We will show you a simple step by step guide to install an extension to Inkscape in Ubuntu. Basically every GNU/Linux user may apply this guide because the steps are the same. And basically you may apply this guide to every extension for Inkscape. Hope you enjoy it.
What To Do
What we will do is only to place the extension files (typically in a .py format) into /usr/share/inkscape/extensions directory. Basically this directory is same from distro to distro. It sounds simple but you will need root access to do it in GNU/Linux. Picture below showing where is the directory location the extension need to be placed. In Nautilus, access "Computer" place > go to /usr/share/inkscape/extensions > and see the extension files. Read the rest of article to completely do it.
1. Get The Extension Package
Step 1: obtain the extension package. You may visit Inkscape wiki extension collection page http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Extension_repository and get one extension. For this article, we demonstrate NiceCharts installation as an example. Download NiceCharts from https://github.com/Florianjw/NiceCharts (visit and press download button there) you will get a package file named NiceCharts-master.zip sized around 8 KB.
2. Extract The Package Contents
Step 2: obtain the extension files. To do it, extract the .zip file (or sometimes .tar) in your $HOME directory (just to make it easy). In example of NiceCharts, after extracting you will get a folder NiceCharts-master containing one .inx file and two .py files. Those files are the NiceCharts extension. Similar thing happens with another Inkscape extensions.
3. Copy The Extension Files
Step 3: place extension files to the correct directory. The target directory is /usr/share/inkscape/extensions/. You must place all the files as is in this directory, excluding the folder. See the previous picture. Make sure you place the NiceCharts-master directory in your $HOME. To do it, open your Terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and perform this command:
sudo -v ~/NiceCharts-master/*.{py,inx} /usr/share/inkscape/extensions/
After performing this command, you must see correct output like this: '/home/master/NiceCharts-master/nicechart_colors.py' -> '/usr/share/inkscape/extensions/nicechart_colors.py' '/home/master/NiceCharts-master/nicechart.py' -> '/usr/share/inkscape/extensions/nicechart.py' '/home/master/NiceCharts-master/nicechart.inx' -> '/usr/share/inkscape/extensions/nicechart.inx'You should not see incorrect output (error) like this
No such file or directory No such file or directory No such file or directoryotherwise you should correct your previous command.
4. Use The Extension
Step 4: check whether it is installed successfully in Inkscape. If you can not find the extension name below the Extensions menu, then restart Inkscape first. In example of NiceCharts, you find it in Extensions > Render > NiceCharts.
Note: (1) showing where is the NiceCharts menu (2) showing how to add data manually (3) the result. Indeed, NiceCharts is an extension to produce chart graphic automatically in Inkscape.