On 10/21/07, microUgly <drworm@...1743...> wrote:
On a side note, I had been getting very confused when making a stop on a gradient transparent. I would change the Alpha value and the gradient would reflect the change, but later I would see the alpha value would be 255 instead of what I had set and what I saw on the graduent. It took me ages to spot that the alpha value was being replaced with the Master Opacity. Is this something that is still being worked on?
What you call "alpha" is actually fill opacity or stroke opacity, depending on what it's applied to. SVG provides them separately from master opacity of object, and Inkscape supports them in Fill&Stroke dialog. But these properties are generally less intuitive and less convenient, and it is recommended to use master opacity wherever possible instead. With gradient stops, the notions of fill and stroke are simply not applicable. For these reasons, some time ago I switched the UI for displaying and changing gradient stop opacity to use the master opacity control. Note that this is also an approximation; what is really used in SVG is "stop-opacity" which is neither (master) "opacity" nor "fill/stroke-opacity". But this convention makes more sense and allows you to e.g. adjust the opacity of a gradient stop using the selected style indicator in the statusbar, without opening the Fill&Stroke dialog.