Is there a setting for the drawing's visible area?
If so I do I modify it?

I have an svg file that was exported by another application. I can read it into Inkscape and edit things fine as long as I stay within the original visible area. If I extend an existing object or draw a new object outside that area it is invisible.

I have increased the page size and released clipping and masking from all objects. That didn't help. I have checked that there is only one layer.

Thanks
Don

Welcome Don!

Hhhm, curious
In the area where things drawn don't show up, is it clickable? Or iow can you click on it and see any selection indicators (dotted line and arrows with Selection tool, or nodes with Node tool)?

If you select everything in the entire document (Ctrl + A), does it show the number of objects that you expect? Or are there too many to keep track of?

Do you have the page border visible? If not, make it visible, zoom out so that you can see the entire page border, and then increase the page size. Do you see the page border get bigger, but you still can't draw or move objects into the new area, without losing them? How odd!

What about View menu > Display mode? Is it Normal? In the Object menu, click Unhide All and Unlock All. Any luck?

Is there a setting for the drawing's visible area?

No, the entire canvas is visible. In some situations where you might use the image later, only the portion inside the page border might be visible. But in Inkscape, you should see it all (unless hidden via layers, clip or mask, or by other objects).

How about Groups? If you have any, try Ungrouping. Any clones? Try uncloning. Be sure to save a safe copy of the image before trying all this. I would hate for you to lose it while experimenting (actually I don't think "uncloning" is a proper term.....try breaking clones' links, if any)

Try Ctrl A, switch to Node tool and reveal clipping paths (on tool control bar). I know you said you unclipped everything already, but the Ctrl A might catch something that you missed.

Is it a huge image, either in dimension or kb? Are you using a lot of filters (blurs are also filters)? Or even any? If so, check Inkscape Preferences > Filters. What are your quality settings for both Filter effects and blurs? Does increasing it help? If the image does not use filters or blurs, and is not really very large, this should not help.

If none of that helps, would you mind uploading the SVG file as an attachment to your reply? By doing this, we can download it, and also investigate. (look below Submit button for Upload attachment tab)

Would you also please tell us your Inkscape version and operating system, as well as the program and format from which you exported? And are you using a graphics tablet? (not sure whether tablet matters, but this might be one of those problems where every tidbit of info could help

Sorry for the barrage of questions

The area outside the existing drawing is clickable, and I can add a rectangle. But I only see the selection outline and points. As soon as I unselect it, it disappears (and yes the fill and stroke are on). I can re-select it again, if I can find it, so its there just not visible.

No luck with other stuff either, I had tried most already.

There are 197 object, just one layer. I have used Crtl-A a lot, many objects extend outside the area I can see, so I suspect this affect was intended.

I'm using Inkscape 0.48 (Gentoo).

I'll attach a copy of one file, after I extended the page size.

This came from the OpenStreetMap site and programs.

Thanks for the help
Don

I found something that looks like a top level clipPath.
This is at line 9113 of the sample file:

<svg:clipPath
id="map-clipping">
<svg:rect
id="map-clipping-rect"
x="0px"
y="0px"
height="171.043180233843px"
width="114.599999999996px" />
</svg:clipPath>

I don't know how to find and delete this graphically, but since we have a nice ascii/xml data format...

Don

Sample file?
Have you provided a sample file? Where is it?

I attached it with my first reply. I don't know how to see attachments in this interface, but it didn't give any errors when I attached it.

Don

You should not need to do anything to see the attachment. You don't see it because it isn't there. When it's successfully uploaded, you will see it. Perhaps you missed the "Add the file" button? In any case, I'm sure you'll get much more meaningful replies once we can download and examine the file. I'll be interested to see it, since this topic has intrigued me since you first posted it

> I'm sure you'll get much more meaningful replies once we can download and examine the file.

Yes, of course. Sorry for the delay, the network connection to the system the file is on went down yesterday.

This is the original file from the Open Street Map tools, before I edited anything. the clipPath is at line 4017 in this file.

It is compressed with gzip as otherwise it was too big to be accepted.

Thanks for your interest.
Don

Wow, this is the weirdest file I've ever seen, lol!!
So many things are not as expected....

