[scribus] feedback needed: snap to items

[ale rimoldi]

hi

in scribus 1.5.4svn one can get an item to snap to other items.

in some cases this is a very useful feature and can be
activated through the page menu.
on the other hand, personally, i haven't heard of anybody who keeps it
on all the time. (or even for longer periods of time.)

i don't. and as a result, i tend to forget about it and only use the
align and distribute tool.

today a user asked for the rulers to also snap to the items and
suggested to use the shift modifier for this.

i liked the idea and we discussed that it should generally be possible
to snap to items by simply holding down the shift key.

i've created a first patch for it:

https://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=15228

while working on this, i was thinking more and more that this should
be THE way to activate the snapping among items.

i started looking for workflows that are better served by
activating a long term "snap to items" mode but i could not find any.

i've now opened a ticket asking for the shift modifier to replace the
current snap to items mode:

https://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=15230

if you know about workflows that really would suffer from the removal
of this snapping mode, please present it here or in the bug tracker.

of course: it is not about removing the snapping to items, but about
replacing a "fix" snapping mode, by an on-the-fly one.

in the ticket with the patch
(https://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=15228) you can see an animation,
showing how the snapping with the shift key will work.

and for the one who wonders why it would be necessary to remove one of
them:

- the code managing the snapping is rather complex and adding a new way
to snap makes it even more complex. (and hard to maintain)
- the scribus UI is also very complex and every simplification is
welcome!

have fun
a.l.e

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[Bert Driehuis]

Dear a.l.e,

This idea makes so much sense!

My only concern would be how to let the users know about this feature.


Cheers,

bert

Post by ale rimoldi
hi
in scribus 1.5.4svn one can get an item to snap to other items.
in some cases this is a very useful feature and can be
activated through the page menu.
on the other hand, personally, i haven't heard of anybody who keeps it
on all the time. (or even for longer periods of time.)
i don't. and as a result, i tend to forget about it and only use the
align and distribute tool.
today a user asked for the rulers to also snap to the items and
suggested to use the shift modifier for this.
i liked the idea and we discussed that it should generally be possible
to snap to items by simply holding down the shift key.
https://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=15228
while working on this, i was thinking more and more that this should
be THE way to activate the snapping among items.
i started looking for workflows that are better served by
activating a long term "snap to items" mode but i could not find any.
i've now opened a ticket asking for the shift modifier to replace the
https://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=15230
if you know about workflows that really would suffer from the removal
of this snapping mode, please present it here or in the bug tracker.
of course: it is not about removing the snapping to items, but about
replacing a "fix" snapping mode, by an on-the-fly one.
in the ticket with the patch
(https://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=15228) you can see an animation,
showing how the snapping with the shift key will work.
and for the one who wonders why it would be necessary to remove one of
- the code managing the snapping is rather complex and adding a new way
to snap makes it even more complex. (and hard to maintain)
- the scribus UI is also very complex and every simplification is
welcome!
have fun
a.l.e
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[JLuc]

Post by Bert Driehuis
My only concern would be how to let the users know about this feature.

In some apps, the possible modifiers (for the current action) are shown on the status bar
I once created a request for this : https://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=10992

JL

Post by Bert Driehuis

Post by ale rimoldi
hi
in scribus 1.5.4svn one can get an item to snap to other items.
in some cases this is a very useful feature and can be
activated through the page menu.
on the other hand, personally, i haven't heard of anybody who keeps it
on all the time. (or even for longer periods of time.)
i don't. and as a result, i tend to forget about it and only use the
align and distribute tool.
today a user asked for the rulers to also snap to the items and
suggested to use the shift modifier for this.
i liked the idea and we discussed that it should generally be possible
to snap to items by simply holding down the shift key.
https://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=15228
while working on this, i was thinking more and more that this should
be THE way to activate the snapping among items.
i started looking for workflows that are better served by
activating a long term "snap to items" mode but i could not find any.
i've now opened a ticket asking for the shift modifier to replace the
https://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=15230
if you know about workflows that really would suffer from the removal
of this snapping mode, please present it here or in the bug tracker.
of course: it is not about removing the snapping to items, but about
replacing a "fix" snapping mode, by an on-the-fly one.
in the ticket with the patch
(https://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=15228) you can see an animation,
showing how the snapping with the shift key will work.
and for the one who wonders why it would be necessary to remove one of
- the code managing the snapping is rather complex and adding a new way
to snap makes it even more complex. (and hard to maintain)
- the scribus UI is also very complex and every simplification is
welcome!
have fun
a.l.e
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[ale rimoldi]

hi

Post by JLuc

Post by Bert Driehuis
My only concern would be how to let the users know about this feature.

