If I think for print the single most important thing that I would think of is CMYK support

For me, above that, is multi-page support.

I understand why it's not there, though. But for me, an accidental "need to design this quick" amateur, I really don't like juggling 01_cover.svg, 02_inlay_left.svg 03_inlay_right.svg and so on. Designing a booklet, folder, or even business-card is frustrating.

I think they added multi-page support in the previous point release[0]. I only use inkscape to make graphics though, so I'm not sure how user friendly the implementation is.

[0] https://inkscape.org/news/2022/05/16/inkscape-12/

I was apparently running a somwhat older version (thanks to snaps/deb failures). Upgraded and its there!

Thanks a lot for the hint. It looks and feels great.

it's really good. very easy to import and work on multi-page docs, even with different page sizes. the developers did an amazing job there.

I expect that having SVG as the native Inkscape format makes this somewhat difficult.

It really does not. SVG is not sRGB-only. You can embed an ICC profile that describe a CMYK-based color space and use colors available in that color space, in native CMYK markup, with sliders and stuff.

true, but that'd be not part of the 1.3 release notes.

You still need scribus in the loop to get to cmyk, it's not a seamless workflow yet.