Re: Align tool for skencil 0.7

[Bernhard Herzog]

Valentin Ungureanu <address@hidden> writes:

> Hi all,
>
> After creating a patch for the align panel I'm having second thoughts on
> the workflow of align operations, so if the following changes sounds OK
> to you I'd like to implement them (i.e. create and submit patches
> instead of keeping it as user script).

On the whole I like the idea.  So I'd say, go ahead.  One thing that's
part of your code and that I'd definitely like to see in Skencil is a
way to have Skencil remember which object was selected last.  That
information would be useful when creating blends and path text objects,
too.

So, if you do make a patch, could you start with this new selection
feature and submit that as a separate patch?

[...]
> Basically you can align to any object in the selection only by clicking
> on it and then clicking on the corresponding handle (or pressing a key).
>
> This eliminates the need for the align options (selection, lowermost,
> highermost) present in skencil 0.6.

how do I center relative to the bounding box of the selection?  
I don't know how important that case really is, though.

> Click on the various handles to align the objects.
> Click on any selected object to make it the active reference.
> Click on the page border to make the page the active reference.

Clicking on the page is not very intuitive, though, and there's nothing
that indicates that it is possible.  This page "mode" is also a bit
inconvenient when one has zoomed to fit the page to the window.  Some
handles will not be visible.  OTOH, that is a general problem with
handles.

One other problem is that the information which objects were selected
last is not retained for undo/redo, so that after an undo the handles
are positioned for alignment relative to the entire selection.  This is
because the necessary information is not retained by
EditorWithSelection.  For a proper implementation that would have to be
added.  I have some ideas how to handle that.

> Once the tool is active, the following keyboard shortcuts become
> available:
>     t, b, l, r: align to top, bottom, left, right respectively
>     v, h - align centers vertically / horizontally
>     c - align to center
>     space - switch to the selection tool

Maybe also 

      p - equivalent to clicking on the page border
      s - assume all selected objects are the ones selected last so that
          alignment is relative to the bounding box of the selection.


   Bernhard


-- 
Intevation GmbH                                 http://intevation.de/
Skencil                                           http://skencil.org/
Thuban                                  http://thuban.intevation.org/