Since I still think Inkscape is the best open source vector editing application for the platforms I use, that means I need an X Window System running on my Macs. With the upgrade to Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) Apple has done away with their X11 release, but luckily XQuartz is there to help out.
And once you’ve got XQuartz installed, you’ll want to go into the preferences and change it from this:
to something much more reasonable, like this:
Yes, deselect that “Updated Pasteboard when CLIPBOARD changes”, because if you don’t, copy/paste will be all screwed up in Inkscape on Mac OS X.
(I’m hoping this post will help future me fix the problem much faster next time someone asks me about it.)
(There might also be useful info on Inkscape.org.)