Distribute Horizontal Centers: unexpected behavior

[spinhead]

I would assume that if I select, say, 7 items stacked vertically on my page as in the attached file, and position ONE at the top left and SEVEN at the bottom right, select all, and click Distribute Horizontal Centers I would get a staircase effect from ONE at top left to SEVEN at bottom right.

Instead, I get (depending on the humidity in my fridge or the phase of the moon) ONE through THREE in a staircase, FOUR on its own, FIVE and SIX in some odd configuration, and SEVEN right where I left it, so at least it's not lost.

Vertical distribution behaves as I would expect (except of course for fonts, where "center" is taken literally instead of using the font's midline as it probably should, y'know, for alignment.)

Am I doing something wrong? Is it intended to produce some other result?

distribute.afdesign

[GarryP]

Interesting.
I’d not noticed this before but the different distribution functions seem to be acting in different ways depending on ‘some unknown internal knowledge’.
Take my attached video for example.
In the first case, the layers seem to be distributed in order according to their initial X-coordinate rather than the order they are selected.
In the second case (after aligning to the left), they seem to be distributed in a different order to that in the first case, for some reason.
In the third case, the distribution is different depending on which distribution function you choose.
It would be nice if someone can explain this as it’s confusing me also now.

[Old Bruce]

Forget about the words' meaning, forget about the layer order and look at which object is closest to the one's leftmost edge in the horizontal direction. It is Four. Now which is closest to the four's leftmost edge, and so on.

I get one, four, two, five, six, three, seven. And that is the order if you go and align to  the top after distributing.

[spinhead]

So you have to have the ALMOST aligned before it works? Why would it not go by layer order, like every other tool I've ever used?

I'd like a tool to not only do the fine adjustments, but the heavy lifting up front. Not very satisfying.

[GarryP]

@Old Bruce I certainly wasn’t expecting the layers to be ordered alphabetically by textual content and I don’t think spinhead was either.
Our (spinhead, just say if I’m wrong) issue is that the order in which the layers are distributed seems to be something that the user has little control over.
Consider my latest video where I have not used text so that it doesn’t cause further confusion (afdesign file uploaded too).
When I horizontally distribute the layers the first time they are distributed as one might expect (if the distribution is ordered by initial X value).
However, after aligning them to the left and then horizontally distributing them, they are distributed in a way that I wouldn’t expect.
Our question is: “How can we define, or know in advance, the order in which layers are distributed?”

distribution-issues.afdesign

Edited November 12, 2020 by GarryP
Added example document.

[Alfred]

46 minutes ago, GarryP said:

@Old Bruce I certainly wasn’t expecting the layers to be ordered alphabetically by textual content and I don’t think spinhead was either.

Me too neither, but @Old Bruce made a point of saying

17 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

Forget about the words' meaning

He went on to say

17 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

forget about the layer order and look at which object is closest to the one's leftmost edge in the horizontal direction. It is Four. Now which is closest to the four's leftmost edge, and so on.

 

[GarryP]

If the order in distribution is ascending X-value then I can understand what’s happening there (it’s probably not ideal but it is understandable).
If the order in distribution is by next nearest X-value then that seems a little bit odd but I could get used to it.
However, what about the second part of my latest video where, after left alignment, all of the layers have the same X-value?
The order in this case doesn’t seem to be by X-value, or width, or area, or selection order, or layer hierarchy, or anything else that I can see.
Set the video to stops at 0:06, 0:19 and 0:29 to see the main differences.

[spinhead]

I was ready to accept the Distribution tools as refiners rather than heavy lifters, but @GarryP that is strage indeed.

I am assuming the tools are intended to work the same in Photo and Designer, by the way.

[spinhead]

Any thoughts, @Old Bruce or @Alfred or any other resident experts?

It may not work the way I expect, but it would be nice to know exactly how it DOES work.

[Old Bruce]

I haven't really thought too much about this but  I figure it will be down to some sort of cartesian origin (upper left corner?) and chronological order of creation. Not necessarily the same for top bottom and left right.

[spinhead]

I'm going to go flag it as a bug. There's no way anyone intended it to work in such an obscure manner.

[GarryP]

I’m not sure if this can be classified as a bug; it may be that the software is doing exactly what it is supposed to do.
The issue could be that either:
A) the user is not given enough information to be able to predict the distribution order, or;
B) the user doesn’t have enough control to be able to specify the distribution order;
C) or both;
D) or something else.
Consider the video I have attached to this post (you may need to rewind a few times to see what’s happening, especially at the green set, see below).
I create five rectangles and give them different widths, then copy each set (giving each set a different colour), then select each layer in a set in a different order and use the same distribution function on each set.
Every time I distribute the rectangles in the set I get them distributed in a different order.
The grey and red sets are (this time, but I often get different results) distributed in selected order, the green set is definitely not in selected order, while the blue set is back to being in selected order.
Whether the set is distributed in selected order seems to be 'random'.
I have done a lot of tests but it’s difficult to get something on video as the functionality seems to work according to some unknown (to me) ‘force’ which means that it works the way I would expect sometimes but then doesn’t at other times (frustrating when you’re trying to demonstrate what’s happening).
If someone can explain what’s happening then I would be grateful.