Snapping

[PixelPest]

I believe there's a scientific paper on why it doesn't work while others just do it:

[jackamus]

Good point but I think that we already have a similar problem with large technical drawing and many guides. Because the drawing may be large it is often necessary to zoom in to get a guide to snap to a particular position accurately. In this case I imagine that the algorithm can also be overwhelmed in a similar way?

[jackamus]

1 hour ago, PixelPest said:

I believe there's a scientific paper on why it doesn't work while others just do it:

What are you trying to illustrate with these two files?

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, jackamus said:

Because the drawing may be large it is often necessary to zoom in to get a guide to snap to a particular position accurately. In this case I imagine that the algorithm can also be overwhelmed in a similar way?

Like I said, it is only a guess but I remember there being some comments from Serif several years ago about having to put a lot of work into improving the snapping algorithm(s) just to handle all the snapping options in the older 1.4 or 1.5 versions without bogging down, & IIRC they have added a few more since then.

[jackamus]

Its knowing this kind of thing about the technical problems (algorithmic overwhelming) that may give people a more sympathetic view about the difficulties of adding new features.

[PixelPest]

1 hour ago, jackamus said:

(algorithmic overwhelming)

Sorry - but all I read are excuses for something other devs already implemented decades ago.

Here Intaglio again - which is a one-man-show BTW. See how the guide snaps to the bounding box first and just when I narrow the cursor it will snap to targeted points:

(algorithmic overwhelming) - Unbelievable!

As long as Serif has such defenders it is not worth asking for new features me thinks.

[jackamus]

What is 'Intaglio one man show'?

[PixelPest]

13 minutes ago, jackamus said:

What is 'Intaglio one man show'?

One developer only.

[jackamus]

Sorry I realized that it was one man band but what is 'Intaglio' is a piece of graphic software?

[PixelPest]

Never heard of Intaglio.app the vector editor+drawing software exclusively for macOS?

[jackamus]

I have now! I downloaded a trial version. Its the technical drawing and guide features that appeal to me.

[jackamus]

Looking through the manual it comes very close to the old Serif DrawPlus.

[R C-R]

7 hours ago, PixelPest said:

Sorry - but all I read are excuses for something other devs already implemented decades ago.

There is more to it than that. For example, Intaglio is Mac-only for good reason: it is a a traditional Mac drawing app based an antiquated (& somewhat clumsy by contemporary standards) MacDraw UI, updated 'under the hood' to use the core graphics capabilities provided by OS X like the Quartz 2D graphics engine, the Mac Color Picker for color control, the same text API's as Font Book, etc.

There is nothing particularly wrong with that (at least if you like working with turn of the century inspectors & such) but among other things, it it would be impossible to port it to Windows without completely rewriting it from the ground up & it is hard for me to imagine it becoming part of an integrated suite comparable to the one Affinity offers. Also, at least for me it tends to crash a lot when I try to use features based on a conversion of Apple's old QuickDraw engine like those old, blast-from-the-past, fill patterns.

Don't get me wrong -- it has some great features that Affinity lacks, but the 'already implemented decades ago so why not in Affinity?' argument (if that is what you mean) is much too simplistic because their code bases & the algorithms that they use, not to mention the potential integration issues, are entirely different.

[jackamus]

8 hours ago, R C-R said:

 based an antiquated (& somewhat clumsy by contemporary standards) 

 

When I draw or select a shape it makes no difference to me whether it is a modern or antiquated method of achieving it. If the antiquated method works then why the need to improve it? What can a new method do to make drawing a shape in a better way?

I can appreciate that if a new kind of feature is to be developed that needs a new kind of method but may also affect the old feature then I can see why the new method replaces the old method. However is this always the case?

[PixelPest]

8 hours ago, R C-R said:

(& somewhat clumsy by contemporary standards)

Your critique is more telling about you of course and Intaglio is just one example.

I don´t care how shiny or rusty the hammer is, but I simply need to "nail the job". Got that? And while you are constantly telling the code base don´t matches users feature wishes it is a waste of time for me here - simple as. Working for a developer since 2005 I would say their „job“ is to solve/overcome these hurdles and not to search for excuses.

And I´m sure you´ll say the same things about Inkscape which runs on Windows/macOS/Linux as you know.

[jackamus]

9 minutes ago, PixelPest said:

Your critique is more telling about you of course and Intaglio is just one example.

I don´t care how shiny or rusty the hammer is, but I simply need to "nail the job". Got that? And while you are constantly telling the code base don´t matches users feature wishes it is a waste of time for me here - simple as. Working for a developer since 2005 I would say their „job“ is to solve/overcome these hurdles and not to search for excuses.

And I´m sure you´ll say the same things about Inkscape which runs on Windows/macOS/Linux as you know.

I prefer your choice of words to my own re the rusty hammer.

[R C-R]

13 minutes ago, PixelPest said:

And while you are constantly telling the code base don´t matches users feature wishes ...

That is not what I am saying at all. It is simply that if the code base or UI is sufficiently different, then implementing a feature in a user-friendly way may be much more difficult & time consuming than it might seem.

[SCHLUBUB]

Snapping guides to nodes is a thing that I do in Illustrator (and before that Freehand) everyday and I think it is an essential tool for a software like AD and I really miss it. It should just work like in Illustrator and Freehand - Snap the guide to the node if you are near enough. If they add this to AD, nearly all my whishes are fullfilled regarding tools I am missing in AD. Maybe a cut tool... 

[jackamus]

Me too.