[Suggestion] Spacebar + RMB-Hold + Mouse Drag = Pinching Zoom

[annenelev]

I've seen such a feature in image reference software (not sure if I'm allowed to name any examples since advertising is prohibited). Basically it allows you to zoom quickly and precisely without using your mouse wheel. Technically it probably just takes the difference between p1, the mouse cursor position at the time of RMB click (on which the holding begins), and p2, the current mouse cursor position while RMB is being held down, maybe relative to canvas scale, and adjusts the zoom level based on that (zooming in for positive p2.x-p1.x, zooming out for negative p2.x-p1.x; by the way, in the software that I mentioned zooming amount seems to be based entirely on X-axis difference, which I suspect is because if you take 2D difference it would result into jerky zoom-in-much/zoom-out-much behaviour while the cursor stays around p2.x-p1.x=0 and |p2.y-p1.y| is sufficiently large).

 

The reason I think it would be useful, besides that it looks cool and allows finer navigation control, is at least the ability to reduce the load on the mouse wheel: when I'm working on something in Paint.NET, I'm zooming in and out all the time, wearing out the wheel a lot. The RMB/LMB-click-to-zoom feature that's already there kind of allows to move that load from the wheel to the buttons, but this way I have to switch tools every time I need a rezoom and I still have to click a lot and wear out the buttons. Just moving the mouse around the table aside from being the least noisy seems the least wearing the mouse out. And the existing temporary navigation tool with Spacebar-hold seems (at least to me) to be the perfect place for such a feature, also considering that holding the RMB (while in temporary navigation mode) seems to have no functionality bound to it at the moment.

 

Here's what it could look like:

 

Edited May 25, 2020 by annenelev

[Ego Eram Reputo]

It's a mouse. They're cheap as chips & the buttons will last (nearly) forever, as will the wheel.

 

If you really want to avoid using the mouse, wear out your keyboard instead with these keyboard combinations: https://www.getpaint.net/doc/latest/ViewMenu.html

 

Hint: Toggle between zoom to window and the current zoom setting with Ctrl + B

[annenelev]

18 hours ago, Ego Eram Reputo said:

Hint: Toggle between zoom to window and the current zoom setting with Ctrl + B

Well, that is to toggle between 2 zoom levels (or am I misunderstanding something?), but I usually go between like 1500% -> 800% -> 400% -> 700% -> 2000% -> etc. so just having a way to switch around 1500% -> 100% (or less) -> 1500% -> 100% wouldn't help me much with what I'm used to be doing. And also as you can see from the example video, that way it's possible to quickly move between distant points on the canvas with just 2 clicks and barely any mouse movement, but with already present features the least it would take is Ctrl+B keypress, plus having to memorize precisely where you were on the canvas (barely matters, but could be pretty significant if you're working on some sort of monotonous and somewhat repetitive pattern where it's easy to navigate relative to where you are, but would take some effort to find where you were and where you're going relative to the suddenly reset centered 100% scale), plus the wheel scrolling which I'd like to be able to avoid (the only other 2 ways are just zooming out and zooming in 1: through more scrolling or 2: through lots of clicking).

 

By the way, I've had several mice's scroll wheel wear out to the point where scrolling is inconsistent, and good mice aren't that cheap where I'm from (also considering I'm a student and don't have much spare money). To me it seems like something trivial to implement and capable of improving usability of the software. Or am I maybe overlooking something here, and it's not that easy to add or in some way objectively not worth adding?

Edited May 26, 2020 by annenelev