VectorCraft had no Objects on Path. A click with the Objects on Path
tool attaches the selected objects to the path clicked. The tool is in
Edit Toolbar's Modify section and the Blend tool's flyout, and Object ›
Objects on Path › Attach and the context menu with two or more objects
selected choose it. The objects and the path go into an Objects on
Path group with the path at its bottom.
- object.objectsOnPath.attach orders the objects column by column from
left to right and top to bottom in each column. The first one sits
on the path's first anchor, the last one sits on the end of an open
path, and the rest are spread evenly by length; a closed path takes
them all the way round. Each object's attachment point (Pivot, one
of nine, default the center of its bounds without strokes) sits on
the path, and the object is turned to the path there. An object that
was rotated by an angle other than a multiple of 90° is first turned
to the nearest multiple of 90°. Rotate tilts every object by that
many degrees counter-clockwise. Symbol instances are measured by
their art. Guides, compound paths, type, paths without length and
graphs are refused with a reason.
- After every edit the objects go back on the path: editing the path
moves them, an object moved on its own goes back, and objects moved
into or out of the group in the Layers panel join the end of the
path or leave it. Scaling, shearing or reflecting the whole group
keeps each object's scale, shear or reflection, and the objects are
spread evenly along the transformed path again. Undo takes the path
and the objects back in one step, and a copied group stays live on
its own path.
- object.objectsOnPath.options changes Pivot and Rotate, and
object.objectsOnPath.expand leaves a plain group. Both act on the
groups that `ids` names, or on the groups of the selection when
`ids` is not given.
- The native file keeps the group live; SVG, PDF and the other exports
write plain art. The tool highlights the path under the pointer, has
a cursor entry, and Escape during a press cancels the click.
Part of #2545
Docs: docs/mcp.md, docs/target-app-parity.md.
Double-clicking the Live Paint Selection tool did nothing, and the tool
always selected faces and edges and highlighted them in red at 4 px.
It now opens Live Paint Selection Tool Options with Select Fills,
Select Strokes, Color and Width, the options the reference app's help
page on selecting objects lists.
- With Select Fills off, a click selects the edge nearest the pointer,
as Alt-click does. With Select Strokes off, Alt-click selects the
face under the pointer, as a click does. With both off, a click
selects no face or edge.
- Color (a layer color or a custom color) and Width (1 to 20 px) set
the highlight on the face or edge under the pointer.
- The defaults are the earlier behavior: both selections on, red
(#ff2a2a) and 4 px. The options are tool options (tool.setOption
{tool: "livePaintSelection"}): they last across tool switches and
are saved with the preferences.
Docs: docs/mcp.md, docs/target-app-parity.md.
The params text of ui.layersPanelOptions and the doc comment on
PanelOptions::locate_selected said that, with the option on, the panel
opens the rows around any object selected outside it and scrolls to its
row. When Show Layers Only, a search or the filter leaves the object
without a row, the panel opens no rows for it and scrolls as with the
option off. Both texts now describe that case, as docs/mcp.md does.
With Locate Selected Objects on, choosing a saved selection in the panel
menu's Save Selection submenu opened the rows around the recalled object
and scrolled to it. A selection changed with the panel's own menu is not
located, and the submenu's recall now follows that rule as the other
panel menu items do.
With Locate Selected Objects on, an object selected on the canvas had the
layers and groups around it opened even when Show Layers Only, a search or
the filter left it without a row. The panel did not scroll to it, but the
rows stayed open, so they showed once the panel listed every row again.
The panel now opens the rows around the object only when the object has a
row once they are open. Otherwise it opens nothing and scrolls as with the
option off. The Layers panel entries in docs/mcp.md and
docs/target-app-parity.md describe this.
By default the Layers panel opens the layers around a row and scrolls
the row into view when its highlighted rows change, for example after
a click in the panel, a new layer or Locate Object. When no row is
highlighted and a selection makes another layer or sublayer the
active one, the panel does the same for that layer's row. Selecting
art on the canvas or by a command highlights no row, so by default
the panel does not open the layer or sublayer that holds the art or
the groups around it, and does not scroll to the art's row.
Panel Options gets Locate Selected Objects, off by default and kept
with the UI state. With it on, when the last selected object changes
on the canvas or by a command, the panel opens the layers and groups
around it and scrolls to its row, as after Locate Object, but does not
highlight the row. When the selection also changes the active layer,
the panel scrolls to the object's row instead of the layer's row.
When Show Layers Only, a search or the filter leaves the object
without a row, the panel scrolls as it does with the option off. A change made with the panel's own
rows, buttons or menu is not located, and a change made during a drag
is located when the drag ends. Locate Object is unchanged.
On a layer of 5,000 groups of 10 paths with every row open, the first
panel frame after a selection change took a median of 1.6 ms with the
option on and took a median of 1.4 ms with it off, in a release build.
