Neighbourhood view icons should be placed in a spatially repeatable way

[garycmartin]

Right now the neighbourhood view is disappointingly random from machine to machine, reboot to reboot, or even just over time as the view (seemingly randomly) refreshes. Now Sugar 8.4 has just broken all the AP colours to be of some new set(network manager, ssid reporting changes?), which is really a great loss of utility and identity; but not withstanding that unfortunate brick wall in the face, I'd like to suggest that AP x,y placements (and all other neighbourhood icons) are based on identity as well, so that you can quickly learn where to expect resources to be spatially in the neighbourhood view. The placement does not have to be 100% accurate, perhaps first attempt then somewhere random, but ideally a blocked placement would slide until it found a nearby empty location.

P.S. I resolved something similar with my SOM label layouts: Roughly... where by I place labels one by one (from most important to least), if it collides it takes the collided's x,y and looks around N, S, E, W locations (+random jitter factor). If still no free space, increase random jitter factor and try again. Worst case (for me) falls back to a label overlap, for neighbourhood view it would be 'any random free space'.

[tomeu]

Would like to get to this for 0.90

[tch]

Still present in 0.107.0.

[quozl]

Is in 0.107.1, as a reproducible position for each neighbourhood view icon, based on identity, but without being able to move them. Closing.

[quozl]

I'd like a second opinion; are the icons unevenly distributed? Do they avoid lower or right edge? See attached.