I am an extremely loyal Inkscape user. I have been using Inkscape for years to create vector-based designs for just about everything I could possibly want to make art for. I love the ease of use, and I am totally on the SVG bandwagon. But I'm sorry. There are glaring problems with Inkscape that have been building up my frustration since I started with it.

The performance and memory usage of Inkscape on both Linux and Windows is just plain shitty. If you are multitasking, with a web browser, maybe an integrated development environment, multiple instant messages, and JUST ONE inkscape document open, this leads time and time again to hard drive thrashing across the swap to bring the document back, followed by Inkscape's own slowness as it has an extremely hard time redrawing not only the document but the USER INTERFACE.

For the record, this machine is a 3.2ghz Intel Core 2 Duo with a gig of RAM. The Intel 945G chipset runs PS2-era games with nifty lighting and blur effects in 3D at an almost usable rate, but I'm guessing that doesn't matter, as I'm guessing Inkscape is still entirely non-accelerated. The inkscape documents are not packed with objects, but are usually simple web design prototypes.

This box runs Windows, but I started using Inkscape on Linux and I continue to use it on Linux occasionally; this is not a platform thing.

Moving on. Today I needed to pull out some logos from other inkscape documents into the one I was working on. I opened the second document (once again, a simple one, consisting of a document-sized black box, and about 6 extremely simple logos on top of them). At this point I received an instant message, so I focused on that and talked for five minutes. This lead to me going to the browser to investigate a link the person sent me. I then switched back to Inkscape-- ahh yes, the terrible wait of doom as it not only rips whatever memory from the HDD that it needed to store there, but then just sat there doing NOTHING (hard drive indicator not flashing) as I waited for it to redraw even the first parts of the UI. I waited for ten minutes. The inkscape process had entirely frozen. In the end I had to kill it, and I lost the last 10 minutes of my work, since I had last saved.

OK, I'm a little pissed at this point. I re-open it, and I open the document I was working on with the Recent documents menu. Now, since Inkscape crashed, it didn't put the other document I was working with in the Recent menu so I clicked File->Open. I then literally waited 2 or 3 minutes until the OPEN FILE DIALOG appeared. I then realized that I should make sure the little bit I've just done is saved in case Inkscape wants to be a bitch again.

So I close the dialog and save the document, then File-Open again. I wait ANOTHER 2 or 3 minutes for the OPEN FILE DIALOG to appear, and then before I have a chance to, Inkscape crashes. Good thing I saved it, huh?

I'm sure some element of the crappy performance could be local, but then why across ALL of my experiences of inkscape have I had these glaring issues, even on systems which are more than capable of doing relatively insane processor-intensive things!? This is a rant, it is a venting of my frustration, but at the core it is a request.

PLEASE! PUHLEASE work on the memory usage and performance of your software, I'M BEGGING YOU. In every other aspect, Inkscape is already awesome. I find it hard to recommend Inkscape and pretend like it's going to run silky smooth on someone's computer, when I know for a fact it won't.

Here's some numbers.

Inkscape's memory usage with a single empty document: 64 MB
Memory usage after opening a single, simple web design: 80 MB
Memory usage after opening a second document, with the logos: 100 MB
Memory usage after CLOSING the second document: 100MB

How about some work on memory leaks!? That could help!!

By the way, PLEASE fix your backup feature during crashes. I know that APPARENTLY Inkscape tries to save backups when it crashes, but it seems entirely arbitrary where it puts them (especially between different OSes). Just put it on the desktop! Simple! And TELL the user that it's on the desktop!

What version are you using? cos that doesnt sound right.

Do you have a system monitoring applet on your panel in linux, one that shows processor and memory usage? Maybe it isn't Inkscape that caused this, but your browser, I have 4GB of ram now, and if I have mem problems it's always the browser causing it (it doesn't even have to strictly be the browser but heavy websites with lots of flash and javascript).

I don't have memory problems with small files in Inkscape, only with lots of objects and with lots of nodes do I notice a slow down, and that's processor speed issue, not memory.

I can tell from experience that 1GB for winXP OS is a bare minimum, you can work with it but it can use up memory easily, and I've heard other people say that Vista on 1GB is terrible, you need 2GB at least.

Do you have antivirus software on windows (you should), it takes up a lot memory too, especially while scanning the system.

I haven't had your problems. I can say crash handling is improved in the development versions, with both a timed autosave and more relible saving-on-crash.

I am running Inkscape 0.46, the latest stable release.

