-----Original Message----- From: inkscape-devel-bounces@lists.sourceforge.net [mailto:inkscape-devel-bounces@lists.sourceforge.net] On Behalf Of Diederik van Lierop Sent: zaterdag 1 december 2007 13:58 To: inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] NEW: Grid visibility and snap enabling
Michael Grosberg wrote:
Is it possible to create a universal "snap on/off" command
which will
be in the menu so there won't be a need to keep the document preferences dialog open all the time? When it's on, it will respect all the settings in the dialog. When off, no snap will be active. Ideally this should be in the view menu below grid and guides.
Of course that would be easy to implement, and I've been considering something like that before. What kept me back is that it will also make snapping more confusing. For example, for snapping to an object we would need to enable the universal snap option, _and_ "snap nodes" or "snap bounding box corners", _and _ "snap to object nodes" or "snap to object paths". It will happen way to often that you'll forget to enable one of these three options, if you're aware of them at all. Even for experienced users this is confusing, I've been there ;-).
In virtually all workflows, you would either use "snap nodes" or "snap bounding box corners", not both at the same time. So to disable all snapping, you currently only have to uncheck one of these options in the document properties to disable all snapping. Maybe we should have a key/menu item/icon bound to both these options to make them easier accessible, instead of adding an universal snap option? This way you don't have to keep the document preferences dialog open all the time, and we will only have two options in series for snapping to objects. For snapping to e.g. guides, we will still have only one option to be enabled.
So, should we add a key binding, menu item and icon for this?
A possible solution:
* Shift+# => toggle grids visible = snapping = !visible. The new state is determined according to the visibility of the grid. If the grid is visible, after pressing shift+# the grid will be invisible and snapping is off, regardless the snapping state before pressing shift+#
* Ctrl+Shift+# => toggle grids visibility visible = !visible snapping is left alone and can still be enabled
* Alt+Shift+# => toggle grids snapping snapping = !snapping visibility is left alone and can still be enabled
This way, Shift+# will still work as it does now to new users. Only advanced users will ever want to use alt or ctrl I think. The current menu item should become a submenu, containing the three toggles. This is a downside as it requires more menu browsing than now.
Johan