After emerging media-gfx/inkscape-0.44 (USE="doc gnome inkjar lcms mmx plugin spell -bonobo -boost -debug"), upon startup I am told that the preferences.xml file located in ~/.inkscape is an invalid XML file. An individual run with xmllint also declares the file to be invalid. All preferences.xml contains is on line: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
So, delete it and try again? We don't install files into ~/