The Book of Inkscape

3.5 Instances, Documents, Views

An Inkscape window you see on your screen (such as the one on Figure 2-1) is not the same as Inkscape itself. A running copy of the program—an instance—may have many documents open, and each document is in its own editing window. Moreover, the same document can be loaded into more than one window, providing different views of the same drawing. Any changes made to a document in one window are immediately reflected in all windows (within the same instance) where the same document is loaded.

The easiest way to open multiple windows with different documents is to start with any existing window and use the File ▸ Open command () from it. If that window contained a new and unchanged document (i.e., just an empty canvas), ...