Excellent. I'd love to see that behavior as an option on the pencil tool's toolbar.

You say that, but to me, I'm really worried about the number of switches that inkscape is taking on. What icon could you use to explain a choice between "use old jaggedy line interpolation" or "use new smooth interpolation". IMHO, users just want the app to work right. The switches seem to be being used as an excuse by us to dodge hard design decisions.

I'd advise that we thoroughly test the new code, and see if we use any functionality by loosing the old interpolator, then if there's no significant loss, only gain, then replace the old with the new permanently!

Joel

On Thu, 2008-01-24 at 16:11 +0900, Bill Baxter wrote:

Excellent. I'd love to see that behavior as an option on the pencil tool's toolbar.

--bb

On Jan 24, 2008 4:05 PM, R M <hoverweasel@...400...> wrote:

...

Hi all, I've been having trouble getting lines smooth looking when drawing with the pencil tool. Looking at the code, it seems like a reasonable job of interpolation is being done, but it is done while the path is being drawn, so it can't base the interpolation on all the points drawn by the user.

I made some changes to do the interpolation of the entire path on button release:

Here is an example using identical mouse points and identical tolerances:

http://arcsin.org/temp/Screenshot-3.png

On the left, is the current way; on the right, is the path interpolated using the entire curve. Deferring interpolation decreases the number of knots created and improves (imo) the result appearance. The tolerance is still adjustable in the same way it is currently.

Here's the diff, which is only a demonstration, and in no condition to be actually used: http://arcsin.org/temp/diff

In order to make the final patch, i guess the questions are ... is the way i'm saving the points ok (or should i use std::vector, etc), should we forgo interpolating at all during drawing and instead just show the user a line path (which would greatly simplify the pencil-context code)? or do people want to retain the old behavior and create a new setting/tool.

regards, rob

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Without trying the diff yet: smoothness is good but it's not the only thing that matters. Sharp turns and corners, ideally, must be recognized and created sharp, not smoothed out. How does your patch compare to the current code in this respect?

Also: maybe while you're at it, you could also add the tolerance slider to the controls bar of the tool, which is a very long-standing feature gap.

Thanks!

On Jan 24, 2008 2:05 AM, R M <hoverweasel@...400...> wrote:

Hi all, I've been having trouble getting lines smooth looking when drawing with the pencil tool. Looking at the code, it seems like a reasonable job of interpolation is being done, but it is done while the path is being drawn, so it can't base the interpolation on all the points drawn by the user.

I made some changes to do the interpolation of the entire path on button release:

Here is an example using identical mouse points and identical tolerances:

http://arcsin.org/temp/Screenshot-3.png

On the left, is the current way; on the right, is the path interpolated using the entire curve. Deferring interpolation decreases the number of knots created and improves (imo) the result appearance. The tolerance is still adjustable in the same way it is currently.

Here's the diff, which is only a demonstration, and in no condition to be actually used: http://arcsin.org/temp/diff

In order to make the final patch, i guess the questions are ... is the way i'm saving the points ok (or should i use std::vector, etc), should we forgo interpolating at all during drawing and instead just show the user a line path (which would greatly simplify the pencil-context code)? or do people want to retain the old behavior and create a new setting/tool.

regards, rob

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On Jan 24, 2008 7:25 PM, MenTaLguY <mental@...3...> wrote:

On Thu, 24 Jan 2008 08:49:44 +0000, Joel Holdsworth <joel@...1709...> wrote:

...

...

Excellent. I'd love to see that behavior as an option on the pencil tool's toolbar.

You say that, but to me, I'm really worried about the number of switches that inkscape is taking on. What icon could you use to explain a choice between "use old jaggedy line interpolation" or "use new smooth interpolation". IMHO, users just want the app to work right. The switches seem to be being used as an excuse by us to dodge hard design decisions.

...

I'd advise that we thoroughly test the new code, and see if we use any functionality by loosing the old interpolator, then if there's no significant loss, only gain, then replace the old with the new permanently!

I concur.

just as a side note since we're talking about the pencil tool. There was a proposition to reuse the code from the calligraphy tool (at it was done in SodiPodi). Maybe I am raising a delicate mater but I personnally like very much this behavior and think it also produces some smoother and more natural lines. This can (should?) be a toggle, since the behaviors are so different (or a "mass" slider in which 0 is current behavior). What about this plan? Is there someone still thinking about it? Are there some strong opinions about _not_ including it?

JiHO http://jo.irisson.free.fr/

Joel Holdsworth <joel@...360...> writes:

You say that, but to me, I'm really worried about the number of switches that inkscape is taking on. What icon could you use to explain a choice between "use old jaggedy line interpolation" or "use new smooth interpolation".

That's easy - you open Adobe flash which has these settings in its pencil tool and you copy that icon. scroll down the page here: http://www.echoecho.com/flashdrawing01.htm and you will see what I'm talking about. actually there's a third setting to the pencil tool there (which also exists in Corel Draw) where some sort of shape recognition is used: nearly-straight lines are recognized as an attempt to draw accurate straight (or angled) lines, and approximate circles are converted to perfect circles.

On Jan 28, 2008 3:49 AM, bulia byak <buliabyak@...400...> wrote:

I tried the patch and found the difference it makes to be quite small. In any case it does not seem to make it any worse. So, please finish the patch and submit it to the bug tracker (along with the toolbar patch) and if others find it an improvement we'll commit it after 0.46.

ok here is a patch that is a bit more functional (joining lines, closing, etc). i think it's nearly finished (if i'm handling the paths correctly). notice that i pulled some functions out of draw-context.cpp .

http://arcsin.org/temp/pencil2.diff

i tried it out tonight with my wacom pad and the code felt fairly natural and transparent.

i'll post it to launchpad as well after some minor cleanup.

thanks, rm