In some apps, the possible modifiers (for the current action) are
https://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=10992

yes, discoverability was also something i was thinking about and...

iirc inkscape showed the way here...
gimp has a slightly cleverer implementation... go and try it out!

i'm not 100% sure that the status bar is the right place for it... but
it's not such a bad place either.

personally, i'm dreaming of a dockable feedback/hints palette...

ciao
a.l.e

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[JLuc]

Hello

My experience is quite different than yours :
i allways have snap to item enabled.
So my proposal would rather be
"why not make it standard behaviour ?"

Post by ale rimoldi
today a user asked for the rulers to also snap to the items and
suggested to use the shift modifier for this.
i started looking for workflows that are better served by
activating a long term "snap to items" mode but i could not find any.

One situation :
The SHIFT modifier is allready used so as to keep the original horizontal/vertical ratio
of a frame when changing its size. (This is a standard behaviour accross applications
and OSes, but sometime CTRL is used instead of SHIFT)

With scribus, changing a frame's size also needs to snaps, and snaps fine as it is.

SHIFT cannot be used to trigger both "constrain ratio resize" AND "snap to items".

JLuc

Post by ale rimoldi
have fun
a.l.e
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[ale rimoldi]

hi jluc

Post by JLuc
i allways have snap to item enabled.

i still cannot think of a document where this is a nice thing to have.

can you share a screenshot of a page where you think it's THE way to go?
or even a .sla so that i can play with it and see how it feels (but
only if it's not trivial to recreate...)

you could also try to download and apply the patch and check if
it improves your workflow.
and give feedback.

personally:

if i have clear "lines" where to align things, the most convenient way
to go seems to be a guide.
and as soon as guides snap to the items, this will be even more
convenient.

if i have "blocks" of texts and images, i go for a typographic grid
(easily created with the guides managers, in the columns and rows tab).

and in the cases where guides are not convenient (and there are many
such cases!), i tend to have too many points, where my items could
snap: so many that it's not helpful to have the snap to items enabled.
those are the cases where i keep the align and distribute window open.
or use the arrow keys to move and resize my elements. (and hope that
the alignment is good enough)
in those cases, enabling the snapping to items would simply make my
monitor just flash green.
but those are also the cases where i mostly would need the snapping to
items being available. on a per case basis.

this is such an example, i've been working on lately:
https://github.com/CoderDojoZH/resources/blob/master/cards-scratch/breakout-game/breakout-a6-en.pdf
most of the times i want the items to align to the margins or be freely
placed (most of all during the draft stage). sometimes they
should snap to other items.

Post by JLuc
So my proposal would rather be
"why not make it standard behaviour ?"

i think that my explanation above tells you why i think it's not a good
idea to have it as a standard behavior.

here again in two points:

- in the cases where it works well, there seem to be easier way to
ensure the alignment.
- in the cases where it is useful, you often get too many suggestions
and it gets disturbing.




personally, i'm not against keeping both ways of enabling the snapping
to items.

but before adding it, i'd really would like to check if the new one
does not make the old one (almost) useless.

until now i've not seen any evidence that simply replacing the feature
would not be an improvement for everybody.
but i've not seen any of your documents, of course!


ciao
a.l.e

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[JLuc]

Post by ale rimoldi

Post by JLuc
i allways have snap to item enabled.

i still cannot think of a document where this is a nice thing to have.
can you share a screenshot of a page where you think it's THE way to go?

AMOF, The only guides i use are the page margins. I never create guides.

My pages are generaly simple :
1) title + subtitle + introduction 1 column frame
2) 2 column frames for text
3) some image frames and their legend text frames

For such simple layouts, I never need more guides than the existing margins,
but i regularly need to be able to place items aligned to other items,
like a legend frames to its image frame or other such basic situations.
Snapy items makes it a pleasure.
Creating a guide would be overkill just to align 2 objects on a single page.

And the only case i can think of when I have too many items for snap to items
is when I import a complex SVG or open a PDF.

It seems you care beginers and having a simple UI :

- to me, align to items is way more simple than create and use guides.
The only guides i use are the margins, which are guides allready.

- The align and distribute is fine for some of its features
when i have to deal with 3 or more object at the same time
(like align left or align right, even gaps or even centers)
but some other of its features are either buggy or not understandable
(for example when it refers to margins or page)
And its use requires to select all object beforehand :
more steps than a direct "move and snap" for 2 objects.

