Hi again ! I would like to add some more data to my previous mail. I'm using Inkscape 0.48.
I assumed the faulty PDF file I obtained was due to my modifying the XML file directly. But it's actually not the case as it also happens with another document I didn't modify this way. Please let me show you some sample files :
1) http://mahen.free.fr/inkscape/Plaquette%20-%20Int%c3%a9rieur.svg as you can see, there is in the bottom right corner a polygon which is filled with a pattern which contains many spirals 2) http://mahen.free.fr/inkscape/Plaquette%20-%20Int%c3%a9rieur.pdf here is the resulting PDF
On my computer : - the PDF takes about 5 to 10 seconds before being displayed !! (core2duo 3 GHz, 4 GB RAM). While the PDF file produced by inDesign (from which I exported this svg before modofying it under Inkscape) was displayed instantly (but, the inkscape produced .pdf was almost 10 times heavier, it seems a couple of parts were converted to bitmaps, I wonder why). - the bottom-right pattern is invisible (under evince / Ubuntu 10.10) when looking from far away. When zooming in, you can make out the polygon shape but it's filled with some kind of random pattern - if I scroll in the document, from the PDF reader, it even makes it *crash* and slows down my system a lot ! (of course, there was no display problem under Inkscape itself)
It seems using some exported .svg files definitely don't please Inkscape a lot. Or this kind of patterns at least...
PS : I provided some font files used by the document in http://mahen.free.fr/inkscape/
Thanks ever so much for reading this ! Mahen