Is there a way to move objects without snapping?

[inkuser]

I don't see any snap-to ____ controls in Scribus, but objects seem to be behaving as though snap is on; in other words, I don't have fine control over where I move objects.

Is there a way other than the Properties bar to gain fine control over the positioning of objects?

Thank you!

[tosca]

See the last two lines of the Page menu. In french, they are "Grille magnétique" (Magnetic grid?) and "Repères magnétiques" (whatever...) You need to uncheck both if you want no magnetism at all.

[inkuser]

Thank you, Tosca...these items were already un-checked. So, this is the best it can be?

[AdmFubar]

Not sure if this is what you are looking for, you can use the cursor keys, alone or with ctrl or shift to, move objects around.

[GarryP]

Turning the two snapping options off - both grid and guides - as suggested by tosca above should turn snapping off completely as they are the only snapping options that Scribus has (in 1.4.6, I don't know about 1.5.x). Without those two options set you should be able to drag things by the pixel.

Can you describe the problem you're having in a bit more detail please? Particularly, which operating system type/version, which Scribus version and where you got Scribus from. If you can give a short work-flow that always produces the reported effect then other people can try it for themselves. A short video of the problem would help too if you can post one.

[inkuser]

Thank you, Garry;

I downloaded 1.4.6 via Portable. IS here doesn't support Scribus, so I'm on my own there. I have a new HP running Windows 7 Enterprise, and while it makes some difference what my document units are (inches versus pts) I still can't get fine control when dragging an item by hand.

It's almost as though Scribus is respecting a pixel grid that I can't see and that bears no relation to the design grid I've laid out.

Adobe Illustrator and some other apps have this feature/benefit, but I don't see anything like that in
Scribus.

So, here's my scenario:

8-1/2" x 11" sheet, landscape, with a .35" margin on all sides. I have boxes with borders and I need to line other elements up with the boxes' borders. I can get pretty close with the numeric field, but not perfect and its VERY tedious to use this method.

Thank you for any help!

[tosca]

You can:
- type the coordinates in the Propriety window, using any unit you can think about (and by the way, the current unit you use in the document might influence the displacement you make with direction keys) including arithmetical operations using keywords as "pagewidth", "pageheight" and such.
- use the window "Espacer et aligner" in order to organize any object(s) in relation to other(s)
- add "repères" (probably "guides" in the english interface) and use magnetism to stick objects to them.

[AdmFubar]

8-1/2" x 11" sheet, landscape, with a .35" margin on all sides. I have boxes with borders and I need to line other elements up with the boxes' borders. I can get pretty close with the numeric field, but not perfect and its VERY tedious to use this method.

Thank you for any help!

Sounds more like you need to use the Align and Distribute options. Check in the windows menus in Scribus to make sure the Align and Distribute pallet is open.
You select objects on the page and arrange via several alignment properties.

[GarryP]

When you drag things with the mouse, Scribus - and all other applications - has to try and convert that movement into the Unit Of Measure used by the application and that's where things get a bit complicated.

Dragging something with the mouse creates an event that tells the application that the mouse has been dragged. The application must then interrogate the mouse drag event to see if the drag amount was sufficient for the drag to be reflected by the UI. If that is so then the application needs to update the UI as appropriate.

Drag amounts in the event are measured in pixels but, since Scribus doesn't use pixels as a UOM, the amount of drag has to be converted to the document's UOM with regard to the current level of zoom. Because of this, there will naturally be some "granularity" of any drag where the document UOM doesn't accurately line up with the pixels of the screen.

After an application has converted the drag amount to the document's UOM it also has to convert the measurements back to a pixel value in order to know where to redraw the thing being moved. If that pixel value is not a whole pixel, the application has to make a guess at which pixel to use, e.g. the one to the left or the one to the right. Because of this, not every drag action will be smooth. This can be more pronounced when a document is zoomed out as more space in the document is "squashed" into the same pixel on the screen. It also depends on the accuracy of the measurements and conversions being used by the application. Some applications are more accurate than others.

With Scribus there's also the added complication that you can configure the display size - via Preferences/Display - and not everyone will have done this properly.

Normally this isn't a problem but it is sometimes. I've probably not explained this very well but hopefully it will make some sense.

All-in-all, as mentioned above, it's better to use guides, snapping and the "Align and Distribute" functions to arrange things rather than trying to line things up manually.

[inkuser]

Holy Cow!  I had no awareness of all of this under-the-hood activity, but your explanation is clear and makes sense.

Thank you.

I think you're right, using other tools is better than dragging, as I've been trying.