Question for all of you: How would you prefer the align-tool to function in an italic font? Should it follow the italic angle or perpendicular to the baseline? Imagine an italic font where you construct the ± character from the + and the − placed as components. The question is how the vertical align-tool should then behave – following the italic angle or not?
Following the italic angle would be useful in more circumstances IMO.
I agree with eliason.
Great, I would hold the same opinion. Captain Georg, make it so!
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As an option, okay. But as the default, no. You often need vertical alignment in italic angles too. Think serifs or instrokes.
I agree with mekkablue, as an option it would be very helpful.
Well, this was my proposal, but George said that having the icons change when the Option-key was depressed was difficult to do.
I would say that the default align should always follow the italic angle.
The align-icons should also follow the italic angle.
If a user want to align straight when an italic angle is set for the typeface, then hold down ‘Option’ and either access the menu item or:
When Option is held down in a typeface where the italic angle is set, then the align-icons straighten (and clicking one of them while Option is held down will align straight.)
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The default should not be the italic angle, because you need align for straightening out extremum handles, and most italic designs do have vertical features as well, eg in the serifs.
The button problem would not apply to the cmd-(opt-)shift-A solution.
Not sure whether aligning components or complete paths with the palette buttons should be changed at all. It is certainly less of a problem, in any event. Can you describe use cases?
Rainer, there is a misunderstanding. We speak about the alignment buttons on the panel and not the cmd+shift+A align. The later shouldn’t follow the italic angle.
On a similar topic, it would be useful to have a modifier key that constrains movements to the italic angle.
For example, if you hold shift and drag something, it moves along right angles. However, if you hold opt-shift and drag, it would constrain all movements to the horizontal and italic axes.
the problem is, that the modifier keys are use for different things already.
Oh, I didn’t realize that. I usually move nodes with opt + arrow keys.
Anyway, I still think it would be useful to have an option for moving things along the italic axis. It doesn’t have to be with those modifier keys, though.
This is a feature I’ve been missing dearly as well. Maybe there could just be a menu item “Constraint to Italic Angle” that could be toggled on for Italic fonts. Then the regular Shift-key functionality could be used for the italic angle orientation rather than for the vertical one.
Similarly, it would be great if Cmd-Alt-Nudge were to preserve neighboring handles aligned along the italic angle. Currently it messes them up badly. Rainer told me this was an inherent problem of the interpolation used for Cmd-Alt-Nudge, but I’m sure that could be amended, e.g. by having the code de-slant the points in question, apply the interpolation, and re-slanting them.
I need to fix the nudge implementation in general. I hope to find time for it soon.
FYI. The application Gravit has a preference field where you can determine the constrain angle like in the old Freehand.