Re: Is it possible to force a 'grab' rather than a resize for small objects?

[Chris G <cl isbd net>]

On Wed, Feb 09, 2011 at 09:44:45PM +0100, Hans Breuer wrote:
> At 09.02.2011 13:25, Chris G wrote:
> > On Wed, Feb 09, 2011 at 04:00:19AM -0800, Octavio Alvarez wrote:
> > > On Wed, 09 Feb 2011 03:23:32 -0800, Chris G<cl isbd net>  wrote:
> > >
> > > > On Fri, Feb 04, 2011 at 03:21:01PM +0000, Chris G wrote:
> > > > > I have some small arc objects on some of my diagrams and they're very
> > > > > difficult to move as it's nearly impossible not to hit one of the resize
> > > > > end/mid points.  Is there any way one can force a move rather than a
> > > > > resize?
> > > > No answers to this?
> > >
> > > Have you tried zooming in using Ctrl+Wheel to make it easier?
> That would be have me my answer, too ...
> > That's one possibility, yes,but everything else is a 'sensible' size
> ... but I thought it was too obvious that you ask about it.
> I still don't get the use case of your request though. How do you
> position the arcs if the only thing cou can see are it's handles?
What I do at present is drag one handle to the right place and then drag
the other handle to its place.  I then sometimes have to resize the arc
as well by dragging the 'middle' handle.  It's this rather laborious
process that I'm trying to avoid.

To use the little arcs I just Copy/Paste to create new ones and then
move them (laboriously as above) to where I want it.  It would be *much*
easier if I could reliably drag them.


> > when un-zoomed and I'd often want to move the little arcs off the edge
> > of the zoomed view.  It would make moving them a bit of a laborious
> > process, zoom in, grab object, move it,
> Having wildly different sized objects is tedious, yes. Feels like
> you are getting what you asked for ;)
The arcs have to be small compared with all my other objects, it's just
the way things are on these diagrams.


> > find I can't move it far enough,  zoom out, etc.
> Are you aware that you can move further than the visible area and
> Dia scrolls the view accordingly?
Yes, it's still not ideal.

> > It feels like there could be something like CTRL+click which forces a
> > grab.
> Just adding more modifiers to the already complex combinations does
> not sound like a viable option to me. As mentioned above I'm still
> not sure if I completely got the use case.
> But also I have doubts if you completely evaluated exisiting options
> for selection - you do not need to 'grab' an object to move it, you
> can move objects by cursor keys, ...
Yes, I do that sometimes, it's excellent for short moves but not so
convenient for large moves.


> It may also help, that handles in a group of selected objects are
> not any longer resizing the objects when grabbed. Instead the whole
> selection is moving.
The 'use' case is in circuit diagrams where I much prefer the use of
little arcs to indicate that wires are not connected when crossing
rather than the convention that crossing wires are not connected and T
wires are connected.  Thus I need quite a lot of 'little arcs' and often
need to move them around extensively.  They also need to be a lot
smaller than the other circuit symbols.

-- 
Chris Green