Developer Forum

Hi everyone!

I just wanted to let you know that Will has posted a new tutorial on his
blog site (the one that is the boss of you! :-) )and this tutorial is about
aligning objects. I haven't finished the tutorial myself but so far I'm
finding great information there. If you follow the tutorial and have
suggestions about improvements to Design's alignment features, I'd love to
hear those suggestions. You'll find the tutorial here:

http://www.yqcomputer.com/

--
Annie
design(at)studioe3(dot)com
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights.

Hi Fred,

Will the feature return? I doubt it. So far the suggestion hasn't been made
to add this feature back, but I'll add it today. But the fact that it hasn't
been suggested before lessens the chance that it will return. I haven't
checked the database yet but I will soon.

Thanks, Fred. I'll go to Will's blog and look at your comments.

--
Annie
design(at)studioe3(dot)com
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights.

Thanks Annie! I just checked Will's site--my comments didn't get posted.
Basically, I suggested that he use the Action Bar & Registration Point icon
with manual position entries to accomplish the alignments to page top,
bottom, right & left. I guess that will even be tricky since ED doesn't
consider the stroke(s) width in the bounding box. :-(

Fred

saw your comment. It's odd that it didn't show up for you.

I'm not sure why that feature was removed unless it's because they felt that
the snapping feature would take stroke width into account, since snapping
uses the bounding in most cases.

--
Annie
design(at)studioe3(dot)com
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights.



"Fred C." < XXXX@XXXXX.COM > wrote in message
news:% XXXX@XXXXX.COM ...

Fred, Annie,

This is something I didn't know about Expression Design, but will keep in
mind. In Adobe Illustrator the default behavior for aligning objects is the
same as what you see in ED, although in Illustrator there is an option
called 'use preview bounds' which will include the stroke weight in the
alignment process so the actual stroke doesn't go past the bounding edge of
the object you align to.

I would like to see an option toggle like this appear in a future version
of ED.

Will
{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\deff0\deflang1033{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fprq2\fcharset0 MS Sans Serif;}}
\viewkind4\uc1\pard\f0\fs20 Fred, Annie,
\par
\par This is something I didn't know about Expression Design, but will keep in mind. In Adobe Illustrator the default behavior for aligning objects is the same as what you see in ED, although in Illustrator there is an option called 'use preview bounds' which will include the stroke weight in the alignment process so the actual stroke doesn't go past the bounding edge of the object you align to.
\par
\par I would like to see an option toggle like this appear in a future version of ED.
\par
\par Will
\par }

nnie,
Snapping to grid, guides or points uses the bounding box which is also the
centerline of the stroke disregarding the stroke width.

Fred

"Annie" < XXXX@XXXXX.COM > wrote in message
news: XXXX@XXXXX.COM ...

h that's right! Silly me. Well then I have no idea why they did that. :-)

--
Annie
design(at)studioe3(dot)com
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights.



"Fred C." < XXXX@XXXXX.COM > wrote in message
news: XXXX@XXXXX.COM ...

I think this was discussed quite a while ago in the days of EGD, namely:

bounding box taking parameters from:

a - the path itself

b - from effects/strokes applied to a path

Softedge effect in EGD at the time meant that option (a) was the easiest
to implement.

There are some events that can cause a registration point to drift or at
least appear to do so:

1 - create an object (a rectangle will do fine)

2 - apply fill and stroke

3 - rotate the rectangle

Try the same with another rectangle that has E3 type softedge or some
off centred blur. E3/EGD strokes (S01?) and softedge tend to be
non-symmetric. Rotating an object can therefore judge the bounding box
and hence a centred registration point off by a few pixels.

I guess no thing is perfect but a path centred bounding box seems easy
to work with provided the limitations are taken into account (especially
the influence of non-symmetric edge, stroke, fill effects when applied
to an object, grouped objects of multiple selection of objects.

What does that have to do with aligning objects?

--
Annie
design(at)studioe3(dot)com
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights.

It's sorta complicated but doable.

Should the object bounding box include non-symmetric effect like drop
shadow then there is (was?) usually an effect on bounding box and
registration points. So, for example, the centred registration box will
be in the centre of the path OR offset slightly to allow for
non-symmetric effects.

Other edge based registration points may also be nudged a few pixels to
cater for non-symmetric effect (drop shadow is a classic example. Drop
shadow applied to lower right corner of a rectangle will displace about
7 of the 9 registration points associated with a bounding rectangle.

What does it mean?

It means that oftentimes a bitmap export based on a crop has different
registration to the source vector. Iyt is not too serious and good use
of position values can help workaround but it sorta slows creative workflow.