Help with InkScape
 

I'm running Ubuntu 16.04.1 with Unity, and have i-Bus active to facilitate easy keyboard switching. i-Bus places an icon on the top panel to indicate which language is currently selected. For English, the default, the icon looks something like [En], for Greek [Gr], and so forth.

These icons must be in svg format; for the "ubuntu-mono-dark" theme at least, they are located in /usr/share/icons/ubuntu-mono-dark/status/22/indicator-keyboard-En.svg, Gr.svg, and so forth.

For various reasons, I would like to make it much more obvious when a language other than English is chosen (entering commands in a terminal, for instance, becomes an exercise in humor if one is not watching carefully). I had originally assumed that there was a single icon over which iBus overlaid the active ISO script code, but once I realized that each script had its own icon, I decided that modifying these to a: be in a different color, and b) to display an obvious letter from the script in question (e.g. [E] for English, [θ] for Greek, [โ] for Thai etc.) would make life much simpler.

When viewing these icons in the file manager (Nautilus in my case) or the Image Viewer, the "En," "Gr," and "Th" are easily visible, and look exactly as they do on the top panel of my desktop. If I load them into Gimp, those characters are also quite obvious. But when I load any of these svg files into InkScape, all I can find is the background. I've tried looking for something akin to layers or paths, but although I can change the color of the icon very easily, I can't figure out how to make the character visible - and even then, I'm assuming that if I can see it I can probably figure out how to replace it with what I want.

I loaded one of these files into LibreOffice Draw, but the characters were not visible at all there either.

I trolled the internet, but the question seems too specific for any usable information. I also went through various on-line tutorials for saving a file as an svg in Gimp - none of which worked at all for me.

I am using InkScape version 0.91 r13725 by the way. I would add one of the svg files, but that doesn't seem to be permitted in the [Manage Attachments] box below. Can anyone provide some sage advice for what I'm missing?

Thanks in advance.

That is puzzling, not surprising though since I know next to nothing about svg files.

The svg files are text (xml) so try using a text editor to change the color and text.
I don't run Ubuntu or use Gnome so I can't test the following. Hopefully it will give you a white theta on a blue background.

indicator-keyboard-Gr.svg

Can you give us a hint as to what file, specifically, you are looking at? It would be more useful than us guessing.

Help with InkScape
 

For Norobo:

Darn - I knew svg files were xml text and didn't even consider trying a text editor. That worked like a charm and does just what I want.

I'm still confused as to why I can't see the characters in Inkscape itself, but I'll attack that with the xml/text file open on the side to try connecting the dots. For now, I'm happy, so thanks much.

For notKlattu:

The files' location, as stated in the original question, is /usr/share/icons/ubuntu-mono-dark/status/22/ and the files themselves are "indicator-keyboard-En.svg," then Gr.svg, and so forth ...

Thanks to both of you for your prompt responses and to Norobo for pointing me to a quick and easy solution.