think-cell technical report TC2003/01 A GUI-based Interaction ...

4.3 Specifying the User Interface INTERACTION CONCEPT
(a) User interaction . . . (b) . . . and the resulting layout
Figure 25: Displacement also works to create a gap between neighboring shapes.
(a) User interaction . . . (b) . . . and the resulting layout
Figure 26: If the edges of the new element do not coincide with the edges of overlapping
shapes, the new element is placed regardless of the overlap.
4.3.2 Inserting Multiple Elements
The insertion of multiple elements at a time is different from the sequential insertion
of multiple elements one by one. In the latter case, the placement of an element can
be specified as described in the previous section, then the solver updates the layout,
then the user determines the next placement, and so forth. In contrast, with paste
or move multiple elements must be placed by a single user action, all at a time, and
the placement of each element depends not only on the existing layout, but also on
the placement of the other shapes that are being pasted.
Just as with single element insertion, the goal is to bind all the inserted shapes
to the right gridlines – or generate new gridlines, if required – with as little effort
from the user’s part as possible.
Copy/Paste and Move
In ordinary PowerPoint, a move operation requires that the desired shapes are
selected first. Then, a drag-and-drop operation is performed to move the selected
shapes around on the slide. The operation behaves as if the selected shapes were
implicitly grouped: Depending on the active settings, the bounding box of the
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