How to Use This Manual

This manual is written to support version 1.5, although of course, it provides information for all preceding versions too. Whenever there is a feature that only works in a certain version, the manual will specify which version. Otherwise, you can consider that the information you are reading should apply to any edition or version of Inkscape.

Please note that this manual is not a step by step guide that is meant to be read from front to back. Rather, it is more of a reference manual, that is meant to be searchable, so that you can directly find whatever information you need.

As you can see, there are two general areas on the pages. The section on the left side of the page is for navigation. You can click on the tiny arrows to open or expand a section, or to close it up after you finish. Click on the text to display that chapter.

The larger central portion of each page gives the instructional information for whatever you have looked up. Text that you see colored orange are “text links”, which of course means you can click on them, to display that information. Sometimes it will be another part of the manual, or sometimes you will be taken to another website. But either way, you will find additional information, relevant to the word or phrase that you clicked on.

As you will soon learn, in Inkscape, there is often more than one way to accomplish a particular task. For that reason, you will find a lot of text links as you read, as well as “See also” boxes, to show you all the drawing techniques that are relevant to what you searched. And soon you will develop your own personal preferences and workflow!

At the top-right area of most pages, you will see some tiny icon/buttons, which can change the appearance of manual pages, to whatever you prefer. {insert image: view_manpages1.png}

  • The tiny eye toggles you back and forth from the manual, to the gitlab page where you can edit the page.

  • The tiny pencil allows you to edit the text directly. Although the proper way to edit this manual is via gitlab.

  • The tiny sun toggles the page background, light or dark.

  • CTRL changes the key shortcuts from PC-like to Mac-like.

Keyboard shortcuts are displayed like this example: CtrlCmdShiftP. You can learn more about keyboard shortcuts in this chapter.

Towards the back of the manual, you can find hands-on Tutorials and Challenges, where you can start to put your new skills to use. Also at the back, you will find a Glossary and an Index.

Todo

[all the links in the last few paragraphs may need to be fixed later]