Extensions

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This page is intended as a guide for providing new extensions for Inkscape. Currently the majority of extensions are provided as python scripts.

Extension types

The following extension types exist for Inkscape:

input
output
effect
print
path-effect - path effects are not currently implemented as extension but there is intention to migrate those over as entensions

Extension implementation

Internal
- C++ implementation (directly in code)
External
- scripts - written in python, perl or as system (console) scripts
- xslt transformations
- plugins - not fully implemented yet

Parameters

Extensions can be supplied with values obtained through easily definable parameters. Inkscape provides the basic GUI for user input. The following parameters are supported:

integer
string
float
boolean
enum
optiongroup
colour

For the sake of the UI there are also the following two parameters that do not provide data to the extension but alter the user input GUI.

description
notebook

Extension Definition File (INX)

All extensions are defined through Inkscape Extension Definition Files (.inx) which are XML files in the

http://www.inkscape.org/namespace/inkscape/extension

namespace and described by the Relax NG available [here]

Structure

Examples

RadioButton example

The following mark-up:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<inkscape-extension xmlns="http://www.inkscape.org/namespace/inkscape/extension">
  <_name>RadioButton example</_name>
  <id>org.inkscape.effect.radiobuttontest</id>
  <param name="radio1" type="optiongroup" _gui-text="Select option: ">
    <option value="string1">translatable string 1</option>
    <option value="string2">string 2</option>
    <option value="string3">test 3!</option>
  </param>
  <param name="radio2" type="optiongroup" _gui-text="Select second option: ">
    <option value="string11">string1</option>
    <option value="string22">string2</option>
    <option>test3!</option>
  </param>
  <effect>
    <object-type>all</object-type>
    <effects-menu>
      <submenu _name="Developer Examples"/>
    </effects-menu>
  </effect>
  ...
</inkscape-extension>

Will result in the following GUI being created:

i18n

To allow the .inx files to fit snugly into Inkscape's i18n infrastructure some XML elements and attributes are prefixed with an underscore (_) character to indicate that the containing text should be marked for translation.