Comment 6 for bug 830663

With default preferences, the size and position of the currently opened document is stored within the SVG file, and used when opening the file again (that's with the default settings 'Inkscape Preferences > Windows > [x] Save and restore window geometry for each document'). The initial window size of new documents (one is opened when you launch Inkscape by itself) is thus based on the values stored in the used template for new files, or - if those are not defined - appears to fall back to a hard-coded min size of the document window (at least the width is determined by the length of the menu bar - not sure about the height).

You can alternatively change the window size in the default template or create a new custom default template with your desired sizes: for details working with templates, see Alexandre's article:
<http://libregraphicsworld.org/articles.php?article_id=29>

> That works, thanks, but why doesn't this happen by default?

With default settings it does happen with every file you reopen after saving - you just happen to not like the minimal size used with new files based on the shared default template ;) - changing the preference as described in comment #2 does instead limit the options (all files now open with the same prior size, whereas with default settings you can have each file open with a default custom size and position).

I don't know the original arguments why the default template does not 'hard-code' the height and width of the document window (others - like the one for the fontforge glyph - do propose an initial window width and height), but it can be adjusted for the local system in the shared default template or overridden per user by a custom default template or by the mentioned preferences setting (keep in mind that your preferred workflow/window size might differ from other users, maybe more so by those on other platforms without the new Gnome or Unity paradigms - personally for example I'm glad Inkscape doesn't force full-screen or a maximized window on me each time I launch the application or open a document, OTOH I do make use of the 'templates' feature and added several custom templates in '~/.config/inkscape/templates', including a custom default one).