Reported: closing a shape by pressing on the first anchor and dragging out a curve flickered, and
releasing at the wrong moment left the shape open.
The press decided to close (path.close preview), but every move asked again which path was being
drawn: the closing preview leaves the path closed, so no longer one the Pen extends, and the move
fell through to "first anchor of a new path" (a path.create preview), the next move back to a
close of a path that no longer existed in the preview... The release committed whichever was last.
- The press now records what it placed (Place: the anchor, the path it goes on, none for a new
path, and whether it closes it), and the drag only shapes that anchor's handles: a close stays a
close, symmetric by default and Alt breaking the handles, and the release closes the path wherever
it ends. The first anchor of a new path no longer depends on the selection either.
- Tests: tools (the drag sees the closed path), engine (closed throughout a 12-move drag, symmetric
handles at the release), MCP headless pointer_gesture. ROADMAP.
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>
