Hi! I don't want this to seem combative - I'm genuinely curious and mean all this in the most friendly of ways possible :)

You want JPEG export. I know others that would like Photoshop PSD files. Yet others will want TIFF, or BMP or other esoteric formats. Should Inkscape support them all, or would it be better to export one or two formats and allow the user to use another application to convert to whatever they want?
You missed my point, Mark.  Moving to another application to do the conversion takes time.  I want to minimize the time I spend, not spend the extra time.

Why do you think JPG is superior to PNG for export?
It's not a question of which one is superior.  That will get you into an endless argument.   LOL

... heheh
 
It's a question of which format, of any kind, best suits the needs of the project.  Nothing more, nothing less.  For the project at hand, we don't need transparency, and we don't need a file as large as PNG files can be.

Wait, "as large as PNG"? How large is the file you are exporting?  I've had banner sized images (about 4m) and it ended up only being ~10MB with PNG..? (Granted it was kind of simple but still)
 
Plus, others involved in the company, may or may not be able to handle the resulting image if it's a PNG.  Not to mention others may never have heard of PNG.   :-)

Windows has been able to view PNG images since XP...? 
 
My friend's supervisor does everything in MS Publisher.  Get the picture?   LOL

What version of publisher is it? Publisher >= version 2000 can import PNG graphics: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/198264  (Publisher 2000 was released in 1999)

Actually, what software are you using to import the image? I am very surprised that JPG is the only format it can import.

In any case, I think it comes down to this: Inkscape exports to PNG because something like 98% of all graphics software since 2000 can use PNG and import/export to PNG easily.
Secondly, I think implementing JPG export is unnecessary because it adds complexity to the export functionality of Inkscape - there are other tools out there that can already do a fantastic job of compressing JPG images - why does Inkscape need to duplicate functionality? :)

If it's size that matters - then JPG compression has a lot of parameters you can tweak to get a better compression ratio - I would rather do that in GIMP or some other software that has proven it can do it very well than do it in Inkscape.

:)

On a side note, it looks like EPS has been supported by publisher since Publisher version 1: (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/76385) unfortunately that link says nothing of PNG :(