To everyone who uses snapping in Inkscape:
We plan to make _screen pixels_ (not px units) the default unit for snapping distance, so that e.g. snapping at 5 pixels remains the same distance on screen regardless of zoom.
The question is, do you still need absolute (not zoom-independent) units for specifying snap distance? If so why?
If there are no voices in defence of abs units, we will remove them altogether and use _only_ screen pixels. This will simplify the Doc Prefs dialog and will be generally saner and simpler.
-- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org
On Tue, Dec 27, 2005 at 11:12:54AM -0400, bulia byak wrote:
To everyone who uses snapping in Inkscape:
We plan to make _screen pixels_ (not px units) the default unit for snapping distance, so that e.g. snapping at 5 pixels remains the same distance on screen regardless of zoom.
The question is, do you still need absolute (not zoom-independent) units for specifying snap distance? If so why?
If there are no voices in defence of abs units, we will remove them altogether and use _only_ screen pixels. This will simplify the Doc Prefs dialog and will be generally saner and simpler.
It's difficult to say without actually playing with it, but I use snapping a LOT, so this change has a chance of either really improving Inkscape or making snapping an even bigger PITA. ;-) But I *think* this sounds like it will make it work more intuitively.
Bryce
On Tue, 2005-12-27 at 11:12 -0400, bulia byak wrote:
To everyone who uses snapping in Inkscape:
We plan to make _screen pixels_ (not px units) the default unit for snapping distance, so that e.g. snapping at 5 pixels remains the same distance on screen regardless of zoom.
The question is, do you still need absolute (not zoom-independent) units for specifying snap distance? If so why?
If there are no voices in defence of abs units, we will remove them altogether and use _only_ screen pixels. This will simplify the Doc Prefs dialog and will be generally saner and simpler.
I very much encourage you to do that change!
Thanx Bulia!
bulia byak wrote:
To everyone who uses snapping in Inkscape:
We plan to make _screen pixels_ (not px units) the default unit for snapping distance, so that e.g. snapping at 5 pixels remains the same distance on screen regardless of zoom.
The question is, do you still need absolute (not zoom-independent) units for specifying snap distance? If so why?
If there are no voices in defence of abs units, we will remove them altogether and use _only_ screen pixels. This will simplify the Doc Prefs dialog and will be generally saner and simpler.
I was recently speaking with someone about snapping. We both had desire to use snapping is such a way that all lines would be snapped to a 1px grid effectively eliminating the anti-aliasing. But we wanted to do this zoomed out to a distance where a 1px grid would not be visible. With your proposed change it would be impossible to force positioning to a grid while zoomed in with out going back to the prefs to set the snap distance. Because the needs of a person doing technical drawings are substantially different that those of someone doing artistic work, I vote for retaining the current behavior as a preference. (And bringing back the ability to snap to invisible gridlines if that isn't currently possible.) Having more options is confusing, but lack of options is sometimes prohibitive.
In a perfect world we could have profiles, where someone would choose icon or art or technical drawing or flyer and get intellegent defaults for snapping et al.
Aaron Spike
I was recently speaking with someone about snapping. We both had desire to use snapping is such a way that all lines would be snapped to a 1px grid effectively eliminating the anti-aliasing. But we wanted to do this zoomed out to a distance where a 1px grid would not be visible. With your proposed change it would be impossible to force positioning to a grid while zoomed in with out going back to the prefs to set the snap distance.
I don't quite see why it should not be possible... when zoomed out, to let's say 100% your 1px * 1 px grid will work with snapping without any problem. When zoomed in you need to move your mouse a little closer to the line than before to snap. What's the drawback? Maybe I just can't see the point, because I'm more used to doing graphics, but this sounds like pixel alignment to me, and I'd for that task still desire the proposed behaviour.
Please give me a chance to understand your point, Aaron and Josh.
David
David Christian Berg wrote:
I was recently speaking with someone about snapping. We both had desire to use snapping is such a way that all lines would be snapped to a 1px grid effectively eliminating the anti-aliasing. But we wanted to do this zoomed out to a distance where a 1px grid would not be visible. With your proposed change it would be impossible to force positioning to a grid while zoomed in with out going back to the prefs to set the snap distance.
