You're not holding down the ctrl key are you?

If you hold down the ctrl key when moving the mouse (including using the mouse accessibility keys), it will do scaling exactly as you describe.

If you are using sticky keys, depending on the config and how many times you hit the key, the ctrl key may stay enabled after using that ctrl+q for quick move causing this behaviour.

I did some testing with these settings on, and found that it is not hard accidentally enabling control.

I think you may be misremembering. I was a bit unsure myself because I don't use this functionality too often, so I installed the older versions and tested, and none of the generated maps had links back up to the parent map.

Could you be confusing it with the html export (from the same dialog)? The HTML export do have the controls you talk about (parent, up/down/left/right)

Try changing the style of the arrow heads, Tools -> Set properites -> Arrow Heads. The default settings are often WAY to small....

Or for the prettier arrows, use the WARROWD command.

The character set in map notes only does standard ASCII characters, not the entire Unicode range, so it has certain limits what will work or not.

You can easily test yourself if anything is necessary to remove by creating a new map note in a map, paste in your text, and then open it up in the viewer (the blue window) afterwards.

That's completely up to you.

The main thing I very strongly encourage when making a non-overland map, is that there is a symbol (or equivalent) on the parent map to link it to. No making an inn and linking it to a blank spot near the road on the parent map because "there could feasibly be an inn here". It is the mappers responsibility to place interesting places in their maps for others to link from, and if no marker for such an interesting place exist on the map, well, then an intermediate map may be required. So generally, the idea with an intermediary map is to make up for "shortcomings" of the parent map.