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vectorcraft/docs/gaps.md
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bflatasticandClaude Opus 5.5 59c890df9e Part of gap 2: Effect › Brush Strokes (Accented Edges, Angled Strokes, Crosshatch, Dark Strokes, Ink Outlines, Spatter, Sprayed Strokes, Sumi-e)
Eight raster effects on the pixel-filter pipeline
(vectorcraft_effects::pixel::brushstrokes), under a new Effect › Brush
Strokes submenu between Blur and Distort in the Raster Effects section:

- Accented Edges (edgeWidth pt 1..14, default 2; edgeBrightness 0..50,
  38; smoothness 1..15, 5): the edges of the softened object painted
  towards white chalk at high brightness or black ink at low brightness;
  Smoothness also leaves the faint edges out. The shape stays as it was.
- Angled Strokes (directionBalance 0..100, 50; strokeLength pt 3..50, 15;
  sharpness 0..10, 3): light areas in right diagonal strokes, dark areas
  in left diagonal ones; 0 makes every stroke a left diagonal, 100 every
  stroke a right diagonal. Sharpness brings detail and bristles back.
- Crosshatch (strokeLength pt 3..50, 9; sharpness 0..20, 6; strength
  1..3, 1): the detail kept under pencil hatching along both diagonals,
  Strength passes of it, the edges roughened.
- Dark Strokes (balance 0..10, 5; blackIntensity 0..10, 6;
  whiteIntensity 0..10, 2): short strokes towards black in the dark
  areas, long strokes towards white in the light areas.
- Ink Outlines (strokeLength pt 1..50, 4; darkIntensity 0..50, 20;
  lightIntensity 0..50, 10): black outlines over the edges, ink hatching
  in the shadows, shadows darkened and highlights lightened.
- Spatter (sprayRadius pt 0..25, 10; smoothness 1..15, 5): each pixel
  shifted by noise up to 0.4 x the radius; Smoothness makes the grains
  larger and smoother.
- Sprayed Strokes (strokeLength pt 0..20, 12; sprayRadius pt 0..25, 7;
  strokeDirection Right Diagonal, Horizontal, Left Diagonal or Vertical):
  strokes along the direction, scattered by up to 0.3 x the radius.
- Sumi-e (strokeWidth pt 3..15, 10; strokePressure 0..15, 2; contrast
  0..40, 16): wet strokes, ink bleeding from the darks along paper
  fibres, more ink with pressure and an S-curve contrast for rich blacks.
  It works in value only: hues and saturation stay, and so does the
  object's shape (no fringe in the transparency).

A stroke averages the colour along a segment through the pixel (16
samples at most, the art softened first when they lie more than a pixel
apart); strokes lie in rows around the object's centre, each row
starting at random and each stroke shifted along itself, with streaked
noise for the bristles. Everything is in document space, so the effects
look the same at any zoom or resolution, move with the object and draw
the same every time; outsets and reaches are exact. On a 2000 x 2000
raster in release the slowest settings take 0.3-2.0 s (Crosshatch at
50 pt with 3 passes the most).

Shared helpers instead of copies: edges::sobel (Glowing Edges now uses
it, unchanged), distort::displace and texture::Tones are pub(super).

Catalogue rows with parameter docs, menu entries, Sprayed Strokes'
direction dropdown, translations (de, es, fr, it, ja, ru, uk, zh-hans,
zh-hant; menu labels in cs and pt-br), tests (parameters and clamping,
outsets and reaches, each filter and option showing, chalk and ink on
the edges only, shadows and rich blacks, Sumi-e keeping the shape and
hues, hatching keeping the tone, strokes smearing along their direction,
Spatter's radius, resolution and move invariance, canvas, multithreaded,
PDF and SVG, the command sweep with junk parameters, the menu) and
ROADMAP.

