Jon wrote
Actually, you can get a *lot* simpler.
Thanks Jon, but I'm trying to solve this problem.
Notepad on WinNT based systems knows many different encodings, including a few different Unicode encodings.
I'd suggest checking the initial bytes of your preferences before and after. Could be UTF-8 BOM hiding in there.
OK. The preferences.xml file appears to be UTF-8 encoded according to the first line. Whether the modified file is saved as UTF-8 or ANSI (my default Notepad save mode) the following happens.
With Inkscape build 031231 the preferences file is picked up and the preferences are used. With Inkscape build 040106 the preferences file is not picked up.
Swapping preference files does not alter things. I read this as a change in Inkscape and nothing to do with the preferences file.
Can someone help here? For example, Bob, what happened between these two releases?
vellum