TWEAK / INSET / OUTSET TOOLS: Break paths / dissappearing paths

[Troy James Sobotka]

Summary: Various tools including but not limited to the "Tweak Tool", "Inset / Outset Tool", and "Pattern Along Path" will break the target paths dramatically. In some cases this results in entire closed areas being deleted. With "Pattern Along Path", strokes are often missing in many areas.

Platform: Ubuntu Linux 7.10 amd64.

Version: .45+devel January 5, 2008.

Frequency: Always (5/5 tries for manifestation.)

Reproduction: Create a text object of several characters. Use the tweak tool to distort the object. After a movement, some shapes should disappear. Using the same text, convert to a path and apply as the "Pattern Along Path". Strokes will disappear in various areas.

Comments: The manifestation of this bug appears to be related in some way. If not, the "Pattern Along Path" bug can be re-registered as a separate bug if required by the developers.

[prkos (prkos)]

i can confirm on WinXP

[prkos (prkos)]

It doesn't have to be text, it happens on any combined path

[ScislaC (scislac)]

These are unfortunately known at this point... They've been known about for a while now and it doesn't appear that it is planned to be fixed in this release.

http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes046#Known_problems <-- covers at least tweak tool issues, the others are known (but I don't believe have been documented, so this will remain open).

[Alex Valavanis (valavanisalex)]

I can't seem to reproduce this in Ubuntu 10.04, with Inkscape package 0.47.0-2ubuntu2 (r22583). Can anyone confirm whether this still exists, or give detailed instructions so I can reproduce it?

[jazzynico (jazzynico)]

Confirmed on Ubuntu 10.01, Inkscape revision 9446.

Steps:
1. Open the attached SVG (three shapes converted to path and combined).
2. Select the tweak tool and choose the shrink option.
3. Start shrinking from the top right of the combined path: the left parts of the path disappear.

[Alex Valavanis (valavanisalex)]

Thanks. Confirmed with 0.47.0-2ubuntu2 (r22583) on Ubuntu 10.04

[Pander (pander)]

Is this bug related to https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/616469 ?

[Troy James Sobotka (troy-sobotka)]

@Pander: Not that I can see. This is a case of paths completely breaking as opposed to warping under the duress of a small size.

[Pander (pander)]

Perhaps a Tool Dialogue would be in place to change settings for inset, outset and alike. The values in Preferences, of course, will be the default values for teh values used in the Tool Dialogue.

Offering such a Tool Dialogue will stimulate users to use this functionality because they can alter the step size easily for the session they are working in and make more visible what is possible. Buttons in the Tool Dialogue should have the same visual identification as the menu item actions in the Path menu.

[Alex Valavanis (valavanisalex)]

Still in inkscape_0.48.0-1ubuntu1

[Pander (pander)]

Could someone please provide an update for this bug which has been triaged for two and a half years? Thanks.

[Krzysztof Kosinski (tweenk)]

This bug is still not fixed, and it won't be until someone writes a robust implementation of path boolean operations. The current method is inherently imprecise and can't be fixed.

I will probably work on this problem during GSoC 2014.

[Jim Newsome (i-jim)]

I'm having similar trouble using the Tweak -> Shrink tool. I'm not getting things disappearing, but the whole path gets gradually distorted when using the tool on only a small portion of the path. Shouldn't the parts of the path beyond the tweak brush be unaffected? Is this the same bug or should I file a different one?

More specifically, I'm trying to use this to get variable line-width. I'm creating 2-px-stroked lines with the pen tool, and then using Stroke-To-Path to convert it to a filled path, and then trying to use the Tweak Shrink/Grow path tool to add some variation to the line width. The whole path becomes distorted pretty quickly though, making this approach infeasible.

[Hachmann (marenhachmann)]

Inset problem still present in 0.91 and in 0.91 devel version from Nov 10 2015 from Ubuntu ppa (see linked question: https://answers.launchpad.net/inkscape/+question/279051).

[Adam Belis (adambelis)]

Closing because [i cannot reproduce in 1.1-dev (0b4651b, 2020-02-09 so i think its fixed].

Closed by: https://gitlab.com/adambelis