7 ms·

I am having some serious slowdown issues since 1.* on Win 10, so I'm stuck on 0.92. I have no qualms with it, but the issue plagues all my Win 10 machines and

I am having some serious slowdown issues since 1.* on Win 10, so I'm stuck on 0.92. I have no qualms with it, but the issue plagues all my Win 10 machines and I just wonder what's going on, and if I'm a select minority with it. Besides that, thanks Inkscape for being such an incredibly useful vector tool!

zibzab 5y ago
To avoid the extreme slowdown (and crash after a while) on win10, close the document property tab (!!) Anyway, inkscape has really disappointed me with multiple serious regressions. This + UI issues + layout problems + zoom buttons disappearing + crash due to version incompatibility + not remembering what unit you use + DPI screwup got me wondering if the people in charge really got what it takes to run the biggest FOSS creativity tool. I mean, I'm grateful if exists. But I use this for technical documents at work and I need it to be stable. Oh well, I guess it's between this and being lured into 12 month contracts with Adobe...
- hyakosm 5y ago
  Affinity Designer is a pretty good tool for vector drawings (for 55$ unique payment). It fills the gap between Inkscape and Illustrator.
  - grenoire 5y ago
    Affinity seems like it doesn't have some of the more precise layout tools and SVG-editing capabilities that Inkscape does. I took the trial after seeing people suggest it as an alternative, but it didn't quite replace my workflow and I ended up dropping it.
    - cycomanic 5y ago
      When I was still using Windows I was using corel draw. I still believe it was (and I suspect still is) the best vector drawing program for more technical drawings. Just one example:alignment is really deeply build into the system using a set of keyboard shortcuts so instead of always going to the align and distribute tab you just pressed "e" to align the previous object. It was really so much faster for drawing than illustrator or inkscape. Unfortunately there is no Linux version otherwise I'd happily buy it.
    - hyakosm 5y ago
      You're right, the power of Inkscape is its ability to work natively with SVG capabilities and its technical aspects (instead of some obscure proprietary format). Affinity is more artist-focused.
      - rectang 5y ago
        I've been working with graphics for a couple decades and I have many old files in formats that I can no longer open. I am strongly biased towards Inkscape for its use of an open standard as its file format. I'm on MacOS where current versions of Inkscape are not really usable because of (understandable) performance degradations. I wish that either those problems could be solved, or that an alternative existed which used an open file format. I'd prefer a pure FOSS solution, but as I'm a BSD-school FOSS person I wouldn't mind a proprietary app so long as that proprietary app used an open file format. It sucks that Affinity uses a proprietary format which is at high risk for orphaning or degradation either if they decide it's in their business interests or if the company ceases to exist.
    - jarek-foksa 5y ago
      Check Boxy SVG for an SVG-focused vector graphics editor. Its UI is heavily inspired by Inkscape and the Linux version is available for free (you just have to run "snap install boxy-svg").
      - slig 5y ago
        Thank you! Looks like exactly what I needed.
- grenoire 5y ago
  Oh, that's a fun one; my document property tab disappeared once and I wasn't able to retrieve it. I don't know if that was when I started having issues, but no amount of reboots without the document property tab felt like it fixed it for me.
- nyanpasu64 5y ago
  Do you think you or the parent commenter can look into debugging or fixing the bugs yourself? I'm also disappointed at buggy software, poorly considered changes, and maintainers ignoring bug reports. But (sometimes) I try (and occasionally succeed) to fix bugs I encounter.
  - speedgoose 5y ago
    Debugging and contributing to large and complex C++ projects is not trivial. I personally do debug and contribute to open source projects using technologies I’m confident with, but when it comes to Inkscape I can’t do much more than to do nothing and to hope for the best.
    - WanderPanda 5y ago
      Filing reproducible issues is probably a good start and anybody can do it
      - realaleris149 5y ago
        Yeap! As a developer, having a well described bug, with clear steps and conditions, is sometimes 90% of the work needed to fix it.
      - speedgoose 5y ago
        A good issue report requires some knowledge and expertise though. Anyone can say it doesn’t work as expected, but it’s harder to identify and reproduce the problem and provide all the useful details.
      - zelphirkalt 5y ago
        Not sure about how the story with Inkscape looks, but it can be difficult to deliver the reproducible issue. You might have to build it yourself, might have to install a compiler in the right version and so on. Depending on the build story of Inkscape, this can take days of fumbling. Not many users are willing to go through that. I would say it is OK to open an issue, which is not 100% reproducible, as long as it has not been opened. It allows for the chance, that others can try to find that reproducible way of causing the issue, who are more knowledgable about the software and might have the dev setup already on their machines.
- AdamBelis 5y ago
