Inkscape "Copy Text Style"

ISSUED: 2026-05-09
EDITED: 2026-05-18

Once I had a fediverse conversation with Sir Martin Owens on Mastodon about Inkscape, new features, text and style. I couldn't find the conversation, so I am replying to him using my Capsule. I know for sure my capsule will last longer than any other fediverse topic.

What happened? 🤷

Martin was writing about some text features he'd like to introduce (actually I don't remember this clearly), and I, as usual, came up with something else, which can sometimes be really disrespectful… 😟

I said something like: «What I would really need would be to copy the style from a text and paste it onto another text…». Sir Martin asked me to elaborate. Eventually, after a long — long, long — time, I decided to elaborate!

So what? 🤷

Inkscape lacks a method to copy text attributes and paste them onto another text. The workaround is usually to duplicate text that is already styled, then paste the new text into it. This is fine, but a copy-and-paste style function should be available as well; below is a mockup to illustrate what I mean:

Inkscape Copy & Paste Text Style Mock Up

SVG version

XML: The infographic shows the XML on the main text; the attributes are there and thus I believe they can be copied and applied to a different text node. I don't believe it is complicated to implement.

This simple feature would already be a big plus and could help a lot, becoming a real time saver. Thinking about expanding this a little bit, it might be possible to make a complete list of actions:

[ Only visible when text is selected ]
Style Menu:
    │
    ├─╼ Copy Style
    │
    ├─╼ Paste Style
    │
    ├─╼ Save Style
    │
    ├─╼ Load Style
    │       │
    │       ├─╼ Style 1
    │       │
    │       ├─╼ Style 2
    │       │
    │       └─╼ Style …
    │
    └─╼ Update Style

HOW TO DELETE A STYLE? To make life easier, styles are deleted when you press "clean up the document."

What else? 🤷

A complete panel to create, manage, and delete text styles would be terrific, but to begin with, the simple "Copy & Paste Style" is enough.

UPDATE 2018-05-18

It ended up that I was unaware this feature was already available on Inkscape:

This was confirmed by Martin Owens himself and from Silv

gemini://envs.net/~silv/gemlog/inkscape_can_copy_&_paste_styles.gmi

Good to know that it was already implemented, I missed it so far but this won't happen anymore! 😉

_________

For comments or suggestions write me at:

freezr AT disroot DOT org

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