Distance Guides, from the public "Use Distance Guides for accurate
placement" and "Smart Guides options" (Invoke Distance Guides) pages:
with Smart Guides on, something selected and the Selection tool,
holding Alt/Option over another object shows the horizontal and
vertical distances between the selection and it, and over an empty
part of an artboard the selection's distances from the artboard's left,
right, top and bottom edges.
- guides::distance_guides measures the selection's bounds to a box: on
an axis on which they lie apart, the gap between their facing edges;
otherwise the offsets of both pairs of matching edges. Each line runs
across the middle of the overlap on the other axis (else the
selection's middle), with a dashed line out to the target's edge when
it passes beside it. An artboard is always measured edge to edge.
Labels are in the General unit, in the smart guide colour.
- The Selection tool keeps what its Alt hover points at and draws the
guides while idle; letting Alt go (the canvas re-hovers on a modifier
change), a press or moving off clears them.
- Overlay::Distance: the line with end ticks and its length in a pill;
the canvas draws it.
- Preferences › Smart Guides › Invoke Distance Guides (`distanceGuides`,
on by default), with i18n rows; View › Smart Guides gates it too.
- Hover only, as the pages describe: nothing while moving or nudging.
Tests: select::tests::alt_over_* (gap and edges beside and below,
artboard edges in pt and mm), distance_guides_need_alt_a_selection_and_
smart_guides, tests_prefs::invoke_distance_guides_measures_the_selection_
to_the_object_under_alt, canvas::tests::alt_over_another_object_draws_
the_distance_guide_label (frame test of the drawn label and line).
Cause: with Snap to Point, the point of a moved selection that snaps to a
ruler guide is the grabbed point (#1534). Away from an anchor or center
that was the raw pressed spot (select.rs: `grab` fell back to `p`;
direct.rs: a straight segment's `grab: p`, MoveObject's `start`). A press
on a stroke or within the pick tolerance of an edge lies a few pixels
beside the path, so the pressed spot landed on the guide, "align" showed,
and the path stopped that far beside it: 0.096 pt at 3,891% and 0.0099 pt
at 28,757% in the #3701 screenshots, visible only when zoomed in.
Change: `guides::hold_on_path` finds the nearest point of the path (on a
straight segment exactly on its line). `select::hold_point` uses it for a
press on the stroke or outline, or within 6 px of it. The Selection tool
(`State::Moving::hold`), Direct and Group Selection moves
(`State::MoveObject::hold`) and Direct Selection's straight-segment drag
(`grab`) snap that point. The move delta still runs from the press, so
nothing jumps. A press in the middle of a fill still snaps the pressed
spot, as Snap to Point is documented to.
Verification: tests_prefs::a_move_held_by_a_paths_stroke_lands_the_path_on_a_ruler_guide
and tests_prefs::a_straight_segment_dragged_by_direct_selection_lands_on_a_ruler_guide
fail without the change (edge 0.0257 pt and anchors -0.0052 pt off the
guide) and pass with it (|gap| < 1e-9 pt). A headless egui/wgpu render at
3,891% and 28,757% puts the guide, the selection outline and the centre of
the 1 pt stroke band in the same pixel column. cargo xtask ci: all 10
steps passed; 9429 tests passed, 0 failed.
With the Artboard tool, a Shift-press on an artboard toggled it in the
selection and started a move, which Shift kept at 45° steps. A
Shift-drag on the pasteboard drew a square artboard. The reference
app's documentation gives Shift-drag inside an artboard as the way to
draw an artboard there, and Shift-drag on the canvas as a marquee that
selects artboards.
A Shift-click now toggles its artboard when the button comes up. A
Shift-drag inside an artboard draws a new artboard (artboard.new), and
a Shift-drag on the pasteboard toggles every artboard it touches, the
last one added becoming active. Shift no longer constrains an artboard
move or keeps a new artboard square, and no other modifier does. Shift
on the active artboard's handles still resizes it proportionally. The
hint bar names the Shift gestures in every complete catalog, and the
cursor is a crosshair over an artboard while Shift is held.
Escape while a new artboard was being drawn left the tool. Escape
during any drag, the new marquee included, now cancels the drag and
keeps the Artboard tool, as it already did during a move or a resize.
Docs: docs/target-app-parity.md.
Wire the View menu toggle and add glyph baselines and bounds to drawing snap targets so point type placement lines up with existing text when Smart Guides are on.
Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
Smart Guides spacing now applies when scaling with the Selection and Free Transform tools, not only on moves.
Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
A move that Shift kept level, upright or on a diagonal left that line
when it snapped. With View › Snap to Grid on, a level Shift-drag also
moved the selection up or down onto a gridline, and Snap to Pixel,
Smart Guides and Snap to Point moved it off the line in the same way.
Each axis snapped on its own after Shift had constrained the move.
With the Selection tool, and with Group Selection and Direct Selection
moving whole objects, a Shift-constrained move now slides along its
line until it snaps. With Snap to Grid or Snap to Pixel, the move
slides along the line by the shorter of the two distances that put it
on a gridline or a whole pixel on either axis. The bounds line up with
the other objects, or space evenly with them, only on the axes the line
runs along, and the grabbed point stops where the line passes an anchor
or crosses a ruler guide. A level or upright move snaps along its own
axis only. Moves without Shift snap as before.
Docs: docs/target-app-parity.md.
A Shaper Group keeps its original shapes as its first child, at no
opacity, and clicks do not pick them outside Construction mode. The
Lasso, the Add Anchor Point, Delete Anchor Point, Anchor Point and
Scissors tools still picked their anchor points and segments, also
where the group erased the face, and Smart Guides, Snap to Point and
the transform tools' reference point snapped to them. The Lasso and
the anchor tools also picked art outside the isolated group or object
in isolation mode.
The Lasso and the anchor tools now visit only the art a click can pick:
the isolated object in isolation mode, and a Shaper Group without its
original shapes unless they are isolated (Construction mode). Smart
Guides and Snap to Point leave the original shapes out of their
targets, and Spacing Guides leave out their bounds when a face moves.
The transform tools' reference point snaps to an original shape only
when that shape is selected, or under the pointer in Construction
mode. The Shaper Group test document moves into the shared test
helpers.
Docs: docs/shaper.md, docs/target-app-parity.md.
A bounding-box handle dragged with the Selection or Free Transform tool
snapped only with Smart Guides on, and then only to the other objects
and the artboards. View > Snap to Grid, Snap to Pixel, Snap to Point
with Smart Guides off and the ruler guides did not move it, while a
move snaps to all of them.
The corner or side a handle moves now snaps as a dragged point does.
With Snap to Grid on it lines up with the nearest gridline, and with
Snap to Pixel on it lines up with whole pixels. With Smart Guides off,
Snap to Point lands it on the other objects' anchors and on ruler
guides within its distance. With Smart Guides and Snap to Point both
on, it lines up with the ruler guides as well as with the other
objects. Shift still keeps the proportions. Without Alt the opposite
side stays put, and with Alt the box still scales about its center.
Docs: docs/target-app-parity.md.
A point placed by the Pen, the shape tools and the other drawing tools, and a
dragged anchor, lands where two paths cross, where a path crosses a ruler guide
and where two ruler guides cross, with the Smart Guides label "intersect".
With Smart Guides on, a selection moved by the Selection tool only lined
its bounds up with the other art: grabbed by an anchor and dropped near
another object's anchor, it could stop a fraction of a point beside it
where an edge lined up instead. When the grabbed point comes within the
snapping tolerance of an anchor or a centre, it now lands on it, as
Smart Guides' anchor snapping does.
The snap targets of a copy were gathered when Alt went down, from the document
as previewed, where the original had already moved with the drag, so the
original was never a target where it stays. Now both target sets (for a move,
and for a copy, which includes the original) are gathered when the drag
begins, and Alt picks between them each frame: for Direct Selection drags by
an anchor and for whole-object moves (the Selection tool's, and Direct
Selection's from a segment or fill).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
A ruler guide goes on the current layer (guide.add {layer}), shows,
hides, locks and is deleted with its layer, is listed in the Layers panel
as a row that selects it, and moves to another layer (guide.setLayer).
Guides on a hidden layer neither show nor snap; those on a locked layer
can't be picked.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01CC5DiGJEZ5ADaQMBEQk4W1
Drawing with Smart Guides on ignored the ruler guides: only with Smart
Guides off did Snap to Point use them (a vertical guide seemed to work
when it lay on the artboard's centre line, which Smart Guides follow).
