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Snapping

One of the nice features of Ipe is the possibility of having the mouse snap to other objects during entry or moving. Certain features on the canvas become "magnetic", and it is very easy to align objects to each other, to place new objects properly with respect to the present objects and so on.

Snapping comes in three flavors: grid snapping, context snapping, and directional snapping.

  In general, you turn a snapping mode on by pressing one of the buttons in the Snap field. The buttons are independent, you can turn them on and off independently. (The snapping modes, however, are not independent. See below for the precise interaction.) Note that the keyboard shortcuts are printed on the buttons. They are rather convenient since you will want to toggle snapping modes on and off while in the middle of creating or editing some object.

  Whenever one of the snapping modes is enabled, you will see a little cross near the cursor position. This is the secondary cursor Fifi (called after the dog in the rogue computer game installed on most Unix systems in the 1980's, because it also keeps running around your feet). Fifi marks the position the mouse is snapped to. Some people don't like Fifi (or maybe they don't like tripping on its tail). Fifi can be turned off from the configuration panel.

  • Grid snapping
  • Context snapping
  • Directional snapping
  • Interaction of the snapping modes
  • Examples

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