On Dec 18, 2007 1:36 PM, Brian Vanderburg II <BrianVanderburg2@...2404...> wrote:
So that any transforms I apply to the gradient used by the rectangle will also affect the ellipse.
Just snap together the ends of the rectangle and ellipse gradients in Gradient tool (with both objects selected), then in this tool you will be able to transform both gradients as if they were one. Or, copy the rect after transforming and paste its style onto the ellipse, this will paste the gradient position too.
Perhaps something that would be nice would be a 'graph' editor for gradients (and for other things maybe as well) that would show the 'real' gradient, and any 'dummy' child gradients connected, grandchild gradients,etc, or something where you can define the actual relationship however you want.
You have XML editor for that. It can be made more convenient of course, but I don't think we need some kind of tool specifically for gradient hierarchy. It's already confusing for many users as it is.
When editing the gradient of the ellipse, I can choose to edit gradient 7890 which would only affect the ellipse, or I can edit 2345, which would affect both the ellipse and the rectangle, or I can edit the stops of 1234, which would affect both. This would also make it easy to have a master transformation in 2345 that affects both and a fine-tuned transformation in 7890 just for the ellipse.
Again, I don't think this will be viable as user-level UI. If you need this kind of control, use the XML editor. Outside of XML editor, Inkscape is a visual, all-on-canvas application: grab that thing, drag it there, copy that over there, etc. Having to manipulate trees and numeric IDs does not fit this paradigm. Moreover, if you implement this nonstrandard tree, it will affect the behavior of things on canvas in ways that some users will find confusing, which is also bad.
In 0.46, I made one change for power users:
http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes046#Automatic_duplicatio...
so now it's possible to share the gradient definition with stops. However this switch is off by default, and only those who know what they're doing should enable it. Enabling similar sharing at the other levels of the gradient system will make it even more dangerous, and I don't really see the need for that.