The Book of Inkscape

A.7 Transformations

Every object in SVG has its own natural place on the canvas. For example, for a rectangle, this place is defined by the x and y attributes on the rect element:

<rect id="rect2310"
      y="350"
      x="100"
      width="300"
      height="150" />

However, one of the most interesting features of SVG is that this position can be affected by the transform attribute. Most often, this attribute contains a sequence of six numbers inside a matrix(...):

<rect transform="matrix(0.96333,0.26831,-0.26831,0.96333,203.200,-160.066)"
      id="rect2310"
      y="350"
      x="100"
      width="300"
      height="150" />

In this form, the attribute represents an affine transform matrix. A complete treatment of matrix algebra is way outside the scope of this book, but you should have an idea of ...