problem with orthogonal lines from objects on objects to other objects

Question

Hi,

With a screenshot this message is larger the 8000 characters, therefore I will try to describe it as clearly as possible.

Situation A
I have 4 shape nodes, placed in a square, 1 top left, 2 bottom left, 3 top right and 4a bottom right.
When drawing an orthogonal line from 3 (to the right) around 4 to the left then up and right to 1, all works fine.

Situation B
The 4 shape nodes are at the same position as above , but 1 and 2 are on top of a large shape node as are 3 and 4 which are on top of an other large shape node.
When drawing an orthogonal line from 3 (to the right and staying on the background node) around 4 to 1, when I get by 4 and release the mouse button to go left, the line disappears when I stay on the background node.
When instead I push Shift, the line changes to a shape (direct vertical from 3B through 4B and to the right to the mouse position) I do not want and when I go to the right the vertical line still goes through 4B.



Is there a normal way to handle this, or is this a bug?
I can correct the line afterwards, but that is a lot of work to get it right.

Thanks in advance,

Kees

Answer 1

Well, the behavior you describe is not a bug but the expected behavior.

As soon as the mouse has left the source node when creating an edge, any mouse released gesture over a node will finish the edge creation gesture with the node under the mouse being used as target node for the new edge. Thus it is not possible to create bends during edge creation while the mouse is over a node.

There are two possible workarounds, though:

1. Before creating an edge, select the four labeled nodes, move them to some empty space, create your edge (including bends), use marquee selection to select said four nodes once more as well as all the bends in the new edge, and finally move the selected elements back over your background nodes.
2. Do not use normal nodes as background nodes, but put the four labeled nodes into two separate group nodes (like in this example). When moving the mouse over a group node during edge creation, a mouse released gesture will only finish edge creation if the mouse is within 10 space units of the group node border.

Finally, I would like to clarify what pressing SHIFT during edge creation does. When creating an edge with "Orthogonal Edges" (i.e. third tool bar button from the right) enabled and there are two segements in the edge's path and you have not yet explicitly created a bend (i.e. you have not released the mouse since starting edge creation), then typing SHIFT will switch the order of the two segments in the edge path. E.g. if the first segment is horizontal and the second vertical, typing SHIFT will result in a vertical segment followed by a horizontal segment.