Fix for this report (bug #1282968), bug #1304602 and bug #1382747 confirmed with Inkscape 0.91+devel r13729 on OS X 10.7.5 (on-canvas text rendering with X11- as well as Quartz-backend).
A detail I noticed with regard to this report (about kerning of Telugu fonts): the incorrect spacing as noted in comment #3 (and as rendered in current stable 0.48.5): "ZWNJ character should not have produced space" is also present with 0.91+devel r13729. This probably should be tracked separately (if confirmed as bug in Inkscape and not in one of the external libraries used by inkscape).
Fix for this report (bug #1282968), bug #1304602 and bug #1382747 confirmed with Inkscape 0.91+devel r13729 on OS X 10.7.5 (on-canvas text rendering with X11- as well as Quartz-backend).
A detail I noticed with regard to this report (about kerning of Telugu fonts): the incorrect spacing as noted in comment #3 (and as rendered in current stable 0.48.5): "ZWNJ character should not have produced space" is also present with 0.91+devel r13729. This probably should be tracked separately (if confirmed as bug in Inkscape and not in one of the external libraries used by inkscape).