Rotate: Align: Perpendicular | Parallel options are not clear (Parallel and Perpendicular - to what? Only one line is drawn, and both ideas demand two lines)

[bernd-wechner]

Distribution

Mint 21.2

Package version

3.0.2+victoria

Frequency

Always

Bug description

I have discovered a brilliant alignment function. It appears under the Rotation group, the free Rotation tool, has an Align feature.

It has two rather cryptic choices, Parallel and Perpendicular.

Then I am able to draw a (one) line, and it acts. This make no linguistic sense to me, and is anything but comprehensible and intuitive, alas. One line must be parallel or perpendicular to another, the idea demands a reference line. Which is ot mentioned.

Empirically, we can determine that the reference line is vertical and implicit, and that parallel will rotate such that the drawn line is vertical, and Perpendicular will rotate such that the drawn line is Horizontal.

To wit, these options, IMHO, should be Vertical and Horizontal respectively. And that suddenly makes sense. Draw a line on the image, to make it either horizontal or vertical.

Steps to reproduce

1. Open an image with Pix
2. On the Tools palette under TRotation, click the Rotate button.
3. Click the Align button,

Expected behavior

For the text on that tool to explain how to use it. Not to confuse the reader.

Additional information

No response

[umikali222]

I don't understand the problem, as the line drawn aligns the picture either perpendicularly or makes the image face the same way as the line. Although I think this feature is not very commonly used, as one might turn the line in question a quarter of a full turn in the counter-clockwise direction to achieve the same result. Thus the image is aligned either perpendicularly or in parallel to the line drawn.

[bernd-wechner]

Sorry, what on earth does this mean:

as the line drawn aligns the picture either perpendicularly or makes the image face the same way as the line

You simply proved my point. That makes zero sense to me and is categorically not what it does. If I have a skew scan and I draw the line along the side of a page, then it reorients the image so that the side I drew the line on is vertical (if I have selected parallel). If, conversely, I draw a line along the top of the page, it aligns the image so that the edge I drew the line along is horizontal (if I have selected perpendicular).

In either case the line I drew immediate disappears the second I release the mouse and the image is rotated, such that the image line I traced along is now horizontal or vertical, it is in no case ever parallel or perpendicular to the line I drew.

[bernd-wechner]

Some clarification as to how and why this make sense to nay human being would help. Can this be translated into something I can understand the meaning of: as the line drawn aligns the picture either perpendicularly or makes the image face the same way as the line

How is a human being to understand what perpendicular and parallel men in the UI when the explanation doesn't even makes sense? For context, with zero disrespect intended, I was not then, am now, drunk, English is my native language, and I've worked as a technical writer and editor for years in IT, so I'm a total loss as to why I cannot make head nor tails of what this means.