Hi all once again,

Just wondered if, with paths, I can select an handle just like the way I can select a vertex, and move it with keyboards key like I can do with vertex.

When a vertex is selected, I can move it with keyboard's arrow key, which is sometime more handy than dragging with the mouse. Especially, holding down the Alt key while using the same arrow keys, allow precise movement, which is a lot enjoyable.

Do Inkscape offers the the same convenience with handles ?

Hibou57 wrote:When a vertex is selected, I can move it with keyboard's arrow key, which is sometime more handy than dragging with the mouse. Especially, holding down the Alt key while using the same arrow keys, allow precise movement, which is a lot enjoyable.

Do Inkscape offers the the same convenience with handles ?

Not the same, but similar:
You can scale and rotate the handle(s) of a selected node with the keyboard: see

• Inkscape keyboard and mouse reference - Scale/Rotate handle
• Inkscape manual > Paths > Editing Paths > Using the Node Tool > Editing Nodes with the Keyboard > Scaling/Rotating Handles

I re-checked the documentation, and seems there is no way.

I could find some useful keystroke to edit handles, but some does not work (may be French keyboards are not fully supported) and this is not handy anyway: too much to remember without any help from the status bar, which does not provide any recall for these.

Someone has some track to give me for using Python for that purpose ? I could attempt to write a widget for handle edition.

-- EDIT -- @~suv: oops, we posted at the same time. The manual link you gave is indeed the one I've just checked.

Hibou57 wrote:Someone has some track to give me for using Python for that purpose ? I could attempt to write a widget for handle edition.

Script-based extensions can't create new widgets to interactively change objects on-canvas, nor are selected nodes passed to the extension script (only the id's of selected objects). It's a known feature request though to have more control over handles (filed in the bug tracker in several variations IIRC).

And yes, it is also a known issue that some keyboard shortcuts don't work on localized keyboard layouts (e.g. when a modifier is required to generate the key code), and unfortunately the shortcuts for scaling and rotating the handles of an individual node can't be changed by the user because they are internally hard-coded for now (yes, that's also filed as bug already).

Some relevant links:

• Bug #517966 in Inkscape: “Feature request: Select, and adjust handles with keyboard.”
• Bug #517964 in Inkscape: “Feature request: Modify numerical values of handles.”
• Bug #172182 in Inkscape: “Individual Node Properties”
• Bug #288146 in Inkscape: “Align/distribute Bezier node handles”
• Bug #171743 in Inkscape: “Synchronized nodes handles movement”

• Bug #168887 in Inkscape: “german keyboard: path editing keys with AltGr don't work”
• Bug #165755 in Inkscape: “keys inaccessible with localized/platform-specific keyboards”

~suv wrote:Script-based extensions can't create new widgets to interactively change objects on-canvas, nor are selected nodes passed to the extension script (only the id's of selected objects).

That's probably better this way. Better solve this kind of matter at application's core level rather than via plug‑ins. Will just wait and don't bother if this takes long.