You're describing groups; this is something different.

OK. But then I need our groups to be significantly expanded in functionality: I need a "current group" to which I can by default add newly created objects, and I need a dialog that would show me only these top-level groups so that I can get an idea of what I have in the document, and to set visibility/editability of such groups easily. See? You may call them "groups," but then we'll simply end up adding a lot of the standard layer functionality to these groups, because your "slices" do not support it.

I guess using the term "layers" sets up wrong expectations of behavior for people coming from Illustrator/graphic design backgrounds (because Illustrator calls its top-level groups "layers" and limits the functionality of child groups), so we will need to find a better term.

OK, let's call your idea "slices". Or "aspects".

What I'm describing is fundamentally different (we will still have groups, so top-level groups will necessarily act like "Illustrator layers") -- think of my "layers" being like search keywords, where one can say "hide all objects not matching this set of keywords".

We already have Find which is pretty close to what you describe. And we can make it behave almost exactly as you describe, by adding some sort of a combo box to Object properties that would allow you to set inkscape:keywords attribute by editing it or by selecting from a pool of other keywords in the document, and adding one more field to Find for searching by these keywords. It's not difficult, I just don't see much use in it if, as you say, we still need "traditional" groups as well.

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From MAILER-DAEMON Thu Jun 10 01:59:18 2004

Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 10:58:33 +0200 From: Thorsten Wilms <t_w_@...123...> To: inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] layers Message-ID: <20040610085833.GA5599@...124...> Reply-To: tw@...125... References: <1086842330.709.7207.camel@...4...> Mime-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <1086842330.709.7207.camel@...4...> Priority: normal X-Mailer: Mutt User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.5.1i X-Spam-Score: 0.0 (/) X-Spam-Report: Spam Filtering performed by sourceforge.net. See http://spamassassin.org/tag/ for more details. Report problems to http://sf.net/tracker/?func=add&group_id=1&atid=200001 Sender: inkscape-devel-admin@lists.sourceforge.net Errors-To: inkscape-devel-admin@lists.sourceforge.net X-BeenThere: inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.9-sf.net Precedence: bulk List-Unsubscribe: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-devel, mailto:inkscape-devel-request@lists.sourceforge.net?subject=unsubscribe List-Id: <inkscape-devel.lists.sourceforge.net> List-Post: mailto:inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net List-Help: mailto:inkscape-devel-request@lists.sourceforge.net?subject=help List-Subscribe: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-devel, mailto:inkscape-devel-request@lists.sourceforge.net?subject=subscribe List-Archive: http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum=inkscape-devel Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Disposition: inline

On Thu, Jun 10, 2004 at 12:38:51AM -0400, MenTaLguY wrote:

In many tools, layers are entirely are decoupled from grouping and z-ordering. They basically just let you take slices through "aspects" of the document and work on them in isolation.

For 2d apps, think of GIS databases or KiSS dolls. For 3d apps, Blender or Unigraphics.

I think that's the direction we should go with layers, too. It gives us some really useful functionality we'd otherwise not have.

But most the well known vector and bitmap apps all couple layers to z-order. And the whole metaphor doesn't make sense if you take that aspect away. So whatever you go for: don't call any concept that doesn't create z-order compartments layers

And a z-order management facility just like illustrator/freehand layers is needed anyway.

• an object can be in zero or more layers

Such concepts are better called groups or sets. Can what you aim at be described as saved selections?

Going with the set name: Objects could be explicitly added to sets, or sets could be like live queries (allthough I wonder if that wouldn't be overkill).

Just an idea: How about inheritance of properties from sets/groups to members?

• objects are visible in the editor iff:

  1. their CSS visibility is "visible"

  2. at least one layer they're in is visible, or they aren't in any

layers

3. their parents are visible by these criteria

• there should be a {select,unselect}-by-layer feature

• there should also be an {add,remove}-selected-objects-to-layer

feature

Oh, saved selections wouldn't have visibility of their own, but allow to change all members state at once.

--- Thorsten Wilms