Anyone advocating "manual is best" is either too close to the problem or hasn't tried an N900, IMHO.

Given I've heard that most users are expected to launch apps from their desktops, having a snap-to-grid for the common sized icons is pretty nice there. Similarly, although widgets are randomly sized (and non resizable AFAICS :-() there's still a strong aesthetic argument for aligning baselines, tops, edges in general.

Fortunately, Quim's said that hildon-desktop will be fully open source :-)