On Wed, 2003-12-31 at 15:44, bulia byak wrote:
- "Inset path" and "Outset path" commands act depending on the type of the
selected object(s). For SPOffset objects, they increment/decrement radius by options.insetdistance (to be added to the preferences, no more relying on stroke width please!). For all other objects, they do one-time offset leaving objects as paths (or converting them to paths if necessary) also by options.insetdistance. If there are several objects selected, each one is treated according to its type.
- The third command, "Dynamic inset/outset", creates an SPOffset with zero
radius. It also flashes to the statusbar, "Use node editor to inset/outset the path interactively."
If there are no objections, Fred, could you please implement these three commands and I will put them into the menu and in shortcuts. See this page on how to create/access a preferences value:
Go ahead and do it like this for now. "Dynamic inset/outset" should probably also get a button like "Convert to path" has.
Long-term, I'm wondering if SPOffset's functionality would be best simply merged into either SPShape or SPPath (probably SPPath).
In that case, perhaps the node editor could provide a different style 'knot' (perhaps e.g. a green circle rather than a losenge/square) for adjusting the inset/outset (for all paths).
By default, paths would have no inkscape:outset attribute -- once the offset knot was dragged from its initial position (0 outset), the attribute would be added, and the original path data copied to an 'inkscape:path' attribute.
When the outset was present, the nodepath knots would use inkscape:path instead of the normal 'd' attribute. That way the user can still edit the original shape and watch the effect on the outset.
It might be nice to have an action (another application of 'convert to path', maybe?) to "flatten" the outset/inset path, removing inkscape:path and inkscape:outset.
-mental