setting zero white space between a series of graphics

[DaveK]

Sorry if this has been answered before, but I can't find it.

I quite often want to have a series of graphics lined up horizontally or vertically with no space between them, so I can use them as one image. Evenly distributing white space doesn't work because depending on the positions of the two end images they either overlap or there is white space between them.

The Serif DrawPlus alignment options has an option for evenly distributing (like Xara), but also has the option of specifying the number of pixels of white space ('spacing), with negative, zero and positive values.

Is there a way of doing this with Xara?

Dave

[gwpriester]

Welcome to TalkGraphics

There is no way to do this with any menu settings. The way to do this would be to align the objects and distribute them, and then move one of the end objects a few pixels at a time and re-align until you get the desired spacing.

[Acorn]

Dave, why not just use the Snap to objects control.
Highlight all the objects. Shift Click the leftmost one and drag the grouped objects until they touch.
Shift click the next left object and repeat until all are touching.
You can hold down the Ctrl key to ensure the objects stay in horizontal position while you drag them.

To set positive or negative spacing at this point you hold down the Alt key and use the left and right keyboard cursor arrows: one click is one pixel at 100% Zoom.

Acorn

[DaveK]

Thanks for the quick response and for the suggestions. Better workarounds than mine - adding the pixel sizes of the inner images and separating the outer ones by that number and then distributing.

I wonder if I'm a lone voice wanting to do this? It doesn't seem like an unreasonable addition to the alignment options. Its really useful on website graphics when I need to have all the horizontal and vertical spacings the same. It's also dead easy to alter them all together. So when I have lots to do, I'll fire up DrawPlus.

Can't grizzle too much though! Between the two programmes they cover everything I can imagine ever needing so I guess expecting one programme to do it all is pie in the sky. Still, I'll pop over to the wishlist forum and plead my case!

[gwpriester]

Xara has always opted for less rather than more. The align menu is very simple yet powerful.

Here are some keyboard shortcuts for aligment.

Object Alignment TIP: Xara’s Object Alignment dialog (Arrange > Alignment...) gives you a quick way to align a selection of objects. The four colored shapes in the preview window show how the selected objects will align when you press Align.

(Left) Click in any of the nine locations indicated and objects will align as indicated by the icons.

(Center) Hold down the Ctrl key and click on the top, center of bottom to vertically align objects top, center, or bottom.

(Right) Hold down the Shift key and click left, center, or right to align objects horizontally left, center, or right. In addition selecting the Selection Bounds (the default setting) aligns objects within the selection. Selecting the Page option aligns the selection to the bounds of the page size. And selecting Spread aligns the selection to the bounds of the two page spread.

[SignPig]

The alignment tool is something I use easily up to 100 times a day, if only there were keyboard shortcuts for doing the actual alignment, eg. L for left, C for centre, etc, similar to a certain Canadian program, it would save a lot of time.