Saving a legacy .ai with transparent images flattened expands pattern
fills whose tile image is see-through or has opacity or a blending mode,
so the tile images flatten with the art under them. A pattern whose tile
is an opaque grayscale image with a colorize paint was not expanded, so
the writer drew the source gray pixels over white. A colorize paint now
counts too.
Path Precision Tools gains two tools, kept out of the toolbars (All Tools
drawer and Object › Plug-ins › Path Precision Tools, no shortcuts):
- Corner Tool (cornerTool): editable corners on any path through the
existing Live Corners. Hover shows an eligible anchor, a click cuts a
corner with the tool's radius and kind, a drag sizes it (Shift: whole
values), a corner's marker selects it and loads its values, resizes it
and removes it at 0 or on a double-click; a corner never grows past
what fits; an Alt-marquee cuts every eligible anchor inside.
- Corners section in the Anchor Inspector: radius, kind, selected count,
Apply to Selected Anchors.
- Slide Anchor Along Path (slideAnchor): a drag runs an anchor along its
curve, the neighbouring segments refitted by the keep-shape kernel;
Shift snaps where the tangent is a multiple of 45° from the constrain
angle.
- Commands addon.pathtools.cornerSet, cornerRemove and slideAnchor, one
undo step each, params validated and covered by the command sweep.
- Cursor stand-ins, catalog rows in every language, docs and tests.
Holding backquote while dragging with the Selection tool (move, bounding-box
scale or rotate) or the Rotate, Reflect, Scale or Shear tool applies the drag
to the selected objects' pattern fills and strokes and leaves their geometry
in place. The key state at release decides the result: the key may be pressed
after the mouse button goes down, and releasing it before the button comes up
commits an ordinary transform. Objects without pattern paint do not move.
PointerEvent gains a `backquote` flag (false when absent). The desktop canvas
reads it from the held key on every pointer event, and `ui.pointer` and the
`pointer_gesture` tool accept it per event or as a default for the gesture.
object.lock.unselected is now reached by its key and as a command only:
the Object > Lock > Unselected Artwork menu item is removed, and the
command stays in the registry, the shortcut editor and automation.
In a partly selected clip group or compound path it now locks the
unselected members, the clipping path included, and leaves the container
and the selected members unlocked. It locks unselected guides while Lock
Guides is on. Hidden art and art on a locked layer stay unlocked, and a
selected layer's art counts as selected.
With a selection in isolation mode the command is enabled and locks only
the unselected art inside the isolated group. The other Lock and Hide
items keep their isolation behavior.
Lock and Hide still share one selector. A lock flag on it selects the
clip group, compound path and guide cases above; Hide > Unselected
Artwork keeps its behavior, and a test covers both directions.
Docs: docs/mcp.md, docs/target-app-parity.md.
The reference app locks all deselected artwork on Cmd/Ctrl+Alt+Shift+2.
VectorCraft had no command for it: Object > Lock held Selection, All
Artwork Above and Other Layers.
The new command, object.lock.unselected (Object > Lock > Unselected
Artwork), locks in one undo step the objects that Hide > Unselected
Artwork hides: every object that Select All takes and that is neither
selected nor holds a selected object. It returns the count. Hidden
objects stay unlocked. The selection stays as it is, Unlock All unlocks
the objects again and selects them, and with nothing to lock the
command records no undo step. Both commands now share one function,
which locks or hides the objects that the existing unselected helper
returns.
In isolation mode the menu item is disabled, and the command returns
the error "not available in isolation mode" that Hide > Unselected
Artwork returns there, and changes nothing.
Docs: docs/mcp.md, docs/target-app-parity.md.
In vertical type, Alt+Down/Up (with or without Shift) steps kerning at a
caret or tracking of selected text, Alt+Left/Right steps leading, and
Alt+Shift+Right/Left steps baseline shift; Cmd/Ctrl makes five steps.
Horizontal type keeps its mapping. Selected type objects follow the same
rule when all of them are vertical, and a selection that mixes horizontal
and vertical type takes the horizontal mapping in one undo step.
Highlight Alternate Glyphs compares each glyph with required shaping
alone, which turns liga and calt off. Older Arabic fonts (such as the
legacy Arial of the Microsoft core fonts) put the mandatory lam-alef
ligature in liga instead of rlig, so every lam-alef was highlighted.
A lam + alef cluster (any alef form, marks allowed) is now never an
alternate candidate, whatever feature the font uses.
Adds a test font built in code (lam-alef under liga or rlig) and
host-independent regressions. Also two equivalent one-line repairs
strict Clippy needs on main: a nonminimal_bool in the Path Precision
Tools inspect check and is_none() in a gradient panel test.
