On 2/26/2014 8:59 AM, Lasconic wrote: > Just to make it clear. > AFAIU the "raster" buttons in the inspector doesn't let you move > object along a fixed grid, "anchored to the page" and that you could > draw once and for all. It will just create a virtual grid centered on > the default position of the current element so that you will move the > object from its default position only by a certain amount. If you > select another element, the grid will be different. The virtual grid will be different from element to element, yes. I was imagining drawing a fixed grid, and yes, I realize that means each element might "snap" to a different place relative to this grid. But I'm not convinced that's a deal breaker. I would assume the default positions of elements from style settings would be well-chosen so elements already align to each other well, and the purpose of "snapping" to a grid is really mostly about being able to drag elements by a controlled amount.
For example, I'm thinking of a use case where you have a dynamic marking, a hairpin, and another dynamic marking - which I assume start off well-aligned because we choose good style defaults - and you want to drag them all downward by the same amount so they remain well aligned. It really wouldn't matter where the grid lines were drawn - just drag each element down three grid lines and they will be aligned as well as they started. You don't even *need* a visible grid for this - you can see the items snap - but it could help. Of course, if it were me, I'd use keyboard nudging to achieve the same effect. Three presses of Ctrl-down per element will move them all down the same amount (3sp), so I get the snapping effect without the need for a grid. Which reminds me - I forgot to mention the fact that all element types can be nudged with the keyboard now. This is another big improvement already in 2.0 that makes me say the need for further alignment aids is greatly reduced. So I personally wouldn't mind seeing the current raster removed because I use the keyboard for the same basic effect, but for those who prefer using the mouse to the keyboard, the current raster *can* provide the same sort of snapping behavior, and displaying a fixed grid (in 1sp units, say) could be useful even though it is just a visual guide - the raster is actually using a virtual grid. A new raster that really did work according to a fixed grid would of course also be nice, but there are still issues to consider of different symbols possibly needing different alignments (top versus bottom versus baseline, etc). I suspect a "snap to get it in the ballpark and then nudge to fine tune" approach would still be required. Which is why I wonder if it's worth bothering. A fixed grid would, of course, also be useful in situations where you don't care about snapping but instead want to manually position elements by eye relative to this grid. But you can get that much just by defining wallpaper with a 1mm (or whatever) grid - no code changes required! I guess the original proposal here was for horizontal and possibly vertical lines that appear like crosshairs as you drag an item, and that seems useful as well and probably simple. > Bug fixes are even more useful :) Absolutely agreed. I am not all convinced more alignment features are really important at this point, but I'm trying to find simple lightweight solutions that might satisfy those who do feel the need, so we can get on with the bug fixing. I'd say every single bug on my hit list and your 2.0 tag list are much more important than any new features. Marc ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Flow-based real-time traffic analytics software. Cisco certified tool. Monitor traffic, SLAs, QoS, Medianet, WAAS etc. with NetFlow Analyzer Customize your own dashboards, set traffic alerts and generate reports. Network behavioral analysis & security monitoring. All-in-one tool. http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=126839071&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Mscore-developer mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mscore-developer
