Re: Align tool for skencil 0.7

[Valentin Ungureanu]

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

I did that several days ago, see patch #4283 on savannah:
http://savannah.nongnu.org/patch/?func=detailitem&item_id=4283
(and, while there, maybe #4166 - Align commands and panel should
be rejected/closed)


> > 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?  

That's not possible, so it would need a keyboard shortcut.


> > 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.

I agree, but I don't know what could be done about it (besides adding a
keyboard shortcut)

> 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 thing that could be done is draw the handles inside the page; while
slightly inconsistent whith the way they are generally drawn, at least they
are visible.
As for the general problem, the least we could do is modify "Fit selected
to window" so that it leaves some space for selection 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.

I suppose that one way to do that would be implementing StateInfo and
SetStateInfo in the AlignToolInstance and making them return/set the
last selected objects.
I did a quick test and it seems to work, is there a better way?


Another thing to notice: the align tool shares enough functionality with
the selection tool that it makes sense to implement it as a third "mode"
of the selection, along with move/transform and rotate/skew.
At some point I even implemented it that way.

I also found that modifing the tool to automatically switch to the
selection tool after aligning feels very convenient.


Valentin