On Thu, 22 Apr 2004, Alan Horkan wrote:
Bulia...this is an awesome feature. I wish the keyboard shortcut
was
easier to do with one hand.
Adobe Illustrator doesn't seem to have anything directly analagous to
a
Clone tool. The way it works in Adobe Illustrator seems to be that
you
make a symbol of something first and then you use the Symbol tools, namely the Symbol Sprayer which has the keybinding Shift+S. I dont
know
how you plan to implement things in the future but you may want to reconsider the current design if it will inevitably need to be changed later.
Do other vector graphics tools behave similarly or do they have Clone tools?
CorelDraw 10 clone command operates similarly to Inkscape though not exact. Clones are made by edit/clone one at a time from the original object and can be moved over canvas. They retain character of the original object and change with it ie. colour, line thickness, gradient etc. As soon as a change is made to a clone then that function is then decoupled from the original. Ie if line thickness of a clone is changed then subsequent changes to the original do not affect the line thickness of that clone. Other things such as colour do still change. Again, if colour of the clone is changed it then remains that colour. So items appear to be treated in isolation and to decouple individually. Clones do not move with the original. I could not see how to identify the original from a clone which is a great ability in Inskape. Bear in mind that CorelDraw is very complex and there may be buried commands to do these things.
Xara X1 has a clone command but it seems like a misnomer. It simply is a copy (duplicate) command producing a copy superimposed on the original. The copy is not linked to the original.
Expression 3 has clones which appear to operate like Inkscape. From the Help manual: 7.17 Working with Clones The clone is a special kind of object that is closely
related to the path. A newly created clone looks
exactly like the path from which it is formed (the
master path), but it is not just a duplicate of the
master path. Unlike its master (or any ordinary
path), a clone does not have nodes, and cannot be
edited directly. In fact, its structure remains tied to,
and dependent on, the master's, and whenever the
master's nodes are edited, the clone's shape is
updated to follow.
Clones can, however, have their own stroke and fill
attributes, and be transformed independent of their
masters. When a master is deleted or unstructured, a
clone will be automatically freed, or converted to a
path.
. Creating a clone from a path: Select the
path, and choose Edit > Clone.
. Selecting the master of a clone: Select
the clone, and choose Edit > Select Master.
Its too late tonight (this morning) to test Expresion so I'll try and do it tomorrow and let you know. vellum.