Comment 3 for bug 1362061

@Sebastian - did you try a recent develop snapshot build (0.91pre2) which features a new dialog to choose from available templates, and now also supports procedural templates? The new dialog had been implemented based on last year's GSoC project by Jan Darowski (Slagvi) [1].

Other recommended reading (before tossing Inkcape's current template-based 'New document' feature out of the window):
http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/using-templates-in-inkscape
(based on the state in current stable releases, does not discuss new features in upcoming major release 0.91)

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[1] I didn't find a full spec / final report on the net, but you can read his progress reports to the devel mailing list e.g. here:
http://inkscape.13.x6.nabble.com/template/NamlServlet.jtp?macro=user_nodes&user=360746