Tools not working properly

[Lilly K]

Hi Inkscape Experts,

It's my first post and something juicy for you to get your teeth into .... or maybe it's a typical PICNIC (Problem In Chair, Not In Computer) situation and it will be glaringly obvious to you what  stupid mistake I'm making. I really hope that's the case, as that will be an easy solution.

I've been using Inkscape for a couple of years and I usually manage to get by OK (with the help of youtube tutorials) but Inkscape just doesn't want to cooperate anymore and nothing I've tried has helped. I've tried uninstalling; going back to an earlier version - no joy. I've just installed 0.92.3 and that hasn't helped either.
The last time I used it, a couple of weeks ago, everything was absolutely normal but now nothing seems to be working properly. Here are some examples of what's happening:

Selecting tools -  I click on the tool (eg the circle) - nothing happens (ie it's not highlighted and I can't draw a circle) I double click it and the preferences box appears. Only after I get rid of that, can I do anything with the tool.

Changing from one tool to another - again, nothing happens when I click the new tool I want to use. Only after I double click it, and get rid of the preference box, can I use it.

Zoom in works - after the preference box thing, but zoom out only does on the first click, after that, it zooms in, too!!!!

Clicking on an object, selects it sometimes, but the next one I try, no arrows appear. Drawing a box around an object, however, does always work -hooray!!

Changing the colour of a selected object - no joy at all.

It's really doing my head in .... has anyone got a brilliant idea for solving my problems, please?

Thanks in advance,

Lilly

[brynn]

Welcome to the forum!

Oh wow!  .....nnno, we sure don't hear this much....really at all, considering all the details.

Some of what you describe, where you click a button to enable a tool, but nothing happens -- we see that when someone has

 -- switched their computer screen from landscape to portrait
 -- using more than one screen or monitor
 -- using an unusual resolution

Does any of that ring a bell?

On the other hand, some of your description leads me to wonder if your mouse might be going bad.  Has it been working ok otherwise, like in other programs, or just managing your computer?  Have you changed any settings for controlling the mouse (I mean your computer settings, not in Inkscape).

It really sounds like Inkscape is not recognizing a single left-click.

Are you using a graphics tablet and/or pen?

[Lilly K]

Brynn, many thanks for getting back to me.

Basically, no is the answer to all your questions.

The laptop (with touchpad) I'm using is only 4 months old and I haven't changed any of the settings from normal landscape etc.

I'm not having the problem with anything else other than inkscape.

Mighty strange!

Lilly

[Moini]

I've seen this before, but couldn't help. Now I've searched through the reports - could it be this one:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/1131428

Can you try the workarounds that are described and let us know if they help - then we know the bug is still relevant, and can add info to the report.

[Lilly K]

Hi Moini,

Thank you so much for pointing me to this thread.

On the one hand - Hooray, it's not just me being stupid! But on the other, looks like this is a really complicated issue that's been going on for years and I could be scuppered as I have no idea how to do any of the tekkie things these people in the thread are talking about - eg trying patches.

About the only one I would be confident to try is the following, if you could give me more specific instructions of what to click on. This person says "right click inkscape shortcut" -where? how?


yakut (toxema) wrote on 2016-09-05:    #45

i am also expriencing same problem with my win7 asus n551 notebook.

i solved problem with changing performace setting of inkscape only.
right click inkscape shurtcut >properties >compatibility> chose disable visual themes
works for me.

[Moini]

I think that must be referring to the desktop shortcut - do you have an Inkscape icon on your desktop?

[brynn]

I didn't read very much of that thread, but at least in the first couple of messages, they mentioned several programs which might be installed on Windows, which might be incompatible, such as what sounded like a screenshot tool, or another sounded like it might be a magnifyer, or special zoom tool, another that makes fancy cursors.  One of them even mentioned Skype as possibly interfering.  So it might be pretty easy to check for those things.

It sounds like most of them provide what I would call sort of whiz-bang, fancy effects kind of features.  If you know of anything like that, like if you might have enabled features which aren't default features, you might consider disabling them, just to test.