Comment 1 for bug 171935

Originator: NO

The point I was making earlier is that, by design, each new document is
attached to a new instance of Inkscape (Inkscape functions as a SDI: Single
Document Interface). Therefore, opening a new document starts the whole
application. On OS X there is an additional level: the application wrapper
(i.e. what you see in the doc which launches the Inkscape binary when you
click on it). This application wrapper is just a small bach script and some
OS X added goodness (icons etc.) and this does not take much time to run.
So to conclude, keeping the OS X wrapper alive when you close a document
will be more consistent with the rest of OS X interface but won't solve
your startup time issue anyway.
So what are the solutions:
1/ did you try an official Inkscape build for Panther? The first that was
with the dev builds had debug information which makes the app bigger, hence
longer to start.
2/ fill a feature request (rather that a bug report) to ask for keeping
the application wrapper alive. This probably won't happen soon but would
indeed be a nice thing to have (once again it wonmt solve the startup time
problem though).
3/ give us some benchmarks on the startup time of a debug info-free
Inkscape on your system so that we can compare to what happens on ours (+
some info on your hardware: which model, how much ram, which processor
speed etc.). A good way to have a precise timing is to use the terminal. If
Inkscape is in your Applications folder, just run:
time /Applications/Inkscape.app/Contents/Resources/bin/inkscape
and close Inkscape as soon as the window appears completely.