Locking guides in AD V2

[jackamus]

Is there a way to selectively lock guides and if not why not?

[NathanC]

Hi @jackamus,

As far as i'm aware it's only possible to lock guides via the View > Lock Guides option, which globally affects all guides within your document and there isn't a function available to selectively lock guides. If this is a setting you're continually having to toggle you could always assign it to a keyboard shortcut under the 'View' in shortcut preferences.

[GarryP]

5 hours ago, jackamus said:

Is there a way to selectively lock guides

No, as mentioned above, the guides can either be all locked or all unlocked - all or nothing.

5 hours ago, jackamus said:

if not why not?

Possibly because it hasn’t been requested to such a degree that tells Serif that it’s something that is wanted by enough users for Serif to put the time and effort into implementing it, and therefore taking time and effort away from the maintenance and/or creation of other functionalities.

Can you give an example of usage and explain how you think the user would manage the locking/unlocking of individual guides?

[jackamus]

6 minutes ago, GarryP said:

No, as mentioned above, the guides can either be all locked or all unlocked - all or nothing.

Possibly because it hasn’t been requested to such a degree that tells Serif that it’s something that is wanted by enough users for Serif to put the time and effort into implementing it, and therefore taking time and effort away from the maintenance and/or creation of other functionalities.

Can you give an example of usage and explain how you think the user would manage the locking/unlocking of individual guides?

Yes. I was constructing a vertical flow chart that used text boxes. The chart needed to be centered on a guide. Because there were text boxes it was easy to accidentally move a guide. A locked guide would be useful in this case. Sometimes, when doing technical drawing I use a great number of guides and periodically have to remove them all but there are some that I do not want to move so I have to go back and replace them.

[GarryP]

7 minutes ago, jackamus said:

Because there were text boxes it was easy to accidentally move a guide.

I don’t understand why the layers being Frame Text Layers would make it more easy to accidentally move a guide then if they were other types of layer. Can you give more information?

7 minutes ago, jackamus said:

Sometimes, when doing technical drawing I use a great number of guides and periodically have to remove them

You can (temporarily) make guides invisible (menu “View → Show Guides”) and that will also stop them from being snapped to when you don’t want to snap to them.

You still haven’t explained how the user would manage the locking/unlocking of the guides individually.

[jackamus]

14 minutes ago, GarryP said:

I don’t understand why the layers being Frame Text Layers would make it more easy to accidentally move a guide then if they were other types of layer. Can you give more information?

You can (temporarily) make guides invisible (menu “View → Show Guides”) and that will also stop them from being snapped to when you don’t want to snap to them.

You still haven’t explained how the user would manage the locking/unlocking of the guides individually.

Maybe its because I'm not very disciplined at using layers as much as I ought to. I tend to do my jobs quickly and creating layers is a chore. However I wouldn't blame you for saying, "you need to be more disciplined!"

Can you hide guides as well as create new visible guides?

Locking and unlocking individual guides could be done with a mouse click with an operator key or maybe create a shortcut.

There is another problem I have with guides and that is if a stroke is coincident with a guide and can't be seen or partially seen it is not possible to selct the stroke without first moving the guide to expose it. The move tool seems to default to the guide rather than the stroke.

[GarryP]

2 hours ago, jackamus said:

Can you hide guides as well as create new visible guides?

The guides are either all visible or all invisible – all or nothing, same as locking.

2 hours ago, jackamus said:

Locking and unlocking individual guides could be done with a mouse click with an operator key or maybe create a shortcut.

A “mouse click” where? On the guide itself on the canvas? On the guide’s ‘stub’ on the ruler? Or somewhere else?
Note that various guide improvements are in the works for 2.1, so that’s worth keeping in mind.

How would a keyboard shortcut affect an individual guide?

2 hours ago, jackamus said:

The move tool seems to default to the guide rather than the stroke.

