Missing key combination hint in Status Bar

[Daniel]

I don't know when it changed but in my jump from Xara Designer Pro X11 to X16 I found that there has been a change in the way bitmaps are stretched when being resized along only one axis.

I've used the Xara drawing software almost daily for 20 years so suspected that there'd be a way to stretch a bitmap somehow - but couldn't find anything in the right-click menus, the regular File/Edit/Arrange/etc menus, nor in the Status bar's tips.

I found it as Alt+drag by guessing. I suspect that change has been made and you forgot about the Status bar. It tells us of how Shift+drag and Ctrl+drag affects things, but not Alt+drag.

[handrawn]

to do it the old way:

first off right click the lock aspect ratio button on the select tool info bar and untick smart transform

second always use the boundary handles for this operation and not the fancy new blue ones

[Daniel]

first off right click the lock aspect ratio button on the select tool info bar and untick smart transform

Thank you very much.
Now I know what it's called, I can search the F1 online help, and confirm: smart transform doesn't appear. I'm glad that it wasn't there because it reduces the chances that I was being an idiot.

[handrawn]

it's was implemented 'in a rush' at ver 15.1 because there was a major backlash against the original removal of the one axis drag in ver 15.0

xara's focus today is on the creation of documents for web/video and print 'in a modern office environment' and they lost sight of the fact that other designers at least, may wish to manipulate text/bitmaps in an asymmetric way - they seem to think this is almaost always 'unwanted distortion'

some background:

https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...ing-megathread

[Acorn]

Thank you very much.
Now I know what it's called, I can search the F1 online help, and confirm: smart transform doesn't appear. I'm glad that it wasn't there because it reduces the chances that I was being an idiot.

F1 Search for "smart transform does appear; the page is "Scaling (resizing) objects". It is also in the new PDF Manual. You are not the idiot here, it is with Xara for hiding the context menu under an icon: given the Xara User Interface, I would challenge anyone to find it.

Acorn

[Daniel]

the page is "Scaling (resizing) objects"

...but the words smart transform don't make it into that article, nor does anything about Handrawn's right click. Having seen the old posts now, I kind of understand how it wasn't documented for v15 but it really ought to be by now. It nearly is, being in the manual but not the online help. I might never have looked at the manual before though, the online help and the interface's intuition has traditionally been enough.

[handrawn]

did you notice the bit:

Note that these handles are shown only on rectangles which are not photo filled because stretching other objects in one dimension rarely produces useful results (photos become distorted)

pure arrogant patronisation - really strange then how many people stretch bitmaps all the time, but that is the market xara is now going for apparently

looks like the help in ver 16 is not the same as in ver 15.1...

if the boundary handles have been removed from the selector tool in ver 16 for bitmaps [which in my case are hardly ever photos] then that is going to be an issue for me when I eventually get it installed - looks like I'll have to put it on a spare machine as trial and test that out...

[Rob-Xar]

Sorry the status bar does need updating to reflect the changes, I'll log this for our developers.

I'll also get in touch with the manual/help department to make sure it's clearly listed in the help.

Otherwise, we do have an article here on it: https://xara.kayako.com/article/425-...mart-transform

Thanks
Rob

[Acorn]

...but the words smart transform don't make it into that article, nor does anything about Handrawn's right click. Having seen the old posts now, I kind of understand how it wasn't documented for v15 but it really ought to be by now. It nearly is, being in the manual but not the online help. I might never have looked at the manual before though, the online help and the interface's intuition has traditionally been enough.

Sorry if I am misunderstanding you here Daniel but the v16.0 Help has "smart transform" highlighted 7 times on the same page you have. Perhaps you are reading the v15 Help?

Acorn

[handrawn]

And the 15.1 help has it for sure... I don't recognise what Daniel has posted either way - edit I assume it's ver 16 from what you say... won't get that installed until tomorrow