Split Text extension doesn't preserve text position

[Ananth P]

Split Text extension doesn't preserve the position of words and characters in the resultant text.

Try:

* Create a text object and type "Split these words"
* Run Split Text extension on it and split Words or Letters

Beginning of the text maintains position. But, subsequent chunks move away from their original places. `Split: Lines` preserve the positions of individual lines though.

I'm using Inkscape 0.91 r13725 on Ubuntu 16.04

Use case:

I use inkscape to create textual music notation for Indian music. ( https://github.com/ananthp/carnatic_scores ). I need to align lot of small text chunks to each other and to lines and dots, and with freedom to position and move objects. Inkscape works great for this.

I use Split Text extensively- typing in whole lines, splitting and tweaking positions. But, after carefully positioning a few items, if I have to split one of the text objects, it spreads out the text and I'm forced to manually position words/letters again.

[jazzynico (jazzynico)]

Thanks for taking the time to file a report!

Bug confirmed on Xubuntu 16.04, Inkscape 0.91 and trunk rev. 14917.
Also confirmed on Windows XP, Inkscape 0.48.5 and 0.91.

[su_v (suv-lp)]

I doubt this is easily fixable (or fixable at all) - the extension script has no access to the precise position of individual words and characters within laid-out (rendered) text - these details depend on SVG style properties in effect for the individual tspan/text element, the font itself (including style variant, size), and may even differ depending on the font backend (platform-specific) and font backend configuration (e.g. fontconfig, fallback fonts) of any SVG renderer used to render the SVG. IIRC this known limitation was already discussed on the devel mailing list at the time the extension was originally contributed several years ago [1], and I'd be surprised if there aren't already older reports about this lack of feature.

[1] https://sourceforge.net/p/inkscape/mailman/message/22164016/