Hi!
I've introduced some of the improvements to the swatch dialog, that were discussed on the mailing list. First of all the default behavior when applying solid color swatches is to apply them by color value. There's a toggle button added, that allows to switch to the mode in which solid colors are applied by reference to a paint server [1]. Currently the paint server is linear gradient, but since solidColor elements are in codebase, the dialog will use them in the future.
Second improvement is related to the appearance of the swatches dialog. Padding between swatches was removed and an option to turn on borders was added [2]. The dialog also supports 16x16 tile size [3]. In this case the tiles representing gradients, patterns and hatches are bigger.
Hatch support was added to Swatches dialog and Fill and Stroke dialog [4]. The UI allows to select and apply a swatch. The swatch properties dialog allows to change pitch and rotate parameters. Files containing hatches can be placed in hatches subdirectory in either user config or global config directories. I've used the file [5] containing default AutoCAD ANSI hatches.
Because the end of GSOC 2014 is near, I'd like those code changes to be last ones. I'll spend the last days on writing code documentation. Hovewer if you see something that definitely has to be done before monday, please let me know.
The project will evolve after GSOC ends. I'll try to make the paint preview more compact. An on-canvas editing tool for hatches will be usefull too.
Regards Tomasz
[1] https://www.dropbox.com/s/5wh4kojl3puht6i/swatches-link.mpeg [2] https://www.dropbox.com/s/pdp1zefvr7ha1rn/swatches-borders.png [3] https://www.dropbox.com/s/urezznmjgb6s5y1/swatches-small.png [4] https://www.dropbox.com/s/g4d9psnvgfftus3/swatches-hatch.mpeg [5] https://www.dropbox.com/s/nysmx6tl0t4hqf1/ANSI.svg