Docs: docs/mcp.md (locateSelected), docs/target-app-parity.md.
A tab stop placed or dragged on the Tabs panel's ruler always landed
at a fractional position, and the ruler was numbered in inches with a
tick every 18 pt whatever the document's units. The reference app
snaps stops to the ruler units with Snap To Unit in the panel menu or
with Shift held during a drag, and numbers its tab ruler in the
document's units.
The ruler is now numbered in the General unit with the canvas rulers'
label step at the ruler's scale, and has a tick every tenth of a step.
The panel menu has Snap to Unit, checked while it is on. With it on,
or with Shift held, a stop placed by a click or dragged on the ruler
lands on the nearest tick, through Unit::snap_to_ruler_tick as a
Shift-dragged ruler guide does. A snapped click that lands on an
existing stop's tick selects that stop and records no undo step. The
stops still change through text.tabs.set. The reference app's page
names Shift for a drag only; Shift also snapping a click, and a
snapped click onto a stop's tick selecting that stop, are VectorCraft's
own rules.
Docs: docs/target-app-parity.md.
Extrude & Bevel and Inflate built one solid from the path, painted with
the object's top fill or, without a fill, its top stroke. A filled and
stroked object lost its stroke, and a stroked open path was extruded as
the area it would enclose if it were closed.
Each visible stroke now builds a solid from its outline in its own
paint, beside the solid the top fill builds from the path, as Rotate
already turns each stroke's outline. When the fill and the strokes are
opaque with normal blending, the faces of all the solids are drawn in
one back-to-front order; otherwise each solid is drawn on its own, in
the order of the appearance. Under a light that is not white, a surface
drawn as one composite or with an opacity mask is also drawn on its
own. In that one order a flat cap turned toward the viewer is drawn
after every other face, untwisted solids included, so the stroke's
front cap covers the fill's walls inside it. The solids share one set
of bounds, and with Perspective one eye sees every inflated solid. A
stroke whose outline is past the 2,048-point limit is left out.
Inflate's cells cut by a hole now pass only the nearby contours to the
boolean. An inflated, outlined 72 pt "VectorCraft" takes about 8 ms
instead of 34 ms, and 66 ms with a 3 pt stroke.
Docs: docs/three-d.md (Fills and strokes), docs/target-app-parity.md.
Choosing a data set in the Variables panel, stepping through data sets
with the panel's arrows, and running `dataset.select`, `dataset.next`
and `dataset.prev` applied nothing and showed no message when no object
was bound to a variable that the data set has a value for. This
happens, for example, after Import Data Sets… defines new variables
without binding them.
The app now shows "nothing in data set A was applied: no object is
bound to a variable it has a value for" in the status bar, and the three
commands add it to the reply as `warning`. A data set with a value for
a bound variable gives no warning even when every object bound to it is
locked; `skipped` counts those objects. What applying a data set does
is unchanged.
Docs: docs/mcp.md, docs/target-app-parity.md.
The reference app's help says Smart Guides cannot be used while Snap to
Grid or Pixel Preview is on, even with the menu command selected. The
Selection tool's move already leaves Smart Guides out under Snap to
Grid, but the canvas still drew the Object Highlighting outline under
the pointer with either view on.
The hover outline now draws only with Smart Guides and Object
Highlighting on and with Snap to Grid and Pixel Preview off.
PNG, PDF, EPS, legacy `.ai`, packaged zips and saved `.vectorcraft` files
record the wall-clock time they were made in, so the same commands run twice
gave different bytes although the pixels matched (#2880):
PDF /CreationDate and /ModDate D:20261018155816 vs D:20261018155817
PNG the `Creation Time` tEXt entry
.vectorcraft one byte of the stored date
SVG carries no time, and already repeated
`metadata::output_time` is the time a file records: `SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH` when it
holds a non-negative whole number of seconds, else the clock, as the
reproducible-builds specification defines it. A date a command is given
(`file.new {created}`, a save's `modified`) still wins over the variable, and a
blank, negative or non-numeric value is ignored so that an export is never
refused over the environment.
`metadata::now_unix` keeps the real clock and now has exactly two callers, both
of which must not be pinnable from the environment: the recovery heartbeat, and
the seed PDF encryption draws on.
A .ai saved without PDF compatibility has only a placeholder page in
its PDF part. document.open reads such a file from its editing data,
but with `pages` given it failed with "the file holds only a
placeholder page", even for "1" on a file of one page.
When `pages` names every page of the file, document.open now reads
the editing data as it does without `pages`.
Docs: docs/mcp.md.
#2784 made zh-hant a language that translates every status and error message while #2930 added the shared parameter-check errors to the others; main's shared_param_check_errors_are_translated failed on zh-hant.
