testing your patch with Inkscape 0.48+devel r10112 on OS X 10.5.8 (i386) - command line version - I get these console messages when launching Inkscape:
(inkscape:97531): Pango-WARNING **: Invalid UTF-8 string passed to pango_layout_set_text()
(inkscape:97531): Pango-WARNING **: Invalid UTF-8 string passed to pango_layout_set_text()
(inkscape:97531): Pango-WARNING **: Invalid UTF-8 string passed to pango_layout_set_text()
(inkscape:97531): Pango-WARNING **: Invalid UTF-8 string passed to pango_layout_set_text()
testing your patch with Inkscape 0.48+devel r10112 on OS X 10.5.8 (i386) - command line version - I get these console messages when launching Inkscape:
(inkscape:97531): Pango-WARNING **: Invalid UTF-8 string passed to pango_layout_ set_text( )
(inkscape:97531): Pango-WARNING **: Invalid UTF-8 string passed to pango_layout_ set_text( )
(inkscape:97531): Pango-WARNING **: Invalid UTF-8 string passed to pango_layout_ set_text( )
(inkscape:97531): Pango-WARNING **: Invalid UTF-8 string passed to pango_layout_ set_text( )