Here's a crash concept guide to Inkscape for you.

* A "path" is a collection of nodes connected by Bezier splines; nodes can connect them smoothly or in a cusp.

* A path has an outline (with color, line thickness, etc) and a fill (none, a flat color, or a gradient).

* An "object" is either a path, a constrained path (like a rectangle or a circle / arc), a bitmap, or a text, or a group of these. You can nest groups arbitrarily.

Key tools:

* Pointer, the arrow, shortcut F1. This is your main tool. Used to select, move, rotate, stretch objects. Shift-click to select multiple objects. Click-drag to select objects within a rectangle. Ctrl+click to select inside a group. Alt+click to select things under the object on top. Space bar switches between this tool and your other tools.

* Node pointer, the triangle, shortcut F2. Used to edit paths. Click-drag on a path to change curvature, or click on nodes to move / edit them, or ctrl+click to add a node, or drag the spline handles. Does different things to rectangles, circles, stars, by moving their control points.

* Rectangle (F4) and circle (F5) are good starting points for most things.

* Line / polygon drawing tool (Shift+F6). Click on places where you want nodes, press Enter to finish. Press F2 to move nodes and make segments curved.

* Curve drawing tool (F6). Click-drag to draw a freehand curve. Ctrl+L to smooth down the curve.

* Text tool (F8). Click where you want your text, type. When frustrated, press Esc, click the text, Shift+Ctrl+T, edit the text in a convenient dialog.

Most useful keyboard:

* Cursor keys: move the selected object(s) by a small amount.

* Shift+Ctrl+F: fill / stroke dialog (if clicking on colors is not precise enough).

* Ctrl+D: duplicate the current object.

* Ctrl+G: group selected objects, or ungroup a selected group.

* PgUp / Pgdn: move the object up / down in Z-order.

* Shift+Ctrl+A: align and distribute things.

* Shift+Ctrl+M: precisely transform things.

* Space: Switch back to pointer from your current tool.

* Press space, click+drag: scroll the window.

Context menus, accessible by right click, are your friends.

Re symmetries: look at the star tool (press asterisk). Explore clones: clone an object with Shift+D, mirror it with H or V, then try editing the original object. Shift+D brings you from a clone to the original.

How is this all intuitive to me? Well, I started with Corel Draw 3 ca. 1992, and most concepts and shortcuts still apply.

Decades of using CorelDRAW have made it impossible for me to use Illustrator. So Inkscape has been a godsend!

Same for me. Corel on win 3.11. ;) InDesign is a good option for vector drawing. (Perhaps I have to change some keystrokes interiorized during the flash era)

Helpful! I probably won't do much more than use Inkscape for sketches with that helpful perspective box tool and the ability to work at low resolution and rescale, but it's good to have a reference like this.

wow thank you for writing all that.

Cool! Thank you, that will be useful.

It is impossible IME to use Inkscape unless you run through all the tutorials. The interface is not usefully discoverable. You have to understand the app's model of things, and that's opaque at best. I think it's worth learning though.

I learned Inkscape years ago by firing it up and going through Wikipedia images that needed to be converted to vector graphics[1]. I could pick images as simple (or hard) as I was comfortable with, and Wikipedia benefited.

[1]https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_that_sh...

A very simple tutorial for new users who never saw a vector drawing program would definitely be nice.

You definitely have to understand the app's model of things; this applies to every app, including things like notepad.exe. Users just happen have some prior exposure to certain models.

Clicking on toolbar buttons and reading the menu items, plus a little experimentation, also helps.

The first tutorial does teach you a lot :-)

FWIW I learned to use Inkscape quite productively without any tutorials. That was five to ten years ago though.

This was my experience as well. I did have working knowledge with similar tools though.

It is necessary to understand the basic concepts of vector drawing and memorize the shortcuts. What worked on me years ago, and made possible to switch from Illustrator to Inkscape (it was an happy transition) was this book at Flossmanuals http://write.flossmanuals.net/inkscape/about-inkscape/

Not as difficult as any vector drawing app (Corel/freehand/illustrator/sketch)

Are you using a new version of it? The tool configurations migrated all into the toolbar, and when they require some extra panel, there's a button for opening them there too.

That's fixed. But last time I used it the gradient dialog was still bad (there's an "edit" button on that edit window that only changes one color, you must click on it) and I also could never make sense of symmetries.

I don't like the "intuitive tool" argument because in the case of creative tools, intuition is what you use to actually create something, it is not what you use to know how to use/hold the tool: look at a physical brush, this is the simplest tool, you directly understand with your intuition how to use it, but it can take years to be able to paint something good with it.

Inkscape can be considered as a good professional tool for creative people because it's slogan "Draw Freely" is honored: once you got the basic rules about vector drawing and that you stick with it, you can create something, you won't create something because the tool created it for you by guiding you in a manner that will influence your work too much.

This is how I understand "Draw Freely", that resonate with the GNU/GPL freedom.

You didn't finish your post. You left off the part about how you read the manual and then you were fine.

What part of the 300+ pages? There is such thing as too detailed for a manual, in particular when it lacks a "quick dive-in" section that provides an shallow but wide overview of all the main features.

As I said, I followed several of the shapes and paths tutorials. That still didn't make the tool intuitive. I've just found this [1] "crash course" that might have just the right level of detail; it would be great if something like that was linked from Inkscape's help menu with a neon-flashing "start here!" button.

[1] http://www.chrishilbig.com/a-crash-course-in-inkscape/

I'd have thought he meant the Help menu pages, that are themselves Inkscape files, that run through all the basics. I've found them well made and very useful. Eg Help > Tutorials > Basic.

> My experience is with Inkscape is quite different; it certainly doesn't feel intuitive to me.

You haven't even tried to learn the software and still open your post with a statement like that??

Maybe you should watch some tutorial series on YouTube first?

Having to watch tutorials seems the opposite of "intuitive"

I did. Still doesn't help with making sense with the problems of "what tool is selected?" and "what mode is the tool in?".