Hello,

I plan to add t-shirt screen printing to my embroidery monogram business so I downloaded inkscape and am trying to teach myself how to do the monogram designs myself. Well, I have a funny feeling I might be on this forum alot asking questions!! I did read the manual on "how to create text", but still cannot get the text box open to I can type in the text. When I click on the "T" a dialogue box opens to select the font, size etc. However, I noticed the box for "apply" is not highlighted. The manual states the text box does not automatically activate unless a pre-existing text is selected. I'm not sure what this means, and was hoping someone in the forum can tell me how to do this.

Also, I noticed there is a rectangle (outline of a sheet of paper) on the screen. Can I get rid of that or is that the space I'm suppose to work in?

Thanks for your help! It is much needed and appreciated.
Deb

To start writing text you need to click on the screen with the text tool, then you can open the Text dialogue if you like and change properties.

You can also click and drag to get a box within to type text (frame) but this is a non-standard feature so if you'll want to do some other things with your text you'll have to convert it to normal text object.

All vector applications have the Page area, this area gets exported to a pdf page for example, but you can use all the space around it to draw. Also when you have SVG files in some folder thumbnails sow only the page area (on an OS that supports SVG thumbnails). You can disable the display of the page border in Document Properties.

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Inkscape Text:

There are two TEXT tools within Inkscape.. One Creates & Edits the Other Sets Fonts & Text, Text Preferences..

The A icon Is found in the TOOLBOX BAR (left of the canvas)
>TOOLBOX items are mainly made up of items to CREATE/EDIT objects onto your canvas
The T icon is found in the COMMAND BAR (2nd down from the top)
>COMMAND items are common edits/menus and is used for EXISTING Objects on your canvas

The A icon CREATES & EDITS Text Objects.
The T icon edits text & sets font preferences, and can only be used on PRE-EXISTING TEXT objects.

There are TWO modes for creating TEXT with the Creation Tool
>Single (or Double) Click on the canvas, you should see a blinking text bar cursor. Type your characters, this is known as NORMAL/REGULAR TEXT
>Drag your mouse on the canvas, a Blue lined square/rectagul will be drawn. Type your characters, this is known as *FLOWED text.

*FLOWED text has been removed from the .svg specification, so Inkscape will drop/migrate this FLOWED text feature in a future release. If you are in need Text Article, Paragraph, Office Letter type layouts/formatting have a look at Open Source Scribus. Scribus supports .svg and .pdf for interowrking with Inkscape

A main difference between FLOWED and NORMAL text is that NORMAL text requires you to hit the return key to start a new line, while the FLOWED text will automatically create a new line when your characters exceed the right margin of your FLOWED text boundary. There are other differences, may I suggest you read the on-line manual for the differences. >Help >Inkscape Manual

Note for you:
The rich artitstic text based features are here in inkscape, it is just a step away from user friendliness. But no worries it looks like ease of use is coming in release 0.48, which is very close to being released.

Snapshot of 0.48beta's updated Tool Controls Bar for the Text Create & Edit tool attached.


You can use the features like Character/Word/Line Spacing, Rotation, Kerning, etc by using the A icon tool and the shortcut keys for text available via the >Help >Shortcut and Mouse References menu.

Finally since you are new, There were three features of the Inkscape interface I ignored when I first started using it.. My advice is to pay attention and use these three resources/features I think it will greatly improve your experience with Inkscape:

1. The Tool Controls Bar:
>bar above the canvas, it has many features, and you can RIGHT CLICK number fields for helpful presets.
2. The Notification Display:
>bottom center of the inkscape interface. This area will display text messages providing you help while using inkscape. Shortcut Keys, Mouse Options, etc I can't believe how dorky i felt when I finally started to read the information here... and It is DYNAMIC, not just one stale help message but many!!
3. The online documents Manual >Help >Inkscape Manual Tutorials >Help Tutorials. A gentlemen named Tavmjong Bah has provided us with a Free On-Line Manual and it is very well put together..

-Draw Freely!