Pencil tool is misleadingly labelled

[Steven Pemberton]

If you google "Inkscape draw straight line", you'll see that many people struggle with this, not least because the tutorials don't say how to draw lines, and the manual doesn't have "line" in the index.

The tool to draw a straight line is the pencil tool, but if you hover over it, it says "Draw freehand lines" (which it also does).

The tool labelling should be "draw lines, straight and freehand".

It would also be great if someone added drawing lines to the basic tutorial.

[ScislaC (scislac)]

You can also draw straight lines with the Pen (Bezier) Tool as well. In fact, I've never even thought to use the Pencil tool to draw straight lines because it's not a technical operation.

[Steven Pemberton (steven-pemberton)]

I think you miss the point: people don't know how to draw straight lines. They don't want bezier curves (even if you can use them to draw straight lines, but if you want to do that, the defaults aren't right, so you get odd-looking lines). The pencil tool can draw straight lines, but the labelling suggests otherwise.