Object › Plug-ins › Artwork Cleanup and a hideable Text row in its panel
gain text tools, each one undo step:
- Break Text into Lines / Paragraphs / Words / Glyphs: point type pieces
placed by the glyph of their first character, keeping their styles.
- Combine Point Text: one-line point type merged into as few objects as
it can, every glyph staying where it was (tracking and spaces, checked
against the layout).
- Split Text at Cursor, Remove Line Breaks, Remove Paragraph Breaks,
Set Alignment, Keep Position, Reset Text Transform and Replace
Missing Fonts.
Effect › Color Effects › Duotone… (addon.color.duotone, also in Object ›
Plug-ins › Color Effects) prints the grey-equivalent tone of each colour
with one to four inks, each with its own tone curve. It is a colour
adjustment like the add-on's others, so it stacks with them and works as
a filter through addon.color.filter.
- One tone of a swatch the document has gives a tint of that swatch,
linked, so a spot tone separates onto its plate; several tones give
the CMYK mix of their tints (the inks overprint, so they multiply).
- Colour adjustments now map paints with their swatch links
(ColorMap::apply_link); the existing adjustments behave as before.
- Skip Objects with Spot Colors leaves spot-linked colours as they are.
- The dialog has a row per tone and the picked tone's curve (the Curves
graph, reused), its points and Reset to Linear / Inverse.
Print Ink Fixes (addon.color.printFixes, Object › Plug-ins › Color
Effects › Print Ink Fixes…) scales CMYK colours over a total ink limit
down to it, removes white overprint and sets black overprint (Overprint
Black's logic) in a CMYK document, as one undo step, and reports what
changed. RGB documents are refused.
The panel opens both under Inks.
Deferred: an opaque undercoat, tones for type only, extra gradient stops
for smoother tints, curve flip and all-100 % buttons.
Each traced path filtered the whole library for its color, twice when
no swatch of that color was linked. The color-to-paint lookup is now
built once before the paths are filled. The first linked swatch of a
color still gives the fill, and the first swatch of that color
otherwise.
When a process swatch listed before a global or spot swatch showed the
same color, a traced fill of that color took the process swatch and
stayed unlinked. Of the swatches that trace as one color, the first
linked one now gives the fill, and the first one otherwise.
With the Perspective Selection tool, Ctrl+Alt-drag (Command+Option-drag on
macOS) now copies objects on their perspective plane, as Alt/Option-drag
does. Before, Cmd/Ctrl lent the last selection tool even with Alt held, so
the drag made a flat copy. Cmd/Ctrl alone still lends the last selection
tool, and the cursor follows the same rule.
Follow-ups to the review of #4697 and #4698:
- With textAs: outlines, a .ai saved without PDF compatibility, read
from its editing data alone, has its type outlined too, as an empty
page or a text-only placeholder already did.
- Threaded type read from the editing data holds its story in its first
frame: it now flows through its frames before it is outlined, so each
frame's outlines show the text it holds, and the outlined frames
leave their threads.
- Each outline group keeps its type's opacity, blend mode, isolation,
opacity mask and effects (the same carry-over the flattener uses).
- A gradient-mesh corner (/N) holding anything but numbers is unread,
instead of being read with the numbers after it shifted into its
colour and opacity.
When Alt switches the Pencil (with Alt key toggles to Smooth Tool on)
or the Blob Brush to the Smooth tool, the drag sent the drawing tool's
own Fidelity (1.5 by default) to path.smoothRegion. The Smooth tool
sends its own Fidelity (2.5 by default, set in Smooth Tool Options).
Both tools now smooth with the Smooth tool's Fidelity. The engine gives
them the stored Smooth Fidelity when it makes the tool, and again when
Smooth Tool Options changes while one of them is active. Each tool's
own Fidelity still sets how its strokes are fitted.
A straight Knife cut now starts only when Alt is held at the press.
Alt pressed later in the drag, even before the pointer moves, leaves
the cut freehand. Releasing Alt during a straight cut keeps it
straight.
With Shift+Alt, the cut keeps to 45° steps from the horizontal and
vertical whatever the Constrain Angle. The Pencil's straight line
still steps from the Constrain Angle.
Tests cover Alt after the press, Alt only at the release, a 90° cut,
a 30° Constrain Angle, and the cut boundaries in the engine.
Docs: docs/target-app-parity.md.
The Knife cut along the freehand drag whatever keys were held. The
reference app cuts in a straight line with Alt-drag, and it cuts at 45
or 90 degrees with Shift+Alt-drag.