  It's easy to forget that Inkscape is run purely with volunteers, is a charity with 0 employees. I get that these problems are frustrating but maybe it would be more appropriate to wonder how is even possible that this project runs so well :D. Some technical problems are outside our power. Mainly performance regression was introduced by gtk3. Which was a big blow to the whole project because it took 5years of work. And in the end, we discovered that technology is just slow and we need to migrate once again if we want to fix it. Bugs are not ignored we just simply don't have enough manpower to fix them all
  - zibzab 5y ago
    I hear you, and as a FOSS maintaineryaelf I agree that it is frustrating to see all complaints but no volunteers. But, many issues in Inkscape are due to bugs introduced by changes that were not properly tested. If you have resources to change things around, you should also test the outcome properly before you hit that release button.
    - AdamBelis 5y ago
      i hope you dont take this wrong way but ... what you are suggesting is if you cannot do it ""proplerly'" dont do it at all ... testing such a huge project as inkscape is a lot of work. perosnaly i do it a lot but sometimes you just cannot catch it all. "We" dont have receorses we have just developers that are sometimes work on stuff
  - IshKebab 5y ago
    That sucks about GTK. Probably would make more sense to use Qt. It's much better. Both Wireshark and VLC successfully migrated to it, though I guess they have somewhat simpler GUIs.
    - AdamBelis 5y ago
      grass is always greener on a other side. And rewriting to Qt would be as big as starting new projcet from scratch
- zuzun 5y ago
  I'm pleased with their development pace. Every new release has lots of good changes, plus I believe they are fighting technical cruft under the hood.
udbhavs 5y ago
I've only used post 1.x versions and they've had a lot of freezing issues but I thought that's just the way the program was. After seeing this I'm going to try 0.92 and see if it's smoother
chrismorgan 5y ago
I’m also fairly bitter about the handling of 1.0 on Windows. I reported various problems at the first beta in moderate detail, my report was more or less ignored and they went ahead with various significant regressions in performance and UI, largely because no developer was interested enough in Windows, and I and others evidently failed to convince them of just how bad it was on Windows; GTK+ 3 in general has shown a general disdain for doing Windows well, whereas GTK+ 2 had been worked over until it wasn’t too bad. Yes, Inkscape is done by volunteers, but I reckon that some of these issues should have been considered blockers to at least recommending 1.0 for Windows, if not its release. So I also stuck with 0.92 while on Windows. But I very much like what I’m seeing in the draft release notes for 1.2: as well as some really nice-looking functionality improvements, they mention various performance improvements in approximately the areas that had the worst regressions in 1.0 (such as zooming and panning), and UI adjustments to reduce space consumed. I haven’t tried 1.2 alpha 1 out just yet, but I probably will in the next few days and I’m really looking forward to it. (Incidentally, I’ve been back on Linux for the last ten months, and using the latest releases, since it works better under Linux, though Adwaita is still horrifically wasteful of space given Inkscape’s habit of stacking many buttons side-by-side, so I installed Minwaita which reduces that problem a lot.)
- sprash 5y ago
  GTK is a GNOME library and GNOME has shown in the past that they not only don't care about third party software but are actually extremely harmful to the community to the point that you might as well call it sabotage. The transition from GTK2 to GTK3 was extremely painful, had no benefits for anyone except GNOME and had many regressions across the board. The right course of action for Inkscape would be to switch back to GTK2 and be as independent from GNOME as possible. For everybody else it would be advised to make sure that your software runs well everywhere but GNOME. Simply check if getenv("XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP") is equal to "GNOME" and exit(EXIT_FAILURE) if true.
  - prox 5y ago
    I hate this ivory tower way of developing. It holds back progress, learning by exchange, and so on.
outsomnia 5y ago
On a Linux 4K Wayland desktop, Inkscape has been slower a year or two ago, this last 6 months it has become really fast panning and zooming even fairly complex pages. The guys there have been doing great work. Maybe they need more helping hands that care about windows.
zeruch 5y ago
I had marginal performance degradation, but that may be due to the specific techniques I use it for, but there definitely was a change southward, just not anywhere nearly as poor as I'm hearing from others. Inkscape is still very usable/utile, but I certainly don't want that trend to continue, as it would rapidly become not so.
legulere 5y ago
Same issue on OS X
adhesive_wombat 5y ago
I've been plagued with lagging and crashes on Linux too in the last few months. But then I rebuilt from master in an attempt to get a traceback or profile to report and it went away, so hopefully whatever that was has been fixed and just got released. Though I have to say I think hiding the snap controls behind a button, as opposed to a toolbar, is a mistake.
pibechorro 5y ago
Why use windows? Its bloatware with zero concern for your privacy. Dual boot into Linux, where inkscape is butter. 2cents.

