Inkscape

Selecting objects including ones in groups for stretching

Bug #818002 reported by Andrzej on 2011-07-29

This bug affects 2 people

Affects		Status	Importance	Assigned to	Milestone
	Inkscape	New	Wishlist	Unassigned

Bug Description

This is a feature request for an object selection function (all or using a rubber band) including objects, which are inside groups/subgroups.

I have a fairly large drawing, which I'd like to stretch, that is move some of its objects away from the rest of the drawing. This process should maintain any path segments between both parts of the drawing.

To achieve this, I normally do the following:
1. select all objects,
2. switch to the node editing tool,
3. select nodes, which I'd like to move away from the rest of the diagram,
4. drag (or Alt-drag) them.

However, this method fails if there are any groups in the diagram. That's because step 1 selects groups, not elements inside them and, because of that, step 2 fails to select any nodes in the internal objects.

After step 1 I can of course use Ctrl+Shift+click to add all the internal objects to the selection but that's a rather tedious process because I have to find and click on all the objects one by one.

Alternatively, I'd like to learn about a more idiomatic way of achieving the same goal (stretching a drawing).

Tags:

Revision history for this message

su_v (suv-lp) wrote on 2011-07-30:

<off-topic>
> Alternatively, I'd like to learn about a more idiomatic way of achieving the same goal (stretching a drawing).

Beyond the scope of a bug tracker - please use one of the available support resources to discuss such questions with other inkscape users and developers, e.g.

- Inkscape mailing list 'inkscape-users'
  <https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-user>
- Inkscape user forum
  <http://www.inkscapeforum.com/>
- Inkscape Answers section at launchpad
  <https://answers.launchpad.net/inkscape>
- Inkscape irc channel at freenode
  <http://inkscape.org/discussion.php?lang=en>
</off-topic>

Changed in inkscape:
importance:	Undecided → Wishlist
tags:	added: node-editing transformations

Revision history for this message

Jeffery Kerrison (jefferykerrison) wrote on 2015-03-02:

stretch_example.svg Edit (91.8 KiB, image/svg+xml)

An old feature request, but it perfectly describes the issue I'm having. I think it would be a boon for Inkscape this functionality were supported, so I'd like to try and describe this further. Currently, it is relatively painful to stretch drawings like circuit diagrams and flowcharts to make space to insert new elements or to rearrange the existing elements without resorting to multiple clicks or redrawing the whole thing

Specifically, using Inkscape for schematics, it is currently very difficult to stretch a diagram containing multiple paths and groups of objects without resorting to a multi-stage approach like this:

1) Select all of the objects (groups, rectangles, ellipses, etc)
2) Drag the objects to the desired location
3) Unselect the objects and select all of the paths
4) Switch to the node tool and select all of the desired nodes
5) Stretch the nodes to the desired location (hopefully the same displacement as #2)

I'm attaching an example drawing which hopefully illustrates this topic. The circuit elements are groups of paths, and they are connected to each other by regular bezier paths. This is a toy example that is relatively easy to do with the above steps but you can imagine how difficult it would be to stretch a large schematic.

A few potential solutions come to mind.
1) The node tool could have an option to include objects when rubberbanding or selecting with rectangle
2) Both selected paths AND selected objects (groups, rectangles, etc) objects can have their internal nodes available when switching to the node tool
3) Selected objects could be represented by single node (perhaps at the corner or in the center of the bounding box) that can be selected after switching to the node tool.

I wish I had the programming prowess to implement one of these myself but alas all I can do is report and hope someone is interested in picking this up!

Thank you for your time.

For reference, Andrzej's post has additional description: http://www.inkscapeforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9924&p=36946&hilit=Andrzej#p36946

An old feature request, but it perfectly describes the issue I'm having.  I think it would be a boon for Inkscape this functionality were supported, so I'd like to try and describe this further. Currently, it is relatively painful to stretch drawings like circuit diagrams and flowcharts to make space to insert new elements or to rearrange the existing elements without resorting to multiple clicks or redrawing the whole thing

Specifically, using Inkscape for schematics, it is currently very difficult to stretch a diagram containing multiple paths and groups of objects without resorting to a multi-stage approach like this:

I'm attaching an example drawing which hopefully illustrates this topic.  The circuit elements are groups of paths, and they are connected to each other by regular bezier paths.  This is a toy example that is relatively easy to do with the above steps but you can imagine how difficult it would be to stretch a large schematic.

I wish I had the programming prowess to implement one of these myself but alas all I can do is report and hope someone is interested in picking this up!

Thank you for your time.

For reference, Andrzej's post has additional description: http://www.inkscapeforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9924&p=36946&hilit=Andrzej#p36946