With Alt held at the press, or pressed before the drag has moved, the
Knife's stroke is the press point and the pointer: the dashed line
shows it while dragging, and the release sends path.knife with those
two points. With Shift held too, the line keeps to 45° steps from the
Constrain Angle, as the Pencil's Shift line does. Shift is read on each
drag event and at the release. The cut stays straight when Alt is let
go, a line taken back to its press point sends no command, and Shift
alone leaves the cut freehand.
Docs: docs/target-app-parity.md.
paint.invert and paint.complement on the Fill proxy, the Edit Colors
commands, the Blend commands and recolor.apply now recolor the color
that colorizes a grayscale or 1-bit image, as one undo step with the
other targets. Before, they left it unchanged. Expand Appearance and
Object > Expand bake color adjustment effects into that color too.
- A colorized image's pixels are not recolored; they stay the gray
coverage of its color. A stroke-only pass reaches the image's stroke
items and leaves its colorize color unchanged.
- A command that would leave a process color on a grayscale image with
an alpha channel fails with the existing message and changes nothing.
Object > Expand undoes its earlier steps when that happens.
- A colorized image counts as a filled object in a blend.
A colorized grayscale or 1-bit image draws its white pixels transparent and is written to
PDF with the image as a soft mask. Node::shows_transparency did not count it, so a PDF 1.3,
PDF/X-1a or PDF/X-3 export whose only transparency was a colorized image was not flattened
and kept the soft mask. A legacy .ai save also wrote such an image as opaque.
- shows_transparency counts a visible image with a colorize paint.
- The legacy .ai writer flattens or leaves out colorized images like other see-through images.
graphicStyle.addFromLibrary with apply: true and ids: null tried to
apply the style to no objects and failed with "no such objects" when
nothing was selected. A null `ids` now behaves as leaving `ids` out:
the style is applied to the selection when there is one, and only added
otherwise.
swatch.library.load, graphicStyle.loadLibrary, symbol.loadLibrary and
brush.loadLibrary read the whole file or decoded data before checking
`name`, so a call with a `name` that is not a string read the file
first, and with a missing file reported the file error instead of the
parameter error. The shared loader now checks every parameter before it
reads anything.
Alt in a spiral drag now rounds the fitted segment count to whole winds
of four segments, counted from the segment count when Alt went down.
Ctrl/Cmd takes precedence when both keys are held, and switching back to
Alt starts from the current count with the held inner end kept. Arrow
keys, Escape, release and a new drag clear the held Alt count.
Tests cover both keys together, a switch mid-drag, Escape, the 2 to 1000
bounds and the committed path's anchor count. docs/mcp.md and
docs/target-app-parity.md describe the rule.
The reference app adds or subtracts winds from a spiral with Alt-drag
and changes its decay rate with Ctrl/Cmd-drag. VectorCraft's Spiral
tool did nothing with either key during a drag.
While a spiral is dragged out, Alt or Ctrl/Cmd keeps the spiral's
inner end at the distance from the center it had when the key went
down, and the outer end follows the pointer. With Alt the number of
segments changes to the nearest whole number that fits, within 2 to
1000, so dragging outward adds segments and dragging inward removes
them. With Ctrl/Cmd the decay changes to fit, within 5 to 99.99
percent, the decays a spiral is drawn with. When both keys are held,
Ctrl/Cmd changes the decay. Up/Down with a key still held move the
held radius to the new segment count. The new values stay when the
key is let go, and as the Spiral tool's segments and decay options
for the next spiral. Both keys also work with a 5 percent decay and
hundreds of segments.
Docs: docs/mcp.md, docs/target-app-parity.md.
Effect › Color Effects › Vector Halftone… (addon.color.halftone, also in
Object › Plug-ins › Color Effects) draws its object as the halftone dots
Object › Vector Halftone makes, live: mono (one dot colour, or each dot in
the art's colour under it) or CMYK screens, the five dot shapes,
frequency, angle, invert and clip to the art's outline.
- The screens, dots and caps move to vectorcraft_effects::addons::halftone,
shared by the command (its behaviour and tests unchanged) and the effect.
- The renderer samples the art (vectorcraft_render::addons::halftone) and
keeps the dots by the object's content and what it reads from the
document, so unchanged art isn't sampled again; past 100000 cells per
screen the object draws as it is.
- Expand Appearance turns the object into its dots, and the SVG, PDF, EPS
and AI exporters write them as paths.
- Its dialog reuses the command's fields, without Keep Original.
Deferred: stochastic and radial patterns, a dot-gain curve, per-screen
separation settings, type or symbols as dots.
