The same illustration that got us to post about image scripting, also brought up an interesting discovery plus a feature/plug-in for Inkscape.

Detail of illustration for Mute Magazine. Click to view .jpg or download complete zipped .svg file + images

Lock layer
It is often helpful to lock an object (in this case the glow in the background), so that when you move things around, you do not have to worry about whether it stays at the right place. Quickly done with Inkscape, but unfortunately not as easily undone. The only way to unlock, is to open up the document in an editor, look for the line describing the locked object, and then delete the line: sodipidi:insensitive. Pfff…

Collect for output
Inkscape does not embed images, but links to them. It is therefore fast to work with (especially when using many images and layers as is the case with this illustration) but not easy when you have to send out the file to a printer or someone else – there is no way to check whether one of the images is missing.

Pim Snel wrote an extension to collect all bitmaps, create relative links to them in the Inkscape document and zip everything up in one go. Wonderful! A description of how to use the script at Jakub ‘jimmac’ Steiner’s weblog.