Behaviour from public documentation only:
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop-elements/using/brush-stroke-filters.html
https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/p/photoshop-sprayed-strokes.htm

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-10-11 01:19:26 +07:00

13 KiB
Raw Blame History

Gaps

Last reviewed: 2026-10-10 · Last updated: 2026-10-10 · Change: major (moved from the ROADMAP's "Where we're lacking", re-ranked, added file-format, stability, hardware, localization, ecosystem and AI gaps) · Target: Adobe Illustrator 2026 (30.x)

Every known shortfall against Illustrator, one entry each, ranked by how much it stops a professional from switching. This is the work list: unless you were given a task, pick the highest-ranked gap you can make progress on, write a plan, and update the entry (and target-app-parity.md) in the same PR.

Gap ids are stable (PRs say "Part of gap 2"); the rank can change. Hours are Opus 5.5 agent wall-clock hours for one agent, estimated unless marked; calibration in target-app-parity.md. Beta marks the gaps that must close before the beta stage (ROADMAP.md).

Ranked

Rank Gap Hours Beta Doc
1 G1 Interaction fidelity 60–90 yes ui-parity.md
2 G9 Illustrator .ai and EPS files from real users 10–20 yes file-format-parity.md
3 G10 Launch and stability on real machines 20–35 yes —
4 G8 Hardening at scale 30–50 yes (part) —
5 G11 Correctness bugs in core tools 8–15 yes target-app-parity.md
6 G4 Advanced type 34–47 core part type-parity.md
7 G12 Preferences and panels that don't act yet 13–20 yes ui-parity.md
8 G2 Photoshop-style raster effects and the Effect Gallery 24–40 no effects-parity.md
9 G13 Illustrator 2026 (30.x) additions 15–25 no target-app-parity.md
10 G14 Pen hardware beyond Windows pressure 8–16 macOS pressure hardware-parity.md
11 G5 Brushes, symbols and libraries 17–28 no target-app-parity.md
12 G3 3D and Materials 45–75 no effects-parity.md
13 G7 Views and windows 15–25 no ui-parity.md
14 G6 Automation and scripting 8–14 no target-app-parity.md
15 G15 Performance budgets and a GPU renderer 15–25 budgets only hardware-parity.md
16 G16 Localization: the five missing key languages 70–110 no localization-parity.md
17 G17 Ecosystem: third-party plug-ins 20–45 no —
18 G18 Generative AI features 30–60 no —
19 G19 Accessibility 15–25 no ui-parity.md

Alpha blockers: none. Every core workflow passes the alpha gate; G9 is the only partial one, and it blocks beta, not alpha.

To beta: G1, G9, G10, G11, G12, the corpus and QA part of G8, the type-core part of G4, macOS pen pressure from G14 and the budget run of G15: ~170–270 h one agent, ~50–80 h wall clock with 4–6 agents.

G1 Interaction fidelity

  • Missing: a tool-by-tool, panel-by-panel pass over modifiers, cursors, the Properties panel per context, isolation mode and small behaviours, against the public tool and shortcut documentation. Itemized in ui-parity.md. The Shaper's construction-mode widget and gesture refinements remain.
  • Evidence: no side-by-side session has ever happened (the clean-room rule forbids running Illustrator, so the pass works from the documentation); users keep reporting small differences: #991, #975, #973, #955, #908.
  • Impact: a power user notices this in the first minutes and stops trusting the tool.
  • Estimate: 60–90 h; splits well by tool across agents.

G9 Illustrator .ai and EPS files from real users

  • Missing: faithful layer and group structure from the editing data in real files (#951: 109 layers instead of 14; #868: round trip with Illustrator 2018 loses layers and groups), guides and non-printing construction lines (#779), open speed on large files (#758), legacy .ai without the prolog, live effects, brushes, symbols and pattern fills as live objects (#637). Writing Illustrator's own editing data is out of scope (undocumented); Save As .ai stays PDF-compatible.
  • Evidence: the issues above; 28 of the 350 issues are about .ai/EPS (about 22 people, the most common single format theme), 20 fixed, and the 8 open ones are about structure (layers, guides, speed, live objects), not missing art. No real-file .ai corpus (users' files may be used locally, never committed).
  • Impact: blocks anyone who hands files back to Illustrator users. Opening and reworking their own archive works, with layer cleanup in some files. This is the main-format gap that keeps the stage at alpha.
  • Estimate: 10–20 h with users' files to test against.

