If you're talking about the panel above the canvas, then it's not "tool options."
The equivlent functionality in Adobe Photoshop is called the "Tool Options Palette" and in the Gnu Image Manipulation Program it is called the "Tool Options Dialog". Similarly with Jasc Web Draw it is called the tools options palette.
Good for them. So what?
I see no sense in calling this "options" if it's not. It's just an extension of the current tool, its additional controls.
Use the correct terminology and you won't have this problem :)
You may find that amusing but I don't.
You are assuming that the terminlogy used for Inkscape is the most correct, which is not an assumption I'm willing to make.
I'm assuming that the terminology used for Inkscape was chosen with Inkscape in mind and reflects the developers' idea of its functionality.
This thing is called "tool controls" now, and it provides exactly this - additional controls for the tool.
Semantics aside the point is even you are talking about the tools, not formatting the object properties after they have been created.
Tools do exactly that: create objects and modify them. So, modifying objects is what a tool's controls do. What is wrong here?
While it works, it is not as logical as how it is done in other programs (like Adobe Photoshop) and it makes the tools a little more complicated.
I disagree. Sodipodi had nothing like our tool controls, but it had "tool opions" like you propose. It was INCREDIBLY inconvenient to not be able to easily change the selected objects. It was one of the worst aspects of Sodipodi interface that I wanted to change, and it became one of the first things we changed, long ago.
Sure, eventually there will be a color palette at the bottom of the window for this.
As these auxilliary palettes/dialog improve I hope the overloading and complication of the "tool controls" to also change the properties of the currently selected object wont be necessary.
I surely hope not. Your input is appreciated, but I think you'll need to present much more persuasive use cases and usability arguments to overturn this. It's been that way for a long time and it's the first time ever that I see someone being unhappy about the possibility to change all aspects of (any number of) selected object(s) using precise tool controls. It's not "overloading and complication"; it's the primary function of the tool controls.