Wish List of Tools

[efremj]

First off, I'm still loving the mess out of this software. It's seriously one of the easiest and most enjoyable mapping programs I've used in the past couple of decades. Next, as usually happens when you're working in any software application, you wind up wishing you had tools that aren't there--yet--so here's my wishlist:

Text Tool
Follow Curved Path (above or below baseline)
Shift + Arrow to highlight letter or letters in word
Ctrl + Shift + Arrow to highlight entire word

Drawing Tools
Draw Straight Line
Draw Curvy Line (freehand, Bezier, etc. etc. etc.)
Draw Circle/Oval
Draw Square/Rectangle
Erase
Draw Distance/Scale Marker (would work very similarly to the existing measuring tool only this would allow you to lay down the scale marker on the map)

Edit Objects
Paste object near where you copied it from (instead of middle of land mass or map)
Ctrl + mouse drag (or) Alt + mouse drag on object to automatically duplicate object (auto copy & paste)

Workspace
Canvas Ruler (along left & right sides of canvas) with changeable units (i.e. Inches, Pixels, etc. etc. etc.)

I'm sure there are more I'm missing but I'll post them later when I can come up with a batch.

Thanks for listening!

-Efrem

[Kanchou]

First off, I'm still loving the mess out of this software. It's seriously one of the easiest and most enjoyable mapping programs I've used in the past couple of decades. Next, as usually happens when you're working in any software application, you wind up wishing you had tools that aren't there--yet--so here's my wishlist:
-Efrem

We're very happy to hear Other World Mapper is working so well for you! And thank you for the ideas/feedback!!

Responses/questions/comments below:

1) Text Tool
a) Right now you can create a "path label" that follows a path (including a simple curve). Is that what you meant, or did you have something else in mind?
b) Selecting of text the way you suggested and using the mouse is planned. It probably won't make it to beta 3 but we'll have it by the release candidate.

2) Drawing Tools
a) The plan is to add a "generic" shape tool that will let you add closed shapes (circles, rectangles, etc), open shapes (lines, curves, arrows), and others. I think that covers most of what you suggested.
b) Erase tool: do you mean a tool that when selected clicking on an item will delete it?
c) We plan to eventually have an option to make the measuring tool be a "permanent" item/object. Is that what you meant? Or literally the scale markers like a maps?

3) Edit Objects
a) Right now if you right click to paste the item the item will be pasted where you right clicked at. But I see what you mean about the ctrl-v or menu paste centering the item. We'll look into it.
b) Drag copy paste: good idea! We'll try to add it.

4) Workspace
Canvas Ruler is a good idea/addition. We'll try to fit that into the short or mid term schedule

Thank you for the feedback!!

- Alejandro

[efremj]

1) Text Tool
a) Right now you can create a "path label" that follows a path (including a simple curve). Is that what you meant, or did you have something else in mind?
-- Yes! I just figured out how to make a label/text follow a curved path. That's exactly what I was referring to. Thanks!

2) Drawing Tools
b) Erase tool: do you mean a tool that when selected clicking on an item will delete it?
-- Maybe not the entire item but a segment of an item. For example, if you drew a land mass and didn't like a part of it, you could erase a segment and re-draw it with the land mass tool to connect the segments again. Does that make sense? Just like a real-world eraser or like how it works in Photoshop.

c) We plan to eventually have an option to make the measuring tool be a "permanent" item/object. Is that what you meant? Or literally the scale markers like a maps?
-- I like the scale tool in OWM and think it would be great if you could draw out a line and have it fixed as an object on the map like a map scale marker (similar to something like this: http://geologycafe.com/images/topo_scale_24k.jpg)

3) Edit Objects
a) Right now if you right click to paste the item the item will be pasted where you right clicked at. But I see what you mean about the ctrl-v or menu paste centering the item. We'll look into it.
-- This helps out a lot. Makes work faster as it pastes near the source object. Thanks for pointing this out!

Thank you for the feedback!!

- Alejandro

[Kanchou]

2) Drawing Tools
b) Erase tool: do you mean a tool that when selected clicking on an item will delete it?
-- Maybe not the entire item but a segment of an item. For example, if you drew a land mass and didn't like a part of it, you could erase a segment and re-draw it with the land mass tool to connect the segments again. Does that make sense? Just like a real-world eraser or like how it works in Photoshop.

I see what you are saying. Right now we go part of the way there with the fractal segment edit tool (you can remove and regenerate a segment's fractal nature) or changing the landmass tool to "add" mode instead of "new" to add to an existing landmass.
We'll see to add in the future a way to work with open shapes so that they can be edited/segments erases, etc. Thanks!

c) We plan to eventually have an option to make the measuring tool be a "permanent" item/object. Is that what you meant? Or literally the scale markers like a maps?
-- I like the scale tool in OWM and think it would be great if you could draw out a line and have it fixed as an object on the map like a map scale marker (similar to something like this: http://geologycafe.com/images/topo_scale_24k.jpg)

Got it. We'll add that to the wish list

- Alejandro

Thank you for the feedback!!

- Alejandro

[Faustyna]

An in-map ruler would be good. You ask us about miles per pixels/inch at the start, some way to click on a road, or between several points, and find out the distance in miles would be really great.

[Kanchou]

An in-map ruler would be good. You ask us about miles per pixels/inch at the start, some way to click on a road, or between several points, and find out the distance in miles would be really great.

The Measure Tool will let you do that .

It will also let you "follow" the contour of existing items so you can measure the length of a road or the perimeter of a lake.

Let me know if you have any trouble with it.

Thanks!

- Alejandro