I am not sure what happened, but usually Open recent like saved lot of works on his list. now somehow every time i reopen the software the list is empty. How can i get it back?

Somehow the history got cleared. I think there's a button you can click to do that, which maybe you did accidentally. Or, I think if you moved the images since the last time you had them open, that could cause the same thing. I'm not sure about that though.

You'll just have to find the images again, using your file manager or Inkscape Open dialog. Once you've saved them again, they will appear in the Recent list again.

thing is i work a lot with inkscape and save many designs daily. and the old ones should just replace with the new ones right? Should but it doesnt do that. it doesnt save anything to recent list. Because every time i reopen the software. Open Recent is empty

Look in Inkscape Preferences > Interface. There you can choose how many files to have in the list, and also there's the button to clear the list. Does it show a non-zero number?

If setting/resetting that doesn't fix it, I guess we may be looking at some kind of bug. If that doesn't fix, would you please tell us your operating system and Inkscape version?

Or maybe someone else has an idea?

windows XP

Inkscape 0.48.1

it started recently no issue with it before. I havent tried reinstall yet.

What did you find in Inkscape Preferences > Interface?

Ah-ha, I found a few possibly related bugs. Starting here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/649940.

Do the file names have any non-Latin or UTF characters?
Or do you save by closing the file, and then choosing Save? If this is the case, then it sounds to me like saving before closing solves the problem. However, note that I did not read the entire bug closely.

If it's any of these bugs, reinstalling won't fix it. Since I didn't read the entire bug report closely, I'm not sure if this occurs in 0.48.2. If not, an upgrade might fix it. But definitely there's a lot of info in that bug report and related reports which might lead you to the solution

I am having the same issue. Under Inkscape Preferences > Interface, I see that up to 36 recent documents should display. Changing this number makes no difference. I am running Inkscape 0.48.2 r9819 on a Mac, and my recent document history used to display, even if I closed and reopened Inkscape. Now it only shows if I keep Inkscape open. Keeping X11 open is insufficient. Saving the file immediately before closing is my normal practice.

The bug mentioned by Brynn is different from my experience, as it makes no difference at what point the file is saved, it still does not appear in the recent document list. No weird characters were used in my filenames, just plain alphabet letters with no accents.

***NOTE***
The information below does not apply to Inkscape running on Windows, and is not related to the bug referred to in earlier comments in response to a question specific to Windows.

MaryStGeorge wrote:I am running Inkscape 0.48.2 r9819 on a Mac, and my recent document history used to display, even if I closed and reopened Inkscape. Now it only shows if I keep Inkscape open. Keeping X11 open is insufficient.

What has changed since then?

• Are you possibly running Inkscape on a new computer or as a different user?
• Did you upgrade from an older version of Inkscape?

There is a known small regression upstream in the GTK+ toolkit Inkscape is based on [1], which can cause such symptoms on Mac OS X e.g. on a new system, or for a new user account who never used Inkscape (or other GTK+-based applications) before.

The information about recently opened files is stored inside a (nested) hidden directory in a file called 'recently-used.xbel'. This file is shared between all GTK+ applications. If the directory structure itself is missing ("$HOME/.local/share/"), the file cannot be created and written to, and no information about recently opened files is provided to Inkscape by the GtkRecentManager facility of GTK+ the next time you launch Inkscape.

Unfortunately, recent versions of GTK+ (including the one used for the Mac OS X package of Inkscape 0.48.2) do not properly take into account whether the hidden directory structure already exists or needs to be created first, before trying to store the information about recently used files (older versions stored the information in hidden file in the top-level $HOME folder, and thus had not been exposing such issues). This is not a bug in Inkscape itself, but still does affect Inkscape users e.g. on Mac OS X.


Known workarounds:

1. Install GIMP on OS X and run it once: it includes a component (gegl) which needs to store some different data to that directory, and properly takes care of that. Then use Inkscape as usual -> 'File > Open recent…' will start to fill again with entries to recently opened files.
   
   (Caveat: I haven't verified this tip with the latest GIMP on OS X package - there might have been some (undocumented) changes to the sources used to create GIMP.app which prevent this tip from working)
   Sorry, no longer works.
   
   or:
   
2. If you are comfortable working with the Terminal, you don't need to install another application - you can simply create that hidden directory structure yourself:
   Open a new Terminal window, type this command and press enter:

   Code: Select all

   mkdir -p $HOME/.local/share
   After this, the information about recently used files should be stored again.

[1] "GTK+ doesn't create ~/.local/share (path) and ~/.local/share/recently-used.xbel"

Just a note that this issue still exists and that the solution B above rectified the problem

OS X 10.6.8
Inskcape 0.48.2 r9819

If you are comfortable working with the Terminal, ...

Open a new Terminal window, type this command and press enter:

Code: Select all

mkdir -p $HOME/.local/share

After this, the information about recently used files should be stored again.

I can confirm that this works for

OS X 10.8.4
Inskcape 0.48.2 r9819

Thank you very much. It was driving me bananas!

T

Just as an aside, I notice that the official stable release is now 0.48.4.

I have no idea if the update solves the problem as I "rectified" my system with Suv's workaround before installing the new version. ( ~suv )

Cheers,

T

Thanks, ~SUV! Another perfect fix. I am confirming that it works for Mac OS 10.6.8 and Inkscape 0.48.2 r9819