GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 93988
allow freedraw of polylines and bezierlines
Last modified: 2019-03-20 11:00:54 UTC
Please add freedraw of polylines and bezierlines. My off-the-cuff suggestion is that this be allowed by holding the ctrl key while placing the object. That is, placing a polyline would work differently depending on whether or not the ctrl key was pressed during placement. If ctrl is pressed, then mouse clicks will add segments (at the point of click).
Control is already used to force horizontal/vertical motion only. I would like to have a way to add more points at creation time, but I haven't found an intuitive way that fits in our current creation system. The object would need some way to indicate that extra clicks should go to it rather than do the normal stuff (select, move etc). Then there should be an obvious way to stop adding points.
My suggestion is that there be a distinction between holding down the control key while placing an object and holding it down once the object is place. So to place multiple points for a polyline object, for example, one would hold down the control key the entire time one is placing points. Letting go of the ctrl key would signal completion of the object placement. Here is an alternative approach: when *selecting* the polyline (or bezierline), one could ctrl-click to be able to place points for the object. This behavior could be ended by hitting the escape key. I like the first approach better, but either would suffice.
our purpose is to add a possibility to choose the number of "points" in the preferences dialogue. btw: polylines and polygons don't work in win-version. (beziergon and bezierlines do).
polylines and polygons do definately work in win-version 0.90
alabor@mail.com said: > our purpose is to add a possibility to choose > the number of "points" in the preferences dialogue. Perhaps I misunderstand the intent of this comment, but it should be clear that the request for freedraw is quite different. See above for a description.
> btw: polylines and polygons don't work in win-version. (beziergon and bezierlines do). This comment seems very strange to me. Using the context menu (middle click) you can add points to polygons/polylines/beziergons/bezierlines. I understand your request for freedraw, perhaps i am isolating you above comment out of context. What existing programs use the implementations you describe? We would need to compare and contrast how existing applictions such as Adobe Illustrator do freedraw and avoid reinventing the wheel. This article is really helpful (at least is was for me) about how best to describe requests for new features. http://ometer.com/features.html
The comment that polylines and polygons do not work in the Win version was made by alabor@mail.com. I have not had his problem. As for the rest of your comment, you seem to be asking whether freedraw is a desirable feature for a diagramming application. (Do I understand you?) I guess the developers have to try a few programs that offer freedraw (on Windows you can try Mayura draw for free) and see if it is not a *much* faster way to accurately draw polylines and especially bezierlines. I cannot cite any usage studies.
i agree that freedraw is a useful feature. you suggested various implementations and i just wanted to make clear that it makes sense to base an implementation on what other applications do (and then improve from there). aisaac, it was the other post that got me confused, sorry to have bothered you. if only Gnome was using a more recent version of Bugzilla! then you would be able to specify comment #4 and suchlike. ho hum.
Alan Horkan said: > it makes sense to base an implementation on what other > applications do (and then improve from there). The reason for my proposed implementations (which are just intended as possibilities) is that I was trying to stay within the current Dia design. The bezierline in Dia works like this: click and place the default object, then modify. Of course there could be a separate icon to click for a freedraw bezierline, but I assumed that to be undesirable. The question I considered is: how can we get a freedraw bezierline under the constraints that i. the current behavior of the Dia bezierline will not be altered, and ii. an additional icon (or equivalently, menu selection) will not be offered. I hope that is clearer. If I was wrong that (ii) is a constraint, then the method to select freedraw behavior becomes simpler (but the user interface becomes correspondingly more complicated).
First off, let me mention that the main reason we don't have a freedraw (or even a place-multiple-points) style for beziers and polythings is that it's difficult to add to our event model. Come to think of it, freedraw is probably easier than placing multiple points, as there is a well-defined endpoint. As for how to add it to the icon: Either have it be settable in the defaults dialog (will require some tweaking to allow properties for the defaults only), or maybe a menu could be added on the buttons.
Actually, here's an unintrusive idea, though hard on single-button mice: While dragging to create a bezier/polything, allow right-clicking to add points.
*** Bug 110334 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
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