How do I...

• Create a filled area
  • If you have an already enclosed area, with a non-combined path, you can just use the "Fill" option with the path selected
    • Menu -> Object -> Fill & Stroke
  • If you have an enclosed area that is making use of combined paths, you can use the bucket fill tool
    • If you catch Inkscape trying to fill / sample a background image instead of an enclosed path, try temporarily hiding the layer(s) you don't want to fill before using the fill tool
  • If you keep getting the cannot fill, area is unbounded with the paint bucket fill tool try zooming out so that the area you are trying to fill is completely visible on your screen before using the fill tool (yes, this is actually a thing)
• Free transform / free skew an object
  • If you click one additional time after the first click to select the object, the handles will change from regular modifications (width, height) to transformations of rotation, skew, etc.
• Reuse the same object in multiple places, without creating duplicate SVG code?
  • Use symbols + defs! (docs)
  • You can select an existing object in the page, click "Add symbol from the current document", and then you have it ready to reuse wherever you want across the document.
  • You could also use Clones for this.
• Allow colors to be inherited?
  • I couldn't find a built-in control for this, but you can manually edit the fill property to be currentColor, so it will inherit the color CSS value from its parent. You can do this with a text editor, or the "Selectors and CSS" panel within Inkscape.
  • Warning: This only works if the SVG is inlined; colors cannot be inherited across documents.
• Reload / revert file from disk / OS
  • There is not a single shortcut / hotkey, but you can use ALT + F to open the file menu (or do so manually), and then press v to reload from disk.
• Select multiple nodes at the same time?
  • Hold down SHIFT while selecting the nodes
• How do I divide up a path into an even distribution of new nodes? E.g. divide path into segments?
  • Use Extensions -> Modify path -> Add nodes

Troubleshooting

Windows - Python Issues - Extensions Broken

I recently experienced an issue with Inkscape on Windows, where every single extension failed to run, and even the "Manage Extensions" dialog would crash. Usually this was with a python error like:

Fatal Python error: init_import_size: Failed to import the site module

I couldn't find anyone else with the exact same issue online, but looking at the error messages closely and some documentation on Inkscape extensions led me to believe that this was an issue with Python version incompatibility. Inkscape claims to ship with Python 2.6.5 on Windows, but the error messages where coming from 3.9.x, which is a version I have installed outside of Inkscape.

I tried manually setting the python-interpreter setting to a pythonw.exe path inside Inkscape (following these steps), but with no change; errors were still coming from 3.9.x. Even deleting the 3.9.x folder string from global PATH still did not prevent Inkscape from clearly running Python with 3.9... I ended up just completely uninstalling Python 3.9, so Inkscape couldn't find it, and that fixed the issue. Manually path-patching for the extensions directory might have fixed it, like this.