Can I say how much I hate.. ?

[amoore]

I'm very happy with Xara's alignment dialog. I find it much easier to read than all those little symbols.

The only complaint I have is the one I keep voicing: there's no option to align to selected object.

Perhaps the solution is to add an "advanced" extension to hold additional options, as in the Color Editor. For example, SWiSHmax allows you to align to the objects' anchors in addition to the standard positions. That could be useful. (The anchor position stays with the object until you specifically change it.)

Of course, SWiSH determines the object's position according to the anchor, no matter where it's placed. And you can't put the anchor just anywhere, as you can in Xara. The possible positions correspond to those in Xara's Origin Position control.

While I was thinking about whether a similar anchor/position/alignment approach would mitigate my problem with the bottom-left ruler origin, it occurred to me that an "anchor magnet" could help out the people who want to snap one part of an object to a particular part of another object. Since I'm not a programmer, I have no idea how feasible that is.