I've set all my tools to "last used style". But it just works erratically. Some styles will stick. Others won't. I *think* that changing the stroke width, or changing the fill to "none" or "flat color" or vice versa, will stick, but changing the style to any gradient or pattern will not be used the next time. What am I doing wrong?

Not a thing. That behavior is a long standing feature that inspires you to try new things by being unpredictable. Just kidding. It's a bug that does not seem to ever get fixed.

That's disappointing to hear. This is great software, but I'm noticing the more I use it that it's rather buggy. Are there any other free SVG editors out there that you know of that are more stable? I've always heard Inkscape was the go-to product, but I'm curious what else is out there...

There is an interesting feature though:
copy an object with the desired style attributes (Ctrl+C),
then select the other object and press Ctrl+Shift+V to add the selected object's style.

Other programs?
As far as I remember xara was always mentioned by users who wanted a more polished program without illustrator's cost.

I think the forum is a little buggy too. For some reason, I get my replies in my email(as I want to and set it up to do) except when it just decides not to. Anyway, that's a cool feature and I will definitely be using it. Thank you.

I will also check out Xara. I'm really enjoying vector art, and I do like Inkscape, but with its' quirks and the lack of a fully comprehensive manual, it can be a struggle figuring things out.

There are lots of bugs in Inkscape. You will encounter a significant number of them. The development team is understaffed.

For example, in many cases Undo will crash Inkscape or at least fail to work. It is known. But there's not enough development resources to fix it.

I think Xara is just about dead. Krita is dead too. http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q= ... ita&cmpt=q

I seem to remember that Illustrator is more polished, but I haven't spent a lot of time with it, and I only remember using its standard features.

Don't take Google stats as gospel. For instance you might add KDE to that stat and see what sort of bump you get. Since Krita is part of KDE you should consider those numbers as well.

AFAIK Krita is being developed very rapidly, and recently did very well in their fundraising, indicating a strong support base. New tools have been recently added and work very well. New builds for various OS are being compiled regularly. The current version of Krita is very stable. the Krita team is very quick to respond to posts and fix bugs. Props to them for their hard work.

To come on here and post such comments (some similar comment by the same member about Inkscape builds) is just being provocative. What's your point here? How often do you want your software updated? All the work in building and providing Windows users with working versions of Krita and Inkscape is done by volunteers on their own time and tying up their own machines, purely as a favor to all.

I think you are misunderstanding something. There are development builds, just not the ones linked on that page. There's even one in my signature, and one in the post above yours.

Well I'm not sure what you guys are arguing over, but thanks for mentioning Krita. It looks like an interesting tool with both raster and vector tools from what I can tell. I might give it a try.