Rotate/view

[Capitaine Pongo]

I often work on packaging. The View / rotate function is very annoying because all the tools have their coordinates rotate too. The arrows on the keyboard to move an object, the window sliders also reversed. Point alignment also works with rotation etc... it's like we're working with our head turned too 🐵 If you fix that, will be very helpfull.

[loukash]

3 hours ago, Capitaine Pongo said:

it's like we're working with our head turned too

It's as if you would rotate your display, and that's actually the point of the feature.

[Capitaine Pongo]

Take a look at the same function in in-design and you'll see why I'm crying ;o) 🙃

[JET_Affinity]

On 10/25/2023 at 9:31 PM, loukash said:

It's as if you would rotate your display, and that's actually the point of the feature.

That's also actually the problem of the feature. I've been saying this since the earliest implementations of 'page rotate' features in other programs, and always argued that fans of such features (as implemented) should just buy a dang rotatable monitor mount.

Many of us have no interest whatsoever in the typical 'rotate'  feature because we don't use styluses and we do need a way to overcome the near universal horizontal/vertical fixation of these kinds of programs, as if illustrators never need to measure or scale objects in other directions.

JET

[loukash]

On 10/26/2023 at 11:43 AM, Capitaine Pongo said:

Take a look at the same function in in-design

I actually did the other day (ID CS5.5), and there is a major difference in concept: ID can only rotate in 90° steps wheras Affinity can rotate (on Mac at least) absolutely freely. 
And I also recalled why I've rarely used this feature in ID: exactly because the "move" orientation changes, and I've always found it confusing.
The Affinity approach seems more logical and natural to me.
But to each their own…  

In that sense: How would you solve the "move-with-arrow-key" dilemma if your view rotation is e.g. 137.652°?

• Move strictly per display orientation, i.e. changing both X and Y values?
• Or move strictly per spread coordinates?

1 minute ago, JET_Affinity said:

That's also actually the problem of the feature.

See above.

The solution would be: Let user decide per option setting.
In other words, nothing needs to be "fixed", but an option should be added.

[JET_Affinity]

For anyone not really catching the subject of this thread:

The typical 'rotate view' feature in mainstream vector drawing programs tries to emulate the pre-computer habit of rotating a pad of paper to comfortably accommodate the angled movements of one's forearm when sketching with a pencil. It's a poorly-conceived analogy because:

• The analogous 'rotated page' is still being viewed through the unmoved horizontal-vertical 'window' of the monitor. The 'drawing sheet's' corners are effectively lopped off.
• If the rulers are displayed, they remain horizontal and vertical; useless for measuring in the drawing.
• Thus, for those drawing on a computer with a stylus and feeling the need to rotate the 'drawing sheet' a proper emulation would be to simply tilt the monitor itself on a rotatable monitor mount.

Meanwhile, absolutely crucial for any kind of measure/proportional drawing is to be able to make measures and perform scaling transformations in diagonal directions in the drawing, not just merely in the vertical and horizontal edges of the page. The pre-computer analogy to this would be the freely-movable and freely-rotatable scale of the parallelogram-style or track-style drafting machines in any serious engineering department. Yet for the full four decades history of general-purpose mainstream vector-based drawing programs, I know of none that has done a decent job of emulating that direct, straightforward, intuitive functionality. This is why many experienced pre-computer tech illustrators can still often do axonometric drawings faster 'on the board' than on a computer using mainstream vector drawing programs. These programs sometimes attempt to address the very basic need by:

• Page-spanning grids. The fallacy of this is that such grids, by definition, have uniformly-spaced increments. But it is absurd to assume that all real-world objects that we need to draw in accurate proportion are both shaped and spaced relative to each other  according to some invisible universal set of equal-measure increments. Yes, in pre-computer days, technical illustrators sometimes resorted to using underlay grids under their translucent drawing sheets as a workaround for when away from their drafting tables. But page-spanning grids are usually just useless clutter when focused on the current area of interest.
• Rotating bounding boxes when a selection is rotated. Most drawing programs in this class always display vertical/horizontal (page normalized) bounding boxes (e.g.; Inkscape}, regardless of the rotation of the selection. A few programs provide bounding boxes that rotate when the selection is rotated. But even this fails miserably when—as with Affinity—there are no transformation tools, but instead just transform handles attached to bounding boxes. The needed functionality is only available when the transformation or measure needs to be made in the directions of the bounding box sides, which just as often has nothing to do with the measurement/transform direction needed in the drawing.
• As already explained, existing 'rotate page' features fail to address this. When the display of the page content is rotated, so are the 'horizontal' and 'vertical' directions rotated with them, even as the now useless page rulers remain parallel to the monitor.

Thus, for those needing to draw objects with measured accuracy, two at least significantly better provisions of the needed freedom to measure and transform in directions meaningful to the drawing would be either:

• Ability to temporarily rotate the page's content relative to the page rulers without also changing the orientation of 'vertical' and 'horizontal' movement, transformation, and measure, or…
• Give one of Affinity's absurdly redundant five bounding box rotation handles some added functionality: Give the lollypop handle the ability to rotate the bounding box about the selection, thereby enabling the illustrator to the transform handles to whatever direction is actually needed relative to the content being transformed.

JET

 

[loukash]

4 hours ago, JET_Affinity said:

• The analogous 'rotated page' is still being viewed through the unmoved horizontal-vertical 'window' of the monitor. The 'drawing sheet's' corners are effectively lopped off.
• If the rulers are displayed, they remain horizontal and vertical; useless for measuring in the drawing.
• Thus, for those drawing on a computer with a stylus and feeling the need to rotate the 'drawing sheet' a proper emulation would be to simply tilt the monitor itself on a rotatable monitor mount.

The solution for this is…

*drum roll*

Affinity for iPad with an Apple Pencil