G10 Launch and stability on real machines

  • Missing: the app not starting or staying in the background on some Windows 11 machines (#858, #964 fixed 2026-10-10, #620, #818), slow pointer on a Linux AppImage (#575), macOS paste from other apps (#954), a web-free crash/hang reporter, a field record.
  • Evidence: open issues; the never-crash lints and guard stop panics, not driver, windowing or packaging failures.
  • Impact: an app that doesn't start on someone's machine is 0% for them.
  • Estimate: 20–35 h, needs reporters' help on hardware we don't have.

G8 Hardening at scale

  • Missing: a corpus of real-world SVG/PDF/EPS files; more Affinity versions and platforms (51 pinned files now, including 28 original Affinity 3.2.3 feature probes; large interacting documents and complex typography missing); Windows, Linux and browser QA by hand; packaging polish (Homebrew cask #588, Flathub #554, update checks #615).
  • Impact: unknown failures on users' files.
  • Estimate: 30–50 h (the corpus and QA part blocks beta).

G11 Correctness bugs in core tools

  • Missing: Shape Builder misses planar regions and targets whole shapes (#937, #893); Asset Export anti-aliasing ghost borders (#983); Transform effect dialog's invisible checkboxes and missing options (#885); PDF text boxes moving on open (#722); SVG units reverting to points (#864); bezier drag preview freezing (#834).
  • Impact: wrong output in everyday work.
  • Estimate: 8–15 h.

G4 Advanced type

  • Missing: hyphenation and justification options, Optical Margin Alignment (type core); CJK vertical composition (ruby, mojikumi sets and dialog, proportional vertical metrics #966, kinsoku settings #633, manual tate-chu-yoko), Middle Eastern features beyond bidi, variable font axes, spell check with an open dictionary, Touch Type, Retype, Snap to Glyph. Itemized in type-parity.md.
  • Impact: professional typography and Japanese/Chinese publishing.
  • Estimate: 34–47 h (type core 14–19 h blocks beta).

G12 Preferences and panels that don't act yet

  • Missing: ~17 Preferences options stored but not acted on (#394: Highlight Alternate Glyphs, Open Documents As Tabs, Real-time Drawing, hyphenation language, Appearance of Black, devices…), Properties panel per context, context menus beyond the canvas, Layers panel row menus and Collect for Export, SVG Interactivity.
  • Impact: settings that silently do nothing erode trust.
  • Estimate: 13–20 h.
  • Missing: 29 of 57 filters (all of Artistic and Sketch), the Effect Gallery dialog, Load Texture for Glass and Texturizer, Smart Blur's Edge Only and Overlay Edge. Measured in effects-parity.md.
  • Done: the pixel-filter pipeline and 28 filters (Blur, Brush Strokes, Distort, Pixelate, Sharpen, Stylize, Texture, Video), Brush Strokes on 2026-10-11.
  • Estimate: 24–40 h (measured 0.7–1.2 h per filter); parallelizes well.

G13 Illustrator 2026 (30.x) additions

  • Missing: gradient dither and perceptual blending, gradient presets (30.0); tangent and perpendicular snapping and the consolidated snapping options (30.0); artboard locking, artboard colours and managing artboards from the canvas (30.0); the Blend panel with ease in/out and separate colour acceleration (30.7); TIFF in Export for Screens (30.2); the Dimension tool (28.x).
  • Evidence: Adobe's 30.0 and 30.7 release announcements, see target-app-parity.md.
  • Estimate: 15–25 h.

