[scribus-dev] welding feature

[Cezary Grabski]

Hi all!

Last time I was upload to Mantis patch for welding page items feature.
Franz reviewed it, rewrote and commit to trunk with his approach.
Anyone was testing it already?

In my approach welding is hierarchical - one item is master and second is 
slave (master can have few slaves items, each slave can be master for others 
items). It was designed for behaviour of welded items when size of one of them 
is changed.
If master size changing change position of welding points then all slaves 
welded to these points move accordingly.
But if slave size is changed then master stay untouched, only slave move in 
order to welding point coordinates change, so always welding points stay 
connected.

In practice:
If I weld top left corner of caption frame to bottom left corner of master 
image frame then caption frame will be always connected with bottom edge of 
image frame.
If I change caption frame height it still will be connected with bottom edge 
of image frame, even if I will changing its height by dragging top handle.
If I change slave item width also master item dosn`t change its position - 
only slave item moves in order to welding point stay connected.
Master item dont move any way while changing size of any slave items, but only 
if slave item is moving then master moves accordingly.
In GUI I prepared only 4 commands for most usefull (IMHO) welding options.
I was thinking about nice interface for it similar to baspoint setting in PP, 
but with 9 predefinied points (left, centre, right x top, centre, bottom) and 
maybe free welding point position in the future.

In Franz approach there is only free point position, which is set buy dragging 
welding point on canvas. Nice, but not very precize.
What worse changing size of one of welding item ALWAYS move second item.
So if you imagine my practice example - changing caption frame height moves 
image frame. Even if welding point does not changing its postition on page!!!
It is not what I want to will be!
In that approach whole feature is less usable (if any usability remains).

Need comments which approach is better for you.

cezaryece