zibzab 5y ago

To avoid the extreme slowdown (and crash after a while) on win10, close the document property tab (!!) Anyway, inkscape has really disappointed me with multiple serious regressions. This + UI issues + layout problems + zoom buttons disappearing + crash due to version incompatibility + not remembering what unit you use + DPI screwup got me wondering if the people in charge really got what it takes to run the biggest FOSS creativity tool. I mean, I'm grateful if exists. But I use this for technical documents at work and I need it to be stable. Oh well, I guess it's between this and being lured into 12 month contracts with Adobe...

hyakosm 5y ago
Affinity Designer is a pretty good tool for vector drawings (for 55$ unique payment). It fills the gap between Inkscape and Illustrator.
- grenoire 5y ago
  Affinity seems like it doesn't have some of the more precise layout tools and SVG-editing capabilities that Inkscape does. I took the trial after seeing people suggest it as an alternative, but it didn't quite replace my workflow and I ended up dropping it.
  - cycomanic 5y ago
    When I was still using Windows I was using corel draw. I still believe it was (and I suspect still is) the best vector drawing program for more technical drawings. Just one example:alignment is really deeply build into the system using a set of keyboard shortcuts so instead of always going to the align and distribute tab you just pressed "e" to align the previous object. It was really so much faster for drawing than illustrator or inkscape. Unfortunately there is no Linux version otherwise I'd happily buy it.
  - hyakosm 5y ago
    You're right, the power of Inkscape is its ability to work natively with SVG capabilities and its technical aspects (instead of some obscure proprietary format). Affinity is more artist-focused.
    - rectang 5y ago
      I've been working with graphics for a couple decades and I have many old files in formats that I can no longer open. I am strongly biased towards Inkscape for its use of an open standard as its file format. I'm on MacOS where current versions of Inkscape are not really usable because of (understandable) performance degradations. I wish that either those problems could be solved, or that an alternative existed which used an open file format. I'd prefer a pure FOSS solution, but as I'm a BSD-school FOSS person I wouldn't mind a proprietary app so long as that proprietary app used an open file format. It sucks that Affinity uses a proprietary format which is at high risk for orphaning or degradation either if they decide it's in their business interests or if the company ceases to exist.
  - jarek-foksa 5y ago
    Check Boxy SVG for an SVG-focused vector graphics editor. Its UI is heavily inspired by Inkscape and the Linux version is available for free (you just have to run "snap install boxy-svg").
    - slig 5y ago
      Thank you! Looks like exactly what I needed.
grenoire 5y ago
Oh, that's a fun one; my document property tab disappeared once and I wasn't able to retrieve it. I don't know if that was when I started having issues, but no amount of reboots without the document property tab felt like it fixed it for me.
nyanpasu64 5y ago
Do you think you or the parent commenter can look into debugging or fixing the bugs yourself? I'm also disappointed at buggy software, poorly considered changes, and maintainers ignoring bug reports. But (sometimes) I try (and occasionally succeed) to fix bugs I encounter.
- speedgoose 5y ago
  Debugging and contributing to large and complex C++ projects is not trivial. I personally do debug and contribute to open source projects using technologies I’m confident with, but when it comes to Inkscape I can’t do much more than to do nothing and to hope for the best.
  - WanderPanda 5y ago
    Filing reproducible issues is probably a good start and anybody can do it
    - realaleris149 5y ago
      Yeap! As a developer, having a well described bug, with clear steps and conditions, is sometimes 90% of the work needed to fix it.
    - speedgoose 5y ago
      A good issue report requires some knowledge and expertise though. Anyone can say it doesn’t work as expected, but it’s harder to identify and reproduce the problem and provide all the useful details.
    - zelphirkalt 5y ago
      Not sure about how the story with Inkscape looks, but it can be difficult to deliver the reproducible issue. You might have to build it yourself, might have to install a compiler in the right version and so on. Depending on the build story of Inkscape, this can take days of fumbling. Not many users are willing to go through that. I would say it is OK to open an issue, which is not 100% reproducible, as long as it has not been opened. It allows for the chance, that others can try to find that reproducible way of causing the issue, who are more knowledgable about the software and might have the dev setup already on their machines.
AdamBelis 5y ago
It's easy to forget that Inkscape is run purely with volunteers, is a charity with 0 employees. I get that these problems are frustrating but maybe it would be more appropriate to wonder how is even possible that this project runs so well :D. Some technical problems are outside our power. Mainly performance regression was introduced by gtk3. Which was a big blow to the whole project because it took 5years of work. And in the end, we discovered that technology is just slow and we need to migrate once again if we want to fix it. Bugs are not ignored we just simply don't have enough manpower to fix them all
- zibzab 5y ago
  I hear you, and as a FOSS maintaineryaelf I agree that it is frustrating to see all complaints but no volunteers. But, many issues in Inkscape are due to bugs introduced by changes that were not properly tested. If you have resources to change things around, you should also test the outcome properly before you hit that release button.
  - AdamBelis 5y ago
    i hope you dont take this wrong way but ... what you are suggesting is if you cannot do it ""proplerly'" dont do it at all ... testing such a huge project as inkscape is a lot of work. perosnaly i do it a lot but sometimes you just cannot catch it all. "We" dont have receorses we have just developers that are sometimes work on stuff
- IshKebab 5y ago
  That sucks about GTK. Probably would make more sense to use Qt. It's much better. Both Wireshark and VLC successfully migrated to it, though I guess they have somewhat simpler GUIs.
  - AdamBelis 5y ago
    grass is always greener on a other side. And rewriting to Qt would be as big as starting new projcet from scratch
zuzun 5y ago
I'm pleased with their development pace. Every new release has lots of good changes, plus I believe they are fighting technical cruft under the hood.

