[Feature Request] Rotate the page

[sebojolais]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

• Problem 1:
  I have some PDF documents as ressources for my classroom. Some of them have mistake in the page oriention. When I import PDF documents in OpenBoard, the pages are shown as background in the bad orientation.
• Problem 2:
  I have a map as background on a page, for example: the classroom map. And it is more intuitive to show the map with a rotation compare to the position of the students in front of the board/screen.

Describe the solution you'd like
For the 2 problems, the solution could be a 90° rotation of the page.

Where we can imagine the feature?
Currently we can arrange pages in the thumbnail left dock. On each page, there are 2 button: for deleting or duplicating the page. We can add one button to rotate the page. Each action on the button throws a 90° rotation in clockwise. So by 1, 2 or 3 clicks, we manage the 3 kinds of rotation. Have a look below for a sketchup:

Describe alternatives you've considered

• I think this feature could not be in the document mode because this mode is more a file manager mode where we do not manage the aspect of the pages.
• This feature could be also in a context menu on the board view on a page. But currently there is no context menu on the board (only on applications). So it is not a good idea to create one just for this feature.

Additional context
Could you give a feedback like a go/no-go because I propose to implement it but I do not want to spent energy if it could not be accepted.

[letsfindaway]

I also have something like this on my list since years (letsfindaway#8) but did not work further. However I would support such a feature and attaching it to the thumbnails view seems to be a good idea to me.

[sebojolais]

Hi Martin,
Thank you for your answer and your support.
Just a detail:
Your issue speaks about rotation of the background object and it was also my initial idea.
But after sometime, I switched the feature to rotate the page and not only background object because:

• If you rotate the entire page, you rotate the background object also
• And it could make sense to rotate the entire page in some use-cases.

[letsfindaway]

Just some comments for rotating the full page:

• There are items (e.g. web widgets) which cannot be rotated individually. I'm not sure whether we could rotate them when rotating the full page and what consequences this could have. At least it would require that we make any currently unrotatable item rotatable.
• And if your page only contains rotatable items, then we already have some means to do that:
  • Select all by using the rubber band or by pressing Ctrl+A.
  • Group the items.
  • Rotate the group.
  • Ungroup the items.

This does however not work when your selection contains any item which cannot be rotated.

[sebojolais]

Yes, we have to keep in mind issues with unrotatable objects.

In other hand, if the page is not empty, rotate only the background object and not the others could sound strange and not user-friendly.

Maybe an intermediate solution could be:

• rotate the background object
• rotate the rotatable objects
• and no rotation for unrotatable objects

We could show a warning message if there are some unrotatable objects to say "Some objects could not be rotated."

[letsfindaway]

In fact, I don't yet see a convincing use case that would justify introducing a new feature for rotating the entire page.

Rotating the background is currently not possible. In my opinion, this justifies a new feature, as this is sometimes necessary. Examples are PDF files with incorrect page orientation or photos with missing or incorrect information about their orientation.

However, the workflow I described already exists for the items on the page: group items and rotate the group. Some rework may still be necessary in individual cases, but it is also easy to move or scale the group.

Rotating the background and items separately may be a little more complex. However, I think this is perfectly acceptable for the few cases where it is needed.

[sebojolais]

I agree with your arguments.

If we want to rotate the background and not the page:

• We can not see the feature on the location described above. Because if the 2 first buttons (delete or duplicate) action the page, the user will imagine the same for the third.
• We can not show a dialog box at each background object creation to propose a rotation because the user experience will decrease for everybody even though the rotation will be used in few case.

I am sorry because just able to say where I can not imagine this feature but no idea where it could be at the right place...

Maybe we can close this ticket rotate the page and open another called rotate background object ?

[kaamui]

Hi @sebojolais !

Sorry for my late reply. There are things planned internally about this, but it somehow embraces more things than just rotating the PDF, even if the initial goal was that. One of the issue you have (and that I had too) on "where to put this feature ?" should be solved with the potential changes around page Size rework.

I created a Project, very basic as a first step, to share with you and others some internal informations, to help on this. I'll replace some of the items by opened discussions when I find time for it).

Please forgive the temporary raw state of it : https://github.com/orgs/OpenBoard-org/projects/1

[sebojolais]

Hi @kaamui ,
Thank you for your answer.
Nice to see a front-end of your internal topics 👍 great job!

[letsfindaway]

I also welcome this project page very much. Thank you!
I'm just missing the flexible background patterns from this list.

[kaamui]

I'm just missing the flexible background patterns from this list.

Fixed