Hi,
as a kind of test for some other things I have in mind I added better support for editing guides by mouse. You will notice that the anchor point of guides is now displayed on canvas as a small dot. You can still move guides as you used to, but now you can also rotate them around the anchor as well as move the anchor along the guide. What I'm not really happy with, though, is the way in which the various functionalities are accessed. So I'd like your help in this respect. Currently it works as follows:
1) dragging the anchor moves the whole guide (and the anchor with it) 2) pressing Shift and dragging the anchor moves it along the guide (while the guide itself stays in place) 3) dragging the guide anywhere outside the anchor rotates it around the anchor 4) pressing Shift and dragging the guide outside the anchor bypasses rotation and moves the whole guide (as in 1.)
Does this make sense to you? Do you have better suggestions as to which functionality should be accessed in which way/with which modifier?
Thanks for your feedback, Max
On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 9:44 AM, Maximilian Albert
- dragging the anchor moves the whole guide (and the anchor with it)
- pressing Shift and dragging the anchor moves it along the guide
(while the guide itself stays in place) 3) dragging the guide anywhere outside the anchor rotates it around the anchor 4) pressing Shift and dragging the guide outside the anchor bypasses rotation and moves the whole guide (as in 1.)
No, I think simply dragging the guide anywhere must move it, not rotate. Otherwise too many people will be upset by the change. Let's limit rotation to Shift+drag. In that case you can display the anchor only while Shift is pressed, thus reducing visual clutter and preventing "what's this" questions.
Maximilian Albert wrote:
- dragging the anchor moves the whole guide (and the anchor with it)
- pressing Shift and dragging the anchor moves it along the guide
(while the guide itself stays in place) 3) dragging the guide anywhere outside the anchor rotates it around the anchor 4) pressing Shift and dragging the guide outside the anchor bypasses rotation and moves the whole guide (as in 1.)
Reading this feels like handling guides would be changed quite a bit, it doesn't feel intuitive. Maybe you should keep the existing behavior as much as possible. - drag guide (outside the anchor) - moves the guide. It's an old feature and it would be worth to consider using the same behavior as before. I often use snapping guides to objects when moving them, and Snap to nodes with Snap to closest point to cursor. I haven't thoroughly tested all the new snapping features (those I have rock!) and I don't know how your new guide features will work but maybe they will get tangled up and you should consider how they interact. - drag anchor - moves the guide but also moves the anchor along the guide. This flashed in my mind when moving the guide with snap to nodes enabled, if a person wants to snap a guide to a particular node, maybe they would want the rotation center to be there so they get it in one step. - Ctrl + drag anchor - move anchor along the guide, but the guide doesn't move (Ctrl modifier seems consistent with restricting the direction of movement) - Shift + drag guide - rotate around anchor (even if you drag at anchor)
I went for the assumption moving guides happens more often that rotating, which of course doesn't have to be true at all once this feature is implemented. Deciding about this is more complicated than it looks at first.
On 01/26/2009 01:51 PM, Diederik van Lierop wrote:
On 01/26/2009 05:48 PM, bulia byak wrote:
Otherwise too many people will be upset by the change. Let's limit rotation to Shift+drag. In that case you can display the anchor only while Shift is pressed, thus reducing visual clutter and preventing "what's this" questions.
Wouldn't it be good if we could select a guide, just as we can select objects? It should then become selected when you click it, and remain selected (and red) until you click it again or until you select any other object. This way we can select multiple guides at the same time, to move them in parallel or to delete them all at once, etc. In that case you could choose to only draw the anchor when it's selected. When moving the anchor it should move in two degrees of freedom, with snapping (I will take care of the snapping once you're done), and with CTRL pressed it should move only along the guide. SHIFT should disable the snapping IMO.
We should also have a list of guides in the document properties dialog, one day. That tab just feels too empty ;-)
Selecting guides would definitely be great. As usual though... if they're selectable, just as "delete" was recommended, it would be great to have the rest of our "universal" keys work with them (the node tool is the best reference).
Insert should place guides between all selected guides (not sure how it works with interesting guides though).
< and > would scale the guides (the distance between selected guides really).
[ and ] would rotate around the center of the selection of guides (should also work on a single guide around it's rotation handle).
Arrow Keys move all selected guides.
The above keys would also behave the same as other tools when using Ctrl or Alt modifiers.
That's all I can think of at the moment... but figured it would be worth chiming in with.
Cheers, Josh
On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 10:44 AM, Maximilian Albert <maximilian.albert@...1439...> wrote:
as a kind of test for some other things I have in mind I added better support for editing guides by mouse.
- it has become harder to grab a guide by mouse - I remember I added a two-pixel grab zone around guides, was it broken?
- when rotating a guide, please enable Ctrl to snap angle instead of killing the guide!
2009/2/2 bulia byak <buliabyak@...400...>:
- it has become harder to grab a guide by mouse - I remember I added a
two-pixel grab zone around guides, was it broken?
I noticed this, too, but I'm pretty sure it was broken even before my changes (I will test it when I get around to it).
- when rotating a guide, please enable Ctrl to snap angle instead of
killing the guide!
I was wondering whether it would be sensible to keep Ctrl for deleting guides at all because once we have better mouse support for guides it seems to interfere with other common uses of Ctrl (as you noticed). Perhaps Ctrl+right click instead? Any other suggestions?
Max
On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 12:39 PM, Maximilian Albert <maximilian.albert@...1439...> wrote:
- when rotating a guide, please enable Ctrl to snap angle instead of
killing the guide!
I was wondering whether it would be sensible to keep Ctrl for deleting guides at all because once we have better mouse support for guides it seems to interfere with other common uses of Ctrl (as you noticed). Perhaps Ctrl+right click instead? Any other suggestions?
Let's use Ctrl+alt+click for deletion because in Node tool, it deletes a node.
On 02/09/2009 05:15 PM, bulia byak wrote:
On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 12:39 PM, Maximilian Albert <maximilian.albert@...1439...> wrote:
- when rotating a guide, please enable Ctrl to snap angle instead of
killing the guide!
I was wondering whether it would be sensible to keep Ctrl for deleting guides at all because once we have better mouse support for guides it seems to interfere with other common uses of Ctrl (as you noticed). Perhaps Ctrl+right click instead? Any other suggestions?
Let's use Ctrl+alt+click for deletion because in Node tool, it deletes a node.
As is how stops are removed from a gradient with the gradient tool.
Cheers, Josh
You will notice that the anchor point of guides is now displayed on canvas as a small dot.
Please only display the anchor point if the guides are visible as well. Currently the point is displayed even if guides are hidden.
Or even only show the anchor on mouse-over-guide, that would be my favourite.
Regards, Thomas
participants (6)
-
bulia byak -
Diederik van Lierop -
Josh Andler -
Maximilian Albert -
Mihaela -
Thomas Holder