Are you looking to animate something on a webpage, using SVG? If so, you'll probably need to write the code yourself. Inkscape doesn't support animation. As far as I understand, you can use SVG only, or it's also possible to use some CSS with SVG. Here's a page that gives kind of an overview of animation and Inkscape and/or SVG:
https://inkscape.org/en/learn/animation/If the purpose is not animation, then I would be curious why you have this restriction of only one attribute or value which changes. (Although certainly you should not feel obligated to indulge my curiosity
) But often when we finally understand the whole picture, we can offer more effective solutions.
When you rotate something, it's not surprising that all kinds of values are changing. If you were moving something from left to right, for example, then maybe only the x coordinate changes. However, look at the object. Even a simple, 2-node path, means 2 nodes' coordinates change. And the XML Editor is going to reflect that both nodes' coordinates changed. Considering rotation, you're moving that needle, with many more than 2 nodes, and the nodes move by both x and y direction. So rotation is a complicated process, as far as XML goes. And the XML uses more than just the node coordinates. I don't know exactly what the transform attribute is or does, but that's part of the process too.