udbhavs 5y ago

I've only used post 1.x versions and they've had a lot of freezing issues but I thought that's just the way the program was. After seeing this I'm going to try 0.92 and see if it's smoother

chrismorgan 5y ago

I’m also fairly bitter about the handling of 1.0 on Windows. I reported various problems at the first beta in moderate detail, my report was more or less ignored and they went ahead with various significant regressions in performance and UI, largely because no developer was interested enough in Windows, and I and others evidently failed to convince them of just how bad it was on Windows; GTK+ 3 in general has shown a general disdain for doing Windows well, whereas GTK+ 2 had been worked over until it wasn’t too bad. Yes, Inkscape is done by volunteers, but I reckon that some of these issues should have been considered blockers to at least recommending 1.0 for Windows, if not its release. So I also stuck with 0.92 while on Windows. But I very much like what I’m seeing in the draft release notes for 1.2: as well as some really nice-looking functionality improvements, they mention various performance improvements in approximately the areas that had the worst regressions in 1.0 (such as zooming and panning), and UI adjustments to reduce space consumed. I haven’t tried 1.2 alpha 1 out just yet, but I probably will in the next few days and I’m really looking forward to it. (Incidentally, I’ve been back on Linux for the last ten months, and using the latest releases, since it works better under Linux, though Adwaita is still horrifically wasteful of space given Inkscape’s habit of stacking many buttons side-by-side, so I installed Minwaita which reduces that problem a lot.)

sprash 5y ago
GTK is a GNOME library and GNOME has shown in the past that they not only don't care about third party software but are actually extremely harmful to the community to the point that you might as well call it sabotage. The transition from GTK2 to GTK3 was extremely painful, had no benefits for anyone except GNOME and had many regressions across the board. The right course of action for Inkscape would be to switch back to GTK2 and be as independent from GNOME as possible. For everybody else it would be advised to make sure that your software runs well everywhere but GNOME. Simply check if getenv("XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP") is equal to "GNOME" and exit(EXIT_FAILURE) if true.
- prox 5y ago
  I hate this ivory tower way of developing. It holds back progress, learning by exchange, and so on.

outsomnia 5y ago

On a Linux 4K Wayland desktop, Inkscape has been slower a year or two ago, this last 6 months it has become really fast panning and zooming even fairly complex pages. The guys there have been doing great work. Maybe they need more helping hands that care about windows.

zeruch 5y ago

I had marginal performance degradation, but that may be due to the specific techniques I use it for, but there definitely was a change southward, just not anywhere nearly as poor as I'm hearing from others. Inkscape is still very usable/utile, but I certainly don't want that trend to continue, as it would rapidly become not so.

legulere 5y ago

Same issue on OS X

adhesive_wombat 5y ago

I've been plagued with lagging and crashes on Linux too in the last few months. But then I rebuilt from master in an attempt to get a traceback or profile to report and it went away, so hopefully whatever that was has been fixed and just got released. Though I have to say I think hiding the snap controls behind a button, as opposed to a toolbar, is a mistake.

pibechorro 5y ago

Why use windows? Its bloatware with zero concern for your privacy. Dual boot into Linux, where inkscape is butter. 2cents.