I'm using Inkscape 0.46 (april 2008) on a Windows XP SP3 box.

I've got a block of text, created by dragging a rectangle with selected. In the text, I have first a few lines of text and then a list of a few items and then some text again. The font is Arial.

In the list, there's two columns, the first columns is indented 2 spaces and the second column is about 2 or 3 spaces behind the longest item in the first column.

The first column is nicely aligned at the left hand side, as a space is always the same width. Since Inkscape appears not to know tab stops, aligning the second column was a bit tricky.

I first tried to achieve that by manually kerning, but this didn't work. A bit of browsing this site led to the tip that you need to "convert to text" first. Once I had that done, kerning went perfectly fine. My second column is now well aligned too.

However, I can't easily my text anymore now.

I wanted to insert an extra line of text between some other text but when I press Enter, all that happens is that the cursor moves back to the left, no new line is inserted. And when I then start typing, the new texts appears on the same line, right through the already existing text.

I also had an extra blank line between two paragraphs that I wanted to delete. Didn't work either, the new line character was apparently remove, but the text following it remained at the same position.

I needed to have a finished image quite fast, so I didn't have the time to do an extensive search on internet, therefore I removed the whole block of text and did it again, carefully making sure that everything was OK, before applying the manual kerning.

I had the same problem in another piece of text, which needed some superscript, which I created with kerning.


Now my questions:

- is there any way to be able to edit a block of text in the normal way again, after having applied some manual kerning?


Thanks in advance

Hi ErikTiePie,
Well, you know Inkscape WAY better than I do, and I'm really not all that familiar with kerning. But I just read the tut and manual, and thought I'd use this as an opportunity to learn something

Anyway, I created a block of jibberish, did Convert to Text, then some manual kerning. Then I tried to edit, and it worked fine, for the most part. But I did also experience what you described.

1st I put the cursor between 2 letters, hit Enter, and a new line was started in the same text box. But when I put the cursor at the end of a word and hit Enter, it started a brand new text area, and if I typed anything, it appeared to type right over the original text. However, when I tried it again, it worked perfectly

So far, I've been unable to reproduce the problem, but it did definitely NOT work right the 1st time. I guess I'm thinking that maybe if you don't place the cursor exactly right, it misses the original text and starts a new batch of text ???

Honestly, I don't really know. But that's my best guess at the moment.
Sorry, I wish I could be more help

I'm not clear form you post if the text is still in a text format or a path. If it's still text? Did you also try editing the Text Tab in the Shift Cntl T menu. Sometimes editing it works better there. (Don't forget to hit apply.)

Edit: Oh wait is it columns? I haven't columns to flow right yet. Even when they flow they text columns are in the wrong order. I have to manually change the order of the words in text string.

Hi All,

Thanks for responding!

It's still text, no path and it's not in columns.


Since I experienced this several times in my document(s), I didn't test this in a new, empty document. I now did and of course, all works as I would expect it to function

I then added a new text in my existing drawing and there it goes ok too...

But, I still can't edit the other block of text in my original drawings normally.


When I copy that "wrong" text to a new Inkscape document, it still won't edit normally. You can find that file here. The text at the top is the one that I manually kerned and still will be edited normally, the lower part is my text that I manually kerned and now no longer can edit normally. E.g. try putting a "hard return" in the first line to break it up in two lines. Or try getting F4 and it's description under F3 and have the rest been pushed one line down.

The file seems to be behaving reasonably well for me. I edited the text using and Shift Cntl T. One thing was I had to click between two characters to get back in the text box to edit and kern. If I click on white space inside the box it open up a new text box so you weren't editing the existing text. And when I delete a line, all the existing kerning below it was deleted. Not sure I understand the problem you're having. Or maybe the original is corrupted.

screencast showing behaveour:

I downloaded my own file again from the website where I have stored it, see my previous post. I open it in Inkscape 0.46 (april 2008).

I then started recording my actions.

- I select the tool.

- I then click in the text and change the word "sampling" into "sampeling" and then remove the "e" again, indicating that I'm actually editing this text.

- Then I go to the end of that word and press 5 or 6 times on Enter. You will notice that the rest of the line goes to the left margin of the text area, but remains on the same line.

- I then press Backspace as long as my text reappears behind the original line again.

- I then press the up arrow a few times to go to the first line and try to bring the last word, "hotkeys:" to the next line by pressing Enter a few times. This also fails and I undo it by pressing Backspace a number of times.




All this can be seen in this 6MiB large avi which I have just recorded. Unfortunately I haven't got the possibility to add sound....

Well, I've been unable to open either of your 2 files, Erik. But it seems clear there is a problem with that one 2nd block of text. So I think that 2nd block of text needs to be examined closely. I don't know if I have the knowledge and skill needed to find the problem, but I'm curious. If you could upload the original, malfunctioning SVG to PetaIMG (it's a free upload) (I know I can open files there) I would be glad to have a look.

OK I ran the video and I got the weird lines on top of each other when I use . I could still edit the text using Shift Cntl T in the text tab. See if that would be a work around. I got a feeling part of the problem is isn't resizing the text box. I can't select that thing that looks kind of like a node on the corner so...

@ Brynn: in my first post with a link to my original file: can't you right-click the word "here" and then do sometihng like "save as..." or "save link..." or "save target..." ?


@ EarlyBlake : I'll give it a try.


@ both : thanks for thinking with me!

@ Brynn: in my first post with a link to my original file: can't you right-click the word "here" and then do sometihng like "save as..." or "save link..." or "save target..." ?

Well, when I see a link, all I know to do is click on it!
It took me to a blank page, which i discovered was blank because it actually was the SVG file, and IE won't open SVGs. Early suggested Save Page, which for me is Save As, which I tried, but when I opened it, it was a long string of code-like text. I thought I needed the file in a form I could download (which is how PetaIMG works). But now that you suggested to do a Save Target As on the link itself, rather than the page it takes you to, yes, now I can finally open the actual original svg file. And now I can finally see the problem you're having!

I can report the good news, that by using the Text tab of the Text and Font dialog, I CAN edit the text successfully. So I think that should work fine for you as well.

It still begs the question for me, WHY that one text box could not be editted properly. And maybe someone who knows and understands SVG code could find something in the XML Browser. Just because I love a good mystery, I'll probably keep mulling it over and looking at the file But I guess version 0.47 is coming down the pike before too long, and whatever this issue is, maybe it's already been fixed?

So it seems you helped me more than I helped you, lol Thanks

brynn wrote:I can report the good news, that by using the Text tab of the Text and Font dialog, I CAN edit the text successfully. So I think that should work fine for you as well.

Yes it does, thanks to EarlyBlake and you I now know of that feature. I used the dialog often, but never bothered looking at the Text tab I only used it for font properties.

brynn wrote:So it seems you helped me more than I helped you, lol Thanks

I don't know who learned more, but isn't that what this forum is for, learning form each other?


Anyway, I have a work around for my issue. Still leaves open (as you already mentioned) what's causing this behaveour.

Well, I was trying to ignore Early's comment, but since you ditto'd...

I'm no power user, no graphic artist, or even artist. I just like using Inkscape to play with images. I've found a way to make IE work fine for me, and after all this time, it's more of a bother trying to learn how to use another browser. Thus far, no one has been able to convince me that other browsers have any advantage for me. Although I understand that everyone has personal preferences, and they have good reasons for using them. I will admit though, that the ability to open SVG files in the browser has been the strongest argument yet, for switching to FIrefox. If I were a more serious artist, I certainly would switch.

But thanks for the thought