Should Candidate List (the one with “Purple Outlines”) be the default Candidates setting in Snapping?

[GarryP]

We often get asked what the purple lines are that surround some layers – the snapping candidates.

The subject comes up a lot and is confusing for some beginners, as evidenced by the number of times it comes up as a question, e.g. today, June 1st, June 5th twice, May 23rd, May 21st, May 18th, May 17th, May 6th, May 5th, May 4th, etc.

Would it be better if the applications used a different default Candidates setting so that Candidate List was something that users could find for themselves rather than it being the default?

I realise that everyone has different preferences at different times – which is why we get a choice – but having a default which causes such confusion doesn’t seem right to me somehow.

I have no personal preference as to what the alternative default would be, only that is probably shouldn’t be this one.

[MEB]

At least it makes the snapping candidates feature discoverable otherwise users probably would't know it's there. The other methods never display the purple lines so i guess it's a little bit discussible which one should be the default- maybe just turning the Show snapping candidates box by is enough. The lines will not be drawn but they will still flash purple when hovering non-snapping candidates objects.

[GarryP]

I don’t think that I can agree with your justification as to why Candidate List is the default, but I’m interested in knowing what people think about it.
I just thought I’d put the question out there to see what kind of debate (if any) comes from it.
Maybe I’m in a minority of one, or maybe there are a lot of people desperate for change, or possibly something in the middle.
Let’s see...

[MEB]

I'm not saying it should be the default - just that it makes it discoverable but again unticking the Show snapping candidates box should be enough for that purpose while still hiding the lines.

[GarryP]

My problem with saying that ‘having the Show Candidate List set to ON makes it more discoverable’ is why every other option in all the other functionality isn’t also ON as that would also make all that other functionality more discoverable too? (I’m not really asking the question, just trying to show by my silly example why I don’t think it’s a good justification.) Or, to put it another way, what makes that feature so good that it needs to be more-easily-discoverable than every other feature that users have to discover for themselves?

Having said that, I think making Show Snapping Candidates set to OFF might be a trade-off if we didn’t start to get lots of questions asking, instead, why some of the layers keep flashing with purple outlines. Having the Candidate List as the default option but having Show Candidates set to OFF might have us answering the same amount of questions, just with slightly different questions with slightly different answers.

I don’t use many other illustration applications but the ones I have used don’t have this sort of thing so I don’t know how expected this functionality is to other users, especially those coming from other software or beginners coming to this area from scratch. From what I have seen, quite a few people don’t expect it.

Edited June 17, 2020 by GarryP

[GarryP]

Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that you thought everything should be enabled by default to make it more discoverable. I knew you didn’t mean that.
I’m finding it difficult to come up with the right words to explain what I mean because I’m trying to make a point of showing that just because something is how it is is not justification for it being how it is, or something like that. I’ve got it right in my head but putting it down in writing is hard without being long-winded, hence the awkwardly written questions above.
Anyway, apologies if I have caused any negative feelings.

[MEB]

Hi GarryP,
I've ended up hidding my last post but it was a bit late apparently. I do understand the point you were raising and shouldn't have taken it the wrong way. Please accept my apologies. I will pass your feedback to the dev team - there's indeed quite a few users bringing this up frequently and turning it off may be the best option. I will leave it with them.

Actually Show snapping candidates is disabled by default already. So either the users are enabling it or there's something buggy somewhere.