Command-line interface (CLI)

In this recipe we will learn how to use the command line interface to perform various operations on an SVG document we created in one of the previous chapters.

Note

This recipe is intended for users of Mac OSX, Linux, and BSD based distributions. The Inkscape executable officially distributed for Windows is not compiled as a console application. This means that the commands shown here will still work, but no output will be shown on the terminal.

More information, including several ways to get around this limitation, is available on the Inkscape FAQ:

http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/FAQ

Getting ready

Download the zipped source files for this book from Packt Publishing's website and extract them to a folder.

How to do it...

The following steps will demonstrate some common commands:

1. 1. Open your favorite terminal; there's no need to open Inkscape this time.

2. 2. Type inkscape -help or inkscape -? and press Enter. You will see a list of options available.

3. 3. One...