I am working with the clone tool, but when I move the + centre of rotation to the bottom of my shape it jumps a few mm to the right and I can't figure out why this is happening. I have checked that 'snap' is off and I'm not using guide lines or grids, I have held down the Ctrl key while dragging it down to keep it in line and still it jumps to the right.

Does anyone know why this is happening?

so, heathenx seems to be having the same problem in this tut (near the end). he's moving the + into place in different directions and seems to get it when coming from the outside, then into place.

watch the tut and you'll see what i mean. you may have to try placing the + from different directions.

you might try zooming in more as well.

I actually fudged it in the end, figuring if it wanted to snap to something invisible I would give it something to snap to, so I dragged in a guide line from the ruler centred that on the design, turned snap on and that made it stay where I wanted it, but it was a bit of a nuisance having to do that.

This is actually a known bug, see:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/172857

Somehow it fell off my TODO-list; I'll put it back at the top. Thanks for reminding me

You're probably using v0.46, right? Could you please see if this still happens in a recent development build? I cannot reproduce this any longer. It might have been fixed by now, although I've not been able to pinpoint when or by whom....

I think I have found the problem. I had created a diamond shape and used it to clip this shape from a photo (JPEG), I am sure it was centering on the jpeg not the diamond. I found if I grouped the object and then moved the CR it worked fine and went where ever I put it. I tested it a few times yesterday using .46 and the latest DB, with the original diamond shape no clipping and then again after clipping and it worked every time. I was naive enough to think when I clipped part of an image the rest of it didn't exist any more