'Remove manual kerns' messes up the text locations

[Yuri]

I have the document imported from pdf having text at different locations. I want to edit some piece of text, and not the other parts. I select the desired word, click 'Remove manual kerns' menu item and observe that whole text block got kerns removed and text locations are all messed up.

See attached testcase. Try selecting any word there (ex. Department), use 'Remove manual kerns' and see how all other texts jump.

1. inkscape should only perform this operation on the selected text.
2. when text selection includes multiple lines, 'Remove manual kerns' should detect where line and word breaks are and not allow moving large portions of text. Instead it should group characters into individual lines and keep similar to original text positions.
3. (additional related idea) when user attempts to edit text with manual kerns (which I am sure happens every day) people observe weird behavior (and file PRs like this https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/inkscape/+bug/221201). inkscape should be proactive and warn user that he edits text with manual kerns and he might want to use 'Remove manual kerns' first. In 99% of cases such de-kerning is what is really desired by user, not jumping texts and other weird behavior.

[Yuri (yuri-tsoft)]

inkscape-0.48 on FreeBSD-8.2

[Alex Valavanis (valavanisalex)]

Related/duplicate?
* bug #309438 <Remove manual kerns doesn't work on selection>

[su_v (suv-lp)]

AFAIU the command 'Remove manual kerns' can work on <text> and <tspan> elements only: please read the 'Text editing Tips' in the section 'PDF and AI import' of the release notes for Insckape 0.46:
<http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Release_notes/0.46#PDF_and_AI_import>

It also explains why text in imported PDF always uses absolutely kerning to position each letter (AFAIU the kerning information of fonts is not saved inside PDFs with embedded and subsetted fonts).

To me it seems that the underlying issue of this report is actually Inkscape's missing feature to edit absolutely kerned text:
Bug #188794 “Broken editing of text with absolute kerning”
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/188794>

[Yuri (yuri-tsoft)]

I read this link and understand why pdfs are imported as they are. And in my example they are text elements.

Yes, this PR is related to Bug #188794. This is basically a suggestion how to fix Bug #188794.

[Qantas94Heavy (qantas94heavy)]

This is probably suited to the linked bug #188794 itself, as whatever fixes that will fix this bug too.