Quadratic Bezier curves are also an integral part of the SVG specification. It would be simply great if Inkscape would help us edit quadratic Beziers.

I am told that currently Inkscape can read quadratic Beziers from SVG files but it elevates them to cubic. It is not clear to me whether while this is a lossy conversion in the sense that the quadratic nature of that curve is not and one is allowed to edit the two generated control points mutually independently, and hence while saving back, (whether the generated control points were modified or not) the original quadratic nature is lost and the curve is henceforth a cubic. (I would appreciate clarification on this point.)

Nevertheless, I feel it is important that Inkscape should provide at least limited support for quadratic Beziers. Rendering it on screen for editing purposes would not be a problem, since even if you only do cubic rendering you can always temporarily elevate the quadratic to cubic for rendering purposes. But there should be a quadratic mode for the Bezier drawing tool, which would only allow for specifying one control point per curve segment.

This would be tremendously useful especially in font creation. (See my relevant other post here.)

A recent discussion on the developers' mailing list: Re: Quadratic beziers?

~suv wrote:A recent discussion on the developers' mailing list: Re: Quadratic beziers?

Thanks for this link. But I think (based on this post) that there is only a UI problem and that too only with elliptic segments and not with quadratic segments. I have now submitted an official bug.