides :

Then fill it with black :