Calligra/Libs/Modifier keys

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< Calligra‎ | Libs

Normal mouse actions can change behavior if during the action a modifier key is pressed. In order to make interaction behavior of all KOffice applications consistent here is a table of what the modifier keys do.

There are 4 different actions you can do with the mouse that are important here. Dragging objects, scaling objects, inserting objects and simply clicking to interact with objects. Note that 'objects' are layers or selections in krita, and frames in kword and kpresenter. Kivio and Karbon use object naturally.

Note also that keys can be combined. Pressing alt+shift combines both options.

Dragging

  • Shift disabled snap to grid and disables snap to guides
  • Alt keeps X or Y position unchanged
  • Control keeps X or Y position unchanged [1]

Scaling

  • Shift disabled snap to grid and disables snap to guides
  • Alt Scales keep aspect ratio, pressing alt immediately snaps the scaled object to the aspect ratio the object had before scaling started
  • Control scales all objects from center of all selected objects

Insert

  • Shift disabled snap to grid and disables snap to guides
  • Alt temporarily switches to 'move' [2]
  • Control temporarily switches the scaling-center to the center of object instead of top-left

Click

  • Shift selects 'underlying' object deselecting the previous selected objects and making sure only one is selected [3]
  • Alt does nothing
  • Control allows multi select

Wheel

  • No modifier vertical scroll
  • Control zooming
  • Shift and Alt are left for tool (for instance to change the size of the current brush)

Notes

  1. Dragging alt and control do the same thing; the reasoning for this is as follows; the feature fits with 'keep aspect ratio' and thus should be available under Alt to make it consistent with scaling. There, however, are some problems in using Alt if the user uses KWin and the default settings. Hence we make this feature available under Control as well.
  2. How this works is that on insert the default action starts a scale and all options work as scaling. Pressing the Alt key stops any scaling on furter mouse moves and starts dragging the insert-object instead.
  3. This feature is needed for allowing selecting of stacked objects. Further research is pending for a solution that may be more elegant

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