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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In effect dialogs (like Color Halftone), length fields with defined bounds
(e.g. Max Radius 4..127 pt) were previously checked only after num_field
returned, leaving the field's temporary buffer holding the un-clamped string
(e.g. '0.5 px'). Subsequently entering invalid text caused the field to
fall back to that sub-minimum buffer.
- Added num_field_within to pass effect parameter bounds directly to unit_field.
- When committed, clamp the parsed value within bounds and update the field
buffer to the formatted clamped value so the UI reflects what is applied.
- When invalid text is committed, clear the invalid buffer and trigger a
one-frame border highlight so invalid input is rejected visibly.
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.
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.
Every Preferences dialog option is read by shipped code, by its field or
its key, except five, each waiting on a subsystem of its own: Open
Documents As Tabs (documents in floating windows, G7), Units > East Asian
Type, Hyphenation > Default Language, Scratch Disks, and the legacy vector
clipboard. Highlight Alternate Glyphs, Real-time Drawing and the Devices
options, still listed as stored-only, act. Docs only.
Merges kept prepending each side's whole summary as "previously: …", so
target-app-parity.md's status line had grown to 66 MB (839 copies of its
Target clause), gaps.md's and ui-parity.md's to over 1 MB. Each status
line now names its latest change only, as the progress-docs standard has
it; the revision histories keep the earlier ones.
In Affinity Designer, Recolor Adjustment layers (RcRA) can be attached to
vector groups/shapes via AdCh. Lightness 1.0 recolors target elements to
white. Import visible RcRA layers as ColorOverlay effects and apply them
during node appearance evaluation.
bflatastic