> As far as the command prompt window, I'm not sure. I asked, and it
> seems that no one knows why this happens on Windows, or if it was in
> previous builds of Inkscape. The thread kinda died.

Ok... stop me if I'm wrong here, but I'm assuming effects work by calling
python.exe with the name of script as an argument, and the parameters as
plain text, right? If so, the command window appears because python is
probably compiled as a CUI (command line user interface) app rather than a
GUI app. When executables are compiled in windows, the linker specifies
whether the app is CUI or GUI in the exe file header.

Yep apparently it's using python.exe, which is the CUI version. Python comes with a second binary compiled as a GUI app called pythonw.exe that you can use when you don't want a console.

--bb