I'm pretty new at Inkscape and I've just downloaded 0.91. I'm trying to find a way to use the space bar as a "hand tool" a la Illustrator. There was a preference setting under "Scrolling" in 0.46 to do this. Was this function removed, or can I find it in a different place?

Thanks,
Mahlon

Hey, nevermind. I found out it's already built in to the spacebar now.

One question though, while I have you all here: when I do use the spacebar/hand tool to move the screen, the graphic update is really slow and all paths and objects tear. My graphics card is not the latest but it's good. Is this slow update a problem with Inkscape, graphics card, or file size?

Thanks again,
Mahlon

I would guess it's probably the file size in relation to how much RAM you have. However, if there are a lot of filters in the file, there are some Inkscape Preference settings you can tweak for that. Inkscape Preferences > Rendering. Besides the Filter Effects and Blur settings, if you're using a computer with multiple cores, you can change the Number of Threads to match however many cores you have. And that will help with the filter display a lot!

Inkscape doesn't rely much on the graphics card, or on the processor (except for filters). It's mostly RAM that you need to consider for Inkscape. (As far as I understand)

I think there is a good deal of difference among the 3 supported operating systems, as far as how fast Inkscape works. Very fast on Linux, slower on Windows, and I'm not sure where Mac fits in there.

By the way, in Inkscape, this is referred to as "panning the canvas". It's not really a tool in the toolbox. Although I've forgotten since 0.46 how that preference was handled back then. But there has been some dissatisfaction with this built-in panning in 0.91, that is "on" all the time. I wouldn't be surprised if the next new version has an option to disable it.

Thanks, brynn, for the info.

Mahlon