Bucket fill doesn't work properly

[Félix C. Morency]

This bug happens in Inkscape 0.46 (iInkscape 0.46~svn20080104 for Gutsy) installed from the .deb version for Ubuntu founded on the main site.

Step to reproduce:
1) Open the attached testing file
2) Select the "Bucket fill tool"
3) Try to fill in some surface
4) Notice that the surface isn't filled at all (only some sort of boundary fill)

[Félix C. Morency (colibry10)]

Bucket fill boundary tester

[MenTaLguY (mental-deactivatedaccount)]

Did you try turning up grow/shrink? The bucket fill is strictly visual, and won't fill up to the mathematical edges. The grow/shrink setting expands the fill to compensate for this.

[Félix C. Morency (colibry10)]

I played a bit with the grow/shrink setting. There are two points I would
like to clarify:

- If the "bucket fill" tool is actually suppose to "fill" the bounded area
as in "a black filled rectangle is completely black (surface and bounds)",
then there is a bug with the tool.

- If the "bucket fill" tool is actually suppose to "detect the bounded area
and create another "correct" bounded area out of it", then the tool name and
icon are very confusing from other commonly "bucket fill" tool in some other
software. In this case, I would recommand to change the tool name and icon.

Regards,
Félix C. Morency

On 1/24/08, MenTaLguY <email address hidden> wrote:

> Did you try turning up grow/shrink? The bucket fill is strictly visual,
> and won't fill up to the mathematical edges. The grow/shrink setting
> expands the fill to compensate for this.
>
> --
> Bucket fill doesn't work properly
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/185744
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

[bbyak (buliabyak)]

Your file's shapes are filled nicely with the tool. Yes, the tool finds boundaries from the click point and creates a new path to fill that area, but I absolutely don't see why the icon and name are not appropriate for that action. I think the paintbucket metaphor captures this precisely.

[Félix C. Morency (colibry10)]

I find this name and icon confusing because in other software like Gimp, Photoshop (Illustrator?), MSPaint and so on, the bucket fill tool doesn't do the same thing as in Inkscape. It currently fills the surface with some color/texture instead of creating boundary surface.

I'm aware that the purpose of those other software aren't quite the same as Inkscape's (except maybe for Illustrator) but I think that consistency is a good think between old and new software/features. I'm suggesting that this feature should get a new icon/name.

Also, consider that I'm not a vector graphic editor expert. My intuition may have misguided me, but if so, it might misguide others too.

[bbyak (buliabyak)]

Actually, AI has the same icon for the same tool - "live paint bucket" - and it does more or less what ours does, except that ours is infinitely easier to use. AI is more relevant to Inkscape than Photoshop.

[Félix C. Morency (colibry10)]

Then why haven't you named the tool "live paint bucket" instead of "bucket fill" ?

If you do a little search over Google for "bucket fill" or "fill bounded area", you'll find out that most of the results are about another sort of "bucket fill" tool.

[bbyak (buliabyak)]

We called it paint bucket, not bucket fill.

As for live, that's what differentiates Ai's tool from ours: Ai updates the fill object when one of the boundary objects changes. Although the number of hoops you need to go through to make it work just renders it meaningless imho. Ours is not "live" but so much easier and faster, plus it has many other useful features.

[Félix C. Morency (colibry10)]

First, thank you for answer me. I know you have hard work and I'm glad that you take some of your time to discuss this issue. I really don't want to be a "pain in the ass" to you but I think the word "fill" just bugs me.

If you rollover the paint bucket tool, you will see that the ballon displays "Fill bounded area". I think the term is not quite right since it does not currently "fill" the bounded area. It simply create a new path bounded by the closed area. Also, a quick search in the Inkscape documentation allowed me to find this:

"The new Paint Bucket tool works exactly as you would expect: click in any area bounded on all sides and it will fill it with color. Being a vector tool, however, Inkscape's Paint Bucket just creates a new path that "fills in" the area in which you clicked". [http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes046#Paint_Bucket_tool]

The "fill" definition seems a bit tricky since it doesn't "worked as I expected". The second sentence however is correct defining a new "fill" word (I guess this justify the use of "" around the word). Correct me if I'm wrong but I think the word fill is inappropriate for this tool. Although, I'm not a native english speaker and I might be wrong but a quick search on Google with "define: fill" showed me that the tool "fill" definition seems wrong.

[ScislaC (scislac)]

Félix,

It's good to know that English is not your native language... To help the issue of the word "fill", if I fill a glass of water, it is filled with water. The glass is a boundary with empty space. Do you expect it to be 100% flawlessly filled to the top of the glass? Or, do you expect a reasonably filled glass of water? Better yet, do you expect the glass to be filled with more glass, or does the word "fill" suffice if you fill said glass with another liquid (like water)?

I really hope that all translates and makes sense...

[Félix C. Morency (colibry10)]

ScislaC,

Thank you for your illustrated example. The use of the word "fill" in the Inkscape context make sense if we see the "filling" as a regions expanding itself to the boundaries. I'm sorry to have taken some of your time and I'm glad you answered me. Keep up the good work.

[ScislaC (scislac)]

Félix,

I'm glad that it made sense. However, please don't apologize for taking my time. I'm more than happy to talk about things to make sure they translate well and make sense to everyone regardless of their native language. :)

[dh003i (dh003i)]

Actually, I think this is a horrible "feature" that ought to be fixed...or at least another bucket ought to be added that really does completely fill the area. Shrink/Grow does not really fix the problem, as it does not grow the fill to the precise mathematical boundaries.

If Inkscape's proprietary competition fills up to the "perceptual edges", that is awful too.