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Connor Paschall
Known Participant
January 23, 2024
Question

Seeking Incremental Mouse Movement Control for Design Efficiency in InDesign

  • January 23, 2024
  • 2 replies
  • 654 views

Hello Adobe InDesign Community!

 

I'm searching for a solution regarding mouse movement control within InDesign. My objective is to configure InDesign to constrain manual mouse movements to .25 inch increments when positioning objects manually with my mouse. Our Graphic Designer is old school and uses his trackpad along with the top menu bar for placement and movement. I struggle with that because it slows down my creative exploration of just moving things around manually. My workflow gives us problems because things are not lined up perfectly on grid with placement by number in the menu bar. Is there a solution to this?

 

To clarify, I'm looking for a way to lock the drag movement of objects so that they snap to .25" increments rather than having fine motor control when using manual mouse movements. This is not just about snapping objects to a grid, but ensuring that mouse movements are limited to these specific increments inherently, making the design process faster and reducing the need for constant measurement checks.

Current methods like 'Snap to Grid' and adjusting 'Keyboard Increments' provide a partial solution but do not offer the seamless "lack" of fine motor control I'm aiming for with mouse movements. I'm curious if there's a setting I've overlooked, a script that can modify this behavior, or a plugin that adds this functionality.

 

Any insights on achieving this level of control would be immensely helpful.

 

Thanks in advance for your help and suggestions!

 

Warm regards, 

Connor

    2 replies

    Scott Falkner
    Community Expert
    Scott FalknerCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    January 24, 2024

    The sounds like a job for cursor keys. In Preferences, under Units and Increments you can specify the distance cursor keys move items. Set it to .25 inches and any cursor key movement will be in that amount. Set it to 0.025 inches and you can use Command (Mac) or Control (Windows) plus cursor keys to move ten times that about (IOW 0.25 inches).

    C
    Connor PaschallAuthor
    Known Participant
    January 24, 2024

    Hey Scott thank you for the info. I am aware of cursor keys, but that only affects movement when using the keyboard arrows. I am looking for a solution that changes the increment of movement while using the mouse to move items around.

     

    Thanks!

    James Gifford—NitroPress
    James Gifford—NitroPress
    Legend
    January 23, 2024

    Using a trackpad is old school? Okay.

     

    I'd say this is something that's going to have to be dealt with at a driver/mouse configuration level rather than inside InDesign. Possibly with some custom code, which is not going to be simple (or free, most likely).

     

    FWIW, I find trackpads so useless for most things I will find and plug in a mouse just to change a few settings for someone. I can't imagine trying to do real work in Adobe apps with one.

      C
      Connor PaschallAuthor
      Known Participant
      January 23, 2024

      Thanks James. I assume you are a track pad user as well? Our Graphic designer has whole heartedly convinced me that track pad use can be just as efficient as a normal mouse. And yes he will claim it is old school. Well his real old school was using the mouse wheel rollers. I may have to get him one of those haha. Its impressive watching him do his thing. I'm 100% a standard mouse guy.

       

      Well I was hoping that there was an internal solution to adjusting manual movement increments when using a mouse inside of indesign. Thanks for the info!

      James Gifford—NitroPress
      James Gifford—NitroPress
      Legend
      January 23, 2024

      Uh, no, I bypass trackpads whenever possible. They have a single advantage, of being easy and cheap to integrate into a laptop. If there's a second advantage, I can't think of it. They lend themselves to efficient, precision work the way a pair of ski gloves lend themselves to speed typing.

       

      I just find it amusing that anyone would consider a trackpad an old-school approach in the world of Human Input Devices. There's a difference between 'old school' and 'having only one blade on your pocket knife.'

       

      Your designer needs to find a mouse or trackball that suits his fancy. There are a half dozen different fundamental designs; I mildly dislike mice and so have used a Logi thumb ball for probably close to 25 years. However dazzling your guy is on a flat pad, it's obviously not enough to keep up with fast, precision work... so if it were my shop, I'd lay down an ultimatum here.

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