Guides as special class of objects

[Hedley Finger]

FEATURE REQUEST

Guides should be a special class of object, on which most of the operations on drawing objects can also be performed:

@ Change colour, stroke width, and stroke pattern on individual guides
@ Option for short guides, i.e. need not necessarily extend to/beyond page margins
@ Group guides with each other (but not with drawing objects)
@ Position guides accurately by entering x and y coordinates for vertical and horizontal guides
@ Angle guides for drawing orthogonal, isometric, and perspective drawings
@ Option to allow guides to be included in printouts and PDF outputs (default: excluded)
@ Duplicate/copy guides at specified centres
@ Draw guides like Bezier curves
@ Snap text and other objects to curve guides, either by centres or edges, or in the case of text, also baseline, x-height line, caps line, ascenders line, or descenders line

No doubt Samuel Chase will be able to think of other aspects of drawing objects which guides could also have during his Google Summer of Code!

Regards,
Hedley

--

Hedley Finger

28 Regent Street Camberwell VIC 3124 Australia
Tel: [phone] Mobile (cell): [phone]
Email. "Hedley Finger" <email address hidden>

[su_v (suv-lp)]

Note: several of the requested features already exist with the current implementation of guides:
- Position guides numerically
- Angled guides
- Snapping

(Many of the other feature requests have already been filed separately in the bug tracker.)

[su_v (suv-lp)]

Related blueprint:
<https://blueprints.launchpad.net/inkscape/+spec/guides-improvement>

[su_v (suv-lp)]

> Guides should be a special class of object, on which most
> of the operations on drawing objects can also be performed

This request for a basic change of the current 'guides' implementation was filed earlier as
Bug #170813 “treat guides more like objects + lock guides + some toughts”
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/170813>

[Alain (tropicalrambler)]

This seems to be a bug that was "solved". However, item 2 and 3 have not been implemented:

@ Option for short guides, i.e. need not necessarily extend to/beyond page margins
@ Group guides with each other (but not with drawing objects)

Item 2 is what I am seeking. To add a field in the Guideline dialog box (upon double clicking) so that the user can specify the length of the guide, so that it does not extend to page margins. Some users have suggested using a bezier line as guides. However, it is my wish to ask that this field and behavior be added. No I am not including screenshots of the proposed behavior, because I do not have time. I suggest you check Adobe Illustrator as an example of such functionality, which would help set guides ahead of time before drawing. These guide features would aid enormously.

Thanks.