* Draging the scale handles with Alt now scales selection by an integer factor, i.e. up to 2, 3, 4, etc. times the original size or down to 1/2. 1/3, 1/4, etc. of the original size (in any of the two dimensions independently). This replaces the old and rarely used "slow" scaling mode with Alt.
Admittedly this use of Alt is not very consistent with others - I would prefer to use Ctrl for that but it's already used for preserving ratio. At least, this mode is much more useful than the Sodipodi-era, very counterintuitive old "slow" mode where a move of the mouse pointer resulted in 1/10 of the displacement.
On 7/8/07, Alexandre Prokoudine <alexandre.prokoudine@...400...> wrote:
On 7/8/07, bulia byak wrote:
Admittedly this use of Alt is not very consistent with others - I would prefer to use Ctrl for that but it's already used for preserving ratio.
Is Shift taken as well?
Yes, it transforms around the center.
On 2007-July-08 , at 18:23 , Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
On 7/8/07, bulia byak wrote:
Admittedly this use of Alt is not very consistent with others - I would prefer to use Ctrl for that but it's already used for preserving ratio.
Is Shift taken as well?
I have always found this use of CTRL a bit counter intuitive coming from other software: most other software I know use SHIFT to keep proportion (well, apart from gimp 2.* which use complicated combinations of shift/alt/ctrl to do this seemingly simple thing). Would a shuffling of the keys be conceivable: - SHIFT: keep proportions - CTRL: scale by an integer factor - ALT: transform around center
JiHO --- http://jo.irisson.free.fr/
On 7/8/07, jiho <jo.irisson@...400...> wrote:
Would a shuffling of the keys be conceivable:
- SHIFT: keep proportions
- CTRL: scale by an integer factor
- ALT: transform around center
It is certainly conceivable, but it's a very sensitive area. I for one would find it terribly difficult to get used to Shift instead of Ctrl. So I'd say we need a very strong consensus in favor of the change before we go ahead with it.
On 7/8/07, jiho wrote:
I have always found this use of CTRL a bit counter intuitive coming from other software: most other software I know use SHIFT to keep proportion (well, apart from gimp 2.* which use complicated combinations of shift/alt/ctrl to do this seemingly simple thing). Would a shuffling of the keys be conceivable:
- SHIFT: keep proportions
- CTRL: scale by an integer factor
- ALT: transform around center
I've just added "Resizing" section to
http://create.freedesktop.org/wiki/index.php/User_interaction_implementation...
Looks like Shift isn't popular to keep ratio in FLOSS so far. Sorry mate :)
I would love to see scaling selection by an integer factor be used wider.
Alexandre
On 2007-July-08 , at 21:04 , Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
On 7/8/07, jiho wrote:
I have always found this use of CTRL a bit counter intuitive coming from other software: most other software I know use SHIFT to keep proportion (well, apart from gimp 2.* which use complicated combinations of shift/alt/ctrl to do this seemingly simple thing). Would a shuffling of the keys be conceivable:
- SHIFT: keep proportions
- CTRL: scale by an integer factor
- ALT: transform around center
I've just added "Resizing" section to
http://create.freedesktop.org/wiki/index.php/ User_interaction_implementations
Looks like Shift isn't popular to keep ratio in FLOSS so far. Sorry mate :)
Indeed, I saw that the resizing behavior changed in Gimp 2.3. I was remembering something complicated (such as CTRL keeps width, ALT keeps height and CTRL+ALT keeps ratio, which tended to fail depending on which key was pressed first) but it's much better now. And indeed CTRL seems widely used for this in FLOSS. On the other hand Photoshop, Illustrator, OmnigGraffle, OpenOffice all use SHIFT (this was the experience I had before using Inkscape). But I guess it's quite natural for Inkscape and other software to keep their own reference (and I got used to CTRL anyway so that's fine with me ;) )
BTW, in your wiki page I think you forgot some mouse actions for zoom in Inkscape (with any tool, not just the zoom tool): MMB zooms in, SHIFT+MMB zooms out and SHIFT+MMB+Drag zooms to the delimited region. I use those all the time, they are extraordinarily convenient (to the point that I find myself frenetically clicking the MMB in other applications and end disappointed when I don't find my beloved Inkscape behavior in those)
JiHO --- http://jo.irisson.free.fr/
bulia byak wrote:
- Draging the scale handles with Alt now scales selection by an
integer factor, i.e. up to 2, 3, 4, etc. times the original size or down to 1/2. 1/3, 1/4, etc. of the original size (in any of the two dimensions independently). This replaces the old and rarely used "slow" scaling mode with Alt.
