I am trying to make a simple draw with only a background a text (sans-serif font) over it. However when I open the draw in GIMP it always appears with a black square in the spot I put the text in Inkscape. Is there a special setting or a trick to make it right? Thanks for any help. I am using Inkscape 0.48 under Linux Xubuntu 12.10.

I guess I found part of the answer. This online book about Inkskape (http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/Text.html) says: "There are three types of text objects in Inkscape. The first is regular text. The second is flowed text; this is a text object that includes a rectangular frame. The third is linked-flowed text."

So I found out that if I use regular text the result can be opened in Gimp. Whenever I use flowed text the draw appears as a rectangle. Still trying to understand why it happens so.

It is because flowed texts are not part of the current svg standard, and my guess is that gimp doesn't use that part which inkscape does.
Never tried to import an svg to gimp myself, glad you found the answer.

Inkscape FAQ: What about flowed text?

(BTW - if you read the manual page about creating (flowed) text carefully, it's explained there as well ;-)

SVG and Flowed Text
Flowed text was a draft SVG 1.2 specification that will not in the end be adopted. The text is not likely to be viewable by other renderers. In addition, some programs will not render any of a file with flowed text (Squiggle, for example). You can convert the flowed text to a regular text object before saving to avoid this problem.

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You can create regular text by just clicking with the text tool, rather than dragging. As you've already got flowed text you can convert it to regular text using the Text > Convert to Text menu entry.

Text is the subject of Part 10 of my Inkscape tutorial, in Full Circle Magazine #70 which you can download free of charge here: http://fullcirclemagazine.org/issue-70/

Thanks everybody for all the help.