”Rotate view” — required options

[Thomas M. Braun]

Dear Affinity team, 

the rotate view option using the mouse was a little irritating to me until I learned how to set it back to 0°. 

I think it's a great option for example to work with vertical text etc. 

However, I think it would and could be way better if users could 

a) know the degree of the rotation in an info menu somewhere

b) rotate it by fixed degrees (say, in 15° steps), for example with a magnetic function. 

That would make using it much more fun, and also the rotation back to 0° wouldn't require to recall the shortcut. 

 

Best, Thomas 

[walt.farrell]

18 hours ago, Thomas M. Braun said:

and also the rotation back to 0° wouldn't require to recall the shortcut. 

You don't have to remember the shortcut, just use the menu: View > Reset Rotation.

The menu also allows the 15-degree rotation.

 

[Thomas M. Braun]

On 3/2/2021 at 1:20 PM, walt.farrell said:

You don't have to remember the shortcut, just use the menu: View > Reset Rotation.

The menu also allows the 15-degree rotation.

 

Thanks Walt. It’s always good to look into the menu before posting a problem. Erm… 

However, the 15-degree rotation is not available for me. I also looked it up in the settings; I couldn’t change the degree of rotation. 
Where can you do this? Thanks for posting if you know. 

 

Apart from that, I still think a magnetic option whilst rotating using the mouse would be much more user-friendly and also faster. 
Ideally, the degrees where the magnetic function arrests could be customized via the settings. 

[walt.farrell]

59 minutes ago, Thomas M. Braun said:

However, the 15-degree rotation is not available for me.

View > Rotate Left and View > Rotate Right are 15-degree rotations.

[gafvert]

I'm looking for a way to disable this feature. In some other application command-mouse scroll wheel is used for zoom, so quite often I use it and end up rotating the entire view a couple of degrees. This is surprising and irritating to me, because I then have to find the rotation reset menu item and get disrupted in my work (because it's very hard to scroll-wheel back to exactly 0° rotation, since it doesn't snap).

I could see a (fringe) use case for rotating the view temporarily 90° (which is what I'd expect from View->Rotate Left / Right). But I don't really understand why you'd ever want to rotate the view say 7° (which is what you usually end up with by mistake with the mouse scroll wheel), or 15°, 30° etc. It's a little strange to me to then bind such a seldom used feature the user probably doesn't want to do to such a central input as the mouse wheel.

It would make my experience with Affinity a lot smoother if I could disable view rotation with the mouse wheel (or even better have command-mouse wheel zoom like I expect it to).

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, gafvert said:

I'm looking for a way to disable this feature.

Turn it off in Preferences, Tools, if you want:

[Pšenda]

4 hours ago, gafvert said:

even better have command-mouse wheel zoom like I expect it to

If not selected, zoom works with CTRL.
 

[Pšenda]

4 hours ago, gafvert said:

which is what you usually end up with by mistake with the mouse scroll wheel

For me, rotation only works with the Alt modification key. The wheel itself is either classic scrolling or zoom (if I set it that way).

[Pšenda]

4 hours ago, gafvert said:

But I don't really understand why you'd ever want to rotate the view say 7° (which is what you usually end up with by mistake with the mouse scroll wheel), or 15°, 30° etc

Paper rotation is very useful for drawing and painting "by hand", where a suitable angle of rotation will allow you to draw more accurately and naturally.
Thus, any angle may be needed, and in some situations very desirable.

 

[gafvert]

Great, thanks @walt.farrell and @Pšenda. I looked at least three times for these settings in the preferences without finding it. Probably because I looked in the interface, general and miscellaneous sections and didn't find this. Now it works like I want it to!

As for the default modifier zoom/rotate functionality it seems weird that on macOS the default Alt + Mouse wheel zooms and Command + Mouse wheel rotates, while on PC Alt + Mouse wheel rotates then?

[Pšenda]

3 hours ago, gafvert said:

while on PC Alt + Mouse wheel rotates then?

Yes, as stated in the preferences.

[Pšenda]

3 hours ago, gafvert said:

Probably because I looked in the interface

You are right, I would also expect it more in the "User Interface" group. But these groups (UI and Tools) are quite intertwined.

 

3 hours ago, gafvert said:

Now it works like I want it to!

Great, that's how it should be 🙂

[Thomas M. Braun]

On 3/7/2021 at 12:47 AM, walt.farrell said:

View > Rotate Left and View > Rotate Right are 15-degree rotations.

I use the German (newest) version, but degrees are set to 90° and it seems I can't change this anywhere. 
Maybe they'll correct/synchronize this with the next update. 
Thanks anyway, so now at least I know I'm not doing something wrong. 

[Pšenda]

1 hour ago, Thomas M. Braun said:

but degrees are set to 90°

Are you really using view rotation through the View menu, not canvas rotation?

If you suspect a bug in the German edition of Affinity, then try switching it to the default English for a while.

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, Thomas M. Braun said:

I use the German (newest) version, but degrees are set to 90° and it seems I can't change this anywhere. 
Maybe they'll correct/synchronize this with the next update. 

As Pšenda suggested, it sounds like you're not using View > Rotate (which moves in 15-degree increments) but either Arrange > Rotate (Photo) or Layer > Transform > Rotate (Designer). The latter two move only in 90-degree increments, and these actually modify the document. View just changes how the document is displayed, to make it easier to work on.

[Thomas M. Braun]

28 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

As Pšenda suggested, it sounds like you're not using View > Rotate (which moves in 15-degree increments) but either Arrange > Rotate (Photo) or Layer > Transform > Rotate (Designer). The latter two move only in 90-degree increments, and these actually modify the document. View just changes how the document is displayed, to make it easier to work on.

 

1 hour ago, Pšenda said:

Are you really using view rotation through the View menu, not canvas rotation?

If you suspect a bug in the German edition of Affinity, then try switching it to the default English for a while.

 

Guys – yes, I DO use View > Rotate which is set to 90 degrees in my case. 

BUT. As I just found out, this is only the case in Publisher.

I assumed the function would work the same in all programs across the Suite, but that's obviously not the case. 

It works in Designer, and also in Photo in my case. 
I just didn't notice that as I didn’t use Designer and Photo for some time now. 

As I said, maybe this will be corrected soon. 

Thanks for your care and attention. 

[Pšenda]

45 minutes ago, Thomas M. Braun said:

this is only the case in Publisher.

Yes, in Publisher, in the "Publisher Persona", where you work with a page and its layout, the view rotates by 90°. Which makes sense, because no finer rotation is needed to write texts and place images.

But in "Designer and Photo Persona", where finer rotation is appropriate, it already rotates 15°.

It's a bit inconsistent, but it makes sense.

 

45 minutes ago, Thomas M. Braun said:

As I said, maybe this will be corrected soon. 

In my opinion, it works as it should and as I expect, so I would did not assume, that this will be "corrected".