Thanks for all the suggestions! Here are some points so far:
1. Location - Tiled clones should be moved to Objects for greater visibility - Shortcut - Open a side dock instead of a floating box
Any objections I've missed?
2. Preview for symmetry types
Here are my preview proposals: http://i.imagehost.org/view/0688/Symmetry_list
Sorry, when I did this, I didn't notice Thorsten's proposal yet: http://thorwil.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/wallpaper_groups.png?w=176&h=...
(it certainly does a better job of explaining the rotational transformations, that I frankly didn't quite understand)
Thoughts? And although a visual selector may take up too much space, could there be a link to a full list of possible transformations, maybe a tutorial page with further explanations besides each type or each group of transformations.
3. No distinction between original and clones
I'm personally in favour of this, but I'm not sure what the rest of you think. I can see advantages to being able to grab any random clone and start changing it, most people eventually have to delete the original anyway. However, I probably missed the reasons against this. Thoughts?
4. Tile boundaries
http://i.imagehost.org/view/0177/Symmetry
I've included 3 choices of tile boundaries: - “of object”, which corresponds to the current possibility - absolute bounds, with a choice of object alignment (to either corners or to the center, with a 3x3 box. Because of space constraints, I didn't add “Object alignment” before the box picture, but that explanation will appear on mouse-over) - from selected. A drop down appears of the paths you have selected along with the object. You have to choose a single path with 2 straight segments. Inkscape makes a parallelogram out of this for the tiling, choosing one as the x axis and the other as the y axis. You can choose to invert the two if needed for the symmetries.
5. Choice of units
Small change in the interface to allow units besides %:
http://j.imagehost.org/view/0856/Shift
I've noticed that I forgot to add skew in the tabs, so just keep that in mind. I didn't quite get some of the suggestions that have been proposed, so if I've missed something, could you do a mock-up to explain?
Is it too early for me to start a blueprint draft page?
I'll do something separate for radial transformation, as they use polar coordinates.