Comment 1 for bug 1174651

It seems to me that Inkscape's cairo-based export is correctly interpreting the SVG data based on the SVG specification:

If adding the missing attribute mentioned in bug #616717 to the <image> element, the scaled bitmap image renders equally as continuous color scale in other SVG viewers (Batik, Firefox, Opera, librsvg) as it appears in cairo-based exports from Inkscape (PDF as well as PostScript).

Inkscape's current trunk though renders the scaled bitmap rather blurry towards all edges (unlike other SVG viewers).

Related earlier reports:
- Bug #461467 in Inkscape: “Image scale saved incorrectly”
- Bug #616717 “Resized bitmap images are rendered differently by Firefox or Batik ('preserveAspectRatio' attribute not set)”
and
- Bug #1163449 “Imported bitmap appear blurry when zoomed in”
(new rendering of scaled bitmap images in current Inkscape trunk: it appears that Inkscape's pixelized view of up-scaled / zoomed-in bitmap images (old renderer in stable versions, trunk <= r12227) does not conform to the current SVG 1.1 specification, and that the spec currently does lack a solution supported by Inkscape to produce the same view as produced by Inkscape's old renderer in current stable versions)