reply to: So, I don't think it's a good idea overall. However, there's another command that needs to be implemented and that will give you, more or less, the functionality you need. It's copy/pasting nodes: in Node tool, pressing ctrl+c with some nodes selected, these nodes must be copied to some special storage; and when you press ctrl+v with some nodes selected, these nodes must be replaced with pasted nodes, correspondingly moved and probably rotated to fit the path in the new place.
two comments:
1. does the node copy/pasting currently exist or is it planned for the future? I just tried it and couldn't seem to get it to work, I just got a new object, not an edited version of an existing object.
2. I may not have expressed the original idea very well, so I'll try again:
Currently the existing 'Edit | Paste Style' procedure will overwrite or edit the existing 'style' attribute of a path node, while leaving the 'd' attribute and the 'transform' attribute unaffected. What I was proposing was the precise complement of this procedure, namely an 'Edit | Paste Path' procedure which would overwrite or edit the existing 'd' attribute and the 'transform' attribute of a path node, while leaving the 'style' attribute unaffected.