Pts

A point canvas with JSON storage

“Points”

Pts is a GUI for creating, manipulating, and arranging points on a canvas.

Points can be:

• different shapes and switched from one to the other with S + the shape key:
  • C for circle
  • S for square
  • D for diamond (square rotated 45°)
  • H for semi-circle (half-circle)
• cloned,
  • in-place with C×2
  • in the dirrection of an arrow key with C+{←↑→↓}
• locked to a grid of lines, toggled with G
• selected one at a time, or multiple at a time by either:
  • Box selection by holding the mouse to drag a bounding box
  • flood fill (also in B mode) in a particular direction (←↑→↓),
• saved to JSON (points.json) and re-loaded.

Usage

• Select single or multiple points with your mouse
• Draw new points by holding the mouse down in paintbrush mode (P toggles)
• Drag points with mouse (G toggles snapping to grid)
• Keyboard-driven workflow

Unimplemented

• Configure settings via tool TOML in Cargo.toml
• Publish to crates.io

Installation

cargo install pts

• Cargo binstall installation is still TODO

Configuration

Create config.toml in the working directory:

bg_color = "#FFFFFF"
point_color = "#000000"
selected_color = "#FF0000"
selection_box_color = "#0000FF"
grid_enabled = true
grid_spacing = 50.0
grid_color = "#CCCCCC"
point_radius = 8.0
move_step = 1.0
move_step_large = 8.0

Controls

Selection

• Click point: Select single point
• Click empty: Deselect all
• B: Toggle box select mode
• Arrow keys (in box mode): Expand selection to adjacent points
• Drag box: Select all points entirely within box

Movement

• Arrow keys: Move selected points by move_step
• Shift + Arrow: Move by move_step_large
• Mouse drag: Move selected points (quantized to move_step)

Cloning

• C then C: Clone selected points on top
• C then Arrow: Clone adjacent (offset by bounding box size)

Shapes

• S then S: Set selected points to square
• S then C: Set selected points to circle
• S then D: Set selected points to diamond
• S then H: Set selected points to semi-circle (half-circle)

View

• G: Toggle snap-to-grid mode
• V then G: Toggle grid visibility
• Ctrl + Scroll: Zoom (0.1x to 10x)

Other

• X: Delete selected points
• ?: Show help window
• Ctrl + S: Save points to points.json
• Ctrl + O: Load points from file
• Ctrl + R: Reset to defaults
• Q or Esc: Quit

File Format

Points are saved to points.json in the working directory:

{
  "points": [
    {"id": 1, "x": 200.0, "y": 100.0, "shape": "Circle"},
    {"id": 2, "x": 400.0, "y": 200.0, "shape": "Square"}
    {"id": 3, "x": 600.0, "y": 300.0, "shape": "Diamond"}
  ]
}

Snap to Grid

When snap-to-grid mode is enabled (G), point boundaries snap to the nearest grid lines. The closest edge of each point aligns with grid spacing.

Multi-Selection Behavior

• Dragging or arrow moving a selected point moves all selected points together
• Cloning creates copies of all selected points
• Shape changes apply to all selected points
• Delete removes all selected points, then selects most recently created remaining point
  • ...often not very well: TOFIX!

Ingredients

Made with:

• egui (for the easy GUI, naturally)
• facet (for JSON de/serialisation and application TOML config loading)

Licensing

pts is MIT licensed, a permissive open source license.