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.
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.
A successful command.batch now records its last Unite, Intersect or other
Pathfinder step as the operation Repeat Pathfinder runs, so playing an
action from the Actions panel updates it. A batch that fails and rolls back
leaves the previous operation in place. action.batch, which runs an action
over other files or data sets, does not set it.
Every successful Shape Mode or Pathfinder operation now sets the
operation that Repeat Pathfinder runs, including direct
object.pathfinder.* commands, not only the panel's buttons. Trap,
compound-shape edits and live effects leave it unchanged, and a failed
operation keeps the earlier one. The panel menu names the remembered
operation, and Repeat runs it on the current selection with the current
Pathfinder Options.
With too few objects selected, Cmd/Ctrl+4 leaves the art as it is and
shows the panel's selection message in the status bar. Adds the
"no Pathfinder operation applied yet" rows to the Catalan and Turkish
catalogs, and tests for direct and failed operations, Trap, compound
shapes, current options, a one-path selection and the default keys.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
A new reader, written from the ZSoft PCX Technical Reference Manual, decodes
the run-length encoded scan lines of 1-bit images in the header palette's
first two colors (black and white when the version has no palette or the two
colors are the same), 1-bit images in two to four planes and 4-bit images
with the header's palette (the EGA colors for versions 0 and 3), 2-bit CGA
images in the colors that the header's CGA background and palette settings
pick, 8-bit images with the 256-color palette after the image data (gray
levels without one) and 24-bit images in three planes. The image is stored as PNG at the resolution of the header's HDpi and
VDpi fields.
Open and Place list PCX, and pasting a copied .pcx file and Glass's Load
Texture… read it by its header. A file of another depth or plane count, one
cut short and one whose pixels as RGBA pass the pixel allowance are refused
with a message before its pixels are decoded. The desktop packaging does not
associate .pcx files, and no export writes them.
Docs: docs/file-format-parity.md, docs/target-app-parity.md, docs/mcp.md,
docs/releasing.md.
While the center was dragged out, the rays pointed at the pointer, as a
polygon's first corner does, and Shift put them back in their original
orientation. In the reference app they turn by a step for each update
of the drag as the pointer moves up or down, and Shift stops the turn
where it is.
Each update of the center drag in which the pointer's document y grows
now adds 0.1 radian (about 5.73°) to the rays' turn, one in which it
falls takes 0.1 radian away, and one at the same y leaves the turn as
it is. Shift held keeps the turn, and turning goes on from there once
Shift is let go. Space held moves the flare without turning the rays.
General › Constrain Angle no longer sets the turn under Shift.
Docs: docs/mcp.md, docs/target-app-parity.md.
The reference app's Flare tool rotates the rays as the center is dragged
out, Shift constrains them to their original orientation, and Space
held moves the shape being drawn. VectorCraft's Flare tool drew the
rays in one fixed orientation and ignored Shift and Space.
shape.flare takes rotation (degrees, clockwise), which turns the rays
about the center and leaves the halo, the center and the rings as they
are. While the center is dragged out, the rays turn with the pointer,
as a polygon's first corner does, and a drag straight up leaves them
unturned. Shift keeps them unturned, or turned by General › Constrain
Angle as a polygon drawn with Shift is. Space held during the center
drag or the drag that places the rings' end point moves the flare at
its current size, and the drag goes on from there when Space is let
go, as with the shape tools.
Docs: docs/mcp.md, docs/target-app-parity.md.
Preview, Embed ICC Profiles, Create PDF-Compatible File and the other VectorCraft Options went back to their defaults for every document not saved yet. A native Save or Save As now records the options it used in the preferences (not the artboards it picked, nor Use Compression, which its preference decides), and file.formatOptions offers them for a document not yet saved as a native file. A document saved before keeps its own.
While an opacity mask is edited the Layers panel lists only the mask, so a new layer was added where no row showed it, and only the panel's layer count went up. Both commands are now disabled then, as isolation commands already are (outside_mask_editing).
With a layer selected, Object > Hide > Unselected Artwork hid every object
on that layer, since the selected layer was dropped from the objects to
keep. The objects of a selected layer now count as selected.
While Lock Guides is on, a group that held a guide path was hidden whole,
which hid the guide with it. Guide paths now count as selected, so the
command keeps such a group visible and hides its other members one by one.
dotCooCoo