Report file free text position bug

[Simon_Aldworth]

Hello,

I've just come across what seems like rather odd behaviour in a Report file.

Say you have two free text objects in a Report layout and you've set their size but the not their position. Let's also assume that their relative position is bottom right, as that's the default.

If one is high relative to the other and you want the high one to drop down to align with the lower one, then you would select them both and press Alignment -> Bottom. However, I've noticed that this will change their relative alignment to top right!

This is an unrequested change, as all you have asked for is that they align, not that they share the same y co-ordinate.

I  can see why it's been done like this as the developers have assumed that you will want to continue the alignment even if you add or remove text from the box and it changes height. However, it also causes considerable grief if you then use the numbers to change the positions of the text. It won't go where you though it should.

Presumably a solution is to use comment boxes as, for some reason that is unclear to me, their size is governed by two diagonally opposing corners, rather than just one.

When one also takes into account the weird duel sizing/positioning system of graphs, where you can set the distance to the edge of the page or the height and width and the two systems interact but only in one direction (adjust the height and only the top edge distance will change; adjust the width and only the right edge distance will change), I wonder why are their so many object sizing strategies within DIAdem??

It seems to me that some simplification or commonising would be good.

Regards.