With Snap to Point on, the ruler guides now pull drawn and dragged
points with Smart Guides on too, also while a point slides along a
construction guide or Shift's angle, as in Illustrator.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A selection moved with the Selection or Direct Selection tool that lines
up with nothing along an axis lands as far from its neighbour as two
other objects of its row (or column) are apart, or halfway between its
two neighbours, within the snapping tolerance; the equal gaps are marked
with a line and end ticks in the Smart Guides colour. The objects are
taken as wholes on their layers (groups too), and inside a group holding
the selection, its other objects. Off, moves only line up as before.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Every drawing tool now asks one snapper (guides::DrawSnap) for the points it
places: the Pen's and Curvature tool's anchors, the Pencil's ends, the shape
tools' start and dragged corner or radius (Rectangle, Rounded Rectangle,
Ellipse, Polygon, Star, Line Segment, Arc, Spiral, the grids), the Type tool's
click and frame and a new artboard's corners. Points land on other objects'
anchors, centres and paths ("anchor", "center", "path") or line up with their
anchors, edges and centres ("align"); hovering shows it before the press, the
Pen's guides end its rubber band, and the Pen lands on the path being drawn
too. Shift keeps a point to its 45-degree step (from Constrain Angle) or a
box's diagonal and slides it along that way into line with a target.
Preferences > Smart Guides > Construction Guides and Angles now act: a drawn
point near a guide through the point it leaves from lands on it.
Before, the Pen snapped only its press and showed nothing, and the shape tools
re-gathered targets on every drag step from the document showing their own
preview, so the dragged corner stuck to where the last step left it.
Performance: targets are gathered once per document state (keyed on the
document's uid and revision, now in ToolContext), from the art in the window,
and sorted, so the anchors, centres and lines near the pointer are found by
bisection. Leaving objects out of the targets no longer looks up each node's
ancestry (quadratic in the document's size): one pruned walk does it, which
also speeds up the Selection tool's moves and resizes.
The direction handles' HandleSnap (#494) is now a DrawSnap holding its own
targets (Targets::for_handle) for the drag: one cache, one lookup.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Reported: with the Pen there was no way to edit curves in place as Ctrl does in Illustrator on
Windows (Cmd on the Mac), segments couldn't be grabbed, and the curve-editing tools felt slow and
sometimes didn't take a handle.
- Cmd/Ctrl held at a press with any tool but a selection tool now borrows the selection tool in the
engine (Session::pointer), not in the canvas: the selection tool chosen last, or Direct Selection
for the Pen, Curvature and anchor tools until one is chosen. The tool lent to isn't deactivated,
so the Pen goes on drawing its path after the release while that path stays selected; it no
longer draws on another open path selected meanwhile. Agents reach it with pointer_gesture
mods.cmd. With Cmd held the pointer is the borrowed tool's. Choosing a tool or switching
documents mid-gesture gives the tool back first.
- Pen + Alt over a segment of a selected path reshapes it, as the Anchor Point tool does.
- The handles shown are the handles that drag (one helper for Direct Selection, the Anchor Point
tool and Pen + Alt): Direct Selection now drags the handles of a path selected as a whole (as
the Pen leaves it, so Cmd + drag of a handle while drawing works), the Anchor Point tool no
longer grabs handles that Show handles when multiple anchors are selected hides, the nearest
handle wins, and a handle shorter than the tolerance leaves its anchor to be picked. The anchor
tools pick within Selection & Anchor Display > Tolerance instead of a fixed 4 px.
- path.reshapeSegment keeps a smooth anchor at either end smooth (its other handle turns with the
moved one) instead of kinking it.
- A dragged handle gathered its smart guide targets from the whole document on every pointer move
(21 ms per move on 20,000 paths): HandleSnap now gathers them once per drag (1 ms).
vectorcraft-cli perf measures handle and segment drags on a 5,000-anchor path.
- catalog::is_selection_tool and catalog::edits_anchors replace the UI's own lists.
- Tests in tools, engine and MCP (headless pointer_gesture); docs/mcp.md, control-protocol.md,
ROADMAP.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Bounding-box resizes with the Selection and Free Transform tools already lined
their edges up with the other objects (#355, after v0.4.0), but a handle never
landed on another object's anchor point, nothing was labelled, and the Rotate,
Scale, Shear and Reflect tools didn't snap their drags at all.
- Targets::snap_scale: the dragged corner (free, or along its diagonal with
Shift) or side lands on the nearest anchor or centre within the snapping
tolerance, labelled "anchor"/"center"; alignment snaps keep their line and
now say "align", as an artboard's resize handle does. Alt (from the centre)
and rotated boxes work the same way.
- The transform tools start a drag from the anchor or centre they grabbed (the
point a click would set) and snap the pointer as drawing tools do (Smart
Guides, the grid, pixels or Snap to Point), so a corner dragged onto another
object's anchor scales exactly onto it.
