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Counter tool / Custom starting index for the Sequential Numbering #365

Description

@MikeAlinov

Hi there,

First off, thank you for building Gradia. It is easily the most polished, modern, and visually beautiful annotation tool available for the GNOME ecosystem right now. The GTK4/Libadwaita implementation feels incredibly premium compared to the older legacy tools out there.

I’m writing to request a quality-of-life feature for the Step Counter (Sequential Numbering) annotation tool. Currently, the tool is hardcoded to always begin counting from 1 whenever a new session or image canvas is opened.

The Problem / Professional Use-Case

When building comprehensive documentation, multi-step technical manuals, or tutorials, the process often spans across multiple separate image files. For example, a guide might require:

  • Image A: Steps 1, 2, and 3
  • Image B: Continuing with steps 4, 5, and 6

Because Gradia lacks a way to manually override or change the starting number, opening Image B forces the sequence right back to 1. This makes it incredibly difficult to create cohesive, multi-image guides without resorting to sloppy external workarounds (like manually drawing the numbers freehand or prepending massive image files onto a single combined canvas).

Proposed Solution

It would be a massive workflow improvement if users could customize the Starting Index of the sequence counter. Ideally:

  1. When selecting the Counter tool, an option appears in the properties sidebar allowing the user to define a custom starting integer (e.g., setting "Start at: 4").
  2. Alternatively, right-clicking or double-clicking a placed number badge on the canvas would let the user manually type in a new value, and any subsequent clicks would cleanly continue ascending from that new number (4, 5, 6...).

This single addition would transform Gradia from a great quick-markup app into an absolute powerhouse for technical writers, educators, and anyone building step-by-step guides on Linux.

Thanks again for the incredible work on this project! I look forward to seeing where Gradia goes.

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