Hi Friends, and mostly dvlierop,

I've just run into an unusual snap circumstance, in Inkscape 0.48.1 on Win7, 64-bit. You may well have it fixed by now. But just to be sure, I'll explain; and I can make a sample file if needed.

I have both a rectangular grid and axonomic grid in one file. For the moment, I unchecked "Visible" option in Doc Props for the rect grid. And I have "Snap to visible grid lines only" checked for both grids. What I first noticed was snapping behavior labelled "Cusp node to grid intersection" at places where there was no intersection of the axon grid. When I make the rect grid visible, I can see that it's snapped to the intersection of the not visible rect grid and visible axon grid.

It seems to me that snapping to a grid that's not visible is inappropriate (especially with 'visible only' engaged). Sometimes things that seem inappropriate to me, actually happen on purpose, for some reason I didn't consider though. Anyway, I didn't see anything about this at Lauchpad, although I don't always know the proper search terms.

Out of curiosity, I'll switch visibilities, to see if it works the other way around.... Ok yes, it does the same thing. And of course, with both grids visible, it still also snaps.

Actually, aside from snapping to a not visible grid, I'm not sure if snapping to the intersection of 2 different grids is all that appropriate. Although I don't know, maybe someone doing some fancy math could use 2 kinds of grids at the same time. So maybe having it just as an option, so it can be turned off if not needed.

Anyway, just for your info, in case it's news to you. If not, no worries, and thanks again for you great work on Inkscape
All best

this is not an answer to your question, which is more along the lines of 'why these words?' but if you don't want a grid to be a snapping target just uncheck 'Enabled'. AFAIK the 'visible' means that the grid can be seen, but the 'snap to visible grid lines only' means that when you are zoomed out and the smallest divisions are not displayed Inkscape does not snap to those undisplayed grid lines which would just mean a useless, constant snapping. So the choice of terms could have been less confusing, I suppose, but I can't think of a substitute... maybe 'snap to displayed only'. Also maybe I don't have the whole story right!

Oh, I see what you're saying. I'm not sure why anyone would ever want to snap to such "not visible" grid lines, in the first place. But of course I always trust developers wouldn't waste time on something, if it didn't have some good use.

So then "Snap to visible grid lines" has nothing to do with whether a grid is visible or not ("Visible" is checked or not). But it still seems strange that it snaps to grids that aren't visible....or more precisely, snaps to the intersection of lines of one visible grid and one not visible grid.

Yes, to solve this problem, I have to uncheck "Enable". I wanted to have both grids, and then just change the visibility, according to my needs. But there's not much difference between toggling "Visible" and toggling "Enable". So it's certainly not a "work-stopping problem". It just seems weird to me that a not visible grid could be snapped to.

I thought the "Visible" checkbox is just another way to hide the grid, as can be done via View menu (or key shortcuts). But perhaps it means something else?

brynn wrote:I thought the "Visible" checkbox is just another way to hide the grid, as can be done via View menu (or key shortcuts). But perhaps it means something else?

Well, if you think about the fact that there is both an 'enable' box and a visible' box things might start making sense? I mean you could check 'enable' and uncheck 'visible'! Now clicking the 'grid' in view menu does not show the grid(s) ever but does toggle whether or not snapping to that grid happens
If you have more than one grid, e.g. the view menu item would also hide both of them but disable them too.... Try and see how it works and after lots of research and experimentation you can report back with a detailed observation!

LOL! Ok, here's my first observation. Tool tip for "Visible" checkbox says "....Objects are still snapped to invisible grids."

But I just can't think of any reason for this being in Doc Prop. I mean, if the reason for having visible and invisible grids (as opposed to hidden or not) is to make it convenient to get rid of the grid while working (yet still have snapping) why is it in Doc Prop and not in a menu (or in a key shorcut)?

2nd observation. Tool tip for "Enabled" checkbox says "Determines whether to snap to this grid or not". But that's not a full description of what it does. Because unchecking it does not simply disable snapping, it disables the entire grid. It all but deletes the grid.

And just to backtrack for a moment. When you explained what "Snap to visible grid lines only" means, I was trying to make sense of it, in terms of snapping to invisible grid. But now that I think of it, in terms of zooming, like you said, ".... which would just mean a useless, constant snapping.". So why would anyone want to snap to those "invisible" grid lines -- ever??

