Comment 6 for bug 406662

<off-topic>
> Inkscape 0.47pre4 r22446, built Oct 16 2009

why don't you use the current release (0.47 from <http://sourceforge.net/projects/inkscape/files/inkscape/0.47/>) or a recent devel-build (0.47+devel from <http://inkscape.modevia.com/macosx-snap/?C=M;O=D>) instead of a long out-dated and unstable prerelease version?
</off-topic>

I recently happened to test this issue again - with the offical 0.47 package on OS X10.5.8 using the Apple's Python 2.5.1. This time it the measure script works without error after modifying the launcher script like this:

$ diff -u inkscape inkscape-locale.sh
--- inkscape 2010-05-07 03:29:28.000000000 +0200
+++ inkscape-locale.sh 2010-05-09 03:15:13.000000000 +0200
@@ -121,6 +121,7 @@
 # to crash on startup in locale_from_utf8().
 export LANG="`grep \"\`echo $LANGSTR\`_\" /usr/share/locale/locale.alias | \
  tail -n1 | sed 's/\./ /' | awk '{print $2}'`.UTF-8"
+export LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
 echo "Setting Language: $LANG" 1>&2

 sed 's|${HOME}|'"$HOME|g" "$TOP/etc/pango/pangorc" > "${HOME}/.inkscape-etc/pangorc"