Understanding Strange Copy/Paste Behavior

[Agrajag]

So I often find I use the process of creating a small box at the intersection of Guide Lines and then SHIFT-clicking the box and another object so that I can then guarantee placement of the object onto another SVG or, since I'm doing cards for a card game, making sure that its inverse (after rotating it upside-down) is in the exact same orientation and spacing in the opposite corner.

However, of late I've noticed something strange. Say I have an intersection of two guidelines where I create the corner of my box and then I also select the desired object I need to copy and place in the new location. I copy it and move to another SVG file and go to snap it to the intersection and all the snapping options match, but the darned thing WILL NOT snap to the interaction UNTIL I drop the pair, unselect them, reselect them and then move them again. Then they'll snap into place flawlessly.

What causes this odd behavior? I understand some elements of the previous file are carried over, but it's confusing that snapping would fail based on anything of this sort. Perhaps it's a bug?

[brynn]

Hhm, I haven't noticed this.  I do paste things into a new file sometimes, but I don't think I've ever attempted to snap it.  But I'll do some testing, and I'll be back shortly.

[Moini]

I think the paste process needs to be completed before anything can snap.

[brynn]

Hhmm, so far, I can't reproduce that.  But let's get the steps to reproduce really clear.

1 -- 2 instances of Inkscape open (or 2 pre-existing files)
2 -- both have 2 guides, 1 vertical, 1 horizontal
3 -- in one file, 2 rectangles are selected at the same time
4 -- copy
5 -- paste into the other file
6 -- without deselecting, snap to the guide intersection

Are those all the relevant factors?

Of course....Hi Moini!  She has a crystal ball, and as soon as I start to type a message, she posts first   

I don't understand what you mean.  If the objects are on the canvas, isn't the pasting process finished?

[Moini]

With drag and drop, you need to drop first.

[Agrajag]

I will say that in many cases the copy and paste process works fine. It's only some of the time where it gets to be problematic. The next time I run into two files that give me this issue I'll attach them here and let you play around with them.

I had one case where I had to repeatedly try to paste a set of objects into one corner of one of my cards. Every time I got anywhere near that corner the program acted like I was moving through sticky rubber. I couldn't get it to where it needed to be very easily at and, at one point, the program crashed.

[Moini]

Bug reports should go here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape

I often have an issue with copy-paste (raster images in clipboard) where images are only inserted after several tries (and then I get several copies of them). This is on Linux.

[brynn]

With drag and drop, you need to drop first.

So you're saying that drag and drop is the same thing as copy and paste?  I knew you could drag and drop raster images into Inkscape.  But I didn't know you could drag vector objects from one file and drop into another.  And even if I did know, I wouldn't have guessed that it worked via automatic copy/paste commands.

How does that work?  If you pick up and drag something on the canvas, has Inkscape actually copied it?  Or does Inkscape copy it when the mouse moves outside the window?