Split margin (top, bottom, left, right)

[haschdl]

It is customary in photography and other forms of prints to have asymmetrical margins. A perfectly centred piece is considered less pleasing to the viewer. It is common for example to have a 10% margin in the left and right, and 7% top and 13% (or approximately double the margin size in the bottom).

For that reason, I would like to propose to optionally have distinct margins sizes. To keep the UI exactly the same, the parsing of the margin field could be smarter, and accept both 1 number, 4 numbers (top, right, bottom, left), and accept both absolute numbers and percentages, in similar fashion as the margin attribute in CSS (see specification).

For example:

• "20mm" or "20" is treated as absolute number, for all 4 sides
• "20 10 40 10" would be treated as 20mm margin top, 10mm right, 40 bottom and 10 left.
• "20%" is parsed as 20% for all sides
• "7% 10% 13% 10%" is parsed as 7% top margin, 10% right and left, and 13% bottom margin

This would also bring the advantage of having a more flexible layout system and eliminate the need for an extra "bounding box" to be added to the SVG itself.

[jimmykl]

+1 for this, it's the main reason I still run artwork through Inkscape/Illustrator before plotting

[ianstormtaylor]

Would also love this. For works that aren't the exact dimensions as the paper it would be useful to choose which side (top vs. bottom, left vs. right) got prioritized.

Edit: just found this answer https://github.com/nornagon/saxi/issues/104#issuecomment-1049271624 which describes a solution to my issue—putting hidden rectangles in the SVG as a separate layer.