If you look into the source of your SVG (open it with a text editor), you will find mainly stuff like this: <rect style="opacity:0.57009343;color:#000000;fill:#3f3790" id="rect2996" width="10.714286" height="52.857143" x="282.85715" y="155.16518" transform="translate(242.40625,114.78125)" /> Those lines starting with `x=` and `y=` contain exactly what you are looking for. You can now write some script to extract them, e.g., with an Inkscape-saved SVG the following works for me (for other SVGs you might need some adjustment): grep " x=\"\| y=\"" drawing.svg | sed "s/[^\"]*\"//;s/\".*//" | paste -d '\t' - - Note that the above may not work if the objects belong to a transformed group or are otherwise special.