Using the online help and just poking around I got the Trace Bitmap to create a vector of some text. I'm quite pleased with the accuracy. And now I want to separate the letters and words from each other.
This is what I have tried to no effect:

• I have tried to Ungroup the object - seem to remain one object when selected using either the or the
• I have tried to select just the nodes with I want and cut and paste them - but cutting grabs all of the nodes
• I have also tried to find some mention of this in the documentation and the forum, and came up empty handed

I'm sure I'm missing something.

My end goal is to have separate objects so that it's easier to make things like highlights and shadows or stroke like effects w/o affecting the whole phrase.

It looks like you need to use Break Apart (on the Path menu). This is likely to break some letters into multiple paths (e.g., an inner path and an outer path for the letter O), which will also mess up the way they display, but you can fix this using Combine (also on the Path menu) on each broken letter.

This might be overkill for a bit of text, but this is what I do when I have to separate different figures that have been scanned and traced as a single outline for my "Monsters, Inked" comic:

1) Copy the path as many times as I need so that I have one copy per final object that I want (e.g. to split a drawing of three people, I copy twice to create three paths in total)

2) Choose one of the paths, and draw one or more rectangles over all the parts except one, then use the Path=>Difference tool to cut away each part. The aim is to end up with just the one part left.

3) Repeat for each of the other copies, until you're left with several separate paths, with one character or object in each.


This might seem like an awkward way to cut paths up, but our traces have thousands of nodes, and we've found this way to be more performant than anything else we've tried. Break Apart produces too many bits that then need to be re-combined, and node editing is too slow when you want to cut away large sections.

Excellent! Thanks guys I'll try these suggestions!

*update*

The "Break apart" then "Combine" menu items worked like a charm! Thanks all!