🚀 go-pugleaf

      Why don't other applications with Bezier tools work this way?




So far, this morning:

Adobe Fireworks does.
Corel Draw does.
Xara Xtreme does.
Inkscape doesn't.

That's all I have on this laptop. I'll try others when I get to the studio.

Here's the thing:

I understand wanting to trace raster artwork with a setting of zero stroke in a program like Illustrator that does not provide a proper hairline stroke width.

When I'm drawing--especially when tracing photos or sketches, I want to see the path as the thinnest representation onscreen possible (which is what Hairline is supposed to be). That way I can see what I'm doing, but the path I'm drawing obscures what I'm tracing the least, regardless of zoom. It also just feels more precise whenever drawing, even when not tracing something. That's why, in FreeHand it has long been my practice to set the default stroke/fill attributes to Hairline/NoFill.

When I'm rendering objects with shading, using paths that will be blended and filled (but seldom stroked), I very often want to draw with the fill set, but with no stroke. Upon closing the path, the fill appears (thus visually ensuring that the path is, indeed, closed). Other programs let me do that because other programs either do not display fills on open paths, or provide the user with an option to disallow it.

Illustrator provides neither a proper Hairline stroke width (even though it can be caused to display one by repeatable bugs in the program that have been known for years) nor provides an option to turn off its infernal fills on open paths.

So users employ Illustrator's Outline Mode to trace or draw with a hairline display. But that does not satisfy, because fills don't show when you close the path being drawn.

JET