Path Precision Tools gains the Parametric Shape Tool: ten kinds of shape
(rectangle, ellipse, polygon, star, ring, arrow, cross, heart, gear,
speech bubble) that stay editable as numbers.
- Geometry in vectorcraft_pathops::addons::pathtools::shapes: each kind's
outline, corner rounding limited to the middle of a side, a fingerprint
of the outline, recovery of centre, size and rotation after a move,
turn or scale, and recognition of plain rectangles, ellipses and
regular polygons.
- The tool (parametricShape, All Tools drawer and Object › Plug-ins ›
Path Precision Tools only, no shortcut): drag from the centre (Shift:
45° steps), arrow keys change the count and values while dragging,
handles edit a selected shape, double-click places one.
- Commands addon.pathtools.shape.create / .set / .convert, one undo step
each; params checked (counts 3..1000, sizes up to 16384 pt).
- A shape keeps its numbers in one object-data entry (vc-pathtools-shape)
that SVG export already leaves out; anchor edits make it a plain path.
- Parametric Shape panel, cursor stand-in, catalog rows in all 25
languages, docs and tests.
With no library yet, library.add made and saved "My Library" before it
looked for the group or item to place the new one by, so a bad `group`,
`before` or `after` failed but left an empty library behind. The new
library is now kept only once the item is in it.
Art dragged off the canvas and colours dragged in from elsewhere (swatches, another library's)
used to be added at the end of the ungrouped items, wherever they were dropped. They now land
as items dragged within the list do: on another item of their kind, just before or after it by
the pointer's half and in its group; on a group, into it; away from the items, ungrouped at the
end as before.
library.add takes group and before/after, placed as library.moveItem places an item (the
placement is shared). A library change that fails partway now leaves the library as it was.
People reuse the same gradients across documents and rebuilt them by
hand. The Gradient panel now has a Presets menu: the presets of the
app's built-in gradient libraries, grouped by library (theme), then
the saved ones. Choosing one gives the gradient behind the active
proxy (or a solid paint) the preset's type, stops, method and dither,
keeping its placement, as one undo step, through paint.editGradient.
The panel menu saves the current gradient as a preset (named in a
dialog) and deletes saved ones; Hide/Show Presets toggles the row.
Saved presets are kept with the preferences, next to the other user
preset lists (width profiles, flattener, perspective). Stops linked to
a document swatch keep their colour, unlinked, since a preset is used
in other documents. Built-in presets can't be deleted; names are
unique.
Commands: gradient.presets.list, .apply, .save and .delete. The menu's
rows are drawn only while in view, as its headings are.
Tests: engine tests for list, apply (fill and stroke, placement kept,
one undo step), save (unique names, unlinked swatch stops) and delete;
panel tests for applying from the menu and saving, deleting and
hiding presets from the panel menu, including scrolling the menu to
the saved presets. Docs: gaps G13, target-app and UI parity, ROADMAP.
Two follow-ups to the empty-page fallback:
- A page counts as empty only when nothing on it was skipped: its only
notes are the page's own (art off the artboards, art past the page). A
page whose only content couldn't be read, such as an image that can't
be decoded, keeps its notes and goes through the usual check against
the editing data, instead of being replaced by it unchecked.
- With textAs: outlines, the document read from the editing data alone
has its type outlined. The usual path takes outlines from the page,
but an empty page (or a text-only placeholder, #1387) has none to give.
A built-in add-on under Object › Plug-ins › Smart Pen:
- The Smart Pen Tool draws and edits Bézier paths without switching
tools: a click adds the next segment straight or curved (a panel
toggle; Tab flips the segment being placed or the last one), a drag
makes a smooth point (Alt breaks the handle, Shift snaps to 45°, Space
moves the point), a curve after a straight segment joins it tangent.
- On existing paths it selects and moves points, removes a point keeping
the shape (Alt-click), toggles smooth/corner (double-click), drags
handles, reshapes a segment by dragging it and inserts a point on it
(Alt-click); it closes, continues and joins open paths.
- The Smart Pen panel: next segment straight or curved, remove points
keeping shape, make smooth, make corner, retract handles, close or
join.
The tool stays out of both toolbars as shipped; the All Tools drawer
lists it under the add-on's heading. Commands are addon.pen.*; the
existing Pen tool, commands and menus are unchanged.
A built-in add-on under Object › Plug-ins › Path Precision Tools:
- Anchor Eraser Brush: painting over selected paths removes the anchors
under the brush that the outline can do without within a tolerance,
refitting the handles beside them (Alt ignores the tolerance, Cmd/Ctrl
deletes without refitting, pen pressure can scale the brush); one undo
step per stroke.
