Technical question about control points

[Gare]

To keep the record straight, your and my "conversion" in Xara yields 43 (or 42, one is overlapping, hard to tell) control points all with cusp properties. This is what I see in your post #8 where you mention Xara Designer 11.

What Illustrator did for me was to map control points precisely as originally created in a font editor, a total of about 23 control points. There are almost twice as many control points created from the original glyph in Xara; this needs work, Mike.

Do people want to have to edit x number of nodes, or 2x when a gylph is simplified?

Rhetorically yours, and congratulations again!

Gare

[mwenz]

31 points in each XDP X11 and AI CS6.





It is your conversion that has the large number of points.

I'll leave this conversation now...

[Gare]

31 points in each XDP X11 and AI CS6.





It is your conversion that has the large number of points.

I'll leave this conversation now...

I'm going to leave it, too, Mike!

I guess my results are either non-reproducible, or no one minds a verbose method of creating paths from Type 1 encoding.

[mwenz]

Well, we can both agree that, like Illy, the curve points need to be smooth points instead of XDP's cusp points.

What is tedious for me in XDP is the lassoing of the points that should be smooth points and clicking on the context toolbar to make them so. The result is correct 99% of the time. But sometimes the curve is altered unacceptably.

[Gare]

To stray from my original point/lament/query (and I will post this on the Wish List thread), there are a number of behaviours I'd like to see corrected and/or enhanced in the next version of XD:

• The ability to lasso nodes along a path, and then scale and rotate only this segment of the overall path. CorelDRAW offers this and has so for almost a decade. It lets you scale only a part of a path; I found this useful to adjust the size of only the feathers on a fancy arrow I drew.

• I don't quite understand how FontLab version 4.5 from a decade ago can be told to optimize a path, and it does so with no noticeable change to the path, even though it can dramatically change the number and position of nodes.

• I feel (and am often alone when I do!) that it's time for a node and path editing tool, a dedicated one. The Shape tool has become far too robust as a drawing tool to be used to quickly change stuff. CorelDRAW's editing tool can alos be used to select stuff on the page you can ten edit. You cannot do this in Xara eith rthe Shape tool...you need to switch to the Selector tool, and then switch back.

When you have repetitive tasks, you absolutely need to get to the root of your design. And the root of vector design work is the path/control point physique.



I think Corel Corp. was merciless in their inspiration for new features back in the 1990s: they picked and chose from Xara's features.
Isn't turnabout fair play?

-g

[mwenz]

I swapped out the space bar for changing to the Shape Editor tool long ago. That way I can leave my hand in the same relative position when changing back and forth between the pointer and shape tool. Not ideal, but far quicker than going back and forth between the V and F4 keys.

Smoothing. I think this can be enhanced. I get decent results using the smooth curve setting on the context tool bar.



I would like a toggle to go from the rectangle select to a lasso select when using the Shape Editor...maybe there is one but I cannot find it.

[Gare]

Good calls and I hope they wind up on The Wish List, pal.

Gary