Inkscape: Change default document properties

Some time ago some lovely person on the inkscape channel suggested the following fix to my desire to have inkscape default to landscape, full screen when I create a new document. It's become such second nature to me now I don't even think about.

But as I passed this tip on to someone today - it occurred to me it might be worth a wee blog post. Hope someone else out there finds this useful :)

Note: Make a copy of default.svg before embarking on this jiggery pokery - in case reverting to factory settings is required.

So - Find Inkscape's default.svg template... for me this is here:

 me@mycomputer: /usr/share/inkscape/templates/

I then need to run Inkscape with the sudo command - no idea how that works for other systems - sorry! ;)

  me@mycomputer: sudo inkscape default.svg

Voila! Inkscape opens.

Maximise the window. Inkscape defaults to a tiny window - [which is a good thing. Defaulting to a large window on a tiny screen would be tres annointment. (very annoying) - although I do wonder if it could somehow ask the system what the screen size is and draw accordingly... but is probably easier to just let the user tweak as needed]

Then Open Document Properties (Shift-Control-D) or find it under the File Menu. Change Page Orientation to Landscape and whatever else you like - perhaps the Grids or Snap Points need tweaking?

Once done, close the Document Properties dialog.

Hit 5 to Zoom Page to fit window.
(or View->Zoom->Page, or just clickon the tool bar.)

Tweak anything else ... then Save and Quit Inkscape.  Next time the program opens, it should default to the settings as configured.

Update: The same approach works if you want to turn off the page border.