On 04/22/2012 06:08 PM, Johan Engelen wrote:
Apparently, I cannot stop you guys from adding this extremely fine-detailed control of snapping.
This has not been done at all, and this has nothing to do with the issues you have with the current state of the UI. Before we had a distinction between sources and targets in the snap buttons. This has been removed to make things easier, and I truly believe it's easier now. Basically, I did exactly what you' re asking: NOT adding fine-grained control!
Please do not add it anywhere in the toolbar UI, but hide it somewhere deep instead
That is exactly what I proposed a few mails ago (adding only a single button to pop-up the document properties dialog, making it discoverable while avoiding clutter), to allow power-users to achieve what they need and to allow novices to find their way around the snapping toolbar.
Choice of snap targets is interesting and should be in UI, choice of snap sources like nodes isn't.
You're basing your opinion too strongly on the node tool only, I believe. In the selector tool for example you really need to be able to control what snaps to the grid, and what not. So control of snap sources is a must, also for novices. Buttons are much easier for this than options such as "snap-closest-only", and are in some cases even indispensable as Luca explained. I would feel the same about the node tool, because in general I don't want to snap smooth nodes to anything. But it should be possible for power-users.
(other examples of toggles ready for removal: grid and guides snapping toggles. shift+3, shift+| work fine for disabling the showing/snapping of grids/guides. yes you won't be able to see them but... come on....
What would removing those toggles bring us? Only more space on the snap toolbar? They're not confusing, they're all at the bottom, and on top of that the window size is still limited by the tools toolbar.
Perpendicular and tangential snap toggles would be a much better of that space)
I've thought about that too, but these options currently still depend on the snapping to paths. Therefore, they should be greyed out when snapping to paths is disabled, but this would add another sub-group to the snap toolbar. So it requires a bit more work than just dropping the buttons there.
Kind regards,
Diederik