Something I liked about the times I worked with some Adobe products (Indesign and Illustrator) was the way I could align things with each other. It would show me the distances between things to space things out evenly and was always looking for positions I might want to snap to. It would be awesome if Inkscape could do that too.

Oh, seans_potato_biz, you know how to Snap with Inkscape already, don't you?

It doesn't show distances, so maybe I don't understand what you mean. But Inkscape definitely has Snapping!

Edit
Perhaps your Snap Control Bar has been hidden, so you didn't realize it was there? Try View menu > Show/Hide, to reveal it.

http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL ... pping.html

And what about the Align+Distribute and the Arrange dialog? They allow you to set distances, too.

I see that Inkscape does have some snapping function but it's not as thought through as the Adobe one. In the below image you can probably tell where I want to put the selected image. Adobe would also know one place I might like to put it but Inkscape lets me stick it directly to one of the other images which isn't what I want. Inkscape doesn't respect gaps/margins. I know I can also achieve what I want using the existing alignment options but it's a little less efficient.



A better example below, Adobe would know where I want to put my third box, based on the positions (and gap) of the two boxes above.

I'm not familiar with AI, so I can't tell what's happening by looking at your screenshot. I think I see a dotted line rectangle, which might be the selection. But it doesn't give me a clue what you want to do with it.

In Inkscape, snapping is a sophisticated feature, which takes most people some time to really be able to use it effectively. It was probably a couple of years before I felt really proficient with it (although I only use inkscape as a hobby - if I were using it every day, I probably would have learned faster). I'm not going to try and explain it to you, since I gave you the link to the manual. But if you have questions, ask away

I understand that AI provides all kinds of bells and whistles which Inkscape does not have. Thanks to so many helpful members, we are reminded about that on a regular basis. You may have noticed how much AI costs? In fact it's so elite now, I understand that you can't even buy it anymore. You can only subscribe to it.

In any case, I think it's unfair to say Inkscape snapping is not thought through. I know that the developer who is responsible for creating snapping for Inkscape has thought through it quite well. Inkscape does not strive to be a free AI replacement.

One tip which I often give to newbies who are learning to use snapping, is to only have enabled the snap options which you need for a particular step. Otherwise, Inkscape tries to snap to everything in sight, and it's hard to control. I don't know, but it sounds like maybe you might prefer to see multiple snap targets. I can only suggest practice, to find out how you like to use it.

What is the benefit of the program telling you the distance between the object you want to move, and the place you want to move it? Is it so you can stop dragging it when it reaches a certain distance from another object?

It's true that Inkscape snapping does not allow snapping to nothing, or some spot on the canvas, if you want a margin. In Inkscape, you definitely must have a snap target - bounding box side, bb corner, midpoint of bb side, bb rotation center, node, object, guide, grid, intersection of those, midpoints of those, centers, rotation centers, page sides, corners, and I may have forgotten a couple. And most recently, with 0.91 or 0.92, we have snapping perpendicular and/or tangential. So if you want a margin, drag out a guide. Or if it's a complicated margin, you can use Object to Guides.

But again, I refer you to the price. I'm sure you understand that Inkscape is an open source project (which means everyone who works to create and maintain it, is doing it as a volunteer).

Those types of alignment tools are often called inference lines or inference snaps. That's pretty sophisticated stuff, and they're based in origins of artificial intelligence. They predict where you might want to position objects based on position of other objects and the order of placement, and gestures. I've mentioned Affinity Designer before... it has a lot of those Ai bells and whistles at a more affordable price.

Yes, they would be nice to have in Inkscape, but not likely very soon.