- Factor the nearest anchor/centre lookup (Targets::nearest_point) and the
transform tools' drag teardown (end_drag).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- `Targets::align_rects` tells `snap_point_with` an axis lined up even when
nothing moved or Alignment Guides hide the line, so the "align" label stays.
- Free Transform's move offset is a measurement label (as the Selection
tool's), its scale/rotate readouts Transform Tools; slice move/resize
readouts follow Measurement Labels.
- Snap to Point (Smart Guides off) keeps the default look for moves too, as
for drawn points and guides.
- Test: guides dragged out of a ruler (#451) follow Snapping Tolerance,
Anchor/Path Labels and Measurement Labels; docs/mcp.md.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Color, Alignment Guides, Anchor/Path Labels, Measurement Labels,
Transform Tools, Object Highlighting and Snapping Tolerance are read:
- tools: `guides::GuideStyle` on `Targets` (`styled(cx)`) colours the
lines and labels and leaves them out when their option is off, the
snap itself unchanged; `ToolContext` gains the six fields and
`snap_tol()`, replacing the 5 px literal for every smart guide snap
(drawn points, moves, bounding-box handles, ruler guides, artboards,
reference points). The tools gate their `Overlay::Measure` readouts on
Measurement Labels (drawing, moving, ruler guides, artboards) or
Transform Tools (scaling, rotating, Free Transform, transform tools).
- engine: `with_tool_cx` fills them from `Prefs` (the colour parsed, magenta
as fallback); the colour's default is `#ff3dfc`, what the tools drew.
- ui-egui: the hover outline needs Object Highlighting and Smart Guides.
- Tests in tools (guides, select), engine (tests_prefs) and the canvas;
docs/mcp.md and ROADMAP.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Guides dragged out of a ruler did not snap at all (only Shift to the ruler's
ticks): they now go through the engine (`Session::ruler_guide`, a
`NewGuide` previewing `guide.add`, one undo step) and snap as a moved guide
does: with Smart Guides to the edges, centres (so the sides' midpoints) and
anchors of the art and of the artboards, labelled; with Smart Guides off,
View > Snap to Point pulls new and moved guides onto anchors. Moving art
with the Selection tool already snapped flush to artboard edges and centres
with Smart Guides on; a test now covers it.
Artboard guides: `Guide.artboard` holds an artboard id (written only when
set, so canvas guides save as before and older files open unchanged).
`guide.add {artboard}` makes one, `guide.list` reports it; a guide dragged
out of a ruler with the Artboard tool belongs to the active artboard. It is
drawn, picked and snapped to across its artboard only, moves with it
(`artboard.move`, a pure move in `artboard.setProps`, `artboard.rearrange`),
is copied with it (`artboard.duplicate`, Alt-drag copy) and deleted with it
(`artboard.delete`, the guide selection kept in step).
Guides as Layers rows with their own lock and hide (part d) stay open: ruler
guides are not layer nodes; Lock Guides locks them all, and Make Guides
paths are Layers rows already. Listed in the ROADMAP parity row.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Dragging direct-selected anchors never snapped: the anchor drag sent the raw
pointer delta. Now the anchor pressed on (or the pointer on a straight segment)
snaps and the other selected anchors follow by the same delta:
- Smart Guides: onto other anchors (including the anchors of its own path that
stay put), onto path segments ("path", new segment targets gathered only for
anchor drags, lines exactly on straight segments), else into line with
anchors, edges, centres and artboards ("align"). The anchors that move, their
segments and the reshaped paths' bounds are no targets, so an anchor can't
snap to itself. Targets are gathered once when the drag begins, capped.
- Smart Guides off: Snap to Point pulls it onto anchors and ruler guides within
its distance; Snap to Grid / Snap to Pixel apply as for drawn points.
- Shift keeps the 45-degree constraint unsnapped.
Group Selection and Direct Selection's whole-object moves now snap like the
Selection tool: its move snapping moved into a shared `MoveSnap`, and
`snap_with` into a reusable `PointSnap` that caches its targets per drag.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Fourteen more Preferences options that were stored but read by nothing now
act, for the mouse and for agents (prefs.set, then pointer_gesture,
press_key or the commands):
- Selection & Anchor Display: Snap to Point and its distance (with Smart
Guides off, View > Snap to Point lands a dragged selection's grabbed
point, drawn points and reference points on anchors and ruler guides);
Move Locked and Hidden Artwork with Artboard (artboard.move, the Artboard
tool and Rearrange; off, hidden art now stays too); Enable Rubber Band for
the Pen and Curvature tools; Handles (solid, hollow, large);
Show handles when multiple anchors are selected (canvas and Direct
Selection's handle picking); Hide Corner Widget for angles greater than.
