David Hewitt wrote:If your fluent in all the keyboard shorts then perhaps its below your radar...

I'm actually not that familiar with the keyboard shortcuts. I know to hold Ctrl, Shift or Alt to force constraints objects I'm manipulating but I can never remember which does what--it doesn't really matter as I just release one and try the other. These are standard keys in most, if not all, graphics software. I also know the shotcuts for changing the node types--that's because I use it frequently and it's faster than clicking the icon on the tool control bar. The rest I'm not that familiar with. I used to know a lot more of the illustrator ones, but that's because Illustrator was frustrating and they had a few different tools for managing nodes, unlike Inkscape.

David Hewitt wrote:As a general rule any novice should be able to start fiddling and in a minute or so figure out almost any function...

Ideally, yes. But I've used Photoshop for years, bought books, and read countless web tutorials and I'm still don't know everything there is to know. It's not uncommon for powerful application to also be complicated.

David Hewitt wrote:But theres allot of keyboard combos ETC.....to hold things together where proper GUI is required.

I am aware of just a very small handful of functions that can only be accessed using a shortcut. Shift + R is one for reversing a gradient and there's another shifting individual characters in a text block. That's all I can think of. I'm surprised you've managed to find "lots". What are some?

David Hewitt wrote:experienced users probably adore the fact that they have mastered something that by its nature turns away all but the most dedicated.

This is an unfair statement. I used Illustrator before using Inkscape. I felt I was constantly fighting with Illustrator to do the simplest things. From the moment I used Inkscape I found it liberating. I was able to work faster, with less mistakes, and everything seemed more obvious. There were functions I did not know where to find in Inkscape, but I had to do the same with Illustrator, and far more often in Illustrator. The problems I do have with Inkscape I cut slack for, as it's still in its infancy, and nobody is stopping me to fixing those problems myself.

David Hewitt wrote:But my point is that i think its UI needs to be polished to be more acceptable to the mainstream.

We seem to have diverted a lot from discussing your ideas for new tools. If you're bothered by my negative reaction to your ideas, I'm sorry. I judge the usefulness of a tool based on how frequently I would use it, and how much time it will save me. When the paint bucket tool was introduced in 0.46 I knew I would use it all the time and it would save me a lot of time--compared with creating paths manually. There are some illustrations I would never have attempted if not for the new tools that have been introduced in the last version and even in the development version now. Some new functions I will rarely use, but if I did need the effect it would be next to impossible to achieve if the function didn't exist. Your ideas in 1, 2, 3 and 5 would rarely be used by myself and the effect you describe isn't that time consuming to achieve now. Some people (including yourself?) may need to do exactly what you've describe all the time--so a new tool may be a huge time saver for them.

My negative opinion on an idea is only an opinion. I'm not a developer, and I don't decide what goes in and what stays out. If you post an idea here, it's expected you want criticism so you can refine the idea. Otherwise there's no point posting it here because this isn't an official forum, and it's not a developers forum.