Making room in a crowded space

Given the new feature you added to select all cards below cursor, I wanted to revive the discussion I started here: Rough :thought_balloon:s on large spaces. I can’t help but see that new feature as temporary since it doesn’t address all situations where you want to make more space (what if I want to move things horizontally, or make space in the middle and push everything else outwards radially). So, I’m curious what your thoughts are for a longer-term more-flexible solution :slight_smile: Here are some of mine:

  • Grouping cards, maybe like illustrator/ps. This would help for just organizing cards, but as I’ve mentioned, it also lets you embed more meaning into a space (“all these cards belong to the same group”). This is currently informally achieved by placing cards close together.
  • Cards on different layers. Similar to above, but this lends itself more to organizing a set of cards more broadly. You could see each layer as its own space, and the layers would let you overlap spaces. Interesting things you could build off this: a layer for comments, layer permissions so other folks can add comments on a specific layer, layers make z-index more formal so you can encode information that way, add a layer for each session so you can see how things evolve by toggling layers.
  • While the flexibility of K is awesome, sometimes I crave the structure of a document. In these cases, I want to be able to quickly add another entry to a “list”. I know hitting Enter supports this, but as soon as I make any connections or other actions, it is fussy to get back to where I can just hit Enter and have the card appear directly under. To this end, I was thinking of being able to define a list (imagine a Trello list) that I can click into and it will add a card that is neatly aligned with the other items, and stays aligned. And within this list, I could drag to reorder, and it would remain tidy.
  • Similar idea as above, but not a linear list, but a clump. Sometimes I want to add a card to an existing group of cards, but it is fussy to create one, then drag it precisely. I have to do this for each card I create. What if I could define a clump and then wherever I click near the clump, I can get a card that gets sucked into that.
  • Sometimes I wish there were a mode where I could avoid overlapping cards. That’s part of the fussiness of grouping cards, you have to keep grooming it to ensure you can see all the cards. Maybe a function that lets you select cards and lets you space them out so none of them touch? That gets hard because what you need more room around it?

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I know @whichrabbit had some thoughts on this discussion: How to deal with groups of sequential cards :slight_smile:

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because the more advanced the feature, the less people who use it: grouping, and the other stuff here that potentially involves adding real ui complexity are challenges I want to tackle much later on

currently I’m focused on the top layer of card align and distribute issues in
Yearly planner: grid alignment/functions? . This is also power user-y stuff, but it’s been nestled between more broad reaching things on the roadmap https://kinopio.club/-kinopio-roadmap-6TRE21gchHI7alHLuwzd5

added this thread as a reference on the roadmap to look into later

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cool, I dig it.

thank you

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