Hi!

I'm going to be casting a large eSports event some time soon. While brainstorming for things to do in between casts we've come up with the idea of running post-game analysis, where we'd bring up the game map and draw arrows / shade areas on it to illustrate where the teams went and what they did at important moments during the game. My requirements are:

• Must be able to draw nice looking arrows easily. Ideally draw the curve by hand, automatically have it smoothed and styled and coloured (and outfitted with an arrowhead at the end)
• Must be able to easily undo and redo
• Should "just work" and be idiot-proof during a live cast

So I'm sure Inkscape CAN do these things. I've not been able to make it do everything I need, but before I go on and ask my questions, maybe someone can point me to a much simpler tool? I feel like using Inkscape for this is overkill.

So assuming Inkscape IS the way forward, I've had trouble with the following:

• Can only apply stroke style after creating the path. I'd press F6, draw the path, and then I'd have to go into Fill+Stroke settings and set everything manually. Is there a way to say "for the next line I draw, and for all the lines I draw until I say differently, use THESE SETTINGS"?
• The arrowheads are confused. They never seem to be pointing in the right direction until I go in with F2 (edit node mode) and point the final node in the right direction.
• I can smooth my F6 lines AFTER drawing them, but I'd really like for the smoothing to be applied automatically as I draw. Can I do this?

So once again: the situation is I'm livestreaming (with a co-commentator) to a few thousand people and I'd like to put on a professional looking post-game analysis. Any and all help would be much appreciated. And hey, if you can help me and you happen to guess what game I'm going to be casting, I'll hook you up with some swag in game

I think I agree with you that inkscape is not the best choice for a live tool!
But if you are up to the challenge I think that pattern on path is the way to go. In the example below I made a quick arrow (at top). Note that this is a drawn arrow, not a line with a stroke style arrowhead. (I did add a few nodes to it with the add nodes extension although it's not at all necessary to do so for the path effect to work satisfactorily.) I then copied it to the clipboard, switched to the pencil tool, chose the "from clipboard" option, set smoothing to fairly high (you asked, "Can I set lines to be smooth as I draw them? You can do this in the tool control bar for the pencil), and started drawing. Note that usig this method you have to be careful what your pencil's default drawing style is set to! this feature is a little unpredictable still.

In the bottom just for fun I have done the same with a filtered version of the arrow and the EXTENSION pattern along path.
The path effect does not allow a filtered pattern but the extension does.

So I tried to do that and I *must* have done something wrong. The result is amazing though, so I thought I'd share it.

What I did:

* Use the rectangle tool to draw a longish rectangle
* Use the "Draw Bezier curves or straight lines" tool to draw a triangle on top of the rectangle
* Selected them both with my mouse
* Pressed Ctrl+C
* Selected the Pencil tool
* Set the smoothing to about 40
* Selected "From Clipboard"
* Then started drawing

The results are highly unexpected. I don't have the original triangle on that picture, but it was a standard arrow, much like yours.

What am I doing wrong?

Ooooh! It needs to be a left to right arrow! Hah! That was an interesting gotcha. Thanks, that totally works for me. Weee!

Cool, I think I got it figure out now! Thanks so much!

One last question: how can I make the arrows appear in colour? I've tried making a coloured arrow and copying it to clipboard and I've tried setting both the fill and the stroke paint to a colour, but no dice. I see the arrow appear in whatever colour I've set for a moment, but then it goes black.

Also (and this is really, really minor), is there a way I can tell Inkscape not to select the object after creating it? I always have to hit ESC to get rid of the selection box after drawing an arrow.

[edit] Got it, had to change stroke style with an element selected and tell pencil tool to use last style. All set now!

DanielZKlein wrote:Also (and this is really, really minor), is there a way I can tell Inkscape not to select the object after creating it? I always have to hit ESC to get rid of the selection box after drawing an arrow.

inkscape preferences >selector> choices are none, box, and mark. You want 'none" the object will still be selected but there won't be anything onscreen to show it.