Remove Marker from Shape Elements in Inkscape

There's a known bug in Inkscape that prevents removing special markers from the start and end points of a polygon element.

• Select a line, circle/ellipse, or a polygon object
• Apply a stroke in the Stroke paint tab on the Fill and Stroke dialog
• Navigate to the Stroke style tab and select an Start/Mid/End marker

I'm making a diagram with a number of line elements that I wanted to be displayed with arrow heads.

I know there are settings that let you use the last style as the default for new elements so you don't have to copy and paste the formatting to additional objects. Somewhere along the way, I think my line markers got applied to my polygon elements. Now I have weird arrow heads at the start/end point of my shape, which is absolutely not acceptable.

Rather than duplicating existing shapes to try find a clean element to resolve this, use the XML Editor to edit the element's properties to get rid of those arrowheads entirely. Using the XML Editor will allow you to edit existing elements without having to re-create the design from scratch each time.

• Select the object
• Navigate to Edit > XML Editor or launch it from the shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+X
• With the graphic object selected in the list at the top of the editor, click on the style element to begin editing it's style attributes

• Select and remove the marker-start; & marker-end; attributes. Ensure that you didn't remove too many- or leave any extra semicolon characters (;) as each attribute will be separated by one semicolon 

• Click the check ✅ to apply the edits

Additional shapes may still have unwanted arrow markers, so clean up and restart the project.

• Choose File > Clean Up Document
• Save the project
• Close and re-open Inkscape

ArcGIS Online Application Transparency Issue

Issue

I published a Map in ArcGIS Online, and converted it to an Application to add some custom functionality (splash disclaimer, print button, etc.). Unfortunately, there is a city boundary layer that is displaying with a 60% transparency, and the requestor wants this to be much darker. I cannot seem to adjust this at the Application level.

Application view

 

 The layer in the map has all transparency removed in the Symbology properties, as well as in the layer's Appearance settings. Despite removing and re-adding the hosted feature layer, the Application still renders the transparency.

Map view

Solution

 Check the settings at the feature layer level:

• In ArcGIS Online/your Portal, navigate to Content 
• Search for- and open the hosted feature layer
  
• Navigate to the Visualization tab
• Click the Change Style icon  
• Click the Options button to open the symbol properties
• Review the Overall Transparency setting and adjust if necessary

60% Transparency applied

Discussion

 In my case, this is where the issue originated. After I set the Overall Transparency to 0%, the property was able to propagate through to the Application level. Despite explicitly configuring the transparency in the Map that is directly consumed by the Application, the Application still reached across the Map and pulled the default transparency variable that was defined in the feature layer.

That is annoying because I had intended for the default City Boundary layer to render with a decent amount of transparency; and this application is an outlier from the otherwise uniform graphic standard I was hoping to implement.

Alternatively, I'll try to apply a transparency value inside the symbol fill/outline settings, rather than at the Overall layer transparency. 💁

 

 

 

 

 

 

Higher Quality UTM Zones Map

Until now, an image from the Wikipedia article on the UTM coordinate system has been my go-to UTM Zone reference. It's pretty okay.

I threw together a map that has been a bit more helpful as it shows US counties and some basic hydrography -  mostly from ArcGIS Online layers, and default ArcMap Template data.

Download the PDF here