What I think we have here, is a lot of confusion about "hidden" and "invisible" and exactly what they mean. For the lines that are invisible because of zooming, to me, they are temporarily hidden. But then hidden because of zoom is different from hidden from view (via View menu).

I think that hidden from view via View menu, should stay the same. But there needs to be some other kind of hidden for the zoom-related kind, because "invisible" seems misleading. On the other hand, I don't know why anyone would ever want or need to snap to those zoom-related hidden invisible grid lines, in the first place. So I would suggest getting rid of that option altogether. Then a new word does not need to be invented.

I can see where someone might want to get a grid out of the way, yet still be able to snap to it. But that functionality would seem to me, to be better suited as a menu item, or button on the Inkscape window. Getting out Doc Prop dialog for that isn't very convenient, imo. But I'm still not sure why it was put in Doc Prop to begin with. And maybe I still don't have a clear view of the purpose for all these things yet.

And finally, getting back to one of my first questions, I can't think of any reason why one would want or need to snap to the intersections of 2 different grids, whether any or all are visible or not. So I think that should be gotten rid of as well.

Fortunately, none of this is urgently needed info. So whenever dvlierop gets here

PS - to repeat, this is in Inkscape 0.48.1

All true, I don't have much to add

What you see here is that probably no one of the devs had a clear view or thought long about this. This is confusing indeed, and is a bit of overkill.

I can't really decide myself either, because I can't even imagine using multiple grids. Why would someone need that? So I cannot tell either wheter it would be useful to snap to their intersections. Could you explain your use-case a bit more? I know _some_ users use it, and I know who implemented this, so there must be a need for this

I don't think though that we should get rid of the option to snap to zoomed-out grid lines. Some people are using grid lines to snap at the pixel level, which avoids aliasing issues when exporting to bitmaps. For them it might be nice to zoom out and allow for very smooth drawing, while still snapping to pixels at the micro scale. They need the snapping, but we can't possibly draw all the grid lines. If we don't snap to the invisible grid lines, then any non-geometric drawing will become difficult. But then again, I've never actually talked to such a user!

My use case...or actually I can think of a couple. One is where I needed an axonomic grid to draw a certain object. But otherwise, I wanted to snap to a regular grid. Another case is where I wanted to have both, to experiment if one would be better than the other. (It's project which may well prove impossible. But a couple of us are trying to make a simulation of lace in a heart shape, like you might see around Valentine's Day. (something like a doily maybe) I may be the only one, but I was thinking that the axonomic grid might make drawing a heart shape easier, and if I could make that work, I could use the grid to snap the other elements of the lace (tiny circles or stars, or whatever) into position.)(When we use PAP or other LPE, it warps the elements, or segments of the lace, and we would hope to make unwarped, yet bended lace effect.) (I don't have a cutter, but I think that many people who use cutters would like some nice lace designs.)

Anyway, I thought I would create both grids, and then have just one of them visible at a time. But when things start snapping to the intersections of both grids (even with one not visible) it gets difficult. As I've said, it's easy enough just to enable and disable in Doc Props, as needed. So if there IS some use for snapping to 2 different grids, no changes need to be made.

And I could concieve of someone having 2 different rectangular grids. I don't know, maybe they have some kind of scene with close up areas, and a 2nd scene further away....like a regular grid and "perspective grid". Well, or something like that, anyway!

I don't think though that we should get rid of the option to snap to zoomed-out grid lines. Some people are using grid lines to snap at the pixel level, which avoids aliasing issues when exporting to bitmaps.

That not only makes a lot of sense, but I think I might find a use for it, now that I understand. That is, as long as I'm using a pixel grid! But what about custom grids whose lines don't necessarily intersect at pixels? And same for axonomic grid, whose lines....well I guess they never align to pixels....not all of them anyway, like in a pixel grid. But again, it's easy enough to just not use that option. I was just curious about why it's availabe.

But the one thing out of all of this discussion, that would be helpful, is to have an option to stop snapping to the intersection of 2 grids (visible or not).

Thanks for your help