Some 0-size text breaks rendering

[Ben Davenport]

I'm using Inkscape 0.91 r13725, 64-bit, under Win7. I have not tried to replicate this bug under other OS or Inkscape version combinations.

I have seen various problems with the presence of 0-size text in a document preventing the display of any other elements in the document, whether they occur before or after the 0-size text.

The attached example file opens without error, but displays as an empty document. The built-in XML editor will allow me to select the RECT element, and will show a bounding box with handles around it, but the rectangle is not displayed.

Changing the font-size from 0px to 10px in this file results in the text being rendered, as well as the large black square.

I can even change the font-size from within Inkscape via the XML editor; as soon as I hit 'set' the text displays as expected, and anything that results in a redraw (such as zooming in) displays the black square as well.

Similarly, changing the font-size back to 0px causes the text to disappear, and a zoom action causes the black square to disappear once again.

Although I have produced this document by dramatically trimming my original >30MB SVG (the 0-size text came in from the .dxf import) down to a minimal example, I am able to reproduce this behavior entirely within Inkscape, by creating a new document, drawing an arbitrary rectangle, creating some text, and then setting its font-size to 0px with the built-in XML editor. It does not appear to matter whether the font size is set in the TSPAN element or the TEXT element.

Using the text tool to set a text size of 0 results in the text having an actual size of 1 set. However, if I set a size of 1e-009, I can get the GUI to generate an SVG with a font-size of 0px. And at that point, a subsequently-drawn rectangle fails to appear, though it is present in the SVG hierarchy, and will be drawn if I select the text (which still exists and has a bounding box with scale/rotation handles) and delete it.

0-size text contained in a layer whose visibility is set to hidden will not break the rendering of content in other visible layers. However, turning on visibility of the poisoned layer will inhibit rendering of any other document content.

There may be other related quirks, but this is all I've discovered so far.

[su_v (suv-lp)]

Thank you for taking the time to file this report. AFAICT this issue has been reported before and is current tracked in
* Bug #1294784 “text with font of size zero pixels renders drawing invisible (rev >= 12488)”
  https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/1294784

Proposing to link as duplicate to bug #1294784.

[Ben Davenport (ubuntu-reg-m)]

Agreed: this appears to be a duplicate. Apologies: I didn't think to search for "zero" rather than "0" pixels when searching for prior art.

[su_v (suv-lp)]

Thank you for the feedback - linking as duplicate to bug #1294784 as proposed.