whats the big deal about a vector eraser?

[handrawn]

well - if you are not a freehand artist, perhaps no big deal, but it would even then speed some things up:

attached is a very quick run through in inkscape beta RC 0.47

points to note:

it cuts through the shape in real time - no messing with nodes or boolean ['slice and dice']

the eraser width can be varied and it is pressure sensitive

you can see both your shape and what is behind it, as you draw in real time

the result remains as one shape in both cases

this is a far cry from simply removing something you don't want [well I think so ]

[HayTay]

Very cool Steve. A definite time-saver that would be. It would be instantly gratifying instead of having to draw, group, shift-select before finally being able to perform a subtract shapes operation only to arrive at the same result.

Your demo has won me over and has my vote (+1) to be included as a future tool in Xara Xtreme.

OH, and would you look at that, there's a spiral quick shape tool sitting right there on the toolbar! Oh, how handy it would be to have one of those that worked in XX, also (pretty please!).

[handrawn]

Thanks Harry

the spiral tool has been in inkscape for a long time - at least ver 0.44, so the current stable version 0.46 can be used to make spirals and port to xtreme or other in PDF format if you wish... the 0.47 version is still rough around the edges on windows...

[HayTay]

'Tis true. I was being a bit facetious. It appears that a vast majority of vector drawing apps have a native spiral tool. Xtreme, as we all know, does not. There are more than a couple of threads and posts here lamenting that fact. I've had Inkscape's 0.46 release install on my system for some time now and use it occasionally. I used to use it a lot more before switching over to XX.

Now, back to the topic at hand. The more I think about the vector eraser or 'negative drawing tool' the more I think it would come in handy.

[handrawn]

I should have known Harry [big old fashioned grin]

[steve.ledger]

OT: Steve, which software are you using to create the flash movie?

[handrawn]

Hi Steve:

Camtasia Studio 3

I've never animated in Flash up to now - I know little about it technically, just used the defaults....