On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 8:32 PM, Josh Andler <scislac@...400...> wrote:
Nodes are awkward legacy? I understand what you're talking about when it comes to tools hiding how they work... but I guess I'm trying to picture how the Live Pen would work when editing a "stroke" after the fact if one is not looking at nodes. Will there be on-canvas guides or helper paths (or something to that effect)?
Of course, you can always turn on the helper path in Node tool.
I'm not calling to eliminate editing via nodes, of course. I'm just saying that I would like to see it less used, gradually replaced by better and more intuitive tools.
As for bezier nodes being clumsy... Are you referring to click-dragging new nodes withe the bezier tool? If so, I'm with you... if that's not what you're talking about, would you please elaborate?
Yes, that's what I'm talking about. Spiro nodes are much better in this respect; Tweak tool is also better but in a different way. Both, of course, are limited and don't work for all paths you may want to edit, yet. Perhaps more tools will emerge that will make node-less path editing even more natural and more universal.
Other than occasionally using the tablet to get an organic hand stroke, I create over 90% of my illustrations using the bezier tool to plot my nodes (with no dragging) and the node tool to tweak the nodes & handles. So I'm just kind of scared of the dissing of nodes that you're doing. ;)
Don't worry, I'm not dissing anything :) I'm just trying to guess a trend.
I guess I look at this in a way that if I were to use this Live Pen tool, I would probably expect it to be tied to visual nodes... in the same way that on-canvas gradient editing works.
The end handles of gradients are not going anywhere. It's hard to imagine how one could control the angle and span of a gradient without them. The middle stops, however, are more similar to the path nodes in that because of their clumsiness, new tools are emerging that more or less bypass them when editing gradient colors. For example, you already can alt-drag multiple selected mid-stops for an effect similar to node sculpting, and coloring modes in Tweak tool can apply color to part of the gradient, without worrying about the exact mid-stop positions (it does not yet create new mid-stops where it is applied, but it probably should). There's even a Simplify for gradient which tries to delete redundant mid-stops without affecting the visible gradient. So it's all pretty much analogous.