I'm working on a 2.2 MB file converted to svg from cdr (CorelDraw X7). The file is a map, and so has a lot of text. The font used in the original was Arial. In trying to work with the file and edit it further in Inkscape I have come up with two questions on which I should be very grateful for any help. The first is about the text already created. As this has come across to Inkscape some of the kerning is crazy, with apparently even up to the space of an additional letter appearing between two adjacent letters. Is there any way of bulk-adjusting this back to "normal" -- i.e. by selecting all text and doing something to it? The second question concerns very specifically fitting text to a path. The first couple of attempts to do this in a given Inkscape session work fine, but then things begin to slow down dramatically, selection of text becomes almost impossible, and the program hangs for long periods in text-tool mode. When I get control back and save and close, I can then re-open Inkscape and repeat the process. Does anyone know what may be happening and what might be a cure? I don't think it cam be lack of RAM -- I've got 16 GB, and I'm using 0.91 64-bit.

Re text spacing: I'd select all text and try Menu: Text>Remove Manual Kerns. Spacing may get big/small, but should be uniform and alterable thereafter en-masse.

Re slowdown: By any chance is your display set to 16-bit color? That can leak memory:
http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php ... own_issues

Thanks for your help. There was no manual kerning in the cdr original, which is why I didn't think of trying that, but I followed your advice and it worked -- all the words now look as they should. Some word-spacing has now gone mad, but there are far fewer things there that will need manual editing than if I had had to deal with every single word!

I'm set to 32-bit colour, so it isn't that. It reminds me rather oddly of Inkscape 48.5 (?). I had similar major problems of speed and hang-ups both in general and in particular with text with the 32-bit version and these vanished when I tried Partha's 64-bit version. With 0.91 I'm using the 64-bit version but it seems to behave more like the old 32-bit version.

I'd open a task manager and see if memory use rises while working with the file, or even just sitting open.

One user was able to resolve a slowdown by cleaning the document.

Please share the file if trouble persists.

I did a clean and the document came down from 2 MB to 1.8 MB. On opening Inkscape and with no document open it uses 103 MB memory. Opening the document bumped this up to 392 MB. At the end of that editing session I closed the document and the program load was 144 MB. Next session began at 103 MB again, which became about 290 with the document open. This time the program load after closing the document was 174 MB. The next time began at 103 again and rose to 265 with the document open, dropping back to 146 on closing the document.Towards the end of the second session the speed of response began to deteriorate quite sharply, with movement by select and drag becoming very jerky and movement with the arrow-keys lagging a second or two behind the key-stroke. I've been working almost exclusively on text today and this performance deterioration does seem to be a text thing rather than a drawing thing. It does remind me very strongly of what I was finding with 48.5 before I started using Partha's 64-bit version. Incidentally, the final size (for today's work) of the document is 1.75 MB.