On Sun, 2005-06-12 at 19:35 -0400, Michael Wheeler wrote:
The problem I see with changing "root" to "background" is that root isn't the name of a layer like background is. It indicates that its elements are not grouped under any of the layers. In fact, elements under root can be both in front of and behind an element on Layer 1, or any other layer. In English, at least, root seems like the appropriate term, while background could be misleading.
Hi folks, First of all, thanks for putting the thread about "background vs root" back on the right track from the "SVG editor vs Illustration package" fork. The way I see it, Inkscape forked off Sodipodi, the SVG editor, to provide the users with "an open source drawing tool with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, and CorelDraw" and I am deeply greatful for focusing on that design (first sentence on inkscape's webpage).
While background is a term more understandable for a graphic artist (Inkscape's main target audience), in this case it is indeed misleeding. The fact that an object in the "background" could be above the complete layer stack sounds ridiculous.
Some of these may illustrate the behaviour better: * Float * Unassigned * Global
I am liking global most. It explains the object can be placed anywhere in the stack regardless of layers hierarchy.
cheers