I have just installed Inkscape, and am trying to learn how to use it to make various simple drawings. (Basically just some diagrams for user docs.) However, all the documentation (at the web site) and the things on the help menu seems to be set up for web access. My problem is that I spend time in places where I don't have any sort of internet connection, which makes using online docs a real pain.

Is there any documentation that's available that can be read in some way other than from the web? Say PDF files? Or perhaps a way to download a local copy of everything?

Thanks,
James

PS: And a couple of real newbie questions, which everyone can ignore if they're too blindingly obvious. First, is there a printable chart or reference for all those icons? Some sort of a cheat sheet that will give me some clue to their function? Second, why does Inkscape use Firefox for help, rather than my normal Opera browser? Is there some way to change it?

Well, you can buy the tavmjong bah Inkscape: Guide to a Vector Drawing Program, which is referred to in the Help menu as "Inkscape Manual". And under Tutorials are 7 items, which afaik, don't require an internet connection. Other than those tuts, I don't know of any free documation -- which doesn't mean there's not any, just none that I know of.

In that Guide, you can find all the icons described. I'm not sure if there's something like a page with all the icons defined. But now that you mention it, it sounds like a nice thing to have. Maybe somone else will reply who knows of such a thing

And finally, my only browser is IE 8, so I can't answer your last question. But again, I'm sure someone else will reply who knows the answer.

I guess I haven't been much help, but wanted to put up some kind of reply for you.
All best.

jamesqf wrote:Is there any documentation that's available that can be read in some way other than from the web? Say PDF files?

• The Inkscape FLOSS Manual offers a PDF download of their current version (link at the top of the manual index on the left side of the page).
• microUgly (the site admin of this forum) has a very comprehensive introduction to Inkscape: a Quick Guide to Inkscape - why not use Opera and print it out?

jamesqf wrote:First, is there a printable chart or reference for all those icons? Some sort of a cheat sheet that will give me some clue to their function?

Closest I could find ATM is The Anatomy of the Inkscape Window, not a reference chart, I know...

jamesqf wrote:Second, why does Inkscape use Firefox for help, rather than my normal Opera browser? Is there some way to change it?

for this to investigate it would be helpful to know which version of Inkscape you have installed and which OS you are using ;-) Opera is recognized/set as default browser by the OS?

Thanks for the reply. The FLOSS manual looks like a good source, though it may take me a week or two to read it all.

I'm currently running SuSe 11.0 on this machine. The Inkscape version I'm using is 0.46, from a package installed via the SuSe repositories.

I don't know if Opera is the "default browser". I'd thought that was a concept that existed only in Windows, and perhaps some of the Windows look-alike display managers (which I don't use). But now that I know what to look for, I expect a bit of searching will give me instructions.