Post by ale rimoldi
you could also try to download and apply the patch and check if
it improves your workflow.
and give feedback.

I dont compile as for now
but I imagine the hindrance would be minimum
and it could be OK.

JLuc

Post by ale rimoldi
if i have clear "lines" where to align things, the most convenient way
to go seems to be a guide.
and as soon as guides snap to the items, this will be even more
convenient.
if i have "blocks" of texts and images, i go for a typographic grid
(easily created with the guides managers, in the columns and rows tab).
and in the cases where guides are not convenient (and there are many
such cases!), i tend to have too many points, where my items could
snap: so many that it's not helpful to have the snap to items enabled.
those are the cases where i keep the align and distribute window open.
or use the arrow keys to move and resize my elements. (and hope that
the alignment is good enough)
in those cases, enabling the snapping to items would simply make my
monitor just flash green.
but those are also the cases where i mostly would need the snapping to
items being available. on a per case basis.
https://github.com/CoderDojoZH/resources/blob/master/cards-scratch/breakout-game/breakout-a6-en.pdf
most of the times i want the items to align to the margins or be freely
placed (most of all during the draft stage). sometimes they
should snap to other items.

Post by JLuc
So my proposal would rather be
"why not make it standard behaviour ?"

i think that my explanation above tells you why i think it's not a good
idea to have it as a standard behavior.
- in the cases where it works well, there seem to be easier way to
ensure the alignment.
- in the cases where it is useful, you often get too many suggestions
and it gets disturbing.
personally, i'm not against keeping both ways of enabling the snapping
to items.
but before adding it, i'd really would like to check if the new one
does not make the old one (almost) useless.
until now i've not seen any evidence that simply replacing the feature
would not be an improvement for everybody.
but i've not seen any of your documents, of course!
ciao
a.l.e
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[ale rimoldi]

hi jluc

Post by JLuc
The SHIFT modifier is allready used so as to keep the original
horizontal/vertical ratio of a frame when changing its size. (This is
a standard behaviour accross applications and OSes, but sometime CTRL
is used instead of SHIFT)
With scribus, changing a frame's size also needs to snaps, and snaps fine as it is.
SHIFT cannot be used to trigger both "constrain ratio resize" AND "snap to items".

have you tried it?

here it is the ctrl-key that keeps the size.
this is consistent with the way inkscape works.
(it's gimp that uses ctrl to keep the proportions)

ciao
a.l.e

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[JLuc]

Post by ale rimoldi

Post by JLuc
The SHIFT modifier is allready used so as to keep the original
horizontal/vertical ratio of a frame when changing its size. (This is
a standard behaviour accross applications and OSes, but sometime CTRL
is used instead of SHIFT)
SHIFT cannot be used to trigger both "constrain ratio resize" AND "snap to items".

have you tried it?

Yes i tried but obviously i didnt try well.

You're right : CTRL keeps the size ratio constrained
and SHIFT is not involved with this.

Sorry for this mis-test.

JL


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ht

[Thorsten Rochelmeyer]

I'm not a big friend of using the keyboard, keyboard modifiers and
things ... but that's just my very humble opinion. Those things differ
between programs and sometimes operating systems and you tend to forget
shortcuts or mix them up if you don't use software XY on a daily basis.

Snap to objects can be activated in the right-click menu on the canvas.
Works for me.

Kind Regards

Thorsten

hi

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[ale rimoldi]

hi thorsten

Post by Thorsten Rochelmeyer
I'm not a big friend of using the keyboard, keyboard modifiers and
things ...

i think that indeed scribus should be usable without having to learn
(too many or any) keyboard modifier.

keyboard modifiers are there to make your workflow faster, so i'm
comfortable with the idea that people who don't choose to use keyboard
modifiers have no access to the snapping to items. which, in my eyes,
is a tool that is there to make the workflow faster.
there is a better alternative for you. one that is completely keyboard
free: it's the align and distribute tool.

you're right to chime in and remind us about the "slow food" [1] users.
in this case, i don't think they will lose anything.
on the contrary, they will get a slightly cleaner UI, with one setting
less, one that they probably won't be using.

ciao
a.l.e

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Food

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[Philipp Anamnese]

Hi,
I was also wondering about ways to improve snapping and two things came to
mind.
1. I would not choose shift as a modifier but some other normal shortcut to
kind of toggle the snapping behavior.
There could also be the functionality of hitting that key multiple times to
switch between two different snapping options like frames/rulers to objects.



