The number of supported filters grows with every day, and I think we should rethink the UI a bit. The filters dialog developed by Nick is great and powerful, and of course must be there for those who know SVG and are comfortable with all the parameters. But for the rest of us, there must be a simpler way to access the filters. So far such a "simpler way" only exists for blur and blend modes, in the Fill and Stroke dialog. But of course we can't cram all filters there, nor do we need to, because most others are more obscure and less useful.
So, what if we just add a whole new menu for SVG filters that would largely contain a list of preconfigured filters that can be applied by a single verb (command), without any setup dialog. These presets may include single filters with some meaningful parameters (perhaps depending on the selected object's properties in some way), perhaps even several different presets for a filter (e.g. Sharpen, Sharpen more, Sharpen a lot etc). Other presets may be often-used combinations of filters, such as Drop shadow. Each such command adds its filter(s) to the top of the filter stack on selected objects. This way the most common filters can be accessed quickly, and users will even be able to assign keyboard shortcuts to them.
Apart from the presets, the menu would have commands "Remove last filter," "Remove all filters," and of course the command to open Nick's filters dialog which is where the parameters of the added filters can be adjusted if needed.
What do you think?