I was doing some cropping on several bitmaps and noticed that when the cropping tool is moved to the center of the object, it changes to a hand. I thought, "Great! I can move the image without having to switch back to the other pointer." Not true, but it would be nice if it would change to a move icon (4-way arrow) and allow you to move the object. In my case I was sizing the images in relation to one another and cropping on both sides. That meant switching back to the object pointer, aligning the sides, and then switching back to the cropping tool to make further adjustments.

To make it even more useful, if you could hold down a qualifier key and have it switch to the object tool, you could handle my entire procedure without going back to the toolbox: Crop the image, align it to the neighbor, then either adjust the crop or the overall size without manually switching back and forth between tools in the toolbox.

Good or bad, PageStream has too many functions to do what you ask. The interface is already what we call "overloaded". In this case, the crop tool allows you to move the contents of the "frame" in respect to the frame itself. so you can change the visible portion of the image/drawing/eps.

All the qualifier keys are already taken, so no way to use one. In fact, on the PC we are short a few qualifiers because Windows takes the darn ALT key for menu shortcuts.

The only reasonable way to do this is already possible. If it is not already the default, it is easy enough to set a few function keys to switch between tools. In fact, commands can take you to the prev or next tool, as well as return to the last tool as I recall.

I'm going to close this as just not possible. However, if you have some other way to accomplish this just reopen this.

[Status updated to 'Wont Fix' on Sat, 08 Sep 2007 18:01:06 -0400]

I don't know why I missed the fact that the hand icon let's you move the image within its boundaries. I've used that before, but didn't notice what was happening this time. (In fact, I ended up accidentally recomposing the image and accidentally liking it.)

As for qualifier keys, there are several graphics programs on Windows that use {space} and/or {backspace} as qualifier keys for nontext funtions. I've seen audio programs that do similar things. It seems to me that it should be possible, but I've no idea what kind of effort's involved compared to using keys that are specifically meant as qualifiers, especially when you need compatibility with other platforms. So, possibly, it's a question of whether it's useful enough to be worth the investment of time and effort.

[Status updated to 'Reopened' on Sun, 09 Sep 2007 13:17:11 -0400]

If switching between tools really is that important (so important to have a qualifier key that only works in some modes) then it is better to use a function key that will always work no matter what toolbox item is select.

[Status updated to 'Wont Fix' on Sun, 01 Mar 2009 21:50:31 -0500]