I have been discussing this with Ralf off -list, and it is possible that these issues will be dissolved away when Gtkmmification is finished, but in the mean time, I have a question.
Is the inkscape object and the inkscape_application_init( ) which creates it intended to be a Singleton pattern, or a Factory pattern, allowing more than one Inkscape::Application object, perhaps parameterised (or something else)?
I might not have brought this up now, but my memory was jogged by the comment at the top of page 2 http://www.thedailywtf.com/forums/48173/ShowPost.aspx (and elsewhere).
inkscape_application_init( ) is called in three places, in main.cpp, exactly once at application start-up; by SVGPreview::SVGPreview() when we want to provide a preview of an SVG file in a File->Open dialogue and by ImageIcon::init(), probably for similar reasons.
I am assuming that the code is not wrong (the new-gui is intended to run with inkscape being NULL), but I suspect that it need to be better commented documented. If this is worth doing, could some kind soul post a few hints and I will do it
Ben