Forum Discussion
When I move lines they get diagonal
Hi there. I have encountered this bug numerous times over the last year. I like to work with a 10-pixel grid because I am terrible at maths. (Why is the default 8px? Why?? WHYYYYYY???)
I have noticed that if one opens the Grid & Guides dialogue box and deselects the "Snap objects to grid" box and/or reduce the grid to 2px then the issue seemingly disappears.
This seems to be related to Storylines' awful geometry issues whereby if a line is 1pixel in width it resides within a 1 pixel plane, but if an object is given a 1 pixel outline, the pixel shifts into an in-between state, neither fully within the shape or completely enveloping the shape. Instead, Storyline renders the outline as straddling the border.
So a number of 1 pixel wide lines SHOULD occupy a single pixel plane each, once distributed vertically or horizontally. But if the positioning isn't mathematically perfect some will always be placed in a weird 'no man's land' plane of existence.
This seems to be what is happening to these lines. When moved, Storyline suddenly realises "Woah, this stuff is being moved, and uh... I was just guessing where it belongs, but, damn, now I gotta figure out where in XY space it's going to... but, wow, that's hard. I'm just gonna anchor one of these lines points to its nearest grid point."
One can encounter this issue regularly if one has a group of identical objects and say, want to distribute them evenly, whether vertically or horizontally. Unless one is very precise about XY coordinates (which is why I try and work within a 10-pixel grid) it is very easy to assume that when one uses the Align > Distribute is being mathematically precise. However, while it may look as if objects and/or lines are evenly spaced, if one nudges the XY coordinates by clicking on the up/down arrows one can often see that the coordinate jumps by 2 pixels (for some reason) and I reckon this is due to Storyline's inability to be mathematically precise on certain visual elements such as lines. Storyline placed the objects in a visually evenly distributed manner that just, ever-so-slightly doesn't match with the maths so it places the objects in a 'fuzzy state', an in-between value.
This is old, but THANK YOU Diarmaid - the snapping to diagonal lines was driving me MAD and turning off snap-to-grid let me go freeform. Surely there must be a way to manually enter something to adjust the line angle (anyone??), but in the meantime, you saved me.