[Ipe-discuss] Proposed change of current translation mode behavior

[Otfried Cheong]

On Thu, Apr 20, 2023, at 17:41, Willem Sonke via Ipe-discuss wrote:
> When I'm in translation mode, I expect Ipe to maintain my current 
> selection when I start dragging even far away from the currently 
> selected object.
>
> So I agree with your frustration, and hence always set 
> "prefs.close_distance = 1e100" in my prefs.lua to avoid Ipe from 
> changing my selection when in translation mode.

Willem clearly knows Ipe better than I do, since I had completely forgotten about this preference setting...

If I remember right, Ipe inherited the current behaviour 30 years ago from a program called idraw.   The point is that one often has a canvas full of objects and wants to rearrange them by moving them around.   The current functionality allows you to do this by just clicking on an object, dragging it, and releasing it - no need to alternate between selecting and moving all the time.

If you don't need that, you can simply disable the behaviour as Willem suggests.  Otherwise, André's suggestion could be a good solution - Ipe would never change your selection if you have one, but it would still be possible to do the "quick rearrangement" with just "press-drag-release" movements (and it would actually work better because it would also work when the next object to be moved is close to the one you just moved).

Otfried