Hibbs, Phil wrote:
I have a couple of questions/suggestions about nodes.
- Is it possible to insert new nodes on a path, kind of a 'reverse
simplify', preferably "insert new node at cursor position".
With current CVS, yes it is and this feature will be in .43. With a copy from CVS you just double click to insert a new node with the node editing tool. Also for note is that you can also drag curves (modify line segments) directly with the CVS version too. Oh, and this morning Bulia added a nice tweak to make the selected node a little bigger than the other which seems small but is amazingly helpful.
- I would like to create shapes that exactly match other shapes, at least
in part. This would involve duplicating nodes from other shapes. Currently this can be done with many steps, such as duplicating the other shape, creating a new shape that overlaps it, and using a boolean operation to cut away the new shape so that it matches the edge of the other shape. I could do this a lot easier if I could just select a node on the current image and get Inkscape to make it exactly match the closest node on the adjacent object. A few iterations of the above option (add a node near the cursor) and this option (snap current node to nearest node) would give me what I want.
Just to make sure I understand what you're looking for here. Are you looking to be able to copy line segments? So that for example if you have a square and select three of the nodes and copy, when you paste it will be copies of those three nodes with connecting line segments only. Correct? If so, I agree that would be a very useful feature and we do not have anything along those lines currently (as far as I'm aware).
If there is not already a request for it, please submit an RFE at http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=93438&atid=604309 (please do search first though before requesting to make sure it doesn't exist already... and if it does exist please add your .02)
- With the Node Editing tool selected, is there a way of selecting the next
or previous object? Ideally I'd like a keyboard shortcut for this. I know the concept of "next" and "previous" object is not very strong, so something similar such as being able to bind a keyboard shortcut to selecting a particular object would do, so I could bind, say, Shift-1 and Shift-2 to the two objects and switch selection between them this way.
With the selector tool you can hit Tab and Shift+Tab to cycle forwards and backward through the objects. When using the node editing tool it will cycle through nodes instead. However, if you tap the space bar once it will temporarily switch to the selector tool from any other tool (and tapping it once again will switch it back to the tool you were using). If you still feel that with the quick-switch it is too many steps, you may want to check to see if an RFE has been filed for this one too.
Hopefully this has been helpful.
-Josh