UI inconsistencies: The Snap Bar
The Snap Bar's hint text was obviously written by committee, some members of which speak English as a second language.
As it stands up to 1.0rc1 (09960d6, 2020-04-09):
- Enable snapping (%)
- Snap bounding boxes
- Snap to edges of a bounding box
- Snap bounding box corners
- Snap midpoint of bounding box edges
- Snapping centers of bounding boxes
- Snap nodes, paths, and handles
- Snap to paths
- Snap to path intersections
- Snap to cusp nodes, incl. rectangle corners
- Snap smooth nodes, incl. quadrant point of ellipses
- Snap midpoints of line segments
- Snap other points (centers, guide origins, gradient handles, etc.)
- Snap centers of objects
- Snap an item's rotation center
- Snap text anchors and baselines
(blank space) - Snap to the page border
- Snap to grids
- Snap guides
- Snap bounding boxes
A proposed consistent text styling, succinct and of the same grammar:
- Enable Snapping
- Bounding Box
- Snap to Bounding Box edges
- Snap to Bounding Box corners
- Snap to Bounding Box edge midpoints
- Snap to Bounding Box center
- Nodes, Paths and Segments
- Snap to Paths
- Snap to Path intersections
- Snap to Cusp Nodes
- Snap to Smooth Nodes
- Snap to Segment midpoints
- Other
- Snap to Object center
- Snap to Pivot Point
- Snap to Baseline
- Snap to Page border
- Snap to Grid
- Snap to Guides
- Bounding Box
Notes:
- In the proposed version, all objects are considered proper names, therefore capitalized, with elements of the Object in lower-case. It may not be 100% according to Strunk, but at least it's consistent.
- It's an easy fix! No real coding necessary!
- In the proposed version, "Enable Snapping" doesn't have a shortcut key displayed because 1) it just looks funny there, 2) that shortcut belongs in the menu bar, and 3) that shortcut can be user-defined.
- Under "Other" the questionable separation between "Snap to Baseline" and "Snap to Page border" is removed.
- "Snap other points" includes snapping to "guide origins, gradient handles, etc." whereas the proposed "Other" makes no mention of these additional snapping points. That's what's known as "painting yourselves into a corner." Inkscape is full of these obfuscated features with no corrisponding menu item. What exactly does the "etc." part in "Snap other points" entail anyway? Are there still other points to snap to not yet mentioned? If there is a "need" for these additional snap points to be brought to focus, then more icons need to be added to the Snap Bar, a choice I'm certainly not advocating.
More to come...