After 8 years of working with Illustrator I've decided to try to make the switch to Inkscape. The main reason is I've fallen in love with Linux Mint and I haven't been able to get Illustrator to run in Wine. It's been a bit of a struggle making the switch though. I'm slowly relearning the ways to do things but I haven't been able to figure out some things that are really slowing down my workflow. Here are a few questions I have mainly regarding keyboard shortcuts.

1. In Illustrator when using the pen tool you can quickly change from a curve line to a straight line by holding the alt key and clicking the last node. How do you do this in inkscape? The closest thing I've come up with is pressing enter after I make my last node and then clicking it again. It feels a bit cumbersome so hopefully there is a better way to do this.

2. In Illustrator much like the above mentioned you can adjust your line curves while still using the pen tool by holding alt and dragging the node handles. Can you do this in Inkscape?

3. By far the biggest struggle I have switching to Inkscape is the way fills and strokes are handled. In Illustrator you had the 2 squares at the bottom of the toolbar one for fill and one for stroke. You could switch which you wanted to change with the x key, cancel them with the "/" key and reverse them with alt+shift. If I could do this and have the ability to simply double click the square and have the color mixer pop up I would be the happiest guy in the world.

4. Is there a way to be able to select a group of objects without having to have the lasso completely surrounding each object?

5. In Illustrator on the layers box it would show each individual path and object so you could quickly select the object you want. In Inkscape it seems to put all objects on a layer without seperating them. In complicated drawings it becomes difficult to select the object I want and I find myself selecting a group and deselecting objects one by one. Is it possible to see a list of each object in Inkscape?

6. I can't seem to find the shortcut to lock an object. Can someone tell me what it is?

Thanks everyone!

iztel wrote:1. In Illustrator when using the pen tool you can quickly change from a curve line to a straight line by holding the alt key and clicking the last node. How do you do this in inkscape? The closest thing I've come up with is pressing enter after I make my last node and then clicking it again. It feels a bit cumbersome so hopefully there is a better way to do this.

Shift + L for a straight segment while drawing, Shift + U for a curved one.

iztel wrote:2. In Illustrator much like the above mentioned you can adjust your line curves while still using the pen tool by holding alt and dragging the node handles. Can you do this in Inkscape?

To create a smooth node just click and drag. To create a cusp node click and drag and adjust the "left" segment, then press and hold Shift to adjust the other handle and the "right" segment.

iztel wrote:3. By far the biggest struggle I have switching to Inkscape is the way fills and strokes are handled. In Illustrator you had the 2 squares at the bottom of the toolbar one for fill and one for stroke. You could switch which you wanted to change with the x key, cancel them with the "/" key and reverse them with alt+shift. If I could do this and have the ability to simply double click the square and have the color mixer pop up I would be the happiest guy in the world.

In Inkscape it's even easier, Illustrator sounds like there's too much steps. There are fill and stroke boxes in the left bottom corner. Clicking on them open the Fill and Stroke dialogue where you can switch between fill and stroke tabs. Right-clicking on the boxes opens a pop-up menu with some option, check them out (Swap fill and stroke). Clicking on color chips inside the palette assigns fill color, holding Shift while clicking assigns Stroke.

iztel wrote:4. Is there a way to be able to select a group of objects without having to have the lasso completely surrounding each object?

Hold Alt while dragging over objects, you'll see a red line, all objects that are touched get selected. Hold Shift and click on individual objects to add to selection.

iztel wrote:5. In Illustrator on the layers box it would show each individual path and object so you could quickly select the object you want. In Inkscape it seems to put all objects on a layer without seperating them. In complicated drawings it becomes difficult to select the object I want and I find myself selecting a group and deselecting objects one by one. Is it possible to see a list of each object in Inkscape?

It's been requested before, but not yet implemented. You can see the document tree in XML editor (under Edit menu).

iztel wrote:
6. I can't seem to find the shortcut to lock an object. Can someone tell me what it is?

Right-click and choose Object properties, but I'd recommend avoiding Locking objects. It's hard to unlock them later. It's much more user friendly to lock Layers.

Thank you so much prkos. These tips will definitely make things much easier for me.

A couple more questions if you don't mind.

