<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">I've been bothered by overlay/xy for a long time, and as Don says, I often find it easier to just plug in numbers and nudge them until they're right than to figure them out from first principles (let's see... it lines up the center of this image with the top-left of that one?  Or the other way around?  And which one is going on top?  And which one is being offset?)  If _I_ would rather use trial and error than first principles, my students will lean even more in that direction.<div><br></div><div>I find place-image more intuitive and easier to use.  Perhaps this is because the typical use of place-image is to place a small picture within a large, unchanging "background", so using the center of the former and the top-left of the latter makes sense.  The typical use of overlay/xy is different -- two images of comparable sizes, not cropping either one to the other -- so simply porting the same convention to overlay/xy might not work.</div><div><br></div><div>Backwards compatibility is an issue -- although perhaps not a big one, since overlay/xy is a pain to use so there may not be all that many uses of it.  (It's mentioned in my textbook, but not used very much.)  If overlay/xy is "fixed", I would suggest giving it a new name like "overlay/offset".</div><br><br><div> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><div>Stephen Bloch</div><div><a href="mailto:sbloch@adelphi.edu">sbloch@adelphi.edu</a></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"> </div><br></body></html>