- General: Transform Pattern Tiles is the default of a new `patterns`
param on object.transform/move/rotate/scale/reflect/shear/transformEach
(journalled when the art uses a pattern), and the transform dialogs get a
Transform Patterns checkbox; Select Same Tint % (off, Select > Same
Fill/Stroke Color takes every tint of a global or spot swatch).
- Type: new type.step {attribute, by} steps size, leading, tracking, kerning
and baseline shift by the Size/Leading, Tracking and Baseline Shift
increments; Increase/Decrease Font Size (Cmd+Shift+. and Cmd+Shift+,);
the Type tool's Alt+arrows (kerning at a caret or tracking, leading,
Shift for baseline shift, Cmd/Ctrl for five steps). Enable Missing Glyph
Protection keeps characters a new font lacks in the font that had them
(text.setStyle, text.setRangeStyle). Fill New Type Objects With
Placeholder Text: type the Type tools place starts with placeholder text,
selected (text.create / text.createInPath take `placeholder`).
Units > General, Stroke and Type were already the single source of truth
(units.rs). Auto Size New Area Type, Show Font Names in English and
Highlight Alternate Glyphs need subsystems the app doesn't have yet and
stay open with the rest of #394.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Guides dragged out of the rulers could not be touched again: no tool hit-tested
them, so a click on a guide went to the art under it.
- The Selection, Direct Selection and Group Selection tools pick a ruler guide
within the selection tolerance (over the art; Direct Selection takes an
anchor on it first) through a shared tools::rulerguide::GuideEdit. A drag
moves the selected guides in one undo step (Alt copies them, Shift snaps the
dragged one to the ruler's ticks, otherwise it snaps to pixels, the grid or,
with Smart Guides, the art's edges, centres and anchors); dropped off the
canvas onto its ruler, the guide is deleted. Hidden or locked guides can't be
picked; the pointer shows which way a guide moves.
- Selection::guides holds the selected guides (on their own, like slices); the
canvas draws them in the selection colour. Delete/Backspace (edit.clear)
delete them, the arrow keys (object.nudge) nudge them, Lock Guides and Hide
Guides deselect them.
- Commands for agents: guide.list, guide.select {indexes, toggle?},
guide.move {dx?, dy?, copy?} (besides {index, pos}) and guide.remove {index?};
guide positions out of range are refused. Documented in docs/mcp.md.
- Shift while dragging a new guide out of a ruler snaps it to the ticks too
(Unit::ruler_step, shared with the rulers' drawing).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Add Snapping to the Artboard Tool
Merged with the Artboard tool's Alt-drag duplicate (#348): a copy snaps too, and to the artboard
and art it leaves behind (a move skips them).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- A dragged handle no longer snaps to its own path's bounds and centre, which move with the
handle; the path's anchors are point and alignment targets instead.
- Shift steps 45° from the Constrain Angle preference, like the cut and gradient tools.
- snap_draw and snap_handle share one pixel/grid/smart-guides switch.
- A test that a smooth anchor's opposite handle turns with a Shift-dragged handle and that Alt
still breaks it, and the tools' module docs (both from #338).
Co-authored-by: theironchef <6278036+theironchef@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Dragging a direction handle with Direct Selection or the Anchor Point tool
sent the pointer position straight to path.setHandle: Shift did nothing and
the handle never snapped, while the Pen already constrains the handles it
pulls out.
guides::snap_handle places a dragged handle: with Shift at a multiple of
45° from its anchor (the Pen's constraint, keeping the dragged length),
otherwise snapped as a drawn point is (smart guides, the grid, pixels).
Both tools use it and show the smart guides while the handle moves.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The resize snap skipped a bounding box standing at an angle. It now works
on the page whatever the angle: a corner handle takes the target's x, y or
both, and a side handle (or a proportional corner) slides along its own
direction until the handle or an end of its side is on a target. A target
the side runs almost along is skipped, so the handle stays near the pointer.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_013j16ENkbsNYyHSCDhxYkYR
Dragging a bounding-box handle with the Selection or Free Transform tool
now lands the edges it moves on the edges and centres of the other objects
and artboards, with the guide line, as a move already did. A proportional
scale snaps the closer axis only; a turned bounding box doesn't snap.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_013j16ENkbsNYyHSCDhxYkYR
aiongg