I don't quite see why it should not be possible... when zoomed out, to let's say 100% your 1px * 1 px grid will work with snapping without any problem. When zoomed in you need to move your mouse a little closer to the line than before to snap. What's the drawback? Maybe I just can't see the point, because I'm more used to doing graphics, but this sounds like pixel alignment to me, and I'd for that task still desire the proposed behaviour.
Please give me a chance to understand your point, Aaron and Josh.
Simple... I like my snapping set very low when I use it, and I can then easily zoom in when I need to snap things. With the change to screen pixels as opposed to absolute units, I'd need to adjust the snapping frequently for it to be workable. Without panels in place yet and since a good portion of my art is done working on win32, I have to fish for the document settings dialog too often then (yes yes, F12... but it's one extra step that will need to be done many many times due to my preferred workflow). I'm fine if screen pixels become the new snapping default, but some of us do prefer the current way it works.
-Josh
On 12/27/05, Joshua A. Andler <joshua@...533...> wrote:
Simple... I like my snapping set very low when I use it, and I can then easily zoom in when I need to snap things.
You mean, you like it to snap only when zoomed in, but not when zoomed out? Why? But in any case, isn't it simpler to just hit # to turn grid off when you don't want to snap?
With the change to screen pixels as opposed to absolute units, I'd need to adjust the snapping frequently for it to be workable.
I still can't visualize workflow for which you may need different snapping distances depending on zoom. To me it looks like having different-sized mouse cursors depending on zoom :) Can you please give a more practical description of how you use it?
-- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org
bulia byak wrote:
On 12/27/05, Joshua A. Andler <joshua@...533...> wrote:
Simple... I like my snapping set very low when I use it, and I can then easily zoom in when I need to snap things.
You mean, you like it to snap only when zoomed in, but not when zoomed out? Why? But in any case, isn't it simpler to just hit # to turn grid off when you don't want to snap?
I guess that's the way it comes across... it just happens to be how I work with it. I don't use the grid, sometimes use guides, but the rest of the time I'm using the new node snapping stuff. Other than not using the grid, turning grid on and off would suffice if I didn't find the grid to be so visually irritating (yes... even temporarily... I can count on one hand how many time the grid has been turned on in Inkscape for me).
With the change to screen pixels as opposed to absolute units, I'd need to adjust the snapping frequently for it to be workable.
I still can't visualize workflow for which you may need different snapping distances depending on zoom. To me it looks like having different-sized mouse cursors depending on zoom :) Can you please give a more practical description of how you use it?
Most of my Inkscape use is for illustration/artwork as opposed to design or layout. In addition to that, my mind typically works in the way of absolute units. Absolute units make sense to me in terms of my document is 1600x1200px and when I'm zoomed in 500% the snapping pixels need to remain relevant to scale. It's partially a raster mindset I suppose, but most of the time my stuff is rasterized in the end and absolute pixels make sense to me when producing for the "screen" medium (as illustrated by my last sentence).
I'm not going to let this go the way of the HSV vs HSL thing, I didn't speak up then and lost out on what has always made the most sense to me in terms of color picking. I did talk to you about it a little after the fact, but it was too late by that point. Please just consider that different people have different workflows and different things make sense to them. What I find intuitive, you may not... and vice-versa. Therefore keeping it as an option is the better way to go in my opinion.
-Josh
First, thanks to Bulia bringing up the question here, as we discussed it in a bug report. Thanks for Josh and Aaron for the clear answer.
So, how much px is 5 screen pixels at 100% zoom?
The question remains: which abbreviation for 'screen pixels' ? 'pixels' is too long IMHO.
ralf
On 12/28/05, Ralf Stephan wrote:
First, thanks to Bulia bringing up the question here, as we discussed it in a bug report. Thanks for Josh and Aaron for the clear answer.
So, how much px is 5 screen pixels at 100% zoom?
The question remains: which abbreviation for 'screen pixels' ? 'pixels' is too long IMHO.
spx?
Alexandre
On 12/28/05, Ralf Stephan <ralf@...748...> wrote:
First, thanks to Bulia bringing up the question here, as we discussed it in a bug report. Thanks for Josh and Aaron for the clear answer.
So, how much px is 5 screen pixels at 100% zoom?
