Gradients doesn't looks good in imported .ai or .eps file that is made with Adobe Illustrator

the attached PDF file imports without errors in Inkscape 0.46+devel r22575 on OS X 10.5.8. The design is rendered identically in Inkscape compared to the PDF in the (osx native) PDF viewer.

Is your problem with SVG files created by AI or with SVG files saved with Inkscape after opening the AI PDF files?

This is how the head and the feet are look like (screenshot) when I import the .ai file in Inkscape.
I get the same result when I export the file in Adobe Illustrator to .svg and open it inkscape.
I am using Inkscape 0.47pre4 r22446, built Oct 15 2009 in Ubuntu 9.10 64 bit.

AFAIU that happens because SVG doesn't have gradient meshes - you have to simulate it like described in this screenshot:
<http://www.inkscape.org/screenshots/gallery/inkscape-0.45-gradient-mesh-experimental.png>

Open the attached drawing containing the left shoe of the santa icon in Inkscape and inspect its fill and stroke attributes: The patches only have fill colors but not white strokes, these look like (rendering) gaps in Inkscape or due to rounding errors when converting the PDF to SVG.

…the blur of the masked and clipped mesh is missing... see attached file with the now 'smooth' shoe after manually blurring inner-most group.

Thank you for your explanation.
I didn't know that SVG doesn't have gradient meshes.