2. Keeping in mind that this idea is getting quite complex it would be nice
if objects that are snapped to a ruler, would move too, when the ruler is
moved or changed...

Phil


-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: ale rimoldi [mailto:***@xox.ch]
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 29. März 2018 22:58
An: ***@lists.scribus.net
Betreff: [scribus] feedback needed: snap to items

hi

in scribus 1.5.4svn one can get an item to snap to other items.

in some cases this is a very useful feature and can be activated through the
page menu.
on the other hand, personally, i haven't heard of anybody who keeps it on
all the time. (or even for longer periods of time.)

i don't. and as a result, i tend to forget about it and only use the align
and distribute tool.

today a user asked for the rulers to also snap to the items and suggested to
use the shift modifier for this.

i liked the idea and we discussed that it should generally be possible to
snap to items by simply holding down the shift key.

i've created a first patch for it:

https://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=15228

while working on this, i was thinking more and more that this should be THE
way to activate the snapping among items.

i started looking for workflows that are better served by activating a long
term "snap to items" mode but i could not find any.

i've now opened a ticket asking for the shift modifier to replace the
current snap to items mode:

https://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=15230

if you know about workflows that really would suffer from the removal of
this snapping mode, please present it here or in the bug tracker.

of course: it is not about removing the snapping to items, but about
replacing a "fix" snapping mode, by an on-the-fly one.

in the ticket with the patch
(https://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=15228) you can see an animation,
showing how the snapping with the shift key will work.

and for the one who wonders why it would be necessary to remove one of
them:

- the code managing the snapping is rather complex and adding a new way
to snap makes it even more complex. (and hard to maintain)
- the scribus UI is also very complex and every simplification is
welcome!

have fun
a.l.e

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[Václav Šmilauer]

Post by Philipp Anamnese
2. Keeping in mind that this idea is getting quite complex it would be nice
if objects that are snapped to a ruler, would move too, when the ruler is
moved or changed...

That is close to the general idea of persistent constraints (relative
positioning, align/distribute which re-aligns/re-distributes as one
moves objects around, ...). Lot of potential, also lot of complexity
(depency graph), lot of work; not speaking about decent UI for this.

vaclav
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[ale rimoldi]

hi philip

Post by Philipp Anamnese
1. I would not choose shift as a modifier but some other normal
shortcut to kind of toggle the snapping behavior.

why not?

Post by Philipp Anamnese
There could also be the functionality of hitting that key multiple
times to switch between two different snapping options like
frames/rulers to objects.

i'm not a big fan of hitting a key multiple times...
inkscape does it for the rotation / moving of items... and it always
feels awkward to me... (personally, i tend to prefer the "antenna"
style)

in my eyes, the proposed behavior (shift) has the following advantage:
you can start your movement without the snapping enabled and only
enable it when you're close to the place where it should then really
snap.

Post by Philipp Anamnese
2. Keeping in mind that this idea is getting quite complex it would
be nice if objects that are snapped to a ruler, would move too, when
the ruler is moved or changed...

good idea.

but, then it should be explicit!

if something has snapped, than it gets an option with the reference to
the thing it has snapped to.
scribus should not try to find out what is possibly snapping by
querying the positions of each item...
if the feature is well prepared (with a clear focus and limits), it
might be not so hard to implement...
if it's only half planned, it will probably become a twelve headed
monster...

ciao
a.l.e

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[JLuc]

Post by ale rimoldi

Post by Philipp Anamnese
2. Keeping in mind that this idea is getting quite complex it would
be nice if objects that are snapped to a ruler, would move too, when
the ruler is moved or changed...

but, then it should be explicit!
if something has snapped, than it gets an option with the reference to
the thing it has snapped to.
scribus should not try to find out what is possibly snapping by
querying the positions of each item...
if the feature is well prepared (with a clear focus and limits), it
might be not so hard to implement...
if it's only half planned, it will probably become a twelve headed
monster...

This feature and the comparison also
reminds me of the "link items" feature (Item > Link)
Objects move all together when one is moved.
It works a bit like groups except it's not groups.
That's very fine But things become weird
when one resizes one of the linked item :
the other item moves.
The moves depends on which side of the frame is moved.
There seem to be some logic based on some sort of symetry
and the UI even proposes a "change linking point" dialog,
but the logic is... quite unpredictable.

JL



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