I found a newly developed library that I think will make creating objects in Inkscape a lot easier:  pySVG – http://codeboje.de/pysvg/ . Just found some great documentation at /usr/share/pySVG/doc/html/genindex.html that provides an index of the api which link to further documentation. This will help someone like me, a non-programmer, utilize this library.
BTW – the two books I ordered are *not* for beginners. I can’t scan the pages and pick up info, these books have to be read. They’re textbooks. But I don’t see them being textbooks to teach young people how to program.
