On 9/14/05, Hibbs, Phil <phil.hibbs@...926...> wrote:

Would you want it to follow invisible edges? I commented on the feature request, but someone else said that it would be better to rasterize the image, trace the shape, and then vectorize the result. I think this is a mistake, it should follow edges exactly. If there are hidden edges then this can be overcome by creating a number of shapes and welding them together.

It was me who said it's much better to make this tool act as the corresponding tool in bitmap editors. Otherwise, why bother? Filling is a visual concept, and it should behave visually, e.g. run into white areas of bitmaps and gradients, ignore invisible lines, etc. Just fill what is _seen_ as continuous, without taking into account the vector invisibles. If you want filling to stop at some line, just make that line visible temporarily. Another advantage is that this will allow changing the filling threshold, whereas a "vector fill" will always be strictly binary. In short, my approach would provide some new and otherwise unachievable capabilities, whereas a "vector fill" will be simply a shortcut for a sequence of boolean ops.

Hibbs, Phil wrote:

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Is there any tool that would just let me click an empty area and have it automatically create a new shape by detecting the edges of nearby paths? This vector equivalent to the bitmap fuzzy-select/ magic-wand tool would be extremely useful.

Would you want it to follow invisible edges?

Do you mean shapes that are completely invisible due to no fill or stroke? If the shape had a fill but no stroke, I would still want to include the visible edge produced by the fill. But if the shape was completely invisible I suppose I wouldn't want it included. Of course, I'm flexible on this, since I could always remove the invisible object if I didn't want it included in the new shape.

I commented on the feature request, but someone else said that it would be better to rasterize the image, trace the shape, and then vectorize the result. I think this is a mistake, it should follow edges exactly. If there are hidden edges then this can be overcome by creating a number of shapes and welding them together.

I see your point. How do the boolean functions do it? I suppose the effect is similar to what you'd get if you performed a boolean "exclude" with your target objects and a temporary generic object that completely encompasses the empty (use "intersection" if the area is non-empty) area you wish to create into a new shape. However, you would then delete all points/paths in the new shape not directly connected to the shape currently under the cursor. Obviously, this functionality is dependent on the use of an action in the right-click pop-up menu, as opposed to something under the Path menu.

To basically, this feature is already present. It's just really inconvenient ;)

The only problem I see with my approach is how to auto-generate the generic object to use in the boolean operation. You'd have to somehow detect the virtual bounding box dimensions of the area "selected" by the cursor.

Chris