Configure default document properties

[Pander]

Please offer in Preferences a way to set default Document Properties. For example, I always manually have to enable in Page / Display the property "Border on top of drawing" and disable "Show border shadow". Can all these document properties for which this is useful to do get offered in Preferences / Document with subsections Page, Guides, Grips, Snap etc.

Check if what is going to be offered is partly supported already under Interface and if it has to move away from there or not.

[Pander (pander)]

Sort of related is https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/1658971

[su_v (suv-lp)]

All document properties are managed via templates, not preferences - they are specific to the drawing task (i.e. the file). You can create a custom user default template, and any number of more specific templates for new files with the preferred document properties (specific to the purpose of the template).

The current only exception is for default new grids, which is already problematic and not fully functional anymore, because the unit chosen for grid origin, spacing in the preferences are global, and do not adjust to the individual document's properties.

[su_v (suv-lp)]

Actually, there is a section in the preferences file (created by the preferences skeleton) which defines minimal defaults for a basic document template - IIRC it is used e.g. when importing a foreign vector file format (like PDF), or SVG files without editor metadata for Inkscape:

  <group
     id="template">
    <sodipodi:namedview
       id="base"
       pagecolor="#ffffff"
       bordercolor="#666666"
       borderopacity="1.0"
       objecttolerance="10.0"
       gridtolerance="10.0"
       guidetolerance="10.0"
       inkscape:pageopacity="0.0"
       inkscape:pageshadow="2"
       inkscape:window-width="640"
       inkscape:window-height="480" />
  </group>

https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~inkscape.dev/inkscape/trunk/view/head:/src/preferences-skeleton.h#L61

Possibly this section could be exposed in the preferences.

AFAIU the values in that preferences group do not act as 'fallback' in general for Inkscape SVG files which do not define specific properties for Inkscape (in <namedview/>). The template is used when opening files that do not provide the metadata at all.

TODO: search for older reports specific to this generic (hidden) template (I recall e.g. a request for a configurable template for PDF import).