On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 21:23:07 -0500, Lou Quillio <public@...534...> wrote:
I wasn't grokking pattern handles, but I now see that a pattern fill stays fixed when the object is re-sized, so I can frame the pattern that way.
Not always. There's a switch (rightmost toggle button on the selector controls bar) which controls this. You can transform objects with or without its pattern fill, depending on this switch. However this only affects transforms with selector; when you change the shape by its own shape handles (e.g for the rect they are in the corners) the fill remains fixed.
But pattern handles and gradient handles ... how are these specifically accessed?
E.g. in the node tool. There are the move handle (cross in top left corner), scale (square, middle of diagonal) and rotate (circle, middle of top side). The gradient handles are accessible also in Node tool and in the new Gradient tool.
As far as arbitrary tiling, I mean this:
- Import a 200x200px bitmap.
- Object to pattern.
- Make a 200x200px rectangle.
- Use the pattern as fill.
- Intuitively, the fill would begin at 0,0 of the rectangle starting with 0,0 of the pattern. Instead, the fill tiles with 0,0 of the pattern at a seemingly arbitrary point in the rectangle's interior. The tiling's right, but it seems to have decided on its own where to start.
It's not arbitrary. It's exactly the same origin point which it had in the previous object from which you are reusing the pattern (either by assigning pattern fill via Fill&Stroke dialog, or by Copy/Paste style). This makes a lot of sense because if you assign the same pattern to many objects, all their fills will align to each other displaying a common grid. But of course after that you can move any object's fill using its handles to wherever you need it.
By the way in this example you don't need a second rect at all. After 2, you already have a rectangle with pattern fill. Do what you want with it (fill, stroke, crop, etc).