G14 Pen hardware beyond Windows pressure

  • Missing: pen pressure on macOS (#852) and Wayland (#491, #764) — winit 0.30 reports none there; tilt, bearing and barrel rotation for brushes (6D Art Pen, #372); the eraser end.
  • Estimate: 8–16 h, partly waiting on winit 0.31; needs pen hardware to verify.

G5 Brushes, symbols and libraries

  • Missing: the Art brush's Overlap, auto-generated Pattern brush corners, new tile art in Pattern Brush Options, the Key Color eyedropper; original brush, symbol and graphic-style libraries generated in code (never Adobe's); dynamic symbols; Start Global Edit.
  • Estimate: 17–28 h.

G3 3D and Materials

  • Done: an initial live Revolve in the three-d crate (#846, from the contributor who offered in #605).
  • Missing: Extrude & Bevel, Inflate and Rotate, caps, materials and better lighting, exact visibility for intersecting surfaces, 3D Classic, Turntable, 3D export (OBJ, USDA, glTF).
  • Impact: specialist, but a visible menu of stubs.
  • Estimate: 45–75 h, the largest single gap; plan in plan/ before coding.

G7 Views and windows

  • Missing: multiple windows and Window › Arrange (Cascade, Tile, Float in Window, Consolidate All Windows), panels on another monitor, New View/Edit Views, global and video rulers.
  • Estimate: 15–25 h.

G6 Automation and scripting

  • Missing: a scripting surface over the command registry (Illustrator: JavaScript), Batch, image and graph variable kinds, dataset import/export. Actions, Variables (text and visibility) and full agent control over MCP are done.
  • Estimate: 8–14 h.

G15 Performance budgets and a GPU renderer

  • Missing: an idle-machine run of vectorcraft-cli perf (last: 2026-10-01 on a loaded machine, 290 ms for a 50k-path fit against a 16 ms budget), fixes for any budget missed, dirty-region rendering, the GPU backend spike (M5).
  • Estimate: 15–25 h (the budget run and fixes block beta).

G16 Localization: the five missing key languages

  • Missing: Hindi, Arabic, Indonesian, Korean, Vietnamese catalogs; a right-to-left interface and interface shaping for Arabic and Devanagari; messages for Simplified Chinese and Brazilian Portuguese; native review of every catalog. Measured in localization-parity.md.
  • Estimate: 70–110 h plus human review.

G17 Ecosystem: third-party plug-ins

  • Missing: Illustrator's ecosystem is a C++ plug-in SDK and a large commercial plug-in market. VectorCraft has sandboxed WebAssembly plug-ins for object filters and live effects (plugins.md) and MCP; missing are tool plug-ins, panel plug-ins, a plug-in directory and any third-party plug-ins (#710).
  • Estimate: 20–45 h for the APIs; the ecosystem itself isn't agent work.

G18 Generative AI features

  • Missing: Text to Vector Graphic, Generative Recolor, Generative Shape Fill (#766), Generative Expand, Concept to Vector, Prompt to Edit, Rewrite Text. Adobe's run on its cloud models; ours would be a pluggable provider.
  • Needs: an owner decision on models and providers.
  • Estimate: 30–60 h after that decision.

G19 Accessibility

  • Missing: AccessKit is on by default, so egui widgets reach screen readers, but custom panels, the canvas and its objects aren't described and nothing has been tested with VoiceOver, Narrator or Orca; keyboard-only canvas operation; high contrast. Illustrator's own accessibility is limited, so this is mostly beyond parity.
  • Estimate: 15–25 h.

Revision history

Date Change Summary
2026-10-10 minor G3: initial Revolve landed (#846), 45–75 h left
2026-10-10 minor G9 evidence counted from the tracker (28 .ai/EPS issues, 20 fixed); impact narrowed to handing files back
2026-10-10 minor Alpha blockers checked against the core-workflow gate: none
2026-10-10 major Moved from the ROADMAP's "Where we're lacking"; kept ids G1–G8, added G9–G19 (file formats, stability, bugs, preferences, 30.x additions, pen hardware, performance, localization, ecosystem, AI, accessibility) and re-ranked