As I've done already in another post, I'd like to raise my voice for text-related-functionality and note that, working with flowed-text-objects is sluggish compared with simple-text-objects. Just give it a try, inserting a single character into such a box feels cumbersome. (Maybe not with 4GB RAM but...) Not being able to switch objects back (and forth) to flowed-text is thus an even bigger issue. Is this a bug ? Cause Alt-W does nothing for me. But side note aside, do flowed-text-object really have to be this sluggish ? What I'm saying is, are we sure the code related to this area isn't somewhat neglected and/or unoptimized ? If it is, please consider looking at it, cause maybe inkscape is only a width-of-a-hair from being better at desktop publishing, despite it not being DPS - which I don't think is an excuse.

Text-related-functionality seems to be too basic, and neglected, while IMHO for example, joining text or splitting would be also basic and basically useful for at least my humble self. Because I might be wrong, I created a poll.

I can't speak to this issue, since I don't clearly understand it. ....Well, I understand that you'd like to see some changes to the Text tool. But flowed text vs not flowed -- I don't understand how they are different, on the technical side. I do know how they are different in use, but can't correlate to the code, or why it's made this way.

I may do some further studying though But meanwhile, I just wanted to let you know that I'm going to move this topic to Discuss Software subforum (as soon as I finish typing). This Feedback & Suggestions subforum is for feedback and suggestions on running and using the forum.

We've been experiencing quite a jump in forum activity over the last couple of weeks, so I can't remember if you've found Launchpad yet? I might have you mixed up with someone else https://launchpad.net/inkscape Launchpad is Inkscape's bug tracker where you can find out if these issues have been reported as bugs, or maybe there already has been posted new feature request. So you can search, and maybe learn more about it. Plus, more knowledgeable people than me will probably have some comments for you

PS - nice poll

Edit
Somewhere, I think but not positive, there is an archive of the developers' mailing list. That would be a treasure trove of info for you