I am making some short lists on a new scapple board: 10-12 items in each. The top item is the title of the list, the notes added (by return) are then collected underneath. On many lists I change my mind about the title and so amend an already existing list member and drag it to the top as the new title. This changing of mind is the whole point of starting in Scapple. Problem: whenever I use ‘distribute vertically’ to clean up the board Scapple rearranges the note order, moving the ‘title’ note lower down.
I have no idea why it is doing this (I thought Scapple was fundamentally free-form) nor how to stop this behaviour. I really hope I’m missing something simple as I do not want to spend an hour retyping all of my lists just to get the order in them that I require, or abandon this normally constructive way of working. (I start all of my projects in Scapple).
I love scapple and use it with my projects. Notes are arranged when stacking by Select the notes you wish to arrange into a stack.
The first note you select will not move,
and subsequent notes will be placed under the first note in order of distance from the first selected note.
This same rule may apply for distrubting vertically or horizontally. Could not reproduce what you were talking about. I tend to stack notes as my default for grouping and not used the distribute mode. Try looking at the distance. The other thing is after you move notes do you reselect the notes before using the distribute command? When I moved and reselected the notes the top note did not change position. Windows scapple
This command is documented in the user manual. From how it is described, would you say it is now making sense why the notes move?
If not, then please provide a demonstration on a sample board, copying the set of notes into three columns. Use Distribute on the middle column to demonstrate the behaviour, and the manually reposition the notes in the third column to indicate how you feel the result should be. Drag this sample .scap file into the text editor, when writing your response, to attach it.
Oh, and when filling a bug report, please use the platform-specific categories, as the two have zero code in common.
Thank both. I have been using Scapple (for Mac) for years - since the very day it was first released - this is a new one on me. I am not making Stacks ( I never make stacks) - I am simply brainstorming ideas for a history of medicine lecture, creating single sentence notes on the fly. I do this a lot. I am using Return to bang out a new note, not CMD-return which I know creates stacks.
When I have created dozens of these ideas I am collecting them together and putting them into 4 or 5 rough vertical arrangements, in rough order. When I have done this - in rough order, and chosen the top note to be the ‘title’ - I then tried to tidy up a bit with ‘distribute vertically’. That’s when the fun started.
Here’s what I read in the manual: “Distribute considers the total width or height of the selection, and will move all of the notes in between the two extreme end notes so that the relative space between them is equal. Distribution only works on a single axis.” Nothing about changing positions.
If I have accidentally created a stack - which is seems I might have done - how do I purposefully uncreate it? Thanks.
I just answered my own question - I have discovered that the short-cut for turning on Stacks (which I never use) is remarkably close to that used to Spell-check a document (which I use all the time, given the carelessness created by the need for hasty typing before the thoughts evaporate).
So, I’m not stupid, I just have fat fingers (it seems).
Okay, I may not be understanding the difference between ‘moving’ and ‘changing positions’ in this case—or why one wouldn’t imply the other. This is why I suggested creating a demonstration of what you mean, since sometimes these things can be awkward to communicate—particularly in how the precise placement and size of notes, in relation to each other, might make the difference between a bug manifesting or not.
For me, Distribute Vertically works as intended, but there are a million ways I may be doing something different.
If I have accidentally created a stack - which is seems I might have done - how do I purposefully uncreate it?
Undo is sufficient in the moment. Otherwise just move notes away from each other. Stacks are rather loosely defined as notes that are close enough together and aligned left, basically. It’s nothing too special.
As I said: changing the ‘order’ in ways I didn’t want it to change e.g,. putting the note I had moved to the top at the bottom when all I wanted was to regularise the vertical spaces between the notes. Anyway - problem solved: as I reported, I had accidentally invoked a Stack which isn’t what I intended to do.
Okay! Got it. I didn’t understand that it was an accidental use of the stacking command. Yes, that would make sense then since stacking takes the first note you select, and the moves everything around below it, and if that happens in a radial way it can result in things shuffling a bit.