Argh! No! I use this a lot!
Alt is important to do sub-pixel tweaking. It's also consistent with using Alt+Cursors to nudge by a single screen pixel.
Without Alt-scaling, the tolerance for the mouse pointer before dragging begins will now mean that it's nearly impossible to scale by a fractional amount.
I do appreciate that modifier overloading is becoming a growing problem, but once again this is a change which is useful for technical drawing or diagramming but retrograde for artistic drawing and graphic design.
I'd always been of the opinion that these two camps can't be combined in one elegant UI, but I wasn't actually expecting that features I was using would be axed in an attempt to make that happen.
If you are determined to continue down this integrated technical/art approach, what about a new toggle button on the toolbar, or even a different select tool, to swap between artistic selection (no snapping, alt-slowing and perhaps other semantics, like thicken/thin path) and a technical selection (integer scaling ratios, snapping etc)?
Dan
On 7/9/07, Daniel Pope <mauve@...1559...> wrote:
Argh! No! I use this a lot!
Alt is important to do sub-pixel tweaking. It's also consistent with using Alt+Cursors to nudge by a single screen pixel.
Sorry for taking it for granted that this feature is not used. But I honestly tried to find the users before removing it :) I announced my plans to eliminate it on this list a couple months ago. Also I read quite a lot of tutorials and Inkscape-related discussions, and nowhere was this feature even mentioned.
Personally I find it quite counterintuitive. In other constrained transform modes, it is at least easy to guess what the constraint is even if you've run into it accidentally. This one just looks like it's broken. I also don't know an equivalent of this in other vector editors.
Without Alt-scaling, the tolerance for the mouse pointer before dragging begins will now mean that it's nearly impossible to scale by a fractional amount.
Why can't you instead just zoom in to fine-scale and then zoom back out? Or just use Alt+> and Alt+< to scale? The only shortcoming of Alt+<> compared to mouse dragging is that it scales around center whereas with mouse, you can scale to one side. But I don't this it matters much for artistic drawings, especially for small scale adjustments.
Myself, especially when I do artistic graphics, I almost exclusively use keyboard for scaling. In this kind of graphics, your typical goals are not to achieve some specific width/height but to "make this thing slightly smaller" or "make that thing somewhat larger". In my brain, such goals much more easily translate into pressing Alt+< or > or Ctrl+> than into a "grab a handle and drag" kind of action.
bulia byak wrote:
Sorry for taking it for granted that this feature is not used. But I honestly tried to find the users before removing it :) I announced my plans to eliminate it on this list a couple months ago. Also I read quite a lot of tutorials and Inkscape-related discussions, and nowhere was this feature even mentioned.
Oh, I haven't been following this list all that religiously :-/
I can understand that few people use it but then it's not an apparent feature, as you say. The majority of users are still getting to grips with Inkscape's more fundamental tools.
Personally I find it quite counterintuitive. In other constrained transform modes, it is at least easy to guess what the constraint is even if you've run into it accidentally. This one just looks like it's broken.
A status bar hint might help. But I think your assertion is overstated. It's not hard to deduce what it does.
I also don't know an equivalent of this in other vector editors.
I don't use other vector editors, just Inkscape. So it's not a persuasive argument from my point of view. Inkscape has different goals to other editors anyway.
Why can't you instead just zoom in to fine-scale and then zoom back out? Or just use Alt+> and Alt+< to scale? The only shortcoming of Alt+<> compared to mouse dragging is that it scales around center whereas with mouse, you can scale to one side.
Alt+<> isn't fine enough, nor does it offer non-aspect preserving scale.
Myself, especially when I do artistic graphics, I almost exclusively use keyboard for scaling. In this kind of graphics, your typical goals are not to achieve some specific width/height but to "make this thing slightly smaller" or "make that thing somewhat larger". In my brain, such goals much more easily translate into pressing Alt+< or > or Ctrl+> than into a "grab a handle and drag" kind of action.
