Hello, I am trying to get an extension to work that will save as an alternative format.  I am returning to Inkscape after a decade-long hiatus, and it seems that the tool has changed quite a bit. Can you help me?

What I want to do:

Ultimately, I'd like to get this extension working to allow me to export a file in a the OpenScad Format, but really, at this point, getting Inkscape to save to any alternative format will work for me.  This was an extension I relied on a long time ago as part of my workflow, but I can't seem to get it to work anymore.  I am an experienced programmer and can read/write code, so any working example of an Inkscape extension that allows me to export a file will do.  I can extrapolate from a working example.

What I have done:

I started by going through the Inkscape Extensions tutorial on gitlab.io.  These tutorials allowed me to create visual effects from the Extensions menu as well as to import a file into Inkscape.  I have working examples that I have customized and I am comfortable now building visual/text effects and importing extensions.

The Inkscape Development page documents that there are four types of extensions:

1. Effect - I am comfortable with these
2. Input - I did the tutorial
3. Output - This is what I want to get working
4. Print - Not applicable to what I'm doing

The Output link on the development page provides a link to the Gitlab.com repo for a gimp exporter.  I have reviewed both the inx and py files associated with this example.

I copied the gimp_xcf.inf and gimp_xcf.py files into my extensions folder where I have the working effect extensions.

My Questions:

1. On a basic level, should I expect to see the new format in the "Save as type" drop-down of the "Save as copy" dialog menu?  If not, where should I access an output extension?
2. Do you know of a working tutorial that will show you, step-by-step how to get an output extension working?
3. Do you know how I could troubleshoot a problem like this where I'm simply not seeing any evidence of the extension in Inkscape?

Since the gimp output extension is bundled with Inkscape as part of its core extensions:

It's probably an .inx id collision.

<id>org.ekips.output.gimp_xcf</id>

Exists in the core extension - so if you have a duplicate of that id in the user extension folder (or any extension folder Inkscape searches), it will fail silently in the gui.

Change the id in your version to make it unique.

You can ask any advanced questions in https://chat.inkscape.org/channel/inkscape_extensions