There's most definitely a memory leak (I am currently using the Windows 0.46 build) Inkscape regains almost no memory when I close an open document. After opening several documents then closing all but the first document I've been talking about in this thread, and inkscape has lost track of ~80MB of RAM (one document open, with 162MB memory usage from the task manager).

To the guy with 4G of RAM: well you have 4G of ram. 162MB of ram is almost 2/10 of my total physical RAM, but for you that would be 2/40th of your ram, no?

Windows XP, yes I have antivirus, and lots of utilities that take up memory. Of course I already closed all of it, even before I posted here . This is inkscape.

One more detail: I use Chrome, whose total memory usage among it's processes is ~70MB. Inkscape tops this without even opening a document.

Exactly this has been fixed in SVN version. Now memory is freed immediately after you close last window with the document. Given your interest in this problem (to put it mildly), I think it would be fair to ask you to download and test an SVN build, and report here a comparison.

As for comparing to Chrome, I'd say Inkscape needs rather more memory for all its tools, icons, and font swatches than any browser. Besides, it's not fair to say that Inkscape is without any document loaded - some document is ALWAYS loaded, even if it is an empty document template. To get an idea of how much memory is taken by UI and how much by the document itself, try a bitmap export from the command line with --export-png, this does not load a GUI, and notice how much memory it took.

bbyak: oh great! Provided I don't have to build SVN I'd be glad to. Will this make it into 0.47? As it is spiro curves have me drooling to try the new version

OK I've got an SVN build (the latest, Inkscape20638-0902061623.7z), and am excited.

For one thing, kudos on the native file open window in Windows, it is much quicker... though I will miss the customizable folder list on the left.

But as for improved memory usage, it doesn't look that much better. Right now after opening and closing lots of documents (some simple, some with lots of objects/data), it's at 136MB with one document open. When I first loaded that document (it happens to be the first I loaded) Inkscape was using 30MB of RAM. Given the almost lack of a difference, I thumbed through the Preferences but found no option to change memory management behavior.

It's clear though that a lot of performance work has been put in, as much of the UI sluggishness is gone.

rezonant wrote:But as for improved memory usage, it doesn't look that much better. Right now after opening and closing lots of documents (some simple, some with lots of objects/data), it's at 136MB with one document open. When I first loaded that document (it happens to be the first I loaded) Inkscape was using 30MB of RAM.

In my test, latest Inkscape takes 76Mb after launch on Windows, with one empty document loaded. That sounds more likely than your 30Mb, I don't believe it can fit into that little memory now.

So, 136Mb after many documents loaded/closed, with the baseline of 76, is not stellar, but it is not as bad as it used to be in some past versions. Yes, we still leak memory. Yes, we are working on that. Yes, that is very hard. Any help is welcome

I been trying Inkscape for the past few months, running 0.46 on a Windows, and find it can hog the entire memory allocation on my computer.

I've believe that the extensive undo history in Inkscape may account for a lot of memory usage. If I have been working on an image I can see the Inkscape process more than triple in size and saving the image makes no difference. If I close Inkscape and re-open the same saved image the memory usage drops right back and slowly begins to grow again as I work on it. I guess this is a feature of the undo history remaining even when you save a file. It would be nice to have a "clear undo history" or "clear undo history on save" option which could free some memory (or does this exists and I have not found it yet?).

Some of the path effects like jitter seem very CPU intensive too when re-displaying an image that has been processed with these effects - a good example of this is the excellent tennis ball tutorial on Heathenx which struggles to re-display after adding the hairs effect, despite having a hi-spec PC and graphics card.

These are all minor as both can be worked around and I think Inkscape is great. I'll be downloading 0.47 after reading some of the new features listed and reading your report on the improved UI speed.

bbyak wrote,
In my test, latest Inkscape takes 76Mb after launch on Windows, with one empty document loaded.

My finding using the lastest Windows build with a blank document is that inkscape uses 166MB. Why would there be such a big difference in memory usage?

Different builds - stripped or unstripped? Different methods of looking up memory usage (I use System Monitor)? May be also you have hugely more fonts than I, and the font previews take that many memory... but that is very unlikely.

bbyak wrote:Different builds - stripped or unstripped? Different methods of looking up memory usage (I use System Monitor)? May be also you have hugely more fonts than I, and the font previews take that many memory... but that is very unlikely.

It could also be that they are measuring two different things? They might be measuring use of physical memory, not including swap space? (I'm not an expert on memory management.)