Dear Inkscape community,

I created a file using Inkscape 0.48 (Inkscape 0.48.2 r9819) in Windows 7. When I reopen in Inkscape 0.48 Win7, there is no problem. But when I open in Linux Inkscape 0.48.3.1 r9886, a part of the image is missing.

In Windows 7 Inkscape, the top part of the red leaf has C&D written in white. But in the Linux Inkscape and even when I view the file in Linux Firefox browser and Linux Google Chrome, the white text is missing.

The attached vector file is:


In Windows Inkscape, the file looks the way it should:



In Linux Inkscape, the vector file looks like this:

There were two! interesting glitches in your file.Maybe three.
1. The font was displaying in Impact even though you had used Sans. The screenshot you attached also showed Impact! So I guess this is a font naming glitch, perhaps your linux system does not have this font.
2. Your original file had the fill color of the text object as RED when selected using but as WHITE when slected using ! Look in the lower left of the Inkscape window to see the fill color of selected objects. I do not know why this might be, frankly, and I could not recreate the condition again once it was corrected. this might be a known bug... But obviously the Linux system displayed it correctly, and therefore the red text vanished on a red background.
Here is a screenshot of what the two fonts look like on my system, just for reference. Some fonts are not availble in inkscape at all! So I just have to tell you verbally that Basic sans heavy looks a lot like Impact. What this might have to do with anything is anyone's guess! My advice is to always always always convert text objects to paths if you want it to render correctly on anyone else's system!

Dear druban,
Thanks for taking the time to look into this (3-headed) problem with me.
I opened the file you created in my Linux Inkscape and printed the screen. See screenshot here:
download/file.php"uncited">

1. The font was displaying in Impact even though you had used Sans. The screenshot you attached also showed Impact! So I guess this is a font naming glitch, perhaps your linux system does not have this font.

If I have Impact on my Linux computer, what problem will this solve?

You said:

2. Your original file had the fill color of the text object as RED when selected using but as WHITE when slected using ! Look in the lower left of the Inkscape window to see the fill color of selected objects. I do not know why this might be, frankly, and I could not recreate the condition again once it was corrected. this might be a known bug... But obviously the Linux system displayed it correctly, and therefore the red text vanished on a red background.

I can't see the text C&D text box at all in Linux Inkscape, and I've tried ungrouping and selecting the entire drawing. The C&D text box is nowhere to be found.


You said:

Off topic:

3. What reason do you have for creating this text as a flowed object? In inkscape you just need to click with the and start typing to create a text object. No need to drag a box, which creates a flowed text object with some different properties.

I have no reason. I dragged a box because I didn't know better. But now, I know better -- henceforth, I'll simply click with the and no longer drag.

You said

My advice is to always always always convert text objects to paths if you want it to render correctly on anyone else's system!

But what if I later want to change the text? Won't paths be problematic?

inksquid wrote:If I have Impact on my Linux computer, what problem will this solve?

Maybe none. On Windows, Inscape substitutes the closest font, in style, on the current machine, for missing fonts. I don't know if Linux does this or just does not display the object at all. If the latter, this would be the reason your text is just gone.

inksquid wrote:The C&D text box is nowhere to be found.

If not for the reason above, then maybe it's visible in outline view? you have probably tried that but sometimes people forget about outline view. See attached bitmap.

inksquid wrote:But what if I later want to change the text? Won't paths be problematic?

Absolutely. However for such a short text string the benefits of conversion outweigh the disadvantges by a long shot! See the attached svg for an example of hiding the original text in a blind layer and converting a copy. Also I have combined all the red paths into one. So just one white fill, one red fill. Hard for the display to mess up!

Pleas see ~suv's post below with much more accurate info about font substitution and the whole issue!

druban wrote:

inksquid wrote:If I have Impact on my Linux computer, what problem will this solve?

Maybe none. On Windows, Inscape substitutes the closest font, in style, on the current machine, for missing fonts. I don't know if Linux does this or just does not display the object at all. If the latter, this would be the reason your text is just gone.

Font matching (for similar names) only occurs for PDF import, but not when opening SVG files: Inkscape, based on the local font back end, either can find the font referenced in the SVG file among the installed ones or not. The font names stored in Inkscape's SVG files sometimes may vary across platforms (depending on which type the installed font has, and the platform-specific font backend).

