since the description says "Does not support Bobs Inserters (use Side Inserters instead)", here are two more questions about compatibilities, whether it is compatible with them or whether you can make it compatible :

is the mod compatible with "Cursed Programable Inserters" (https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Cursed-PI) ?
that mod is very similar to bobs inserters and i started using it since it didn't need bobs libraries, thus avoiding problems of several other mods which erroneously assumed that all of bobs mods would be installed when bobs library was found.

is it compatible with "fantario" (https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Fantario) ?
that mod is heavily based on a very long extended burner phase, electricity only with space science after launching a rocket(!?) and machines instead being powered with chemical fuel (wood/coal) or with heat from a burner heat generator :-) and thus would extremely profit from burner leeching functionality and from additional burner types. it also has some additional inserters of its own (two 90 degree inserters, and a heat powered inserter)
[but i don't think i need to explain to Kryzeth what the Fantario mod is :-)]

Oh hey, nice to see you again! I probably wouldn't have remembered you without that reference to Fantario lol.

Regarding compatibility with those two mods... I tested with Fantario a couple times, but decided it wasn't really worth it to add specific compatibility, and just disabled this mod when playing Fantario (though my other two mods work perfectly with it!). Since it seemed that Fantario had its own system of inserters that mostly replaced the base game inserters, and the menu looked pretty clean without me muddling with it.

Although... looking at the list of inserters now.. there's no particular reason I couldn't add specific compatibility. The game is basically just a bunch of burner inserter variants of the usual vanilla inserters, with a special heat inserter, and one single electric inserter. It might not even take much new code, just a bunch of copy-paste, and a bit of fixing up the arm/base colors, if they don't match. I'll try patching that over the weekend; I still enjoy Fantario :D

As for Cursed PI... I've known it exists, but just like with Bobs Inserters, it's more of an either-or kind of thing. They'll load up together just fine, but there's really no point to this mod if you're using Cursed PI. It does sound like a nice alternative to Bobs, since it won't trigger any bob dependencies in other mods. This too, I could also add some specific code for; the same I have triggered when Bobs Inserters are detected, which just tells the user to disable one of the offending mods.

Thanks for bringing these two up to my attention!

(sorry that this reply took so long, but i accidentally put the window with this unsaved answer in the background and without having a current map in factorio, for the first time in years almost forgot about factorio when Autonauts was released and i discovered that game for a week. now i closed some old tabs in the browser and just discovered this window after being sidetracked for a week and will return to factorio soon :-)

i played my last maps without any "inserter pick/drop modifiers", even tried fantario without those two 90 degree inserters, but that became more annoying than an interesting challenge, and thus i enabled those two inserters, but i probably will start over from scratch. i also had used a leech mod, but needed to switch over from one to another when it started grabbing coal from machines and dropped it on belts :-( therefore i am currently testing some mods to determine which ones will be useful, are working, and are not overpowered for fantario.

Cursed PI are different to bobs inserters in several small details. they have a different gui for near/far drop locations (using only a near/far switch instead of a 3x3 grid of "subtiles" to specify the drop location exactly), and most of all they have NO techs for range and angle. thus you need long inserters to be able to select pick/drop locations with a bigger range, and unless you use a mod like https://mods.factorio.com/mod/SchallInserters to get (normal and even armored) inserters with ranges of 1, 2 and 3, you are limited to vanilla red inserters (relatively slow inserters with no stack bonus possible) for range 2. thus your variants of long fast, long stack filter, etc (but currently most important long burner etc) would still be quite helpful when using the cursed PI.

Hm.. interesting. So a basic long inserter would have the speed of a yellow inserter, but have a selectable, 2 range, orthogonal-locked, pickup and dropoff area?

Hm, I suppose in that case, it would make sense to have long versions of those inserters, though I think that limitation must be there for a balance reason? Or am I misunderstanding something?

not entirely ... vanilla red inserters have a different speed than all others, the range 2 (more precisely "up to 2") is only possible for inserters which already have a range 2 without cursedPI, and if a range is available then all angles (not only orthogonal) and all smaller ranges are possible. the cursedPI doesn't introduce new limitations, but only keeps having the vanilla limitations for speeds and ranges, while adding more drop/pickup locations in that range (adding all angles, adding a near/far switch, and adding all lower ranges eg in case of red inserters).

see also https://wiki.factorio.com/Inserters#Inserter_speed :
burner inserters can do 0.6 turns per game second,
yellow inserters 0.83, roughly 40% faster than burner,
long handed 1.2, another 50% faster than yellow, and
fast/stack/filter/stackfilter 2.31 turns per game second, once again faster than red by 100%.
afaik, none of these values and their abilities (like range or stack or filter abilities) are changed by the cursedPI which only allows to rotate the pickup and drop locations of existing inserters independently from each other instead of vanilla always rotating the entire inserter as a whole. in contrast, bobsinserters adds all angles only after some researches, and also allows to research all ranges for all inserters.

