2010/4/26 Jasper van de Gronde <th.v.d.gronde@...528...>:
Illustrator's method indeed doesn't sound nice, but perhaps we could consider showing objects that still need to rendered as outlines? (For example.)
But then, when it's time to render it normally, you will have to delete the outlines first (remember, all objects may have transparency, so leaving the outline and just "covering" it with normal rendering will not work), which means partial rerendering of the objects below where they are touched by the outline. I'm afraid this will slow it all down considerably and add confusion.
Also, currently we draw from bottom to top (z-order), but in almost all cases you can just as easily draw top to bottom, which could help in giving people a more useful image much sooner, as well as lessen the sensation of shapes "popping up", as any object that is drawn will not be covered afterwards.
You cannot do this when transparent objects are stacked, because adding something to the bottom means you have to re-compose (not necessarily re-render if you have them cached, but even then, composing of transparencies also takes time) everything on top of it. Since transparencies are not quite rare in vector graphics, I think this approach will slow it down too much, not to mention it is somewhat counter-intuitive.