Inkscape glossary

This is a beginning of an Inkscape glossary. Please respect it and contribute to it if you work on Inkscape UI. If you are doing translations, please create and link below a similar glossary for your language.

• RussianTerminology

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• Node: a point on a path that you can drag. It is displayed as gray (when not selected) or blue (when selected) square on a path when you are in node tool. Shapes do not display nodes; they have controls. A node may have one or two handles.

• Handle: 1) one of two points around a node, displayed (for selected nodes) as a circle connected with its node by a line (node handles); 2) the arrows around the selected object in selector (scale handles, rotation handles); 3) points on a shape that can be dragged by node tool to edit the shape, displayed as small white diamonds (shape handles). (Internally this is called a Knot, but this is a deprecated term in user documentation)

• Path: an object that has editable nodes but does not have controls (when in node editor). An example is a line created by the freehand tool.

• Shape: an object that does not display nodes but may have controls. An example is a circle or star. A shape can be converted to path by Convert to Path command.

• Stroke: a visible outline of a shape or path. Not the same as path; a path may or may not have a stroke. If the stroke is present, it can be converted to path by Convert Stroke to Path command.

• • Stroke shape (to be implemented): the dependency of the stroke width on distance along the stroke. Currently only constant-width strokes are supported.

• • Stroke pattern (to be implemented): the representation of a stroke as a sequence of arbitrary objects positioned along the path.

• Object: an independent editable thing on the canvas. May be a path, a shape, a text object, a group, etc.

• Deprecated terms: these are for the code only. Never use them in user documentation.
  • knot (this may be a "handle", "control", "node" etc as seen by the user)
  • item (use "object")
  • desktop (use "canvas" or "document window" depending on context)
  • event contexts (they are known to users as "tools")