I tried to search for this in the manual and also in online references but couldn't find anything. My question is; is it possible in Inkscape to to locally simplify a path i.e. can I use simplify only on a portion of a path and not the entire thing? I'm sorry if this is a really basic question, but playing around with the menus didn't take me anywhere.

Thanks

select the path, and the with this tool select the area of interest and in the top bar you can edit the distribution or delete individual nodes.
cheers

Thank You for the reply nesDK!
I do see the option for adding or deleting nodes, but I cannot find anything that handles node distribution at large. And the nodes are too numerous for me to delete individually. ^^;

Now I could separate the portion I want by breaking the path and then simplify and rejoin the nodes. But is their any function that does this directy?

I don't know what kind of "distribution" of nodes that nesDk was referring to??

It's not possible to do this, that I know of. But there might be some other ways to do it. Like for example, you could select smaller groups of adjacent nodes, and delete them. This is only going to go quickly, if after selecting the path with the Node tool, you can easily drag a selection box around groups of adjacent nodes. Then of course delete.

I don't know exactly how, but it's possible with the mouse to select several adjacent nodes too. I happen to have a fancy touchpad mouse. If I select a single node, and drag my finger upwards along the left edge of the mouse, it selects adjacent nodes until I stop dragging my finger. In a traditional mouse, I think this is done with the wheel, but I'm not positive. You could check the Help menu > Key/Mouse Ref to be sure.

Other than that, I guess you'd be stuck with breaking the path, simplifying certain pieces, and putting it back together.

With the mouse and delete key, it should go fairly quickly. But it won't be as good as Simplify. When the nodes are deleted, Inkscape will try to preserve the shape of the path as much as possible, but still, Simplify is much more precise in terms of preserving the path. So I guess you'll have to decide which is more valuable, the path shape, or your time.

That would be a nice feature though! I wonder if anyone has ever submitted a new feature request "bug report"??

brynn wrote:That would be a nice feature though! I wonder if anyone has ever submitted a new feature request "bug report"??

This problem cropped up recently in this thread. I tracked down a feature request that was already on Launchpad: https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/170441


This is a real problem for the work we do on our Monsters, Inked comics. Once we trace our outlines we're left with so many nodes that our filesizes become huge (well, huge compared to our Greys comics), but Simplify on the whole path loses too many details. It's one of the reasons why we don't make our Monsters, Inked SVG files available for download.

Thanks for the replies People. I'm glad that there is already a feature request in Launchpad.

sorry about the confusion and false hopes, my bad.
where just saying that you could alter the amount and whereabout of the nodes, not a smart distribution button.
sorry not english native, hence the Dk

brynn wrote:I don't know exactly how, but it's possible with the mouse to select several adjacent nodes too. I happen to have a fancy touchpad mouse. If I select a single node, and drag my finger upwards along the left edge of the mouse, it selects adjacent nodes until I stop dragging my finger. In a traditional mouse, I think this is done with the wheel, but I'm not positive. You could check the Help menu > Key/Mouse Ref to be sure.

And yes, it happens with the scroll button, and while sometimes useful, it can also get confusing when you actually want to zoom in but select adjacent nodes instead. May be we need a feature to disable this option when the the program detects that the Ctrl key is being pressed. Still not a big deal. Bigger issues are more important.