Bug 94433 - Add arbitrary glue points to gallery objects
Summary: Add arbitrary glue points to gallery objects
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Draw (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
5.0.1.2 release
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: Shape-Points
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Reported: 2015-09-22 08:12 UTC by Tom
Modified: 2017-06-24 21:09 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

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Crash report or crash signature:


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Description Tom 2015-09-22 08:12:43 UTC
For user-defined galleries it would be very helpful to be able to add arbitrary glue points to new created gallery objects. Currently it seems that only 4 default glue points located in the center of each bounding box edge are recognized. While this may be sufficient for symmetric gallery objects it becomes a pain for asymmetric gallery objects.

Regards
Tom
Comment 1 Buovjaga 2015-09-22 14:50:26 UTC
Sounds reasonable -> NEW
Comment 2 Regina Henschel 2015-09-22 21:20:37 UTC
What kind of objects do you use? I have no problems to add glue points to a shape and drag the shape to the gallery. When I later on use the shape from the gallery in another document, the glue points are still there. The issue is a "worksforme".

I use Version: 5.1.0.0.alpha1+ 
Build ID: ac226443522c55ab75cab8eed354b999052135a7
TinderBox: Win-x86@62-merge-TDF, Branch:MASTER, Time: 2015-09-18_23:26:58
Locale: de-DE (de_DE)
Comment 3 Tom 2015-09-23 09:18:04 UTC
Hi Regina,

I tried to create a gallery of electronics symbols. Consequently, I use lines, polygons, rectangulars and circles all grouped together to create an object. You can find a very simple example in Bug 94363.

In fact, before I drew the conclusion that the "glue point feature" is missing I had tried several ways to attach glue points to an object and export it into a gallery and import it back into a drawing.

Adding glue points
------------------

I found that glue points cannot be added, if the "Glue Points" toolbar is just displayed per menu "View -> Toolbars -> Glue Points". Instead, when the "Glue Points" toolbar is displayed after clicking on the "Glue Points" icon in the "Drawing" toolbar, it really can be used to add glue points. (Unfortunately, this behavior makes it less intuitive for the user to use glue points.)

Export/import of gallery objects
--------------------------------
First, I tried to export my objects per drag & drop into a new gallery. It worked to some extend, but the preview in the gallery was not correct and the re-import from the gallery into the drawing did not include the glue points. I did not see any glue point and when I tried to connect a connector only the 4 default connection points were highlighted.

Second, I exported my objects into different vector format files (emf, wmf, svg, svm) and added them by means of these files into the gallery. The gallery preview was OK, but some formats (emf, wmf, svg) turned out to be spoiled (slightly smaller than the original and off-grid) and all formats lacked the glue points.

Afterwards I decided to file one bug ticket and this feature request.

Regards
Tom
Comment 4 Heiko Tietze 2016-05-03 15:35:37 UTC
It looks like only circle and smiley have more than four glue points by default. Even the inbuilt stars are outlined with a rectangle. I wonder if it's possible at all to define glue points freely.
Comment 5 Regina Henschel 2016-05-03 19:04:42 UTC
Hi Tom, the problem seem to be, that you group the objects and later on try to connect to a part inside the group.
For your purpose it might be worth to learn how to write own custom-shapes. In custom shapes you can define glue-points directly. Draw a "Isosceles Triangle" and save the file to Flat ODF. Open it with an editor like Notepad++ and you will see such glue-point definition.