The current snapping mechanism is next to unusable when there are many places where a given thing might snap. The approach of snapping everything-to-everything is fundamentally wrong, because it simply doesn't work for many snapping points. I have a different idea, inspired by Corel DRAW, where snapping is much more useful than currently in Inkscape:
1. When snap is enabled, the Select tool displays a highlight and some text describing the snappable thing over which it hovers. The things that are highlighted are the same that are enabled in the snap toolbar. 2. During a subsequent drag the snapping point that gets highlighted is chosen as the only snapping point for the dragged object. Otherwise the object doesn't snap when moving. This way we don't have to snap everything to everything, because we know one of the points the user intends to snap.
If someone could give me some pointers about how to implement it, I could work on this, because it's the only feature that I found really lacking when I switched to Inkscape from Corel DRAW.* I like my drawings to be perfectly aligned :)
Regards, Krzysztof Kosiński
*) fortunately the ability to easily specify alpha for gradient stops was more important :)