Can we find out in CodeLab if a selection is tilted?

[NSD]

The value of the angle of inclination does not matter. Just a True or False flag.

[BoltBait]

 

I don't think so...

 

What is the difference between a square selection that is rotated 45* and a diamond shaped selection made using the magic wand?

 

 

[NSD]

None, except that one shape is rotated and the other is not.

Thanks for your answer.

[MJW]

As BoltBait also seems to be, I'm curious about what use you'd like to put this information. Unless it's a rectangular selection, why does it matter whether the selection was rotated or not? In what significant way is a rotated non-rectangular selection different from a non-rotated non-rectangular selection? And if you want to check if a selection is an unrotated rectangle, that doesn't seem to be too difficult. You could confirm that the selection matches its bounding box.

 

You've asked this question twice, so it apparently matters to you, but I don't quite see why.

 

EDIT: I remembered that there's a very easy and efficient method to tell if the selection is a singe rectangle, oriented to the X and Y axes, if that happens to be what you want to determine.

[BoltBait]

If you are wanting to have an effect (like directional blur, for example) follow the angle you've rotated the selection to, I think you're better off using an angle chooser control.

[toe_head2001]

5 hours ago, MJW said:

I remembered that there's a very easy and efficient method to tell if the selection is a singe rectangle, oriented to the X and Y axes, if that happens to be what you want to determine.

 

Please share.

[MJW]

5 minutes ago, toe_head2001 said:

Please share.

 

I believe the following works. Call:

            Rectangle[] selectionRectangles = EnvironmentParameters.GetSelectionAsPdnRegion().GetRegionScansInt();

 

This returns a list of rectangles that together cover the selection. If it has only one rectangle, it's a rectangular selection.

[toe_head2001]

16 minutes ago, MJW said:

If it has only one rectangle, it's a rectangular selection.

 

So, that would be:

bool isOneRectangle = EnvironmentParameters.GetSelectionAsPdnRegion().GetRegionScansInt().Length == 1;

[MJW]

I think so. I admit I can't say with absolute certainty that it does work.

[MJW]

It's definitely true that if there's only one rectangle, it must be a rectangular selection.  I believe the converse is also true, but I don't know if I've ever confirmed it. Whenever I've stepped through code calling the routine, it's only returned one rectangle for rectangular selections.  The only case I've used it was to determine if I could use a simpler method, so if it had failed, and said a rectangular region was non-rectangular, the only result would be slightly worse performance.

[NSD]

Thanks  MJW!

This code seems to work fine only for rectangular selection:

Rectangle sel = EnvironmentParameters.SelectionBounds;

//check if selection is tilted
Rectangle[] selectionRectangles = EnvironmentParameters.GetSelectionAsPdnRegion().GetRegionScansInt();
if(selectionRectangles[0].X != sel.X)
  {
    //selection is tilted
  }

 

Edited November 17, 2020 by NSD
added info

[Rick Brewster]

That's not a very good way to do that

[MJW]

1 hour ago, Rick Brewster said:

That's not a very good way to do that

 Could you please elaborate; or at least clarify whether "that" refers to determining if the selection is tilted (as NSD wishes to do), or to determining if the selection is a non-tilted rectangle (as the method I proposed attempts to do), or to both.

 

If the method I suggested doesn't work because a non-tilted rectangle may produce more than one rectangle in the returned list, an alternate method would be to sum the area of the returned rectangles and compare that to the bounding-box area. I realize there are cases where a minutely-tilted rectangular selection (or similar) could produce a false positive, since the rectangles and bounding box have integer coordinates, but that seems impossible to avoid without access to the actual selection path (the one that can be written to the clipboard). As far as I could determine, that isn't available to plugins, though you once mentioned that you might consider providing it.

 

(I don't see how tilted versus not-tilted is very meaningful for anything but a rectangular selection. I suppose it could have meaning for any symmetric selection, but I can't see to what good use the information could be put.)

[Rick Brewster]

I'm referring to @NSD's code. You can't just compare X and conclude that the selection is "tilted".

[MJW]

33 minutes ago, Rick Brewster said:

You can't just compare X and conclude that the selection is "tilted".

 Thanks. I certainly agree there.