Attached are images to help explain my previous post... Thx!!   Greetings all... I just posted this in the Inkscape chat as well. I have been working on a project that involves creating a red square in Inkscape, layering some text on top (text must be black for this to work), and then going to 'Path' then 'Difference'. The result is that the text, and the portion of the box that is underneath the text, becomes transparent (or invisible). If I then put the red square on top of a blue circle, the portion of the box where the text is will be see through so I can see the blue circle underneath (I have been able to achieve this successfully). The problem I am running into, is that if I do multiple boxes (lets say a red square next to a green square next to a yellow square next to a pink square) and then follow the same steps as above (add black text on top, and then go to 'Path' then 'Difference'), everything goes haywire. The boxes disappear and the text doesn't become see through. If there is a way to attach images to this forum I will gladly provide screen shots. I am a relative beginner with Inkscape, so please dumb-down any directions. Thanks in advance for any/all suggestions. Best, DA.

There's 2 possible solutions:

1. Create your different colors in one rectangle using gradients (ask if you can't figure out how to create a gradient with sharp color blocks)
2. Duplicate the text (ctrl-D) as often as the number of blocks you need to do the difference on. Do it on every rectangle separately.

Is this clear? If not, don't hesitate to ask more.

This should be doable with the Path effect->Boolean; group the four coloured squares (set fill rule to evenodd) and link to the Text object (which still is editable text).

Maybe this:

Wow... I actually never used inverse clip in the past! Thanks for digging up this feature :)

Doesn´t work with Text object hence the boolean op. 😉

lol... Inkscape has so many features, and I'm still dabbling with the things I learned in 0.47 😅