This thread (viewtopic.php?f=5&t=32311) triggered a question about path simplification (Ctrl+L).
I would like to simplify several paths individually within a group.
I couldn't find an answer, e.g. here:
https://inkscape.org/de/doc/advanced/tu ... anced.html
http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL ... Paths-Misc
What these tutorials/manuals say: The larger the path/group the more "aggressive" the simplification is.

How can I simplify each path individually without ungrouping everything and selecting hundreds of objects individually one after another?
For example, the transform dialog (Shift+Ctrl+M) has an option "apply to objects individually". But for Ctrl+L such a feature is missing.

There is Menubar | Edit | Preferences | Behaviour |
a "simplification threshold" and the default is 0.002? What are the units? What does this number mean?
Can somebody explain? Are there other ressources which I could check?

Well, there is also an LPE "Simplify" which has actually more parameters to set.
Where can I find documentation what these numbers for "Steps, Threshold, Angles, Helper Size,..." mean?

Not sure if this helps much, but the video is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaWujN_iTSk

Additional: written description of feature (no usage instructions): http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php ... 2#Simplify

Thank you both.
For future questions I will also check the release notes (hoping I can find out when function in question was introduced).
Well, it's not too much explanatory.
On the left what the release notes refers to, on the right what I see in 0.92.1 r15371 Win7/64.

If there is no other documentation then the only thing left is just playing around and try to find out how it works... hmm, not very efficient and satisfying . I know, writing documentation is timeconsuming and painful... .

We're discussing this currently, and vividly, on the mailing lists

The CTRL-L simplify can only be controlled by the one simplification threshold you already found.
For most usecases the default 0.002 is much too high..... It aggressively smoothes out a complex path by pressing CTRL-L only once.
I am usually changing the value to 0.0002 (very soft) or 0.0005 (medium) so that I can press CTRL-L multiple times before any hard changes appear.

Note that there is also the select node, backspace trick: On a complex path, without even spliting subpaths or anything, I drag a rectangle to select where nodes are very close together. The simply presss backspace to remove all selected nodes and replace them with one smooth bezier spline.
This works well for paths resulting from traced bitmaps. The only caveat is, you should always exclude critical corner nodes, or any intended spikes will disappear.

[quote="theozh"]This thread (viewtopic.php?f=5&t=32311) triggered a question about path simplification (Ctrl+L).
I would like to simplify several paths individually within a group.

There is Menubar | Edit | Preferences | Behaviour |
a "simplification threshold" and the default is 0.002? What are the units? What does this number mean?
Can somebody explain? Are there other ressources which I could check?

Moini wrote:We're discussing this currently, and vividly, on the mailing lists

Not sure which list (haven't opened email yet today). But for those who don't want to subscribe, links to archives where you can follow the discussion

Dev list: https://sourceforge.net/p/inkscape/mail ... ape-devel/
User list: https://sourceforge.net/p/inkscape/mail ... scape-user

We're discussing about writing a manual, Brynn, I'm quite sure you noticed (on devel and docs)

Yes, I've seen, by now. Thanks