Alright, so I've been using Inkscape for a few months. I've had no complaints with it. It is amazing.

But this weekend, I started on a project for my Graphics project and it seems that the file size is affecting the crash rate of Inkscape. The file size is about 2 MB. I planned on adding quite a bit more (I'm making an in detail map for a game we are making in class). To combat the frequent crashes, I saved often.

At my last save, I got the error message "Too many heap sections," or something like that. I've gotten the error message before, along with several other reasons for Inkscape crashing. Well, I went to open it again and it fails to load. So I try again, and it fails to load. Then so on and so on. Basically the file has been rendered useless.

I would like to know if there is any way to salvage the file besides restoring a previous session. I did quite a bit of work on it since the last session (though I wouldn't mind doing it again). If there is no way, is there any way to keep it from crashing and inevitably not loading, so that I can pick up from the last session? Or should I just scrap the map and start over in a way that takes up less memory?

Please help me and thank you very much if you do.

EDIT: I meant 22 MB...typing a bit too fast...sorry.

Here's the link to another recent message re "too many heap sections". Partly it's a bug, as you will read, which is parially fixed in the current development build (links and all in that thread):
viewtopic.php?f=29&t=5037

I don't know if you're aware of or have tried File menu > Vacuum Defs. It removes unused info from the file, and often reduces file size quite significantly. Basically things like gradients that you tried but ended up not using, all kinds of things really, that you might have tried but they didn't work. So if for example you have 20 gradients (perhaps from trial and error, as I often did when I was learning), but only 2 of them are actually being used. Vacuum defs gets rid of the rest. Although please note that if you might want to use one of those experimental ones later, it will be gone and you'll have to create it again. I usually only use Vacuum defs when I've finished an image. But in your case, it might be helpful?

Another thing that you can do to try and prevent crashes related to large file size (it's a known issue), besides saving frequently, is to make heavy use of Layers. If you're not doing that already, you can simply hide layers that you aren't using at the moment. You know, like background layer, midgrounds, forground in different layers; or a different layer for each character. And don't forget sublayers. Then Inkscape only has to deal with what's visible.

Regarding the file no longer opening, have you tried restarting Inkscape? If that doesn't help, try restarting your computer. I had a huge file once that just stopped opening, and simply restarting Inkscape fixed it, for awhile. Then I had to restart computer to get it back. At that point, I decided to break up the image into a few different documents, and when I finished, put them all back together in one doc. Although I realize that not every image will be conducive to such a workaround.

Anyway, just a few ideas.

If you have any more questions after reading the other thread, please feel free to reply again, and give us the details. We'll be glad to try and help