Writing an extension would certainly be the fastest way to get a working prototype of the functionality you desire. It is probably also one of the best ways to show the developers exactly what you want to do. I would be happy to answer any questions you have as well as I can. If I wasn't late for work I'd probably hack something together for you right now. :)
Aaron's right on the money there. :-) Great idea.
the thing is, how do i get the 'selection order' from inside an inkscape extension script? i.e., i want to rename the elements that have been selected, 'in the order that they were selected', (not the order in which they appear in the DOM) .. is this feasible?
IIRC, long, long ago there was a feature request for adding this... If you look through the early RFE's there might be a discussion about it.
i remember bringing this up once or twice in the earlier history of inkscape, but never went anywhere with it because i just ended up hacking a PySVG script to sorta do it for me .. but it'd be far more useful for me if there were some sort of 'name/id administration' capabilities within the interface of inkscape itself ..
i can see a future where inkscape might be used by freedesktop types to create 'standard controls' (if not already) .. once things go in this direction, having more powerful 'object/element naming tools' in inkscape itself might be useful?