Dear all, I was not aware of this discussion, when I also ran into confusion. Finally, I figured it out myself and wrote a summary. Perhaps it is useful for somebody: http://www.biozentrum.unibas.ch/personal/schirmer/modtrafo_html/rotation.html
I fully agree with the final comments by Ian and Sacha. The comment is part of the documentation for my program MODTRAFO, a collection of jiffy programs dealing basically with models and transformations. The platform allows e.g. to create easily rotation matrices from polar or Eulerian angles or, vice versa, to analyze a transformation for its angular components. Best, Tilman