1. In Illustrator you can hold the spacebar to pan around your document. What is the shortcut in Inkscape?

2. What is the keyboard shortcut to join 2 endpoints and break them? I looked through the default.xml file and can't seem to find it.

3. Is there a GUI to change keyboard shortcuts? I wanted to change the "shift + L" shortcut you mentioned before but couldn't seem to find that entry in the default.xml file.

Hi, I'm not prkos (who could even come close?), but you asked

iztel wrote:1. In Illustrator you can hold the spacebar to pan around your document. What is the shortcut in Inkscape?

Much easier in Inkscape! One handed! Middle mouse button drag! (Buut if you are really attached to the spacebar you can set it to imitate Illustrator behaviour in preferences\scrolling.)

iztel wrote:2. What is the keyboard shortcut to join 2 endpoints and break them? I looked through the default.xml file and can't seem to find it.

Shift-J and shift-B.
Lots more lovely shortcuts and info here http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL.html"smilies" src="images/smilies/icon_e_sad.gif" alt=":(" title="Sad" /> sorry. You could open default.xml in a word processor and just search for the string ...

prkos wrote:Hold Alt while dragging over objects, you'll see a red line, all objects that are touched get selected.

Note that many Linux distributions use Alt to let you drag the window around. If you find the whole window moving when you do this, try pressing (and holding) the Windows key before pressing Alt - it works on my Ubuntu system at least.

prkos wrote:

iztel wrote:1. In Illustrator when using the pen tool you can quickly change from a curve line to a straight line by holding the alt key and clicking the last node. How do you do this in inkscape? The closest thing I've come up with is pressing enter after I make my last node and then clicking it again. It feels a bit cumbersome so hopefully there is a better way to do this.

Shift + L for a straight segment while drawing, Shift + U for a curved one.

I've just tried the Shift+U part of this, and don't see it working, or perhaps more correctly, don't see the point.
If I select a straght-line segment from a "finished" bezier curve, I can pull the line with the mouse and it becomes
curved. Shift+U doesn't seem to do anything, not even give it curve handles. What am I missing?

That's just the point, these shortcuts work during drawing, not after the line is finished. If you create come straight lines with Pen tool by clicking on canvas hitting Shift + U creates a handle on the "free" segment so you can draw a curve. The same when you click and drag to get a curve, hitting Shift + L makes the "free" segment a line.

Ah, interesting. As far as I can tell from experimenting, Shift+U and Shift+L
work DURING drawing, but only Shift+L works AFTER drawing.

Thanks again!

Hello Inkscapers,
It's great to know that there is such a helpful forum for Inkscape users. An Inkscape newbie like myself will need all the help. I'm used to illustrator. I am switching because i have read horror stories of BSA using it's lawyers and some goon type "Anti-piracy Agencies" (much like Loan Collection Repo guys) to target even small and tiny DTP and graphic designers.

Basically i googled and landed here after i could not find the command to "lock object" which in Illustrator is in Object >> Lock

But this is just the start, i am sure i would require many many more corresponding commands and shortcuts of inkscape and illustrator.

Has anyone made a cheat sheet that lists all short cuts of illustrator next to the corresponding shortcuts in inkscape?

That would be great!

Best Regards,
Karan

ps: BSA is digging its own grave by getting greedy and targetting small time designers, soon the majority will shift to open source and then these corporates will try giving their software for almost free, but i hope that when it happens, nobody would want to switch back

Welcome to InkscapeForum!

I have seen tutorials around (on the internet), that are targetted to former AI users, which explain some comparable commands. I don't have them saved, but a simple search should find them. I haven't seen or heard of any charts, for example, where they are all listed. But you're welcome to post here if you can't figure them out.

To lock an object, you have to call up Object Properties from the Object menu (not sure if there might be a shortcut).

Also, as you're learning Inkscape, keep in mind that it's continuously under development. It doesn't have all the features of AI or other programs, and probably isn't intended to ever be a "free replacement" for them. You'll probably have to learn some different techniques to accomplish similar goals. And being open source (this is the best part) anyone can report bugs and/or request new features. I'm not sure how it is decided, or whom makes such decisions, as to which new features will become part of Inkscape. I think that for the most part, it depends on people who are so skilled and motivated to do the coding.

So what I was about to say, it that some sort of "object manager" has been a frequently requested new feature, and I suspect there will someday be an easier way to lock objects