HI,

As an ex programmer looking to introduce my Grandaughter to computer graphics production, and finding Inkscape to be a worthy product with which to get her started, I was dismayed that the tutorials of the 'official' manual are, from the 'Hiking Club Logo' and onwards, very bad and likely to put a beginner off for good.

If someone considers themselves expert enough to be writing tutorial they have a responsibility to do better than this.

Is there a set of tutorials or a book that is suitable for a young person who, with help, will be able to make progress without becoming bogged down in frustration?

facsic

Did you see the other, easier, manual and resources mentioned in the submenu pages here (click the headings):
https://inkscape.org/en/learn/ ?

Also, the full circle magazine has a really extensive set of tutorials, thanks to Mark Crutch: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=11981

Then there are books at your favourite book seller, and tons of video tutorials on youtube.
If you speak German, there are entry-level tutorials on my website (and other websites), too.
There's a French entry level manual (tell me if you need the link).

There are also whole websites in English dedicated to Inkscape tutorials (which are also linked from the Inkscape website, one that collects tutorials is this: https://inkscapetutorials.wordpress.com/).

I'm sure there's something that will help your granddaughter, and I believe we've done our best to make all these things easily accessible from the Inkscape website.

As things are now, unfortunately, tutorials are scattered far and wide, throughout the internet. (Except for those few "official" tutorials.) I've made an effort to collect all the best tutorials that I know about here: http://forum.inkscapecommunity.com/index.php, where I've tried to divide them into beginner, intermediate and advanced (and a couple of other categories).

Actually they are links to tutorials. And also, they're what I think of as "independant" tutorials. There are more tutorials to be found on proprietary sites, such as VectorTuts Plus (or something like that), but their terms and conditions prevent linking to them.

However, even with that collection of tutorials that I think are good for beginners, it won't be good for a child. You didn't say how old your granddaughter is, but I've seen very few tutorials that are adequate for children. (Now that I think of it, maybe that will be the next challenge I set for myself -- a series of tutorial to teach Inkscape basics to children.....hhmmm...)

For a complete novice, I would suggest starting with the series of videos by Joshua Redin (in the Beginner block, on the page above). After that, I would suggest Aaron Neize's tutorials on Go Inkscape! I mean those in the Beginner block, since he has all kinds of tutorials at his website (Go Inkscape!), even some very advanced ones. (some are text, some are videos) After that, still in the Beginner block, the screencasters.heathenx.org collection of videos. And after that, syllie's on Very Simple Designs.

To open each author's list of tutorials, click on the black text of each list item. Watch for the cursor to change to the finger, to know when to click.

Well, I've typed the following and deleted 3 times. But it's something that's been very frustrating for me too. In my opinion, the way Inkscape has grown and developed, has left a huge hole where documentation and instruction should be. A lot of people will disagree with me. For programmers and developers, documentation is excellent. But for beginners, documentation is all but non-existant.

There has been some brief discussion recently, on a mailing list, about starting a new "open" manual, that's more step by step and less theory. But it's off to a slow start...actually hasn't started yet, and may not for quite some time.

Meanwhile, I try to write tutorials for things we get the most questions about in forums. And my site, Inkscape Community, offers a way for any capable members to write new tutorials, to build our collection. But I think it's just too bad that Inkscape instruction has developed in this "hit and miss" way. Just my opinion, and I will gladly work to change it, But can't do it alone.

Edit
And PS - to supplement the tutorials we can answer questions in the forums too. I particularly enjoy making things simple for new users. And most everyone (here and Inkscape Community) is very friendly.

Tutorials should be helpful. For creating any tutorial, need to clear everything for the begineers.

The built-in tutorials are worth mentioning, and fine for beginners:

These are the same as found on Inkscape.org.

Odd, how someone describing themselves as an ex-programmer would miss a Tutorials entry in the section "Help", very close to the entry for the manual.