GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 161778
Constrain Path tool to horizontal & vertical
Last modified: 2018-05-24 11:19:20 UTC
The brush and pencil tools can be constrained to draw horizontal, vertical or 15 degree lines by holding down shift + control. But the path tool does not appear able to do this. For consistency, ease of and intuitive use it might be useful if the path tool could also follow the brush rules, to enable easy drawing of horizontal & vertical straight lines. Not sure how it would affect the existing usage of the path tool shortcuts though?
It seems reasonable. However, the Can you propose a way to do it and keep existing shortcut functionality? Hmm..control + shift is currently not used, thought control alone change it to from design to edit mode - maybe ctrl + shift could keep the tool in design mode and work with the constrainments. there is also the complication of what to do when moving a point already linked to other 2. I suppose the constrainments should apply towards the point that is "first" in the path - but I do not know if this information is kept internally.
I guess minimally it would be good to implement a constrain mode on the existing path tool, perhaps minimally for open ended paths, but the suggestion of the first one in the path is also good for double ended paths. Sorry, can't suggest a way to keep the existing shortcuts, but perhaps it could be added as a "constrain" checkbox option next to the polygon option? I don't have a huge amount of programming experience so I don't know how trivial it is to change shorcuts but i guess that is a decision/question for the programmers - For instance is it preferable to liase with the developers of the paint and pencil tools (an other is applicable) to come up with a new universal shortcut key for constrain mode, which in the short term will inconvenience users who will need to learn new shortcuts, but in the long term lead to a more consistent, intuitive and usable interface?
This seems like a change that would be easy to implement and could improve the user experience quite a bit. Setting the milestone to 2.4.
This is not a blocker for 2.4 and there are no indications it will be implemented immediately, so I am bumping to Future.
I think the way Dan suggested it, with a seperate checkbox, is the best way to do it. Is anyone about to implement that?
I am not aware of anyone working on this and I think it now is too late to consider inclusion for 2.4. Some way to constrain the tool would be very useful in 2.6, although I am not really convinced about the checkbox, but that is stuff that can be discussed. Christian: If you want to work on this feel free. Drop by in IRC and I'll guide you through the path tool code.
It would be better if we could use the Ctrl modifier key instead of a checkbox and constrain to multiples of 15 degrees as we do in other tools.
Sven: You do know that just using CTRL for this constraint would change the workflow of the path tool dramatically. We should wait for Peter&Kamilas analysis before doing this kind of change.
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