Inkscape is unusually rich in keyboard shortcuts. A complete chart of all keyboard and mouse shortcuts (you can view it in the browser by choosing the Keys and Mouse Reference command in the Help menu) contains more than 460 entries.
Normally, keyboard shortcuts don’t require any setup: They just work. Sometimes, however, you may want to change some of these shortcuts or add new ones, perhaps because you’re used to a different keyboard layout from another program, or simply because your work habits are not adequately covered by the existing shortcuts.
Most (although currently not all) of Inkscape’s keyboard shortcuts can be configured by the user. You can also assign a shortcut to any of the commands that you see in the menus, including any extensions in the Extensions menu (13.3 Path Extensions). There are even a few relatively obscure commands that are not included in any menu and do not have any shortcuts by default but can be accessed if you assign shortcuts to them.
The shortcuts you cannot yet configure include those that involve mouse clicking or dragging, as well as those keyboard shortcuts that are limited to a single tool or mode (i.e., only global keyboard shortcuts can be configured).
All of Inkscape’s keyboard configuration files are stored in the directory keys which is inside the share directory of your Inkscape installation. There, the file default.xml is the only one that Inkscape reads when it is started; this is the standard Inkscape keyboard layout.
The inkscape.xml file is just a copy of default.xml. Other files in that directory provide keyboard layout emulations for all the major Inkscape competitors (Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW, Xara Xtreme, Macromedia Freehand) as well as for some minor vector editors (Zoner Draw, ACD Systems Canvas). The file right-handed-illustration.xml is a variant of the standard layout which places the most often used commands under the left hand so you can avoid lifting your right hand from the mouse or tablet.
You can enable any of these layouts instead of the standard one by copying the corresponding file over default.xml and restarting Inkscape. Note that the alternative layouts may not be as complete or up-to-date as the main one. Any help in improving these alternative layouts or adding new ones will be appreciated by the developers.
Changing existing shortcuts or adding new ones is possible by editing the currently used keyboard layout—the file default.xml. This XML file is quite simple in structure and contains extensive explanations in comments, so I will not describe it here.