In a complaining mood

[Greg Titus]

On Saturday, December 22, 2001, at 07:40  AM, Howard Kaufman wrote:
> I create a lot of shapes that have lot's of text objects interior to 
> them.
>   I suppose for charts it's very convenient that you can click anywhere 
> inside a shape to select it, but it really makes it hard to select the 
> text within the shape.  It isn't too hard to select a single text item, 
> but it'
> s impossible to select multiple text items if they are within the shape 
> boundaries.  You have to shift click every one of them.

You could 'Lock' the shape to make it unselectable, then just 
drag-select (or whatever) the multiple text items.

In 1.2 beta we've added layers so you could have a shape layer and a 
layer of text above it, and lock the whole shape layer at once. 
Essentially the same thing, but acting on the whole layer at a time 
instead of individual shapes.

If you have other suggestions on how you'd like to handle this, of 
course, we'd love to hear them.

> Here's a another behavior that is making me nuts:  Create a line.  
> Show  the head label and remove the fill.  Now use the yellow dot 
> marker (sorry I don't know what you call it) to move the position of 
> the text so it is to the left of the line and in the clear.  This is 
> really great, it identifies the line in a way I used to have to do with 
> a separate line and a separate text object.  And they stay together if 
> you move the line which is also really cool.  But here's the problem.  
> If you try to edit the label when it is to the left of the line and in 
> the clear, it loses it's orientation and becomes vertical text instead 
> of horizontal and you have a pain to get it back to what you had before 
> the edit.  Is that a bug?

Definitely a bug. But it's something that I can't reproduce. When I try 
it here, the orientation doesn't change and everything works fine. Does 
this still happen for you in the 1.2 beta? If so, could you send a 
sample document?

> Another text problem:  When you create a text object it doesn't align 
> to the grid lines, it sits above or below the grid lines.  Since I use 
> text objects to identify a line, I need it to be centered with the 
> line.  You can do that of course with the command Align To centers in 
> the grid Info pane, but you must do that for every single text object 
> you create, every single time.  It should be a preference you can set 
> for all text you create.

Hmm. I looked into this one briefly, and it looks like it'd be a 
significant job to do it right. I think you'd probably want to have each 
shape (and text object) have an 'affinity' for either centeredness or 
edge-aligned-ness so you could drag the shape/text around and have it 
remain centered on a grid intersection instead of going back to being 
edge aligned every time you move it.

If we had centeredness affinity available to shapes, then you'd just 
need to change the text drawing tool in preferences to be centered, and 
it would work exactly how you'd want.

I think this is a good idea, but it isn't a simple fix.

Thanks,
	--Greg