Okay... first off, I nuked my svn checkout, xmingw, and my gtklibs... Then brought everything back up-to-date and clean at that.
Cross-compiled for win32 and fired up inkscape on the win32 box. The error I reported yesterday persisted (about not finding python25.dll). I manually moved the dll file from the main inkscape dir into the python subdirectory where python.exe resides. This solved problem of not being able to find the dll.
However, effects still do not work. When I try to run effects (interpolate is my example here) I now get output stating: "python: can't open file 'share\extensions\interp.py': [Errno 2] No such file or directory"
For the sake of trying to find a workaround (like the dll), I copied the "share\extensions" directory structure with the contents into that python dir as well (hey it worked for the dll). Unfortunately, this did not fix it.
It seems like this may be more related to our library upgrade and new python than the changes Ted made. I really want to make sure that people will still be able to use effects on win32, and it seems like the sooner we can know if there's a problem, the better.
Anyone else building for/on win32 having a different experience? Again, note that I'm cross-compiling, not compiling natively.
Side note: Bob, the gtkrc file copied to "inkscape\etc\gtk-2.0" has the correct change I suggested. But, the gtkrc file that is in "inkscape\share\themes\MS-Windows\gtk-2.0" does not have the change and it is the one inkscape actually uses.
-Josh
P.S. Ted, you're getting CC'd because I want you to know that I plan on testing your changes on win32 asap... and also to know that I will bug you if your changes don't work on win32. ;)