Assume a text object in Inkscape that contains the text "foo bar baz". This text object was generated via R package svglite. When I delete characters in this object, the width of the text object does not change automatically but is maintained. At the same time, the text is stretched. How can I disable this behaviour and instead have the object width decrease in accordance with the number of characters?

As this isn't the normal behaviour for an Inkscape text object, I think you need to supply an example file so that we can see what sort of structure is being created under the hood.

Here's an example file: https://file.io/pohWIL It was generated via R package svglite.
You can ignore the overlaying text in the lower half of the svg-file. If you try to delete a letter or two in any of the text in the upper half of the svg-file, you will notice that the entire text is stretched to the original size.

Here are the details of my operation system and my Inkscape version:
$ uname -o
GNU/Linux
$ inkscape --version
Inkscape 0.92.2 2405546, 2018-03-11

Here is the xml-code of the file I am refering to (and which I just shared):

Here seems to be the answer: Text elements in the svg-file in question contain attributes called "textLength" (e.g., textLength='187.44px'). Upon removal of these attributes, the default behaviour of the text elements resumed.

It's always good when someone manages to answer their own question

Unfortunately I can't think of a way to remove just these attributes in Inkscape alone, other than manually editing them in the XML editor, which is awkward if there are more than a handful of entries like this. The simplest solution is probably to open the file in a text editor and use search and replace to replace "textLength=" with "XtextLength=" (or some other attribute name that isn't a real SVG attribute). It's not as neat as removing the attribute entirely, but should do the job.

(or use a regular expression to really remove the attributes, if you search+replace supports those)

Yeah, I just went with the "safe" option, as a mistyped regex could break the whole file very easily. Still, if anyone wants to give it a try, the following regex should work:



(note that there's a space at the start of the line)

As most people probably aren't familiar with regex syntax, this finds any string that starts with a space, followed by "textLength=" then an opening quote, then any number of non-quote characters, then another quote. This approach means that whatever the value of textLength, whether or not it's got decimal a decimal point or different units, it will still get found.

If you've got access to a Linux or Unix-like command line which has the "sed" program, the following one-liner will remove all the textLength attributes from the entire file (where "file.svg" is the filename - replace with "*.svg" to hit all the SVG files in the directory). Make sure you've got backups first!