First, I can yes, confirm exactly what you've reported. The short version is that there is a layer called "Map decoration" that will allow me to draw outside the border. The rest of it will be a really long report, lol. There are some really funky things happening outside the border. All of my comments below are regarding what's happening outside the border.

The next thing I noticed is that according to the layer indicator at the bottom of the window, there are 2 layers. Both visible and unlocked. However, opening the Layers dialog, I actually see 6 layers. According to the dialog, all are visible and unlocked. But the bottom 4, when I try to draw a rectangle, I see very quickly flashed in the info/status area "Current layer is hidden". And I cannot draw anything. I don't know why they are shown as visible in the dialog, but hidden in the info area. But being hidden is probably why they don't show in the dropdown menu at the bottom.

In the layer called "Map", I apparently can draw a rectangle, because the selection indicators are created. The Fill and Stroke dialog indicates a stroke but no fill, fully opaque. Using Select all in all layers, I see that there are 200 objects in 2 layers (and who knows what's in the apparently hidden layers). Using the tab key, I see that most are outside the border. The 2nd object does not show selection indicators, probably because it's just too huge. I mean, there must be some limit to the size of object Inkscape can handle, right? According to the selection tool control bar, that object is over 3 feet wide and over 24 feet high! (Use zoom selection to fit window, results in a 1.6 zoom factor, and now the path's nodes can be seen, but still no clue why the object can't be seen.)

Well, I could go on and on with weird observations. But given the discrepancy with number of layers, hidden status, and objects which don't appear (not to mention not being able to draw outside the border) despite being fully opaque, I think there may be things happening in the image about which we just can't make any educated guess. Some objects intersect with the image border, for example, click on the blue river with the node tool. It has the appearance of being clipped. But the info area does not indicate a clip.

One thought I had was just make the image border larger. But any new object drawn starting inside the original border, disappears at the original image border, even though the new and current border is larger. This is reminiscent of a clip as well, but....no clip path can be seen, release the clip doesn't fix it (or mask, or clone, or anything else I can think of).

I think there might also be something overlaying everything outside the border that is not selectable due to its size. Or maybe it's just a weird way that the original program handles the SVG conversion? Again, I don't have the technical expertise to figure out why things are as they are in this file. And nothing I've thought of to try will enable me to draw outside the border on the Map layer.

But hopefully drawing on the Map decoration layer will work for you. Or you could also create another brand new layer to draw on. But I suspect you may find the sheer size of this file prohibitive, in ways other than uploading it here. And the image size according to Document Properties is only a small fraction of the whole thing....meaning that you don't need the whole thing, right. I've tried clipping and path intersection, to try and cut off the unneeded parts, but can't get an accurrate selection due to the size of some of the objects.

Otherwise, maybe you can find another map program from which you can acquire and SVG formatted image?

Maybe someone else will be more successful here, or at least have some explanation?
I'm sorry, I wish I could be more helpful....

The layer [1] "Map" itself has a clip. To release it (why do you need to?), open 'Edit > XML Editor', select the layer node '<svg:g id="map" inkscape-label="Map">' in the list on the left, return the focus back to the main window, and apply the menu command 'Object > Clip > Release'.

[1] A layer in Inkscape is like regular group, the only difference is a special attribute (inkscape-groupmode: "layer") which makes Inkscape interpret it as layer.

~suv, did you have to look in the XML to learn that the layer is clipped? Or otherwise, how did you figure it out?

Well the clipped layer explains some of the phenomenon. It might or might not explain why we can't draw outside the page border. I know when I clip an item, I certainly can still draw in the clipped area.

The reason I am doing all of this is that I need to scale the map to a different page size.
Scaling does not seem to affect the cliparea so I need to disable that. I will end up either
cutting the paths or adding a new clip area later.

Don

Ok, when I release the clip according to ~suv's instructions (and also delete the black-filled clipping path which is revealed when the clip is released), I am able to draw outside the page border, on the layer Map. So either draw on the layer Map decoration, or release the clip that ~suv identified, and draw on the layer Map.

As for scaling, that may be a different problem altogether.

To be honest, I suspect that there might a better source for your map, that does not create all this unneccesary stuff. But I wouldn't know what to suggest otherwise. I mean, just considering the area inside the page border, you could pretty easily draw it yourself, even if you simply traced by hand.

But hopefully releasing the clip will allow you to do what you need to do