Comment 84 for bug 170049

This might seem very naive, but why do you actually have to change the internal coordinate system? Can't you add an option in user preferences or document preferences, which in the latter case could be added as metadata to not affect backwards compatibility, to where 0,0 should be and have it only affect the user interface? Simply translate what coordinates are displayed for an object in the user interface, without changing the internal coordinate system. This should be an extremely simple mathematical translation, and the coordinates can be translated back internally when the document is saved so no internal coordinates need to change, and no previous documents need to be broken. I'm sure there are already translations for object coordinates for specific formats when they are saved since SVG files assume 0,0 is top left.

This seems like a perfectly fine and elegant solution; it even seems like it should be preferential to me than implementing a system where all internal coordinates are absolute and revolve around a user-given origin, because a user changing the origin doesn't also change every single coordinate in the file, it only changes how coordinates are displayed in the user interface. To me it seems preferential, because any coordinate system change only affects the mathematical translation and not every single point in the system.

I'm literally just talking about translating the x and y values displayed to the user in the top bar by adding a function. What is wrong with this solution?