Re: questions about snapping centers

Ooohh, so snap to center of object is meant to be used when the rotation center 
has been moved?  Hhmm....

"rotation origin" would be an improvement - not sure about solution, but 
definite improvement

For snap to center of object, could tooltip be "snap to center of object if 
rotation origin has been moved" ?  It's a bit long, but much less confusing.

I don't suppose Inkscape can  identify when the rotation center has been moved, 
and then fallback to snap to center?  Too much ai?

But as Maren has clarified, is the fact that you can't snap to the center of 
objects in a group, using snap to rotation center, a bug?

I also just now discovered that you can only snap to the center of a text object 
using snap to rotation center.  Snap to object will not snap to the center of 
text.  Or the center of imported raster image either.  Moving the rotation 
center has no effect.  It still won't snap.

Should I make a bug report?

All best,
brynn

-----Original Message----- 
From: Diederik van Lierop
Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2018 1:37 PM
To: Inkscape User Community ; brynn
Subject: Re: [Inkscape-user] questions about snapping centers

Hello Brynn,

On 11/06/2018 01:40 AM, brynn wrote:
> Hi Friends,
>        Here's the setup.  Snap the center of one object of a group (of 2 or 
> more objects) to the center of a rectangle.
>
>        If you use the option "Snap an item's rotation center", it won't work. 
> Inkscape wants to snap the center of the group to the center of the rectangle.

I think this work as intended, as far as I can tell. It can be confusing
though. Inkscape tries to snap the ROTATION center of the group to the
ROTATION center of the rectangle. This rotation center of the group
however does not coincide with the center of the object, so snapping
likely occurs on a different position than you might have expected.

>        Questions:
>
> 1 -- Is there a bug involved in the above scenario?

I think it works as it should.

> 2 -- Exactly what is the purpose for "Snap center of objects" compared to 
> "Snap an item's rotation center"?

When creating technical drawings, it can be very useful to rotate one
object around some point on another object, or around the intersection
of two guide lines, or whatever. In that case, the rotation center of
the object is moved (snapped) to that other point, and hence it is
located far away from the center of the object itself. To still allow
snapping to the center of the object, one cannot use the rotation center
anymore, as this is located far away. In such a situation one can use
snapping to the center of the object, instead of snapping to the
rotation center.

> 3 -- Could the tootip text (for one or both options) be improved, to better 
> represent how they work?

I'm guessing that the main problem is the subtle difference between the
"rotation center" and the "object center". Maybe it would be good to
rename the "rotation center" to "rotation origin"? If we remove the
"center" part of "rotation center", then it's no longer implicitly in
the center of the object. Even better would be "transformation origin",
as it is also used for skewing. But this might be too technical, I don't
know. Anyway, it would have to be changed in more places than only in
the tooltip, likely.

Best regards,

Diederik