the cursedPI does not extend the range, only making any location in the original range selectable. thus all vanilla inserters (except red ones) have only a range of 1 only, and the red inserters have a range of UP TO 2 (thus range 1 or 2), and thus using cursedPI there are neither inserters with range 3 nor non-red inserters with range 2, unless you get them from another mod (like the schallinserters or the kryinserters). simply select mods for the ranges and abilities for inserters, and cursedPI will add all angles and all shorter(!) ranges to them.

whether it is about balance, i don't know. it simply is an alternative to bobsinserters, implemented differently, with slightly different abilities, eg having no research needed and requiring to have inserters with desires ranges and abilities by other mods. it allows me to more exactly specify (by selecting mods and mod options) what i want, not dumping every inserter with any angle and any range on me.

the only thing that i don't like about cursedPI is the simple near/far switch instead of the 3x3 small grid. when turning, inserters often need to place items slightly "off" to one side or the other to have the exact floating distance between center and drop location, or else start contracting or extending the arm which takes a really huge time compared to the rotation, even if the difference in distance is only minor.

Huh, I never noticed the differences in speed.

But yeah, I see, if I were to add long versions of each of the inserters, they would have the same speed as the base inserter (because that's the way the logic of my mod works), so there'd be no point to using the normal sized inserters.

But I guess this is already the case for yellows, because there's no reason to use a yellow, if a red is faster, and has all of the options of the yellow.

(also, Side Inserters has all of those specific drop placement options, like near/far and slight left/right-within-tile; though it only has 90 degree turns, with no diagonals)

quite often people use reds to "grab over each other", taking items from any of two belts (4 products on 4 lanes, or even up to 8 items like science packs from two belts with beltweaving) and/or dropping items from the assemblers back onto one or the other belt (eg getting items from 3 lanes and dropping products on the fourth lane).
edit: writing and re-reading this, i just got an idea how to use it on fantario, getting up to 6 items from 2 belts and dropping products and the surplus junk on two other lanes of the same two belts, provided I'll get longhanded burner filter inserters :-) LOL
the halved speed can be made up by using two of them in parallel, and long blues would of course be some kind of cheating, but all new additional inserters would be kind of "mild cheating" anyway :-)

no advantage of yellow over red ? there are some advantages of long yellows above reds: although they are slower, they don't need automation research, they need less power (same 400W drain, but only 13kW instead of 18kW in use, 30% less) and they are cheaper and easier to make (reds are made from a yellow and thus require an additional assembler and almost twice as much iron, 7 instead of 4). of course, those advantages are only important in the absolute beginning.
i see the same problem "the other way around" with long blues: why would i use reds when i can have faster long blues? :-) they need additional copper, but are similar to make like reds and then are faster.

this is also why i like to be able to select which inserters i use (schall, kry, etc) and independently which angle/range changer i use (bobs, cursed, etc). but too many thoughts about this will probably be not worth the effort since this would turn the planning of mods and mod combinations into the "real" game instead of playing and using them in some modpack :-) most important will probably be my (always different at the time) "current" needs, eg having additional long and filter burner inserters as well as some leeching capabilities when playing Fantario :-)

the exact drop location within a tile is most important for angled locations (0, 90, 180, 270 are no problem, and eg 22.5->67.5 or 22.5->112.5 are no problem either, but 0->22.5, 0->45 or 22.5->45 causes slow extensions and retractions), thus for side inserters this only matters in special cases (when dropping on corners of belts). i stopped using side inserters many versions ago when i wanted to unload from a belt to a chest with three "parallel" inserters (maybe even stack inserters, one straight and two with drop slanted by 45 degrees), not wanting to use a normal inserter and two reds which would have made the setup slower and also larger from 1x3 to 2x5.

speaking of different properties and combinations, etc: another new mod might be interesting where inserters are built from parts, having a base (burner, electric, heat, whatever), an arm (short, long, extralong, extensible or fixed length, etc), and electronics (logic for grabbing single items, small stacks (vanilla normal), large stacks (vanilla stack), whether filter inserter or not) which all must be combined, maybe with some restrictions like module slots so that every range needs a module, filters are only 1 different item per module, etc .... a very complicated system and probably not woth it, but fun to think of :-)

"cheaper and easier to make" - Ah, that's another thing; by default, my mod makes long inserters a simple craft using the base form of inserter, then when you mine it back up, you get the base form of inserter, so you can quickly swap between them.

As for why to use a long red instead of a long blue? I would say research (depending on the modpack) but also just the regular difference between using yellows over normal blues. I still use yellows until blues are absolutely necessary, because blues by themselves don't actually make anything faster.

That would be an interesting idea..

Alright, so it seems that Cursed PI was always compatible, and there was nothing to change. Fantario required a few more if statements to disable some unnecesary code, and added one long electric inserter; but it should load up perfectly fine now. My mod adds nothing but the red electric inserter; letting Fantario set all of the balancing and recipes.

So marking fixed as of v2.1.0