On Tuesday 15 February 2005 5:32 pm, mental@...32... wrote:
If you need to snap to finer increments, don't you have to zoom more closely to see them anyway?
Speaking from a CAD background, in my experience snap to grid and grid visibility are, and should be, independent. I frequently run snap to grid on an invisible grid. It is useful to not clutter the screen with a grid when all I need is the snap. High-density grids also have a history of causing slow screen repaints in CAD programs.
As someone else said, look at the rulers. In most CAD programs, there is also a small numerical display indicating position. This feature is also present in inkscape.
But in CAD, it would be silly to try to snap to a grid which was smaller than a pixel. Qcad handles this situation by switching to the smallest sensible multiple of the specified grid.
In a broader sense, vector graphic programs like inkscape are bound to see some convergence with CAD in the future. I know that I have seen features on each side that I would like to see implemented on the other.
The major single design point that is missing from most graphics applications is precision. It really needs to be designed in. Trying to patch it in later doesn't make sense. So IMHO, the more precise, the better. Vector graphics are precise by definition, so it should be a basic program design philosophy to maintain UI access to whatever level of precision is required for the job at hand.