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

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.

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12 Responses to “Fixing Inkscape in Mac OS X”

  1. James Says:

    Excellent, thanks!

  2. Stefano Says:

    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?

  3. César Izurieta Says:

    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).

  4. Bill Gathen Says:

    @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.

  5. César Izurieta Says:

    Thanks for your correction! Posted an update to the article.

  6. Ricardo Meza Says:

    Cool, It works!

    Thank you!

  7. Don Smith Says:

    Thanks for posting. Your post was the first search hit and it worked swimmingly. Thanks!

  8. Robert Says:

    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?

  9. César Izurieta Says:

    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.

  10. Ryan Willis Says:

    Thank you for posting this!!!

  11. Vincent Says:

    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

  12. Vincent Says:

    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

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