Inkscape

How to sparse objects inside a group

Asked by haldor

I have a group of say 3 objects, and i want to increase their respective separations by a constant factor, i.e. i want to sparse them in horizontal or vertical direction.
Usually, if these 3 objects are grouped together, and i scale the group by dragging one of the arrows, then also the objects get scaled, i.e. the group is scaled as a whole.
I'd rather like the objects to maintain their properties, such that only the separations get increased.
Just like if the objects are pinned to a rubberband and then when i pull on the rubber band, the objects get sparsed.
Thank you.

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Guillermo Espertino (Gez) (gespertino-gmail) said : 		#1

Use the "rows and columns" command in the "object" menu.

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haldor (haldor-hartwig) said : 		#2

Can you please tell me how to achieve this?
As i understand the "rows and columns" command is that it aligns the objects equidistantly, but what if i have something like this, separation between object A and B is 2 units, and between B and C is 3 units.
A..B...C
after the operation, i want the separations to be twice the value, i.e. 4 and 6 units, like this.
A....B......C
This should work with any real-valued factor.
Is there any such operation?

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Best pbhj (pbhj) said : 		#3

I don't think you can do this with inkscape, the best I can get is if you want all your items to be the same size (it might help if you say what you're trying to achieve, or is this general, sounds a like a good feature suggestion). I digress ... if you take one of your shapes and copy it to the clipboard. Then select all the shapes and expand, you now have the separation you want just that the shapes are larger too, now (with the individual shapes still selected) use Edit > Paste Size > Paste Size Separately.

Under these limited conditions you now have an enlarged sparse grouping.

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haldor (haldor-hartwig) said : 		#4

Yes, indeed, that works, but only for equally-sized objects.
Actually i was looking for some general solution, and i agree, this would be a good feature suggestion.
It could be implemented in the same manner as is done with the "affect" - menu, there is a already an option for suppressing the scaling of the stroke width or radius of corners when scaling objects.
How can we make a feature suggestion?

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haldor (haldor-hartwig) said : 		#5

Thanks pbhj, that solved my question.