If you lock the guides then you shouldn’t be able to move them. I don’t know whether the Move Tool should ‘prefer’ guides over layers when guides are unlocked; some will agree some won’t.

I’m not against being able to manage guides in a more complete manner, it may be very useful, I just think it needs to be thought through more.

[jackamus]

28 minutes ago, GarryP said:

The guides are either all visible or all invisible – all or nothing, same as locking.

A “mouse click” where? On the guide itself on the canvas? On the guide’s ‘stub’ on the ruler? Or somewhere else?
Note that various guide improvements are in the works for 2.1, so that’s worth keeping in mind.

How would a keyboard shortcut affect an individual guide?

I

 

I'm just flagging-up a problem with guides and how the developers solve it is for them and for not me to make suggestions how they ought to solve it! There just needs to be a way to lock individual guides and also how to select a stroke that is hidden under a guide.

Do you know what the 2.1 improvements are likely to be?

[iconoclast]

6 minutes ago, jackamus said:

I'm just flagging-up a problem with guides and how the developers solve it is for them and for not me to make suggestions how they ought to solve it! There just needs to be a way ... how to select a stroke that is hidden under a guide.

Doesn't that work for you? In my case, if I have a stroke that is hidden under a guideline, I simply need to place the cursor on the stroke/guideline - I will get a doublearrow-cursor in that case - and then click. Because you can't select guidelines,  the stroke is selected then. Then, after it is selected, I can drag it with the mouse or do with it what I want. If you have an overview what layer belongs to that stroke, you can also click on the layer instead of the stroke/guide.

But I agree, that to be able to lock/unlock single guidelines might be helpful in some cases. Inkscape has that feature. I don't use it very often, but it's good to have it. Inkscape also allows to rotate the guides around a point, that you can place yourself. That is very helpful for perspective drawing. And that makes the single-lock/unlock-feature even more helpful.

[GarryP]

23 minutes ago, jackamus said:

I'm just flagging-up a problem with guides and how the developers solve it is for them and for not me to make suggestions how they ought to solve it!

If you want some changes to be made then why not be specific about what those changes are?
If you don’t specify what you want then how can the developers know what you want implemented?
Simply saying something like “I don’t like this; make it work differently.” probably isn’t going to get you what you want in the end.

23 minutes ago, jackamus said:

Do you know what the 2.1 improvements are likely to be?

Have a look in the relevant Beta area/sections of the forums.

[MiloW]

But locking doesn't work like it should. I resize the artboard and they all MOVE!

[Pšenda]

23 minutes ago, MiloW said:

I resize the artboard and they all MOVE!

Does it move within the Artboard? As mentioned earlier, the guides are relative to the start of the Artboard, which is always its left/top corner. So if only the size of the Artboard changes, the position of the guides does not change - neither relative to the parent Artboard, nor to others (although this is relatively irrelevant given the nature of the guides). If the position of the Artboard changes, the position of the guides relative to the parent Artboard does not change, but to the others it does.

[MiloW]

They move when you resize the artboard any other direction than bottom right. And as I mentioned earlier, this is IDIOTIC.

I can't add to the top of the artboard with the handle because it ruins the guides. I-DIO-TIC!

[Pšenda]

7 minutes ago, MiloW said:

They move when you resize the artboard any other direction than bottom right. And as I mentioned earlier, this is IDIOTIC.

I can't add to the top of the artboard with the handle because it ruins the guides. I-DIO-TIC!

Unfortunately, I don't understand the point of your post, not even in the context of the topic of this thread - which is locking guides, i.e. protecting them from selection and movement, not locking/freezing their position.

[Old Bruce]

Are you are wanting guides to be x units from the top or the artboard and then after you to add y units to the top of the artboard you want the guides to be (x + y) units from the top?

The guides take their location from the top left corner of the artboard.

[PROdult]

You don’t need to have that problem - I believe that’s exactly what Adjust Layout in InDesign can be enabled to prevent.