Align Horizontally, align vertically feature request

Believe it or not, some of us go a little crazy when out nodes are not perfectly lined up either horizontally or vertically or both. I am just such a person, you could say I am on the OCD spectrum. Anyway, it frustrates me know end that there isn’t a way to group a bunch of nodes and then align them to the Top, Center, Bottom for vertical alignment and Left, Middle, Right for horizontal alignment.
Much the same as you can do with applications like Visio or PowerPoint and many visualization design applications. NodeRed is a visual low code editor and the ability to align nodes will I believe make it much easier to understand the flow. At least for us OSD type folks.

Hi @tonyfitzs,

adding a set of 'align selection' actions has been on my todo list for ages. I thought we had something on the backlog for it, but couldn't see it - so I've added https://trello.com/c/iYmbLYT1 to keep it from being forgotten (again).

@knolleary,
Could it be that you were searching for the "editor-layout-tools" trello item?

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Am I correct that this could be created in the future via the new editor plugins (you are working on), or does that has nothing to do with it?

Ahhh yes. That's the one.

Maybe... depends if it wants to be a built-in feature or an optional add-on.

That's the interesting thing with the new plugins structure I'm working on - it opens up the question as to what features we already have that could be pulled out of core into a plugin. They would still be pre-installed with the node-red module, but for those scenarios where someone wants to embed the Node-RED editor for their own application, they may not want all the features we provide.

For example, the Context Browser sidebar is a nice example of an entirely self-contained part of the editor that could be pulled out into a plugin.

Anyway - still early days on plugins, but lots of interesting possibilities to explore.

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That would indeed be very powerful, since I assume it also allows you to introduce other nice stuff (like e.g. fine grained roles, which user will have access to which editor tools).
Although it is a very nice development, I will now stop asking questions about it :wink:
I will wait patiently like a well behaved school boy, until you decide that your developments are mature enough to demonstrate and discuss it with the community. Promised :lying_face:

Top Tip : - I find if you change the grid settings to be 15 rather than 20 then tike the small link node can be made to line up much more easily... - may help assuage some of your OCD in the meantime.

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