Changing freehand tool width via toolbar.

[Slythfox]

A lot of the other tools have options that can be set in the toolbar. (Example: the calligraphy tool gives options in the toolbar for changing the width and thinning of the line.) I think it would be beneficial of one could change the width of the freehand tool line from the toolbar (default = 1).

I understand that after creating a line, you can just open the fill/stroke dialog and change the width there. But this feature is useful because once a person sets the freehand tool line width, any other time that person creates a line, it will use that width by default, which can be really useful. The rectangle, oval, polygon, spiral, bezier curve, calligraphy tools all have such functionality, why leave out the freehand tool?

I recommend this feature to be implemented in the 0.47 release, because: "For 0.47 a particular focus will be [...] refactoring for improved consistency [...]"

[sailor595 (billc595)]

The items for the calligraphy tools that you can set in the tool bar aren't normal path parameters. Width means the distance between the two ends of the path that the calligraphy tool drags along behind itself and closes when you lift the stylus, not stroke width, that's normally set to zero for that tool. Nothing on that tool bar can affect any already existing object. Selecting an object on the canvas can't affect anything on that tool bar, none of that stuff is part of a path, it only affects how the tool works. The system IS consistent.

But I agree with you. I think the style indicator/controller thing on the status bar is the bomb. The one that indicates AND controls fill and stroke color, object opacity, and stroke size of the currently selected object. I think the one on the right side of the tool bars that looks the same and takes up the same amount of room, but just opens that tools preference menu is like teasing us. It should work just like it's near twin on the status bar, but set what the tool will do NEXT. If the tool is set as 'this tools own style' it should adjust that. If the tool is set as 'last used style' it should repeat what the one on the status bar indicates until the user adjusts it, and then set the tool to that until it is changed again or the one on the bottom is changed. The 'take from selection' button for tools set as 'this tools own style' should be on the tool bar as well as in the preference dialog. Finally if we need a button on the tool bar to open the preference menu for that tool, put a button labeled 'preferences' on it. Don't tease us with this.

Create a persistent dummy object for every tool. Have each tool always take it's settings from that. For 'last used style' tools have the dummy object change with every change to the status bar tool, but not actively track it. For 'this tools own style' tools the dummy object should ignore the status bar indicators entirely. For both preference settings, the new tool bar style indicators both track and adjust the style of the dummy object (the adjust part is probably the only real difference from what you are doing already). A 'take from selection' button on the tool bar will update the dummy object style to match the status bar control immediately.

One weakness the status bar style tool has is whether to set the stroke or fill style. This will be acerbated by having two more possibilities. At a minimum the swatch strip will need 'tool fill' and 'tool stroke' added to it's right click menu which is currently just 'fill' and 'stroke'. Better yet the right click menu's for both status bar tools and tool bar tools should get an eye dropper tool added. Double clicking any of them should bring up the eye dropper tool for them as well. And drag and drop for the transparent swatch (the big X on the far left of the default colors) needs to be fixed anyway.

As long as this is on the wish list, we might just as well wish for something cool.

DS