Hi Friends,
The 1st question is a quick one:
Is it possible to clear the Undo History in Inkscape, like in The GIMP?
It really would be helpful to speed things up, when working with complex images (with a lot of memory hungry things in it). I've been just saving, closing and reopening the image, to get rid of a huge Undo History. But it would be really convenient if one could just click it away.

I haven't seen anything about it in the few Inkscape resources I searched.

Next question a little more involved:
In the Undo History, like changes are grouped together. That's helpful . But I get confused sometimes, because like changes to different objects, paths, gradients are also grouped all together. For example, I have 2 objects -- one has 2 gradients and the other has 1 gradient. If I work on gradient 1 of object 1, change a stop color, add a stop and move a stop (change offset); then I work on gradient 2 of object 1, move the handles and tweak the stop colors; then I go to object 2, gradient 3, move the handles, add a stop and move the stop (offset) -- all those changes a grouped together. So if I want to Undo a change I made to one of the gradients, there's no way to know which one of the items in the group is the one I want to Undo. I'm not sure if screen shots would be helpful, or even if I could make some very easily, to illustrate.

But I'm thinking it would be more helpful, if this group were further subdivided by object, or maybe even individual gradients. Or another option, which might actually be ideal, is to eliminate grouping altogether, in the Undo History, while identifying the gradient to which each change was made.

Another example: I have 3 objects, 2 rect and 1 ellipse. The creation of the 2 rect are grouped together, yet the ellipse gets its own entry in the Undo History. Then I go and set the Fill colors. But the fillings of all 3 objects are grouped together. It seems there are no consistent rules for grouping in the Undo History.

And again, in the 2nd scenario, it would be helpful, I think, if the creation of each object were listed separately. But again, I think the ideal solution might be to eliminate grouping, while identifying the item to which each change is made.

And so my 2nd question is -- Is this something that might be worth suggesting to the developers?

Thanks for your help

I don't know that clearing the history will increase performance in the same way as it does for GIMP purely because Inkscape is vector and each change isn't going to add up to much data. But there may be other reasons why someone might like to clear their history though so I don't think it's a bad idea.

I think grouping history items by object rather than by task is a good idea (or at least by object first, then subgroup by task).

I've never even looked at the history palette until this post, but now I've seen it, I'd really like to be able to undo a single step within the middle of the history without having to undo all the steps since then

I've never even looked at the history palette until this post

LOL! omg, I'd be lost without the Undo HIstory!

I'd really like to be able to undo a single step within the middle of the history without having to undo all the steps since then

This option is not available in The GIMP (or at least in the version I have), which leads me to believe it would be rather difficult to achieve. But what do I know about writing a program, after all???

For me, it's just identifying the object of each action, that would help me locate a particular entry in the Undo History. Especially gradient changes, because changing the stop colors, depending on exactly how you do it, can add several entries in the history for a single change. Also moving stops/offsets, sometimes a single change, a single move of the mouse, adds several entries to the history. So that creating even a moderately complex gradient can result in a list of 100s of items in the Undo History. And without identification, it's hard to know which "Move gradient handle", "Change gradient stop offset", "Change gradient stop color" is the one I want to Undo! (when I say hundreds, I'm not exaggerating!)

Well, so maybe I'll make a feature request at LaunchPad?

microUgly wrote:I don't know that clearing the history will increase performance in the same way as it does for GIMP purely because Inkscape is vector and each change isn't going to add up to much data. But there may be other reasons why someone might like to clear their history though so I don't think it's a bad idea.

I can say empirically there is some it increase performance under vista when I periodically exit and restart inkscape 0.46. It's not a big gain, but I'll take anything I can get at this point.

microUgly wrote:I've never even looked at the history palette until this post, but now I've seen it, I'd really like to be able to undo a single step within the middle of the history without having to undo all the steps since then

I get around this sometimes by hopping back in the history, then copying and pasting in place items into a new file (of the same height & width) then redoing everything. And pasting back in place. A way to skip all those sets would be great.

The very first bitmap program I ever used, Micrografx Picture Publisher, included the feature of being able to browse the history and insert or undo steps in the middle without undoing all the subsequent steps. It was fantastic. This was 1999 or 2000. I don't know why that feature didn't become standard across all bitmap editors. I have no idea if vector graphics programs are so vastly different that it's unfeasible, but it would be fantastic.

Slightly OT, I think micrografx was bought by Corel and Picture Publisher became incorporated into, I believe, CorelDraw. Does anyon know if Corel Draw has this feature?

I thought it would have been easier with vector because it's dealing with numbers, not rendered effects. With a bitmap I would think it would requiring undoing all steps, then skip the one you wanted and reapply all subsequent steps again. I guess this might need to be the same with Vector because the set of numbers used in one step may be dependent on the numbers of the previous step.

FYI, I decided to go ahead and post these comments as Feature Requests on Lauchpad.