How to write SVG manually so it is displayed in Inkscape?

Question

I'm trying to write some SVG for illustration and while it renders well in:

• Chrome
• Firefox
• http://svg.enshrined.co.uk/ see screenshot below for an idea

But nothing gets displayed in:

• Inkscape (Inkscape 0.92.5 (2060ec1f9f, 2020-04-08)).
• wmflabs (though it did not report any issues)

Minimal working example to reproduce is below and was validated against:

• W3C
• http://svg.enshrined.co.uk/
• wmflabs

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<svg version="1.2" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 200 200">
        <!-- last joint -->
           <defs>
           <g id="disk">
            <!-- define here the joint -->
            <circle cx="0" cy="0" r="100"/>
            </g>
         </defs>
      <use href="#disk" />
</svg>

Google / Firefox rendering: :

While Inkscape shows only a blank sheet.

I'm assuming some specifics to Inkscape (I've seen special handling for layers, but would rather avoid reverse engineering if possible).

Answer 1

Try this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<svg version="1.2" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" viewBox="0 0 200 200">
        <!-- last joint -->
           <defs>
           <g id="disk">
            <!-- define here the joint -->
            <circle cx="0" cy="0" r="100"/>
            </g>
         </defs>
      <use xlink:href="#disk" />
</svg>

Basically all I did here was to use xlink:href= instead of href= and declare the namespace prefix xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink". I tested this and it works in Inkscape, Firefox and Google Chrome.

I don't know why href doesn't seem to work in Inkscape. To get an answer to that, perhaps better to ask the Inkscape developers.