A new direct manipulation technique for aligning objects in drawing programs

Current drawing programs provide mainly three ways for carrying out object alignment: either by issuing an alignment command, or by using direct positioning with the help of gravity active points, or by making use of constraints. The first technique has limited functionality, and the other two may be mysterious for a novice. We describe here a new direct manipulation tool for alignment. We show that while direct manipulation helps to make the tool intuitive, it has through iterative design evolved into a tool that also offers functionality not found in current commercial products.

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