Hi

I am new to Inkscape 0.48 and I have been looking round at video tutorials, and found one to draw an 8 Ball - you may know it.

It look like good basic introduction to Inkscape.

I get on fine with it, until a point where, having drawn a circle, I need to reduce the size, while still constraining it to a circle. With the select tool, I left click on the arrow at bottom centre while holding down CTRL and move the cursor upwards to resize the circle. What actually happens is the circle jitters between two positions and finally settles in the wrong position. It is easier to see what I mean on the 30 second video - http://youtu.be/FL8HGJiMBb4 What is odd is that I didn't get the problem on the first two circles I had to draw along with the tutorial.

I have tried restarting Inkscape, I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling it. But it is always the same. On the tutorial video

Hoping someone might be able to help me. As a beginner, it rather puts me off trying to learn Inkscape at all.

Thank you




Polly

Welcome Polly!

That's a name I don't hear much these days. I used to hear it a lot as a child, but not so much lately -- what a shame. Well anyway, refreshing to hear it (read it)

I haven't looked closely at that video, but I think I probably know which one you're talking about. (...well, I've seen A tutorial for an 8-ball, but not sure if it's the one you're using.) I'm not sure that I would suggest the technique of holding Ctrl and dragging mouse vertically. And you've discovered exactly the reason why it's not always appropriate. Holding the Ctrl key keeps the circle in the proper proportions, up until a certain point. But if you drag it too far either horizontally or vertically, it jumps out of proportion. (I'm not sure if it would be considered a bug, but if it is, it's easy enough to avoid.)

I would say that it's more appropriate to drag the mouse diagonally, inwards or outwards.

And I will also take this opportunity to say that many of the video tutorials that are commonly found on the internet don't give accurate info. Usually, if you follow them to the letter, they will successfully draw whatever they are teaching. But they don't always explain how or why....so that if you waiver slightly from the steps, you can get into trouble. And a lot of them are ripped off too. Sometimes someone will take a great video, remove the helpful dialog, replace it with (often annoying) music, and call it their own. And there's no way for the Inkscape novice to really know if they're getting accurate info....because good or bad, they have no way of knowing.

(I'm actually in the process of creating a new website which will have links to tutorials that I've reviewed. Not that I'm such a big expert myself. But I have learned SO much while reading this forum, day in and day out, and at least for the beginner and intermediate techniques, I have a pretty good idea as to the how and why. So hopefully sooner than later, there will be some way for Inkscape novices to be somewhat reassured that the tutorials they use are accurate and worthwhile.)

Thank you having me and for the welcome.

I used to think Polly was not that common these days, but oddly, I have two friends who are also called Polly, so now I am not so sure.

Graphics is something I have tried in the past...it is one of the basic, useful skills that has never quite worked for me, perhaps because I am not a visual artist. But the other day, my daughter asked me to transfer a logo she had designed by hand onto computer for a scan...and she didn't mean just scanning it. So I sat down with the Gimp. It took me three days (it was a very simple logo), but it taught me something about layers, paths and bezier curves. I was really pleased with it, so I thought it was time to try Inkscape again. Perhaps I was over optimistic with the video I chose, but it seemed simple to follow until it did the jitter bug. Maybe I need to wind myself in and join the nursery class and start from basics...like many people, I don't tend to start by RTFM. :/ And maybe I should...Inkscape is a full sized application with many features.

At the moment though, the experience I described in my first post, plus a couple of others has left feeling that Inkscape feels a bit flaky, a bit unreliable...and yet I know it is an extremely popular app.

Patience is not one of my virtues, unfortunately.



Polly

Hmm... I smell some snapping thing going on there. First, you have an arc, not a ellipse, that would explain the misplaced nodes that you see in the shape. The arc is achieved by playing with the top three buttons in the tool bar when you have selected the tool (and your object).

In the tutorial that I found, which seems to be exactly the one you were following (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_Kw10dDKkY), the guy has an ellipse. You can tell because when you select something, you get some information in the status bar at the bottom. It should be "Ellipse in layer Layer 1. Click..." and in your video it says "Arc in layer..."

Maybe, and this is a long shot, you are having some snapping going on with another object behind the white ellip, erm, arc. You could try disabling snapping by using the button at the top right corner.

Hope it helps.

And an advice, yes, Inkscape will make you want to pull your hear at some point or another. By patient, many of these annoyances come from the fact the you don't know a better way of doing things... other times it's just Inskcape fault. But you will have the same amount of cra, erm, problems in other graphic suites.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

The issue with arc, segment, ellipse...and me not knowing, or knowing how, to make the ellipse whole.

I can move forward again.




Polly

Gald to help.