02
Mar
I had this error for a very long time when trying to use extensions in Inkscape 0.46 for Mac OS X:
“The fantastic lxml wrapper for libxml2 is required by inkex.py and therefore this extension”
After many hours of trying to find a solution I got it to work. This is what I did:
sudo easy_install lxml
cd /Applications/Inkscape.app/Contents/Resources/lib
mv libxml2.2.dylib libxml2.2.dylib.old
ln -s /usr/lib/libxml2.dylib
cd /Applications/Inkscape.app/Contents/Resources/lib
mv libxml2.2.dylib libxml2.2.dylib.old
ln -s /usr/lib/libxml2.dylib
After that, all extensions (those found under the effects menu) started to work.
Update:
The problem seems to be fixed on the latest development version.
Update 2:
Fixed typo. Thanks to Bill Gathen for your comment.
No related posts.

June 2nd, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Excellent, thanks!
July 28th, 2009 at 5:02 am
I am really frustrated with Inkscape on my MAC for the same kinds of problems. Unfortunatelly I cannot use your tip because: I do not have the command easy-install and I cannot find it in Macports and my inkscape port did not result in anything in /Applications/Inkscape.app/Contents/Resources/lib and I do not know where to find the file libxml2.2.dylib of inkscape. Could you please help me?
July 28th, 2009 at 7:30 am
Try searching for “setuptools” in macports and install that, then you’ll have the easy_install command. I’m no tusing the Inkscape port but the version from their website. Try also installing the latest development version, it seems to be working without a problem. Else try searching in /opt/local/ for libxml2.2.dylib it might be there (that’s where macports installs the software).
September 21st, 2009 at 12:11 pm
@Stefano I think there’s a typo in the solution. It’s easy_install on my system (Leopard), not easy-install.
The fix didn’t get me working, but my build is from March 2008.
September 21st, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Thanks for your correction! Posted an update to the article.
October 20th, 2009 at 1:08 am
Cool, It works!
Thank you!
November 15th, 2009 at 11:01 am
Thanks for posting. Your post was the first search hit and it worked swimmingly. Thanks!
December 18th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
One question: do you need the MacPorts version of Inkscape for this to work or should it work on the Mac version from the Inkscape website?
December 18th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
I was using the 0.46 version from their website, but there’s a new 0.47 version now there, maybe it just works. I haven’t tried it yet.
February 21st, 2010 at 7:58 am
Thank you for posting this!!!
March 8th, 2010 at 5:32 am
I was very excited when I found this, but it didn’t work for me : (
Now I get:
Failed to import the numpy or numpy.linalg modules.
I’m using 0.47 and don’t seem to have any of these path effects available under Extension
March 8th, 2010 at 5:38 am
Also : is it a problem that when I tried to install the lxml I got:
NOTE: Trying to build without Cython, pre-generated ‘src/lxml/lxml.etree.c’ needs to be available.
Using build configuration of libxslt 1.1.24
March 19th, 2010 at 6:29 am
it works, after many month attempting to find a solution, thank you
March 27th, 2010 at 4:56 pm
Worked great for me, but like Vincent I got an error about numpy. I needed to install it:
$ sudo easy_install -U numpy
Then things seemed to work ok.
April 30th, 2010 at 6:38 am
You made my day! Thank you very much for sharing this hint. It worked like charm for me. Also the numpy installation (see previous comment), despite a terribly long list of warnings, worked without problems. (Inkscape 0.47 r22583, built Nov 24 2009 on a Mac running OS X 10.6.3 Build 10D573)
June 20th, 2010 at 2:43 pm
Hi,
Thank you for sharing this tip with us. I have just installed the last dev version (it says 0.48 in the Help/About), but I meet the same problem. I have MacPorts installed on my MacBook Pro (OSX 10.6.4 French). I have also tried to execute the steps you indicate, they do not seem to solve the problem. So, I am afraid that some of us will continue to meet this problem even with the next version
June 30th, 2010 at 6:15 am
I tried this, but it didn’t work. No error messages when the commands were executed, but after that no improvement. Extensions still do not work.
I use an Imac 21.5 with OSX 10.6.4
July 5th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
For me it did not work in the 0.48 out of the box, neither any hints I googled help. So I found my own way:
http://blog.lrem.net/2010/07/05/fixing-inkscape-python-extensions/