Comment 34 for bug 482993

> the version of this fix that I had tried previously was
> "sudo export VERSIONER_PYTHON_VERSION=2.5",
> which was systemwide.

Even when using 'sudo' (not needed in the context of the Inkscape launcher shell scripts), AFAIU the scope of the environment variable does not extend beyond the launched shell and processes called from it.

To make an environment variable permanently set in all shell processes you would add it to '~/.MacOSX/environment.plist' or '~/.profile' (or ~/.bash_profile) and to set an environment variable permanently system-wide you would add it for example to the shell profile in '/etc' or to a script in '/etc/paths.d/'.

But setting it permanently (and system-wide) IMHO does defeat the purpose of this environment variable: to override (system-wide) defaults for individual or current processes (again: as far as I understand it). The 'defaults' command is Apple's recommended way to permanently change the setting (python version/arch) system-wide - it should not be used in Inkscape's launcher scripts.