Let's learn how it works, not by printing 'Hello World' (which is pointless anyway), but by drawing a circle. It would be a pity to let Inkscape's extensions feature go to waste because of its deficient documentation however, so let's do something about it. Again, it has been made obsolete by Inkscape 1.0, and it is mainly listings of code devoid of comments, which you are expected to understand, or tutorials left halfway complete, as if most authors gave up just when they got past their own particular 'Hello World' example. The documentation written by third parties regarding Inkscape's extension system is just as bad. The little documentation there is on the API is still for the old version and is completely obsolete.

Alas, with the overhaul of looks and features came an overhaul of the scripting API, and you probably guessed what happened with the docs – nothing. To add insult to injury, Inkscape was recently updated to version 1.0, after being in the 0.9x circle of hell for years. For starters, a link to a Python Effect Tutorial in the Inkscape wiki leads to an empty page ('') that was last 'modified' in 2008! However, when I began exploring it, I found the documentation of the extension engine to be staggeringly bad. Inkscape is a wonderful piece of software, a testament to how good free and open source, community-built applications can be. Which brings me to Inkscape's extensions. I set out to do something, hit the wall of insufficient or non-existent documentation, doggedly try to do it anyway, and if I succeed, hey presto, an article. It is also what … er … 'inspires' most of my Linux Magazine articles. In fact, I'd say that for free software it is almost the norm.

Where to place inkscape extensions