In Vanilla (Pure Data 0.48.1) when a scalar gets any of it's values [set] (even the ones that don't impact how it's drawn) it seems to get redrawn resulting it to move on top of any overlapping scalars. This behaviour seems to be platform independent (tested on Windows 10 and OS X Yosemite). This is a problem since GUIs and such often rely on overlapping elements and working around it makes a patch a lot more complex.
Here is a simple test patch, it sets the (unused) float "test" on a scalar then it overlaps the other scalar:
My questions are, is there a way to prevent this from happening without clearing and redrawing the whole thing, and is this worth reporting as a bug or a suggestion to fix?