Inkscape command line programming

Question

I'd like to be able to derive new images from a pre-existing image from the command line. To do that, I'd turn on/off specific layers that have portions of the image and then save the resulting image to a file. However, while I can see a number of commands listed in the help to manipulate layers, I don't see any that would allow one to select a specific one and turn it on/off.

Answer 1

If what you want to do can be achieved by deleting a few unwanted elements by their id (say, layer17 and layer4711), you can do it this way:

inkscape image.svg \
  --select=layer17   --verb=EditDelete \
  --select=layer4711 --verb=EditDelete \
  --verb=FileSave --verb=FileClose

Note that this will overwrite image.svg with the result, so if you're scripting this, be sure to work on a copy rather than your originals.