Dear Xara...

The Width and Height input control box labels are meaningless unless the Rotation is 0° or 180°: they flip and their sense becomes Height and Width controls when the rotation is 90° or 270.
I also have no sense of which node the Rotation references: 0° seems to be due South and positive increments turn the ellipse anti-clockwise across the range 0° to 360°. c.f., Lines that seem to point left and go to to ±180°.

Your Manual and Help totally overlook this.

Logically, the boxes should be labelled Major-axis & Minor-axis.

Acorn