Hi & good day to all. I have been trying out this tutorial re: http://screencasters.heathenx.org/wp-co ... /ep060.ogv but although I am following the tutorial to the letter I am getting different results. Attached are two files one with images before combining & the second after combining. In Mr Heathenx's tutorial upon combining the fill or colour is removed from the text in my case however everthing turns black. I don't think that I am leaving out any steps thus far but then again can someone tell me if I am missing a step. Thanks.

Apparently, the fill color of the combined object depends on some condition that I don't get... Sometimes I get the results of the video, and sometimes I get your result. Either way, you image has everything in place, only with the "wrong" color. If you select the object and set some color for the stroke, and nothing for the fill, you end up with the same thing as in the video...

Hope it helps.

PD: Nope, I keep trying but no idea why sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

EDIT: No, I was wrong. What you get on you image is not the same as in the video. You should be able to set a fill on the combined object and you would get solid text and empty rectangle... So I'm lost, just as you. Let's wait for the smart ones to shed some light here.

EDIT 2: Well... I was right after all. You do get the result on the video by just removing the fill and set a stroke on the combined object.

Hi Kento,
I don't think you're missing any steps, but if you reversed the order of a couple of them, it could cause what you're seeing. Be sure to create the text first and then the rectangle. When you Combine paths, they both become subpaths of a single compound path. And they take the style (color, stroke width, etc.) of the last path created. Even though they were both converted to paths at the same time, apparently Inkscape looks at the order they were drawn.

So if you draw the rectangle first and text last, since the text has a black fill and no stroke, when you combine them, the result has a black fill and no stroke. Reverse the order, and you get the same result as heathenx.

You could still achieve the same result with what you have though, instead of going back and re-doing everything. Just add a stroke and remove the fill and you'll be ready to proceed.

Of course there could be other reasons for the result you're getting, but reversing the order of creating rectangle and text is the most obvioius to me. If you can't manage to fix it, and you're sure you're doing the steps in the right order, just reply again. Eventually we'll track down the issue, if this isn't it

Oops, Uktrunie does it again, sneaking in a reply while I'm typing mine

Not only that, I had time to edit the post, not once, but twice.

By the way, I still don't understand this. For what I read the final fill and stroke colors are the ones of the top object. So the order in which you draw would be irrelevant, but you would just move the objects to the top or to the bottom, which is not what is done in the video. Now, the screencast was made in 2008 I think, it was Inkscape version 0.46 so the behavior of the combine tool might have changed... I don't know, Brynn says he gets the right result just like in the video, but I just can't, I can however, get the right result over and over playing with which object is on top and which is at the bottom.

PD: Mind you, by "does it again" you mean failing to provide a solution to the problem?

Yeah, I do type slowly And I had to replay the video a few times.

Uktrunie wrote:Mind you, by "does it again" you mean failing to provide a solution to the problem?

No, of course not! I meant post a reply while I was composing one

Uktrunie wrote:For what I read the final fill and stroke colors are the ones of the top object.

You could absolutely be right about that! I thought the style of combined paths was the style of the last drawn object. But the last drawn object is always on top! I can also achieve the same undesirable result by drawing the rectangle first (which makes the text last, and on top).

I guess heathenx could have practiced a lot (probably did), before putting the tut to video, and found the most efficient route to the result. I was thinking he just happened to draw them in that order (making the rectangle last), and that if he had instead drawn them with rectangle first, he would simply have included instructions to add stroke and remove fill, after combining.

I also noticed that it was an older version of Inkscape, and perhaps the behavior has changed. But if you've read somewhere that it is the top object, I would be inclined to believe it. My response was just from personal experience, and coincidentally, the last drawn object is always on top, unless you move something else to the top after drawing it.

From the Inkscape 0.48 manual:

Inkscape can Combine paths into a compound path (Ctrl+K) and [...] Since an object can only have one fill and stroke, a new compound path gets the style of the first (lowest in z-order) object being combined.

I also tried with version 0.46. The manual says the same thing: the final style is the taken from the object on the bottom, BUT IT'S NOT, it's taken from the object on top. So it looks like the opposite of 0.48.

In other words, Kento, try moving one object on top of the other and the result will vary. Just like with the other boolean operations, the z-order (which is on top of which) is of the most importance.


PS: Sorry Brynn, after posting I somehow recalled that I read in some post that you were a woman but I wasn't sure...