I'm drawing SVG manually, but I'm using Inkscape for the job since it shows me how the outcome is immediately. However, I have one problem. When modifying/creating a "transform" attribute, and entering something like "scale(-1,1) translate(-100,-100)" into it, it is automatically converted into "matrix(-1,0,0,1,100,-100)". This is probably done because it is more economical, but it bugs me, because I, as a human, find it a lot easier to see transformations as steps (i.e. scale like this, then translate like that) instead of a matrix transformation.
Please tell me there is a way to stop Inkscape from doing this. I want to keep my transformations just like I enter them.
In Inkscape Preferences under Transforms, there is an option to store transformation as Optimized or Preserved. If Preserved is selected, Inkscape will retain the original x,y etc. values and store translation/scale/rotation changes into a matrix. However, this is not as helpful as it could be, since if one wishes to manually edit the SVG later, you have to decipher the matrix values. Instead, if Preserved is selected, Inkscape ought to always output the transform matrix broken down into scale(), translate(), and rotate().
This was originally Question 20632 (https:/