Aligning shapes in the Invoice designer
Michael Brandt
via web
Hi,
I'm trying OTJ (btw: I'm impressed so far) and currently I'm working on my personal invoice layout. My question: How can I align the items? Right now I'm using the MacOS build-in screen magnifier and a sheet of paper, but this can't be the solution.
A Button Left/Right/Top/Bottom align or a input for the top/left coordinates would be fine. Can I export my template and edit (XML) it outside OTJ?
Support Staff 2 Posted by Dan Messing on 04 Jan, 2010 05:50 PM
Hi Michael,
Unfortunately, alignment is one of the less refined areas of the invoice editor at present. It is an area that we most definitely plan to improve upon in future (free) updates.
What I find helpful is to use a tool like The Icon Factory's xScope (http://iconfactory.com/software/xscope) to show horizontal or vertical overlay lines on the screen, and use the arrow keys to nudge design elements into place. Holding shift while using the arrow keys will increase the nudge from 1 to 10 pixels.
Exporting a template to XML is not supported, although that is not a bad idea.
Sorry I don't have a better answer for you, but thanks for the extra motivation to get things working more smoothly!
Dan
3 Posted by chrisg on 22 Jul, 2010 05:16 PM
I got around this concern by creating an 8.5x11 image in Photoshop of nothing but grid lines and then placing it in my invoice as a background image. I then nudged around all the invoice elements to align with the grid manually. Once all the elements were placed I removed that background image and it looks pretty good. My concern now is that I see no way to change the leading of multi-line elements like “Client Address” thus I need to redo my grid based on whatever that default happens to be for a given font size to create an appropriate baseline. I’ve attached my initial grid in case anybody wants to give this approach a try.
4 Posted by Ben Frank on 29 Oct, 2011 06:53 AM
Yes, please add the ability to align things to each other or some sort of snapping.