I think it's just a matter of practice. I have trained myself over recent months to use Alt+drag and it turned out to be pretty handy. Common situations I use it:
* Making curves line up tidily, especially to get the outlines of different paths to overlap. * Correcting for antialiasing blurriness. I can pixel align some things using the coordinates on the toolbar, but sometimes (when elements extend outside of the box I'm trying to align) slow scaling is more convenient. * Fine work on generally turns out to be much easier given the extra precision.
I've never found zooming in to be a particularly convenient alternative anyway: swapping to another tool and losing the wide-angle overview just to get more precision has always lost out to instant fine control at a lower zoom. This is especially true when you can't fit all of the scale handles onto the zoomed viewport at once. Now though, zooming in to do fine work can take on the order of minutes to render the window when using Gaussian blur, and be unusably slow even then, so it's simply unacceptable to work that way.
I accept there's a desire to cram in more features and I'm happy to adapt my method of working if anyone can suggest an alternative. The best workaround I can think of is using a duplicate window at a different zoom, but that's not exactly convenient because of the duplicated chrome, selection and inconvenient window focus. Would it be easy to create an ad-hoc "magnifier" window that stays on top, is editable, and shares selection with the parent viewport? Perhaps this could be created or refocused using a modifier with the zoom tool. It could also approximate the gaussian blur to make it easy to work with.
Dan
On 7/9/07, Daniel Pope <mauve@...1559...> wrote:
Alt+<> isn't fine enough,
In principle we can make the distance of all Alt+ keystrokes settable in prefs, so you can set it for example to 0.1 screen pixels instead of 1. Will this address your needs?
- Making curves line up tidily, especially to get the outlines of different
paths to overlap.
Not sure what you mean by lining up, but can Align and Distribute perhaps be useful?
- Correcting for antialiasing blurriness. I can pixel align some things using
the coordinates on the toolbar, but sometimes (when elements extend outside of the box I'm trying to align) slow scaling is more convenient.
Yes, that's an interesting use case because it indeed requires fine scaling _without_ zooming in, so you can see the effect of it on antialiasing at your target resolution. But I think it's a rather narrow use case to waste an entire modifier on :) Besides, I'm sure some of the AA problems can also be fixed by snapping to pixel grid.
I've never found zooming in to be a particularly convenient alternative anyway: swapping to another tool
Why switch tools for zooming? Inkscape has TONS of ways to zoom without leaving your current tool. I don't remember the last time I used the Zoom tool.
viewport at once. Now though, zooming in to do fine work can take on the order of minutes to render the window when using Gaussian blur, and be unusably slow even then, so it's simply unacceptable to work that way.
True, zooming with blur is slow - but then I'm having trouble imagining why you need subpixel precision with things that are blurred anyway :) And remember you can always press Ctrl+Num5 to toggle Outline mode and everything will be lightning fast.
bulia byak wrote:
On 7/9/07, Daniel Pope <mauve@...1559...> wrote: In principle we can make the distance of all Alt+ keystrokes settable in prefs, so you can set it for example to 0.1 screen pixels instead of 1. Will this address your needs?
I'm not sure. I know I've been using this but I'm not sure how the alternatives measure up. I will update my copy of Inkscape and see how I fare without this feature this week. I used to get by without using it 6 months or so ago but quite a bit has changed since then, both with Inkscape and with me :)
As for the new feature, I don't think I've ever wanted to multiply a dimension in that way. I occasionally want to divide a dimension by an integer though.
- Making curves line up tidily, especially to get the outlines of
different paths to overlap.
Not sure what you mean by lining up, but can Align and Distribute perhaps be useful?
I mean aligning shapes so that one path's stroke connects with another without under- or over-shooting. And no, this will usually be at odd angles of in the middle of bboxes, so Align and Distribute is useless. Scaling isn't perhaps the best way to align things, but with the precision scaling modifier it turns out to be quite handy.
Yes, that's an interesting use case because it indeed requires fine scaling _without_ zooming in, so you can see the effect of it on antialiasing at your target resolution. But I think it's a rather narrow use case to waste an entire modifier on :) Besides, I'm sure some of the AA problems can also be fixed by snapping to pixel grid.
Actually, I find a pixel grid more trouble than it's worth. I'm working with web-size graphics, not icons, and there's often a mixture of things I want to align versus things I don't. Besides, a single pixel grid doesn't snap to individual pixels at 1:1.
