(If your only reason is 'But I'm used to it!', I'm sorry - this doesn't count among professionals. Maybe you're better off if you explain to us which kind of artwork you want to animate and why you think you can only create it in Inkscape - we could then discuss a way you could achieve the same result in AS. These limitations are mentioned in the manual, and if you know them you can live quite comfortably with it. It also fails when you want to export AS animation to Flash and notice all your gradients and brushes will not show in Flash. Let's face it, AS isn't very good in importing vector artwork, mostly because it uses a Bezier curve much different from what other programs use. ai files but spend hours with cleaning them up?

What's the use in creating effects which won't export, or if you could import. But even then I strongly recommend that you create your animation art directly in AS. You didn't mention the OS you're working on - if it's Linux, then maybe you don't have a choice. Inkscape itself is very clumsy to use, IMO.

In the manual it doesn't specify which of the at least 6 different. ai here because I don't have 'ghostscript' installed, whatever that is.

I just installed Inkscape on my Mac and really wondered why anybody would want to use it. I checked the Smith-Micro website and the manual (which you could download separately before buying), and it only says 'imports EPS', in the manual it says 'imports Illustrator 8 only'.

Inkscape eps import mac