Hey guys,

I created a few fill patterns but some did not come out as I liked them. How do I rename them and/or delete them? I couldn't find any interface for that, and a quick googling also revealed no clues. Surely it must be in there somewhere?

- Nils

Hi Nils,
It's good to see you again

I don't think you can rename them.....besides repeating the Object to Pattern step. You'll get a new random number assigned to it, every time you click Object to Pattern. But as fas as I know, you can't name them at all (besides the randomly assigned number, ie - Pattern 1234).

I think if you need to edit the pattern you made, you would just make the edits, and click Object to Pattern again. As long as you're not using the original pattern anywhere in the file, then once you close and re-open the file, it will be gone. That's about the only way I know to delete a pattern.

But patterns are not permanent anyway, afaik. If you make a new pattern in File A, and you do save File A, then the pattern is preserved, but in that file only. If you make a new pattern in File A, but later decide not to use it, it does remain intact in that file, until you close it. But if it's not used anywhere in the file, then after you close and re-open the file, it's gone.

I don't think the kind of interface you're looking for exists. Although I think it would be a nice feature, for sure! And I think you already know that you're more than welcome to add a feature request at Launchpad (if there's not one already).

Yeah, I think it would be great to be able to create new patterns, that are stored permanently, and available for any other file, besides just the one in which it was created. I don't know if it might be possible to manually place a newly created pattern in the program or preference files, that would make it permanently available?? It makes sense (to me) that it would be possible, but I'm not sure how to do it (if it IS possible).

You have to use the XML editor as far as I know to rename them. find it in the defs then change the id on it.
vacuum defs should delete unused patterns, didnt realise that opening and closing did, it probably shouldnt.
You can delete them in the XML editor too, just select the pattern in the defs and delete the node.
if you want patterns you can reuse you can add them to the patterns.svg in inkscape/share/patterns and they'll appear in the drop down list along with the other defaults.
(think you can add a patterns.svg to the user dir, but not entirely sure, I wrote some of that stuff several years back, and other people have finished it up since then, not sure what the status of per user files is these days)

Thanks guys, and thanks for the "welcome back".

Yeah it'd be really nice if we could have a GUI for these things. Shouldn't take THAt much effort really, a good task for a minor developer contribution. And, no, my C/C++ is way too rusty.

Anyway. The main thing is to get rid of unused patterns, I can work around the rest. Thanks!