Hi! I`ve been searching in the forum and tutorials but I didn´t find how to do what I want to do properly.
I´m working with a font ( caviar dreams ) and I want to make it lighter, making it's stroke thinner without changing the font size too much.
I've tried making inset but it gives me a poor result, with irregular corners and edges. I've solved the problem partially by widening the stroke and changing it's colour to the same of the background, but this is a problem when I want to place it on a grid or put it in different backgrounds.
I put an image of my results:


Anyone knows a way to do this properly?

The easiest way is probably with a mask similar to your second example.

1. Create text.
2. Duplicate text (Ctrl+d).
3. Set duplicate's fill to white and stroke to black.
4. Set duplicate's stroke width to an appropriate amount.
5. Select both objects.
6. Go to the Object menu, Mask -> Set.

To edit the text, you'll have to release the mask, delete the duplicate, and redo the steps above. To change the "thinning" amount, you'll have to release the mask, adjust the duplicate's stroke width, and set the mask again.

There are ways to set it up so that you never need to release the mask to make either of those changes, but they're pretty involved, so I wouldn't bother with that unless you see yourself have to edit the text and/or change the thinning amount a lot.

Thanks for the answer, but it isn´t working on my computer. I followed exctly the steps you gave me, but when I come to Object-> Mask ->set, it creates an object but it`s invisible to me. I tried to change it's fill and stroke colour but it doesn't work, maybe it has to deal with my version or preferences? I'm with Inkscape 0,46 under Windows Vista.
Thanks again.

Two things to verify: 1) that the object being used as the mask (white fill, black stroke) is on top and not underneath, and 2) that the two objects are in exactly the same position. Both of these should happen by default when making a duplicate, as long as you didn't move anything.

Verified, white fill object is on top and in the same position. I don´t understand what happens...
Don't worry anymore, I'll manage myself with the "bad" solution.
Thanks a lot.

Heya,

I realise the OP has prolly long forgotten this issue, but I needed to get it right as well and found the following solution.

Kelan's solution sort of worked for me but with a few changes. In summary, my steps were:

Create text.
Create two duplicates; I'll call them dup1 and dup2.
Set dup2's fill to white and stroke to black (or whatever colour your desired text is; mine was blue).
Set dup2's stroke width to an appropriate amount.
Raise dup2 to make sure it is above (z level or whatever you call it) dup1.
Align the dup2 so that it is centred directly over dup1
Select both objects.
Go to the Object menu, Mask -> Set.
Filters -> Color -> Invert
Filters -> Color -> Desaturate

I now have a skinny sliver of the original text, which I hope is what the OP was looking for.

CU,
Tim.