- Extend Path tool: dragging an end of an open path carries it on
straight, by stretching its last curve or along the circle it curves
on, or shortens it back along itself.
- Measure & Inspect tool: drag to measure distance and angle; hover a
path to read segment and path length, area, curvature, tangent and
anchor angles and handles, in the document's units.
- Anchor Inspector panel: the selected anchor's position and handles as
numbers, with Make Smooth (auto-smooth rule), Make Corner, Equalize
Handles, Remove Points Keep Shape, Add Points and three ways to close.
- Add Points at Crossings and Split at Crossings.
The tools stay out of both toolbars as shipped; the All Tools drawer
lists them under the add-on's heading. Commands are addon.pathtools.*;
the existing commands, tools and menus are unchanged.
A built-in add-on in Effect › Color Effects and Object › Plug-ins › Color Effects:
- Exposure (stops of linear light, offset and gamma), Desaturate and
Invert Colors as live colour adjustments, evaluated in stack order with
those of Effect › Color Adjustments.
- addon.color.filter applies any colour adjustment to the colours
themselves, through the Edit Colors pass, as one undo step.
- A panel picks an adjustment and its values, then adds it as a live
effect or applies it as a filter.
The add-on lives in its own modules (effects, engine and ui-egui addons
folders) and leaves the existing effects, commands and menus as they
were.
A built-in add-on under Object › Plug-ins › Artwork Cleanup:
- Simplify Anchors (Keep Shape) removes anchors while the outline stays
within a tolerance, optionally keeping sharp corners.
- Document Health Check finds and fixes 16 kinds of problems in the
selection or the document (stray points, duplicate and collinear
anchors, tiny handles, nearly closed paths, needless groups, compound
paths and clipping groups, unpainted and invisible objects, duplicate
objects, art off every artboard, empty artboards…), with Show, Fix
Selected and Fix All, each fix one undo step.
- Deep Ungroup and Rejoin Path Pieces.
The add-on lives in its own modules (pathops, engine and ui-egui
addons folders) and leaves the existing commands, tools and menus as
they were.
PDF export (and the PDF-compatible .ai it writes) cut each gradient mesh
patch into 8 x 8 flat-coloured quads. Viewers showed colour bands and
hairline seams between them, and files with many meshes became very
large and slow to write.
An opaque mesh is now written as one Type 6 (Coons patch) shading
(ISO 32000-1, 8.7.4.5.7) filling its outline, through the PDF writer's
MeshGradient: each patch blends its corner colours bilinearly, as the
canvas draws it. Colours go through page_color as other fills do, and a
mesh mixing RGB with other models goes through RGB. A mesh with
see-through points, an invalid one, or one past the coordinate range
keeps the quads.
A PDF-compatible .ai whose PDF part's pages are cropped to its art (each
page the box of all the art, the editing data's bounding box) rather
than to its artboards came in as that PDF part: the editing data's
artboard wasn't the page's size, so its layers were refused. With
several artboards every page held all the art, so the document had a
copy of everything per page.
When the artboard isn't the page's size but the editing data's bounding
box is, the layers are compared with the page on that box and keep
their artboards. The comparison of their art with the page still
decides whether they are used.
With Preferences > Performance > Real-time Drawing and Editing off, tool
previews are deferred to the release, so a guide dragged out of a ruler
(guide.add) or moved with a selection tool (guide.move) showed only its
position label until the button was released. Guide previews now always
apply as the guide is dragged: the guide is all such a drag shows.
#4646's units and guides lost on reopen don't reproduce for a native
file: a new millimetre document's ruler guides and units survive Save,
Close and Open in .vectorcraft, PDF, .ai and EPS (new regression test,
and live in the app with Background Save). An SVG saved without Preserve
Editing reopens in pixels with no guides, as the reporter saw.
Eraser Tool Options' Size takes Fixed or Pressure and a Variation as the
Blob Brush's does: the tool records the pen, and path.eraseRegion outlines
the squashed drag at the pen's widths, stretched back to the tip's angle
and roundness. The pressure parsing and outline move to draw2's common
helpers, shared by both commands.
Blob Brush Tool Options' Size takes Fixed or Pressure and a Variation, as
the brush options' Size does: with Pressure the brush is Size − Variation
wide where the pen presses lightest and Size + Variation where it presses
hardest. The tool records the pen pressure of each point and shows each
step of the drag as wide as the pen pressed there; path.blob takes
[x, y, pressure] points with sizeMode and sizeVariation and outlines the
stroke with that width profile. A stroke without pressure keeps the Size,
and Fixed with no variation stays the default.
https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/desktop/paint-and-fill/learn-painting-basics/blob-brush-options-and-best-practices.html
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