Inkscape Community
Help Using Inkscape => Inkscape Beginners' Questions => Topic started by: mortoray on January 23, 2019, 10:42:32 PM
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I've used Inkscape a lot and have never figured out how to center the workspace view. I zoom in and out a lot and my page ends up moving to the side and getting stuck there.
The screenshot below shows the typical symptom. Note that the bottom scrollbar is to the far right, so I don't even have the option to move it back into view. I end up zooming in/out until I 'm happy.
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How can I center the view?
Is there a way to zoom on the center of the view so it doesn't move?
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Welcome to the forum!
The Zoom tool :zoom: provides the option to zoom to the page size (or 5 key, for the key shortcut). Of course that can only fit one dimension, unless you always use a page size with the same ratio as your screen.
Another option might be to hide the page border entirely, and then you don't have to worry about it. File menu > Document Properties > Page tab, near the bottom. In that case, you can center your drawing to the screen using Zoom to fit drawing button (or 4 key).
Or there's yet another zoom button/key, Zoom to fit selection (3 key).
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I don't want to reset the zoom, only change the view position (the panning).
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You know that you can move the drawing area ('panning') by using:
- Ctrl + Arrow keys
- middle mouse button and mouse drag
- space bar and mouse drag
?
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I did not know about all of those (I kept going through the menus looking for such options to get keystrokes, but they don't appear to be in the menu).
That SpaceBar one appears a bit weird. It doesn't always trigger correctly. Like if switch layers, or tools, or selection, then it requires a few priming clicks before it works. It appears the view needs to have keyboard focus -- tools will steal that even if they don't use the keyboard.
Ctrl works. Middle-mouse is okay, but it's a wheel, so hard to to click.
Thank you. I should be fine with these -- though a "center" would still be great.
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Is there a way to zoom on the center of the view so it doesn't move?
That's why I answered with zoom features.
I'm curious why you have this need to have the page in the center of the screen. If you could share more about that, there might be a feature that will work for you. I mean, of course you want the page fully on the screen, but I don't understand why you need it centered on the screen.
Possibly you're accustomed to some other graphics program which has such a feature, and you miss it in Inkscape? Of course as an open source program, anyone is welcome to request new features. You can request a new feature here: https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inbox/issues Click the New Issue button, and fill out the questions. (If you don't already have a gitlab account, you'll have to register.)
Or it's possible that as you use Inkscape more and more, you'll realize you don't need the page centered on the screen? Did you realize that it's possible to draw outside the page border in Inkscape? Or that you can remove the page border entirely, if you don't want to see it? I rarely use a page border myself. I wonder if either of those would work for you?
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I've been using Inkscape for years now, but this problem finally bugged me enough to look into it.
The reason I want centered is because, as the first screen shot shows, everything ends up stuck to the side of the viewport -- it gets worse than that sometimes. On a large monitor this forces me to look in a different direction to work on the graphics. It also creates an unbalanced border around the image, making it harder to judge the sizes.
I use page sizes a lot when targeting graphics of a fixed size/ratio. I'll end up exporting the page to a PNG file. It's my natural clipping bounds for such graphics. This means that my work will always be centered on the page -- thus the desire to quickly center it again.
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https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inbox/issues/38
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Check out the keyboard and mouse reference linked from the Help menu item. It contains lots of additional gems!