I'm now getting quite used to doing CTRL+SHIFT+D to set defaults.

One little problem - I have NEVER in the past 5 or however many years I've used inkscape needed ANYTHING except inches. I don't need to set pixel size, being a dumb american, (no offense to the millions of others...) I have not needed centimeters, and points drive me bonkers.

All I want as default for everthing is inches. ( Would be nice to have text size in inches too, but I'm sure THAT won't happen.)

I have searched numerous times for the answer to this and it seems the only solution is going into the source code, changing and recompiling. Doesn't work so well when an update comes - Do it all over again.

Any thoughts of how to accomplish this? Am I just missing something really basic?

Hey, look what you can do with these icons:



Too bad the paint doesn't flow around his head better...

Set the document properties to inches and then save as default.svg or what ever template you use.

WONDERFUL!

How have I missed this for so long??

Now I have all units in inches and 3 layers all ready to roll. I also moved to another folder the templates that I NEVER use.

/usr/share/inkscape/templates

You'll need to edit it as root, I believe. Otherwise you won't be able to save to that folder.

In a terminal (using ubuntu in this case ) type:
gksudo inkscape

then enter your password in the popup box.
From what I understand, 'sudo' is fine for command line programs, but 'gksudo' helps when starting gui programs.

Thanks again!

you can also do it locally, I think this is what you need https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/170663

just put your template file in there (in .inkscape/templates/)