1. I don't understand the discussion at that URL. Is there any documentation anywhere as to what it considered the correct, expected behavior of inkscape at this point? I came across this bug report earlier, but it didn't seem relevant to me; it seemed to have something to do with explicitly choosing landscape mode in a menu, which I did not do.

The current behavior is the result of a patch by Wolfram Quester. That page discusses the reasons for it put forward by the author and the responses of at least one user who (like you) found the new behavior counterintuitive. I thought that if you add your comments to it, the author of the patch will be better motivated to change the code he submitted.

2. Perhaps I'm being overly sensitive, but to me, your suggestion that I submit my patch comes off as brusque and dismissive. This is inkscape-user, not inkscape-devel.

Sorry, I'm subscribed to both lists and I don't pay much attention to which one I'm replying to. All I wanted to say is that if you fail to persuade Wolfram Quester to fix his patch, you are free to submit your own patch overriding his code, and we (developers) will consider it on the same terms as the original patch. I don't see anything dismissive about it; all I wanted to say by this remark was that this behavior is not a result of some strategic decision of the core developers, but just a patch from an outside contributor, and that everyone including you are free to change this if you find the current behavior wrong. Myself, I have no opinion on the matter because I don't use PS export.