Sketch icon deconfusion : // vs =

[freman]

To me := has a direction, while = is rather the mathematical equality. Whichever of the two lines changes length due to some other constrants - the other is changed as well.

Exactly my point , := is an assignment. FC models are based on constraints ( such as an equality ).

[chrisb]

Exactly my point , := is an assignment.

Sort of. The meaning as assignement operator was derived from its mathematical meaning "is defined as".

[dxp.dev]

My 2 cents here.

:= has meaning only for people with coding background, which is not the case of all the users, whereas = is known as "equal" by everybody. Therefore I think := should not be used.

[carlopav]

I agree with dpx.dev, := seems just a Nazi smiley to me...

[usbhub]

my2cents:
I think, changing the parallel icon would be enough. Yes, red lines represent lines at all other icons but I think, that would be the lesser of the two evils
It would make the difference a lot more clearly.

usbhub

[carlopav]

What about "EQ" as equal?

[chrisb]

This is no continuously reoccurring discussion. I would give it a try with changing the parallel icon only. Hoping that the distinction is now good enough I would wait for the next discussion to come.

[vocx]

I was checking this PR https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/pull/2536 and I share triplus' opinion that the new icon is not the correct symbol for parallelism...

I don't think triplus was against the newly proposed parallel symbol, just the new equals (=) symbol.

In my opinion the new parallel symbol is quite good, because parallelism is just about the slope of the lines not their length. So any two lines can be parallel, no matter if one is short and the other long. The new symbol indicates this quite well.

...
Now the = symbol usually is used to express that two mathematical quantities are equal. However, in the sketcher case we define (or better force) two quantities to be equal and therefore we could also use this symbol :=
...

Thinking about this a bit, I don't quite like the current equals symbol (=) for the constraint. The constraint is about "equal length" only, not "general equality". To me using the equals symbol (=) indicates "identity"; the objects that have this constraint aren't identical, they only have equal length, which is different from saying they are "identical".

Here are some proposals for a new EqualLength icon. The first two were derived from the original Constraint_EqualLength. The first one was too "fat", so the second one is thinner. The third one is derived from Constraint_HorizontalDistance. The fourth has similar spacing as the third, and is derived from Sketcher_CreateLine; the idea is to stress that they have the same beginning and end, that is, same length.

Constraints_EqualLength.png (158.74 KiB) Viewed 1251 times

[vocx]

Here are the SVGs.

Constraint_EqualLength_new_1.svg

(14.34 KiB) Downloaded 45 times

Constraint_EqualLength_new_2.svg

(14.34 KiB) Downloaded 42 times

Constraint_EqualLength_new_3.svg

(21.93 KiB) Downloaded 33 times

Constraint_EqualLength_new_4.svg

(24.21 KiB) Downloaded 46 times

[DeepSOIC]

The constraint is about "equal length" only, not "general equality".

It also works on:
* equality between circles (makes radii equal)
* equality between ellipses (makes their two corresponding radii equal)
* possibly other shapes, I don't know
And potentially (in future):
* angle equality,
* blue constraint value equality