Gridlock

I use grids a lot. Chalk that up to my obsessive side, but I like things to line up. Not "close enough", not "almost there", but exactly, identically, on the same point. And, since I'm American, I think most comfortably in inches, and use a lot of powers-of-two fractions, like eighths and sixteenths and thirty-seconds. Many times I've even set the Illustrator grids to 1/64 inch. I have also always loved the look of the grids in AI; but I must say that Inkscape has power to spare in this area, allowing you to exactly duplicate the look of Illustrator or construct more complex arrangements as you choose.

Inkscape has two mechanisms for achieving this. It allows you to set grids in "Inkscape Preferences" on a global or default level; these grid settings are what get applied to new documents you create. You can also change grid settings in "Document Properties", settings which apply only to the document you're currently working on. Let's compare the two.

In "Document Properties", on the left, we find a system of even more power and flexibility (with one exception) than Illustrator's. We can change the colors and opacities of major and minor grid lines to anything we want. We have all the usual unit options. We can even overlay multiple grids! Say, for example, that we wanted to emphasize not only grid lines on whole-inch boundaries, but also grid lines at half-inches. Simply define another grid, with a major grid line at every 8 rather than 16 lines (for example) and choose colors appropriately. The results of this can be seen in the background; a grid with lines every 1/16 inch, a darker line every 1/2 inch, and a still darker one every whole inch. Many other, more exotic possibilities are available, and grids you create can be toggled on or off as you need them. All of this is excellent!

But now suppose you've come up with grid settings you really like, and you'd like to save them so they can be applied to all new documents as a default? Well, no problem there—just do the same thing in "Inkscape Preferences", right? Wrong! The grid settings here (the right window in the screen capture) are not the same; gone is the ability to overlay more than one grid, and, for a worse surprise, look at the numeric precision! Two decimal points instead of four? I can't define anything more precise than 0.01 inch, and I can't use my beloved powers-of-two fractions below a quarter of an inch! This, by the way, is the "one exception" I mentioned above: even four decimal points is insufficient for 1/32 or 1/64 inch, both of which I'm accustomed to using in AI.

Which leaves me the unpleasant task of setting up my grids the way I like them with each new document I create. Most likely I'd just configure one and save it as a sort of empty template for myself, so it's not necessarily a deal-breaker on it's own. Worse than the balky interface itself is the intellectual puzzle—UI choices like this seem so inexplicable, I can't help but wonder why it's this way, especially when Inkscape is so close to getting it perfect. Why not just make the global and local grid settings be exactly the same, as I expect would be the case if the code were properly modular? Why not include a "make default" button in "Document Properties"?

If I discover this sort of bad decision within two minutes of installing the software, what other horrors lie in wait? I'm tempted to force myself to use Inkscape on some project, just to find out. I also hold out hope that I'm missing something here, that some Inkscape partisan will pipe up with a perfect explanation of why it is this way and even why it can be no other way. Even suggestions for some workaround will do! As I said, I haven't used Inkscape long, so it's entirely possible I've missed some obvious fix. But then, I'm not exactly a novice driver of vector graphics software either, and if Inkscape's not aimed at me (a casual "prosumer") and my myriad of expectations, cognitive biases, and outright prejudices, I don't know who it would be aimed at.