I want my extension (https://github.com/lifelike/countersheetsextension) to be able to insert images in flowing text. SVG 1.2 supports this by using flowImage elements together with flowPara. Inkscape however only supports flowPara. I googled and all I could find was a bug report for this from 2005 (https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/171049).

It is probably not a trivial thing to add, so I am thinking of workarounds. One thing that might work is to insert a small flowPara with just a single glyph where I want the Image to be, write out the SVG to a temporary file, and then call "inkscape --query-id" on the temporary file to get the coordinates that glyph was rendered to, then insert the image there. That would probably work and I have been known to make more hideous hacks than that, but I hope there is something slightly better. Maybe if I can set a image pattern fill on a glyph and there is a good square-shaped glyph to use that could be inserted in the text and would look like an inserted image? But I tried to set a fill pattern on a flowPara and could not get it to work (Inkscape just deletes my fill-attribute, so I guess it is not supported and perhaps not allowed in SVG).

Other ideas?

Is it also in SVG 2?

Here is some more information about SVG support in Inkscape (scroll down to How does Inkscape implement SVG?)

Sounds like a very nice feature, to have flowed objects within text. Maybe a discussion on the developer mailing list would be more lively, have you tried there? Or the Inkscape IRC chat?

Yes, flow layout in SVG sounds useful (and Inkscape has at least partial support). Here is the description for SVG 1.2: Top