So today I fired up Inkscape again. For the fifth time I went in and tried to do stuff and couldn't. I couldn't resize the sheet, couldn't move the path block, couldn't do a symmetrical resize of the paths, couldn't figure out where paths will be on an exported image, couldn't export just the paths. I looked at the documentation (again) and was still completely baffled. I came to the conclusion that there's something fundamental about this program that completely escapes me. This is more than needing an explanation, there's something about this program that is totally alien to how I think and work.

While contemplating what to do next I remembered that svg was supposed to be a text format and, out of curiosity, decided to open up a couple of the svg files I'd created. To my surprise, I took one look and immediately understood them. Oh, not the details, but the concepts and how things are set up are obvious and easy to work with. Looking up the svg documentation I had no trouble whatsoever doing, with a text editor directly on the svg file, all the things that had frustrated me to no end (and I thought were pretty basic) when I tried to do them through Inkscape. (OK. One minor problem. It would be nice if you could start and end an elliptical arc at the same point.)

I'm now going through the svg documentation and loving it. Is there anyone else here to prefers to work with raw svg, or finds raw svg easier to use than Inkscape?