Perhaps you need to take this as an opportunity to create a more general set of SVG templates. I am assuming you have programmatic elements in the template. So your only choice is to exercise the template using HTML::Template and rendering a set of SVG files unencumbered with programming constructs or place holders. Then, edit them as you wish. Save this general set of templates somewhere safe, then make a copy of the set and "templatize" them. I'd recommend not using any constructs other than the TMPL_VARs. This way, in the future, updating the SVG is as simple as editing the source templates and regenerating the templates from there.