Inkscape on linux-/bsd-based systems in general has more font substitution features supported than the Windows port of Inkscape - (on Windows, stable versions (and AFAIK development builds as well) don't do any glyph substitution (e.g. if a special character is missing in the currently used font), nor support e.g. ligatures).

Yes, recent development builds can display a new warning dialog about missing fonts when opening files, but the only real substitution that occurs (in stable and development builds) if the referenced font is not found, is that those text are _rendered_ with the fallback font (on linux/osx usually 'Sans' (-> DejaVu Sans or Bitstream Vera Sans, depending on fontconfig options), on Windows 'Sans' (-> Arial)).

Note: I didn't read the rest of the comments in this topic yet in detail, not take a closer look at the provided sample SVG files.

Hi, Suv.
Thanks for chiming in.

~suv wrote:Note: I didn't read the rest of the comments in this topic yet in detail, not take a closer look at the provided sample SVG files.

Would love to hear your further comments, when you have time.

A couple of notes to topics mentioned in earlier comments:

druban wrote:There were two! interesting glitches in your file.Maybe three.
1. The font was displaying in Impact even though you had used Sans. The screenshot you attached also showed Impact! So I guess this is a font naming glitch, perhaps your linux system does not have this font.

Text in Inkscape can be styled on two levels:

1. the Text object itself: no part of the text content is hightlighted when the style (family, size, color, etc) is applied.
2. individual <tspan> (or <flowPara>) elements: if any portion (or all) of the content is selected when a style is applied, the parent 'Text' object still has the initial (maybe untouched default) style defined, which is overridden by the new style applied to the highlighted portion of the text.

No glitch here, just the way Inkscape works.

druban wrote:2. Your original file had the fill color of the text object as RED when selected using :tool_selector: but as WHITE when slected using :tool_text: ! Look in the lower left of the Inkscape window to see the fill color of selected objects. I do not know why this might be, frankly, and I could not recreate the condition again once it was corrected. this might be a known bug... But obviously the Linux system displayed it correctly, and therefore the red text vanished on a red background.

See above (applies to colors as well as font families and other style attributes). No glitch nor bug here either (and this works the same on either platform, with stable versions or development builds).

druban wrote:Some fonts are not availble in inkscape at all! So I just have to tell you verbally that Basic sans heavy looks a lot like Impact.

This might be the case on your platform, but:
'Sans' is a generic font name, which is rendered with the fallback font defined by the local font configuration system-wide, or maybe even application specific (web browsers might defined their own default fonts): on current linux distros, the fallback font is usually 'DejaVu Sans' (it used to be 'Bitstream Vera Sans') - which does not have a 'Heavy' variant. On Windows, 'Sans' is rendered with 'Arial' which AFAIK does offer the 'Heavy' variant (looks closer to Arial Black, probably, or actually is rendered with 'Arial Black').

inksquid wrote:I can't see the text C&D text box at all in Linux Inkscape, and I've tried ungrouping and selecting the entire drawing. The C&D text box is nowhere to be found.

Since you don't have the font 'Impact' installed on your linux system, inkscape uses the fallback font (Sans -> 'DejaVu Sans' or maybe still 'Bitstream Vera Sans') to render that flowed text object on top of the maple leave. Due to the different font characteristics of 'Impact' and e.g. 'DejaVu Sans', the text frame of the original flowed text object is too small to display the content if the text is rendered with the fallback font:

truncated-flowed-text-if-rendered-with-fallback-font-2.png (90.09 KiB) Viewed 1866 times

See also this earlier comment in an otherwise unrelated topic.

Flowed text truncated to 0 (zero) characters is neither visible nor selectable in Inkscape (there are selection methods which allow to detect them, and there is a report tracking this issue). If needed I can provide more details for the known workarounds. However - the best recommendation here would be to not use flowed text unless really needed (as was mentioned already by druban): for a single-line 3-letter logo text, working with regular text is best.

inksquid wrote: (…) and even when I view the file in Linux Firefox browser and Linux Google Chrome, the white text is missing.

It's missing because Inkscape's 'Flowed Text' implementation is proprietary (unfortunately without including a fallback version in the SVG file), and cannot be rendered by other SVG viewers (including web browsers), no matter on which OS/platform they run.

See also:

• Inkscape FAQ: What about flowed text?
• The note about 'SVG and flowed text' in the manual: 'Creating Text > Entering Flowed Text'