Exactly 5 :) That is, more or less, the definition of px units: it's screen pixels at 100%.
-- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org
On 12/27/05, Joshua A. Andler <joshua@...533...> wrote:
I guess that's the way it comes across... it just happens to be how I work with it. I don't use the grid, sometimes use guides, but the rest of the time I'm using the new node snapping stuff.
So you'll probably benefit from a key to toggle object snapping, right?
when I'm zoomed in 500% the snapping pixels need to remain relevant to scale.
What do you mean by "snapping pixels"? Distance between two adjacent snap lines in a grid? If so, this is NOT what it's all about. If you have a 1px grid you will always snap to px units (absolute), regardless of the snap distance setting.
fact, but it was too late by that point. Please just consider that different people have different workflows and different things make sense to them. What I find intuitive, you may not... and vice-versa. Therefore keeping it as an option is the better way to go in my opinion.
Of course. If I'm sure we understand each other correctly and you really want absolute-valued snap distance, we'll make it an option. Sorry for continued asking, but you see that some people misinterpreted the concept of snapping distance, therefore I want to be double sure that I understand you correctly.
-- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org
bulia byak wrote:
On 12/27/05, Joshua A. Andler <joshua@...533...> wrote:
I guess that's the way it comes across... it just happens to be how I work with it. I don't use the grid, sometimes use guides, but the rest of the time I'm using the new node snapping stuff.
So you'll probably benefit from a key to toggle object snapping, right?
I definitely would.
when I'm zoomed in 500% the snapping pixels need to remain relevant to scale.
What do you mean by "snapping pixels"? Distance between two adjacent snap lines in a grid? If so, this is NOT what it's all about. If you have a 1px grid you will always snap to px units (absolute), regardless of the snap distance setting.
Sorry, I wasn't too clear. By snapping pixels I was referring to the difference between absolute/screen pixels in relation to snapping. Basically, if I set snapping to 2px and I zoom in to 500%, I want that 2px for snapping to be scaled with the document (as it currently is). And to tell you the truth, another place we may look to have the absolute/screen pixel option is with the keys used for node editing (with the Alt modifier). I know I would definitely have mine set to absolute (or px rather than spx).
fact, but it was too late by that point. Please just consider that different people have different workflows and different things make sense to them. What I find intuitive, you may not... and vice-versa. Therefore keeping it as an option is the better way to go in my opinion.
Of course. If I'm sure we understand each other correctly and you really want absolute-valued snap distance, we'll make it an option. Sorry for continued asking, but you see that some people misinterpreted the concept of snapping distance, therefore I want to be double sure that I understand you correctly.
I'm pretty sure we understand each other. And don't worry about asking more than once, better safe than sorry.
-Josh
On 12/28/05, Joshua A. Andler <joshua@...533...> wrote:
Sorry, I wasn't too clear. By snapping pixels I was referring to the difference between absolute/screen pixels in relation to snapping. Basically, if I set snapping to 2px and I zoom in to 500%, I want that 2px for snapping to be scaled with the document (as it currently is).
So, you want your mouse to be snapped across half the screen, if zoomed in close enough?
And to tell you the truth, another place we may look to have the absolute/screen pixel option is with the keys used for node editing (with the Alt modifier). I know I would definitely have mine set to absolute (or px rather than spx).
Are you aware that there exist arrow keys _without_ alt, which move by absolute distance (default 2 px, settable in prefs)?
-- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org
bulia byak wrote:
To everyone who uses snapping in Inkscape:
We plan to make _screen pixels_ (not px units) the default unit for snapping distance, so that e.g. snapping at 5 pixels remains the same distance on screen regardless of zoom.
The question is, do you still need absolute (not zoom-independent) units for specifying snap distance? If so why?
If there are no voices in defence of abs units, we will remove them altogether and use _only_ screen pixels. This will simplify the Doc Prefs dialog and will be generally saner and simpler.
I'm with Aaron on this... retaining the current behavior as an option would be optimal in my book. I don't use snapping all that often, but, when I do, the ability to zoom in and have the snapping work based on absolute units is very helpful to me.
-Josh
participants (7)
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unknown＠example.com -
Alexandre Prokoudine -
Bryce Harrington -
bulia byak -
David Christian Berg -
Joshua A. Andler -
Ralf Stephan