Thank you - much appreciated - I will digest it and then try working it through.

Perhaps a bit more clarification from me (the OP). I was working on a calendar and seeking a variety of small graphical symbols to indicate different events (trefoil, harp, tophat, roundel, etc.). A crescent would have been useful but there did not seem to be one native to Inkscape so I went out to ...

I am wishful of using the merge filter to combine two paths but cannot find it - where should I be looking, please? I have found the paragraph in the manual but that does not say on what to click to activate the filter.
Thank you! =

Thank you - I appreciate all the help, but I think the lesson for me is to avoid matrices. If I find I have got one then either delete and recreate or source another glyph. The calendar I was working on has now been printed and has come out well enough but there are differences in the shade and dens...

Later - there may be something in what you say. I created a new star from the leftside toolbox and checked it in the XML editor. There was no mention of stroke width so I took it to be zero. Then into the Fill and Stroke dialog which gave a width of 1px. I changed that to 2, came back to the XML and...

Hmmmm. So is there a way to update the XML editor?

In what units does the xml editor report stroke width, please? I have a simple star whose stroke width according to the Fill and Stroke sub menu is 0.810 px, but when I move to the xml editor I am told 'stroke-width 4.44489274'. I cannot at the moment relate those two figures. Thank you!