GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 134957
paths tool cannot delete components, only entire paths
Last modified: 2018-05-24 10:59:18 UTC
this is extremely crippling when i want to separate out components that are currently in the same path. the easiest fix might be making a 'separate components' menu item for the paths dialog, then you could delete the individual parts and remerge if wanted. but this could make unreasonable amounts of components for eg. paths that resulted from a complex 'selection to path'. otherwise, the path tool is dreamy :)
By "components" do you mean disjoint path segments in one stroke? Like o o / | o--o--o o--o Component 1 Component 2 Or do you mean nodes and/or edges? You can delete these quite easily Ctrl-Shift-Click (or Shift-Click in Edit mode) Or you do mean disjoint segments in one stroke, I don't know of a way to split them up. It's probably easier to have them on two different paths from the start. Assuming that's what you mean, it would be an enhancement. Setting severity, priority and milestone appropriately. Cheers, Dave.
to clarify: the paths, segments,and points are easily deletable, but components are not. this is disconcerting because you can eg. move components as you can for points , segments, or paths, but you can't delete them in one step as you would for points/segments/paths. it's not orthogonal. the easiest workaround i found was, as you said, to make sure each part is separate to start with.
I am not sure if david gowers means exactly this, but personally I often find that I have created a path consisting of multiple components (i.e., each component is a structure made up of points and line segments, butthose components are, at least not necessarily, all connected) or just a ver big path, and I need to split that path up into two (e.g. because I do not want to stroke all of this path, but only a component). What would be helpful would be some sort of "path selection tool": a tool that lets you select multiple portions of a path at the same time, which you then could move, cut or delete at once. Imagine this path: o--o--o / o--o o--o--o--o I would like to single out the "o--o--o--o" part of the path and move it entirely, without moving the other part. Now, the way you would normally do this would be to make them two different paths; however, when you start editing the path you might not yet realize that that is what you will want to do. Therefore, a tool that would allow you to select multiple parts of a path would be helpful, and consequently all compatible actions should then only work for that part of the path - just like e.g. the "Kill selection" action only applies to the content of a selection and not to the entire layer/image. Additionally it would be helpful if you could as an action for such a "path component selection" (probably someone needs to come up with a word other than "selection") the action "make into new path" would exist; that action would remove the selected components from the current path and create a new path into which that would be inserted.
The move mode of the path tool can move connected components ("strokes") individually, so for moving this is IMHO not an issue. Also you can use Shift in Design mode to select multiple nodes and move them together and also delete all of them. A way to easily select all nodes of a stroke would probably useful, although it is unclear to me how to incorporate this in the path tool without making it too complex. Shift-doubleclick in design mode? Any better suggestions? Splitting a path into multiple paths probably would be a useful functionality anyway, should not be too hard...
Yes, you are right, now I see that actually the movement of strokes is possible; I wonder why I did nto see that before. The splitting and the need to have an easier selection prevails, however; just imagine you wrote text with the text tool, turned that into a path and now would like to remove one of the letters, maybe a w. That letter might have twenty nodes, and you have to delete every single one individually... if you could select them all quickly and then just delete them, that would be helpful (as of now you can delete them if they are selected, but for selection you have to press shift and then select them indivudally; as well then you could go into edit mode and shift-click all nodes to delete them). Personally I would like the selection tool(s) to have a mode selector similar to the one e.g. the rotate tool has: you would choose whether the select tool applies to image content or paths. Then you could for example take the rectangular-selection tool and select the part of the path you want by simply putting the rectangular selection box around it. As for your double-click idea: why not make it a simple double click? Or does so far a double click on a node in design mode do anything? (As far as I can see it does not.)
As for Shift-doubleclick, this was basically out of consistency: Shift-clicking is for selecting multiple nodes, so shift-doubleclicking is kind of natural. I hope that at some point a usability study on the path tool will get done...
But shift-clicking is to select multiple points one by one, whereas the double-click is supposed to be an escalating action: Click one: selects the clicked node. Click two: selects all other nodes that are directly or indirectly connected to the node selected in step one. Actually, shift-doubleclick should be usable to select another stroke, like this: I click on a point. I shift-click on another point: now two are selected. Now I shift-double-click on a point of another stroke; as a result, that entire stroke is selected along with the two points I selected beforehand. Or: I double-click a point and thereby select an entire stroke. Now, I shift-double-click a point that belongs to another stroke; as a result, both strokes are now selected completely. That would keep things coherent: - double-clicking a point selects the entire stroke the point is a part of - shift-clicking adds (or substracts) the clicked point to (from) the current group of selected points So if one follows that model, double-click and shift-double-click should be implemented to allow the selection of entire strokes.
-- GitLab Migration Automatic Message -- This bug has been migrated to GNOME's GitLab instance and has been closed from further activity. You can subscribe and participate further through the new bug through this link to our GitLab instance: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/issues/63.