Anchoring after flipping?

[Julion]

In Affinity Designer if I flip an object horizontally or vertically, it seems that the anchor map in the rotation panel changes relatively as well. Say I flip horizontally and select an anchor point on the left side, all transforms anchor to the right instead. I think it's unintuitive and unpredictable, because I can't tell whether the object has been flipped or not. What is the purpose of this behaviour?

[Callum]

Hi Julion,

 

This is by design just because you are flipping the object doesn't mean you want to change the anchor.

 

C

[R C-R]

Maybe a dumb question but if you can't tell by its appearance, what does it matter if an object is flipped or not?

[Julion]

Hi Julion,

 

This is by design just because you are flipping the object doesn't mean you want to change the anchor.

 

C

 

 

But the anchor does change. If it didn't, none of this behaviour would occur. 

Edit: To put it more precicely, it's the orientation of the object that changes. Meaning that the object's left, right, up or down might differ from the user's point of view. That's the unintuitive part.

 

Maybe a dumb question but if you can't tell by its appearance, what does it matter if an object is flipped or not?

 

I wasn't talking about appearance. I meant that I may not remember having flipped an object. UI shouldn't rely on remembering things. 

Edited November 17, 2016 by Julion

[R C-R]

I wasn't talking about appearance. I meant that I may not remember having flipped an object. UI shouldn't rely on remembering things.

But why do you need to remember if the object was flipped or not if it is the same either way? You can show, hide, or move the rotation center with the move tool, or choose any of the 9 reference points in the Transform panel for rotation, skewing, scaling, etc., or do the same using the Move tool on bounding box control points in the workspace.

 

I am not sure which of these things you mean by anchor. Maybe I would understand your issue better if you could say a bit more about that.

[Julion]

But why do you need to remember if the object was flipped or not if it is the same either way? You can show, hide, or move the rotation center with the move tool, or choose any of the 9 reference points in the Transform panel for rotation, skewing, scaling, etc., or do the same using the Move tool on bounding box control points in the workspace.

 

I am not sure which of these things you mean by anchor. Maybe I would understand your issue better if you could say a bit more about that.

 

Because it isn't the same. Flipping seems to affect the Transform window's anchor map: 

 

 

After flipping the orientation of these anchor points aren't what the GUI shows. 

[R C-R]

The anchor reference points in the Transform panel icon are not a map of the object. They are independent of the control points on the bounding box & the movable rotation center on the object in the workspace.

 

The icon rotates when the object is rotated but that is just a visual cue of dubious value, more "eye candy" than anything else. The Transform panel provides only nine rotation points, fixed in relation to the object's bounding box's edges & center, while the rotation center provides a way to rotate the object about any center point in the workspace, even ones far from the object.

 

When you flip an object what specifically changes in the Transform panel?

[Julion]

The anchor reference points in the Transform panel icon are not a map of the object. They are independent of the control points on the bounding box & the movable rotation center on the object in the workspace.

 

The icon rotates when the object is rotated but that is just a visual cue of dubious value, more "eye candy" than anything else. The Transform panel provides only nine rotation points, fixed in relation to the object's bounding box's edges & center, while the rotation center provides a way to rotate the object about any center point in the workspace, even ones far from the object.

 

When you flip an object what specifically changes in the Transform panel?

 

The behaviour changes, and it's not represented by the reference points. After flipping if I want to anchor the object to the left, and I click an anchor point on the left, and the reference point on the left lights up, it gets anchored to the right instead. 

 

With transforms the reference points do update to represent the orientation of the object. This is not the case with flipping. 

 

Am I wrong to expect the reference points to give a visual hint of where the object should be anchored?

[R C-R]

OK, I finally see what you mean about the behavior changing. I can't say if your expectations are right or wrong, only that the app is designed so that flipping does not change anything relative to the object itself. So in that sense it is non-destructive -- you can toggle between flipped states without that affecting anything internal to the object, sort of like flipping a 35 mm slide or similar real world object over doesn't change anything in it.

 

This is the behavior I expect & prefer but I understand that you might prefer something different. You might want to add that to the feature request section.

[Julion]

OK, I finally see what you mean about the behavior changing. I can't say if your expectations are right or wrong, only that the app is designed so that flipping does not change anything relative to the object itself. 

 

But this is not true. Object has orientation, meaning what is the object's reference of "up", "down", "left" or "right". If flipping would only mirror the visual content and didn't change the orientation, the anchor reference points would intuitively make sense every time. 

[R C-R]

Any object has two well defined orientation references, one to the outside world & another to its internal structures. Flipping an object over changes its overall orientation to the outside world but not the relative orientation of internal structures. But mirroring an object is not the same thing as flipping it over -- that actually requires a transformation of the internal structures.

 

This may be easier to visualize if you consider a 35 mm slide showing a man holding an object in his right hand. If you flip the slide over left to right & look at it from the back, it is still an image of him holding the object in his right hand, even though from your perspective it looks like he is holding it in his left. If you showed him the slide flipped over & said it actually shows that the object was in his left hand, he would probably say you are the one not making any sense.

 

The flipping options in Affinity mimic this kind of real world behavior. Flipping an object is not the same as mirroring it. Currently there is no mirroring option as such in the app. You can do this manually by dragging a control point exactly twice the distance from its opposite control point, but that isn't easy to do accurately. Some apps provide a snapping point for that, so it might be a good suggestion for a feature request.

[Julion]

Thanks for the nice analogy! To continue from there, I guess I'm suggesting that instead of flipping the slide and the frame you could remove the slide from the frame, flip it, and put it back in. That way when I want to hold the frame from the top left corner I don't need to remember whether the frame has been flipped to know where the top left corner actually is.  ;)

[R C-R]

I think that in effect you are suggesting that there should be a true mirroring option in Affinity, in addition to the flipping ones ... or maybe instead of them?

 

Either way, if you want the control points not to flip along with the object for now you could try the manual workaround I mentioned or an easier alternative: flip the object, draw a rectangle that completely encloses it (or any other shape that does), select both objects & apply the Intersect boolean operation from the toolbar. This converts the object to one with the control points set the same as they would be for a new, unflipped object.

 

The same basic technique can also be used to permanently reset the selection box of a rotated object, reset the skew angle to zero without altering the shape, & so on. It requires extra steps vs. a dedicated 'one click' function but for now it is better than nothing.