Distribute Objects and Distribute Spacing space the selected ruler
guides across the axis (vertical ones for the horizontal options,
horizontal ones for the vertical options) together with the selected
objects, as items with no size. Guides along the axis stay where they
are. Two or more guides selected without objects are enough, and the
Align panel's Distribute buttons are enabled for them. With Align to
Artboard, the outermost items go to the artboard's edges.
A key guide (select.key {guide}) is one of those items. With a spacing,
it stays put and the other items are spaced from it, as from a key
object with no size; a key guide along the axis leaves everything where
it is. The Align panel sends the Distribute Spacing value with both
rows of Distribute buttons while a guide is the key, and enables the
value for it.
A lone object selected with ruler guides can be the key (the Selection
tool's click on it), and Align to the key moves the other selected
guides to its edge or centre: vertical guides to left, centre or right,
horizontal ones to top, centre or bottom. Parallel guides line up on a
key guide. Aligning to the selection or the artboard leaves guides alone.
A click with the Selection tool on a guide selected with objects makes
it the key (select.key {guide}), drawn thicker; a click on it again
cancels it. Align to Key Object is on with one object and a selected
guide and makes the guide the key. object.align lines the objects (or
selected anchors) up on the guide's line and leaves the guide where it
is: a vertical guide sets x only, a horizontal one y. The selection
keeps key_guide beside key, never both; it goes with the guide or the
objects, and follows the guide when earlier guides are deleted.
Distribute Spacing doesn't space from a key guide.
The list fills the panel down to its bottom bar and scrolls, also while a drag nears its top or
bottom edge (in the dock and in a flyout, as the Layers panel does).
Dragging in the list:
- an item (colour, text style or graphic) dropped on another of its kind lands just before or
after it, by the pointer's half, an accent line showing where, and joins that item's group;
- dropped elsewhere on a group (its header too, even collapsed) it goes into that group, and on
the ungrouped items out of its group, the section outlined; with every item grouped, a
"Drop here to take it out of its group" strip shows while one is dragged;
- a group dragged by its header goes before or after another group.
Colours and graphics still drag onto art and the canvas as before.
Engine: library.moveItem takes `before` / `after` (an item of the same kind) to place the item
in its kind's order, which the panel shows; the new library.moveGroup {group, to} moves a group.
Text styles drag as PanelDrag::LibraryItem, groups as PanelDrag::LibraryGroup, and a library
colour's Paint drag names its library item, so the panel tells it from a swatch dragged in.
Tests: reordering and moving in the engine, the commands in the library fuzz test, and panel
tests that drop styles and group headers and check the list scrolls and scrolls while dragging.
Strings translated in the 23 catalogs; docs/mcp.md and the parity row updated.
Documents are now at most vectorcraft_doc::MAX_DEPTH (32) deep, so the writer's MAX_DEPTH of 256
and its warning for art nested deeper can go; symbols and live objects nested in one another keep
their limit.
The file had an empty prolog, so a PostScript interpreter stopped at its first operator: it
couldn't be printed, placed or previewed by anything that runs PostScript. The prolog's
procedure set (VectorCraft_Legacy, written from the PostScript Language Reference and the
version 7 specification) now gives every operator the writer emits its meaning: paths and their
painting with separate fill and stroke colours and overprints, the fill rule, compound paths
painted as one path, clipping groups and masks, guides that don't print, layers that are hidden
or don't print marking nothing, and images drawn from the hex samples on the comment lines after
XI. Gradients fill with the colour set before them (the first stop's), and the type and encoding
operators take their operands and mark nothing.
VectorCraft opens a file with that prolog from its program, as before: its page has flat
gradients and no type.
Every file the writer's tests write is now run through import_with(bytes, false) and must draw
what the document it was written from draws: its paths, fills, strokes and images in the same
places and colours, with type left out (type the writer outlines is compared as its glyphs'
outlines), gradients as their first stop, layers that don't print left out and hidden objects
shown when the options write them visible. A new test prints the sample with every layer shown.
The engine's flattened-image test also opens the file as PostScript.
The page trailer the version 7 specification gives (section 3, Script Setup) is
`gsave annotatepage grestore showpage`, and annotatepage is a procedure of the app's own
prolog, which the file didn't have. The file now carries a procedure set of the writer's own
(VectorCraft_Legacy 1 0, listed in %%DocumentSuppliedResources) in a dictionary the setup begins
and the trailer ends, which defines annotatepage as marking nothing.
The Legacy .ai Options dialog gains Hidden Objects (Hidden Layer, Omit, Make Visible) and Text
(Editable, Outlines), translated in every catalog. Docs: type and hidden objects in the legacy
.ai paragraphs, the restored revision rows and roadmap row.
Type is written as version 7 text objects (§15): point type, area type and type on a path, with
fonts by PostScript name re-encoded to Windows-1252, and each run's paint, size, scaling,
tracking, leading, alignment and indents; type 8-bit text can't hold (or all, with outlineText)
is outlines. The format hides only layers, so hidden objects go to a hidden layer above their
own (hiddenObjects "layer", the default), are left out ("omit") or show ("visible"). The .ai
reader reads legacy type (To … TO, TE, %AI3_BeginEncoding) and ignores Ar; the import fuzzer
gets legacy type tokens.
The .ai options dialog offers Legacy (version 7). In that mode it shows Transparent Images
(Flatten, Omit) and, with more than one artboard, thumbnails to check with the file each is
saved to (long names keep their end). OK is greyed out until an artboard is checked. A save
panel's Enter no longer confirms the options dialog it opens.
aiVersion 7 saves through the legacy writer, one file per artboard; range picks the artboards
and document.save writes them again. Appearances are expanded first. Transparent images
(see-through pixels, opacity or a blending mode) are flattened with the art under them into
opaque images clipped to where they change it (transparentImages "flatten", the default), or
left out ("omit"); both warn.
export_legacy_ai writes a document as a PostScript-form .ai of version 7 (one artboard per
file), keeping every layer (name, order, Hidden, Locked) and its groups, compound paths and
clip groups. Closed paths end on their start point, so they keep their corner. The .ai reader
learns what the writer emits, and the tests read every file back.
tests_fontchange adds fonts to the shared font database, which makes every renderer lay type
out again; a tests_memory test counting the type it kept between frames then failed when one ran
alongside it (about half of the runs of the render tests). The font tests now hold a lock alone,
and the frame cache tests hold it shared.
Dan Green