Why switch tools for zooming? Inkscape has TONS of ways to zoom without leaving your current tool. I don't remember the last time I used the Zoom tool.
I don't really get on with zooming in or out by step like that. To zoom in, I prefer to pick an area. To zoom out, I prefer to step back to 1:1. I'm not saying your mileage won't vary, but that's what works for me.
True, zooming with blur is slow - but then I'm having trouble imagining why you need subpixel precision with things that are blurred anyway :) And remember you can always press Ctrl+Num5 to toggle Outline mode and everything will be lightning fast.
Obviously you don't need subpixel precision for that :) However, the slowdown still happens when manipulating unblurred shapes among or near blurry ones. Since blurry shapes are useful for shading of all sorts, my canvases are generally covered with them.
Dan
Just some quick notes:
On 2007-July-09 , at 23:49 , Daniel Pope wrote:
Why switch tools for zooming? Inkscape has TONS of ways to zoom without leaving your current tool. I don't remember the last time I used the Zoom tool.
I don't really get on with zooming in or out by step like that. To zoom in, I prefer to pick an area.
SHIFT+Middle mouse button drag would do that, outside the zoom tool.
To zoom out, I prefer to step back to 1:1.
Typing "1" in any tool (except when a text object is edited obviously) does that also.
I'm not saying your mileage won't vary, but that's what works for me.
JiHO --- http://jo.irisson.free.fr/
jiho wrote:
I don't really get on with zooming in or out by step like that. To zoom in, I prefer to pick an area.
SHIFT+Middle mouse button drag would do that, outside the zoom tool.
Doesn't seem to work for me? I would be using that if I'd come across it, certainly.
To zoom out, I prefer to step back to 1:1.
Typing "1" in any tool (except when a text object is edited obviously) does that also.
Yes, I must start forcing myself to use that one. Adopting new keybindings is a process of developing muscle memory rather than conscious effort though, isn't it? :)
Dan
Daniel Pope wrote:
bulia byak wrote:
Yes, that's an interesting use case because it indeed requires fine scaling _without_ zooming in, so you can see the effect of it on antialiasing at your target resolution. But I think it's a rather narrow use case to waste an entire modifier on :) Besides, I'm sure some of the AA problems can also be fixed by snapping to pixel grid.
Actually, I find a pixel grid more trouble than it's worth. I'm working with web-size graphics, not icons, and there's often a mixture of things I want to align versus things I don't. Besides, a single pixel grid doesn't snap to individual pixels at 1:1.
Here is another mention of someone needing a solution to a problem that I have been describing for a long time. Pixel grids have never been quite reasonable. (Or did we fix the pixel grid thing? I'm going to assume we didn't for now and I'll apologise later.) The Alt thing seems like it would be quite fidilly to me. I think we need a solution that fixes this problem. Maybe just this problem and not bother with how it applies to anything else. Some people want crisp images. Past suggestions for catering to this demographic have been grids, fine grained movement controll, and non AA rendering. Are there any other possibilities?
Aaron Spike
----- Original Message ----- From: "bulia byak" <buliabyak@...400...> To: "Daniel Pope" <mauve@...1559...> Cc: "inkscape-devel" inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Sent: Monday, July 09, 2007 7:01 PM Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Selector keybinding change
Personally I find it quite counterintuitive. In other constrained transform modes, it is at least easy to guess what the constraint is even if you've run into it accidentally. This one just looks like it's broken. I also don't know an equivalent of this in other vector editors.
A similar and IMO more intuitive functionality is implemented in Corel Draw. There you can select the nudge distance, how far will an object move when you click on the cursors. In the attached screenshot it is 2 millimeters (the units are taken from the default document units, so it can be 2pt or 2px for example)).
Then you select the nudge multiplier (called super nudge). It's how far will an object move with SHIFT + Cursors. I use 2, so I get 2x2mm.
The third thing you can select is the micro nudge. It's the nugde divider, how far will an object move with CTRL + Cursors. I use 2, so I get 2mm / 2.
If there could be a similar option in Inkscape (with Inkscape's shortcuts of course), that would be very intuitive (a loto better than having a standard behaviour that few people understand). Attached is a screenshot of the preferences section in Corel Draw (corel_nudge.png).
Molumen
participants (6)
-
Aaron Spike -
Alexandre Prokoudine -
bulia byak -
Daniel Pope -
jiho -
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