Hi all New to inkscape...cool little app for open source......anyway some feedback:

Obviously most people using inkscape are familiar with xara extreme...not that this is perfect and I know in many ways you guys are probably working towards matching them in many ways.....so here goes.....

I have noticed that inkscape has a "pen tool" and a "pencil tool" which correspond quite closely to two of the existing Xara tools...IE their freehandtool and pen tools..... but it seems the shape editor tool is curiously missing........
I know you guys probably don't intend to completely copy everything off xara and actually aim to be better than them if possible but this is not an input tool to be deliberately omitting from your tool set........

I really hope someone is working towards this as it is the most important, quick and practical tool xara has... and much more frequented that the other 2 tools.

Futher to this i have some great ideas of how these 3 tools could be melded together into one harmonius whole so that you could sketch, Place down manual nodes with the bezier method or place curve and corner points down rapid fire (like with xara's shape editor tool) in any combination for the one input......

not even xara can do this well although there is no reason why the could not as all the functionality is already there ie you can mix and match input tools....
for the one input etc but you have to hit a short cut key to change to the new tool and then another to change back and in the case of the freehand tool changing to this will actually result in 2 lines not one continuous one unless the user goes to the trouble of actually selecting the last node and continuing on ETC...

anyway my idea is to have all 3 of these tools be interchangeable with "hot keys"... ie which change the tool only whist depressed and then change it back when you let go!

But i think you guys really have ommitted the most powerful tool of all iE the shape editor tool which allows the user to side step the standard tedious bezier input method and place "curve" and "corner points" down rapid fire in order to quickly produce a line with out any bezier mumbo jumbo...
But you can always if you require more exact point placement hold down the hot key for the bezier input tool: place down your bezier node and then continue on.
or for those who prefer the bezier input method: base themselves with in this tool and then use the hot keys for sketching or curve/corner point input for instances where they would like to deviate....

There are some similarities to xara due to a couple of the devs having used it lots, however trying to be a clone is definitely not our goal. I've never used xara myself, so most if your post means nothing to me cos I've no idea what the shape tool is. An explanation not requiring knowledge of xara would be useful.

What I do is that I click out a lot of linear points with this tool
then I use the


and click on the lines and drag to make them curved or select the nodes I want to be soft and convert them.

Very quick to work with.