Comment 3 for bug 168678

I tried a similar command as the original poster with Inkscape 0.46 (Apr 8 2009) and the 0.47rc that is in ubuntu karmic koala aka 9.10.

Regarding the "improvement" from 0.44 : There has not been any progress on this one.

The false y-coordinate - it is now a serious misfeature. That makes it *harder* in some casing to script.
For instance, when you use inscape --export-png --export-area=x0:y0:x1:y1 you cannot use the y coordinate that you can produce with inkscape --query-id=path123

You have to correct the y coodinate with something like the document height, but not really the full document height but a little amount subtracted.

There should be an additional command line option to specify the coordinate system (svg or inkscape-legacy). Maybe I'll file an enhancement request (very similar to the text in this very comment).