Black fill inside the frames when I print that are not visible on the screen

[lahunt]

Probably user error as I am brand new at this program, but I spent half a day making a simple drawing with rectangles, circles, lines, and text. The circles are within frames with handles. When the page was printed, the frames around the circles printed black. The circles themselves look okay. I made two brush stroke lines, one after the other;  the frame around one of them is half the piece of paper  and it is all black around the brush stroke. The other one looks fine. I cannot see how the two are different. There are two layers in the project, one has the original pdf I scanned in to trace (but I did not use the Tracing function) and the other has the drawing on it. I have attached a scan of what I got off my printer with the black fields, which are NOT visible on the screen. Thank you

[brynn]

Welcome to Inkscape Community!

Would you be able to attach the SVG file?  That will make it easy to find out what kind of objects are involved, as well as the properties of the objects, especially regarding transparency, but maybe other things.

About the PDF, which you said you scanned in.....I'm not sure I understand that process.  Was it a PDF that had been printed, then you scanned it back to your hard drive and imported that into Inkscape?  Or did you import the PDF directly into Inkscape?

Can you determine whether the black areas are associated with the layer with your drawing, or the layer with the scanned PDF?  Or did you hide the PDF layer when you printed?

Also, please tell us which version of Inkscape

[lahunt]

I am using Inkscape .91 which I just downloaded a day or so ago for Windows 8 laptop and a brand new Brother printer.
Here is the file. All I did was print my little map, find the black frames, then scan it back in on my scanner in order to attach it for you (after several hours of reading the help site). That is distinct from the starting field sketch map which I scanned also on my scanner and imported (I think) as the  first layer for my drawing, which then was hidden for printing the new drawing.
The black frames are on elements in the drawing layer, as only the original sketch is on the other layer. But I did mess up and put some of the shapes on that original field sketch layer at first, and moved them to the other layer when I figured it out, using, I think, "move object to layer above" command. But all the black frames are not on shapes i moved. For instance the little green circles were added much later on the working drawing layer.
 

[brynn]

Oh ok.  You didn't say, but you must have installed the 64-bit version of Inkscape (since you mentioned laptop)?  This looks like a bug that is only affecting the 64-bit version of Inkscape, in which anything with any amount of transparency prints like you see it.  And indeed, the objects in your drawing which show that anomaly all have small amounts of transparency.  (And fully opaque objects don't.)

Here's that bug report, if you'd like to read it (I didn't read it very closely) https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/1418865

If you need transparency in your drawing, then the good news is that you can simply install the 32-bit version of Inkscape, which apparently is not affected.  Or if you don't need the transparency, you can just make sure all the objects are opaque when you print.

Inkscape has an annoying default behavior, in which the next object you draw with any particular tool takes on the style (color, opacity, etc) of the last object you drew with that tool.  Fortunately, there's a way to customize your tools, if you don't want to have to worry about this, so they always draw opaque (or a certain color, stroke width, etc.).  So here's a tutorial I wrote about that:  http://forum.inkscapecommunity.com/index.php?action=articles;sa=view;article=15 

[lahunt]

Thanks for the info! Yes I went with 64 bit.
 If I install 32 bit, can I open the same file with it and it will be cured? Or does it need to be imported into it or something.
Also, what I really need rather than transparency is a fill that is in  patterns like a cross hatch, slashes  or dots. I have not discovered if you can do that in Inkscape? I was also having trouble creating an outline of a circle or a rectangle with the transparency inside. I need a heavy outline with a faint fill pattern.
Thanks for the assistance.

[brynn]

Theoretically, you should be able to install the 32-bit version, and be cured, witihout any other steps.  But I'm not very familiar with this bug.  Let us know if you have problems though, and we'll be glad to try and help.  (Don't forget to uninstall the 64-bit version first, if you used an installer rather than 7z version.)

Yes, Inkscape can make pattern fills.  There are several patterns that come packed with Inkscape (mostly stripes).  Or you can make custom patterns.  I'm just about to log off for a while (will be back later tonight) so I'll just refer you to the manual, to learn how to use/make them, for now.  Help menu > Inkscape manual, and then just use the Index to find the info.  Plus I'm sure others will be around to help.

However, if you're planning to print this image in the end, you might run into problems printing the patterns, depending on how you do it.  Especially if you're thinking of converting to another file type/format.  As long as you stay with SVG or maybe PDF, you should be fine.  But if you do run into problems, you might not necessarily have to convert the pattern design (custom pattern) to a Pattern.  If it's not a large area, you could probably tile it "manually".  Or perhaps use another feature -- clones or tiles clones.

Good luck and have fun