breaking apart and selecting nodes

Hi,

Did you try Path->break apart ?

To rotate the selected nodes (Shift+Click on them) by using the mouse, you need to activate the rotation / transformation handles by activating the corresponding button in the node tool's tool bar.

Then you can rotate them by handles. It's also possible to use the keyboard for that, see
https://inkscape.org/en/doc/keys091.html#d0e3481

If the text is still a text (check the object type by looking into the status bar when it's selected with the selection tool), you first need to convert it to paths before you can use the node tool to edit it.
(Path -> Object to Path). Then you can decide if you want to break the single character apart, as Mc suggested, to have single objects, or if you would like to just move/rotate the nodes.

You may want to try out one or more of the tutorials that come with Inkscape, too. Find them in Help -> Tutorials, or visit our website to find more.

What does the status bar say when you select your large object?

The break apart function does work, but the drawing (more info, the drawing is of a lizard, with a main black object with several "voids" in white, with abo. 30+ smaller objects, and some with white voids within) goes completely black, with several dashed boxes-INDICATING THE PATHS-left on the screen. I believe I often would use a "punch out" function in other programs, then ungroup. I did find a workaround by accident. I mistakenly filled the black parts of the drawing with a shade of dark grey. I went around with the paint bucket with black and filled all the areas. but when I moved some of the nodes, I noticed the grey remained underneath, so I selected the black color, copied, opened a new page, pasted, then found that all the areas were now independent, and could be worked on in a manner similar to other programs (select, scale, rotate, etc.). I think I'm missing a step to select and separate the black from white, then break apart, or get the white to go away, leaving transparent in its place, so there would be nothing to fill, or copy or break apart, other than the remaining black.

Scaling/rotating/selecting also works with the node tool for selected nodes.

So if your goal is to just rotate, move and scale the dots in the lizard, then select them by dragging a box around them with the node tool, then rotate/scale/move them, using the handles.

Or you can change their color after breaking apart, so you can see them, then move them around to your heart's content, and after that, combine the dots, and do Path->Difference with the lizard body, to punch the holes back in again.