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• The simple Inset/Outset commands must check if the

object is already an SPOffset, and if so, adjust its radius instead of converting it to shapes.

the offset of an offset of shape A is not in general another offset of A. what you want is mathematically incorrect, but maybe what the user expects...

That is, you mean that several sequential simple offsets of a path will give a different result than several sequential adjustments of an SPOffset radius? If so that is unfortunate, but if there's no mathematical workaround for this problem, I would still argue that the above described behavior is the most logical. An SPOffset is a higher level of abstraction than a path; if we can perform some operation without lowering the level of abstraction, we must do that, if only because lowering the level of abstraction is generally irreversible.

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• The dynamic offsets do not accept zero radius;

they snap it to +/- 0.25, so you cannot do an exact copy of the original. Why this limitation? I tried

0 width will cause problems, and imposing a minimum radius was the simplest way around; besides what's the point of doing a 0 offset?

The point is that when I have an SPOffset, I normally use node tool to adjust its radius, and I don't want to have any preset value - I want to start from zero. Another point is that it's not clean to have different inset/outset commands for different offset types; it's much more logical to have one pair of inset/outset commands that act on any objects plus several commands that create (but not adjust) different kinds of offset objects. It's just a matter of a clean separation of concepts. And finally, an object with a parameter that cannot take one specific value (even though this value makes sense for it) is a lack of genericity and looks more like a bug to me.

So, can you just add a special-case treatment in SPObject so that if radius is 0 (or very close to 0), it simply copies the original path without attempting any offset?

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