Hi all,
was wondering if anyone has had the same issues I've had with the path tool.

I would like at least one particular option that is available in both Inkscape and PS: to be able to 'lock' the control points of a single point such that the line joining the two control points intersects the point itself (i.e. the two control lines are parallel)

The reason is VERY simple and should be EXTREEMLY obvious to anyone who has ever used The GIMP path tool. You don't get a smooth line/curve across a point unless the two tangents are the same (or very similar) When trying to make a smooth curve with more than 2 points, the 2 control points for each non-end point must be in a straight line that also intersects the point itself.
It's a real PITA to have to adjust them by hand since it isn't always easy to judge by sight.

Myself, I ended up writing a little Java program that you export a path to an SVG and feed it into the Java program and it spits out a slightly modified SVG where any control point tangents that are within a specified tolerance are corrected so they are the same. Only problem is that you end up with paths that are not really where you wanted them in the first place. So I don't use it.
This actually came from firstly writing a little Java app for generating a perfect gradient perpendicular to a path (you have a path that has two colours on either side and you draw a perpendicular line of chosen length that starts as one colour and finishes as another colour then spit out a PNG to be loaded as a layer.) Yeah paths have become rather of interest to me (and also somewhat of a bane)

Now, I'm not really asking anyone to implement this, rather, I'm wondering if anyone could save me a lot of time and help me with where I would change this in the code and of course which version I should be looking at. I can program as well as anyone (well better than most actually) but of course I really don't want to start on a life path of understanding The GIMP code inside out to work out what is needed to be changed and what odd preferences the programmers have (yes we all have them, myself included - I really do understand a lot on the subject of programming)

Anyway - is this worth me spending time on ... or is it already going to be part of 2.4? (I assume 2.4 is where I'll end up looking to change if necessary)
Anyone with helpful info greatly appreciated.

AND - if it is possible to do from some sort of script I guess that would be OK - but I find the scripting language code I've seen not very easy to read (and I will add that there are VERY few programming languages, and TYPES of programming languages, that I haven't used) - so I was surprised at my complete lack of understanding of the scripting language without any background prior knowledge of it.

-Thanks for any help

Thanks for that Saul - yep that really means that it's only gonna be a minor change for what I want :) The Shift-Click (not Ctrl-Shift-Click) make both parallel but also changes the length of the second one to match the selected one.
That might even be the same as PS or Inkscape (but I can't remember and have only used them once or twice) So I guess some other X-Shift-Click could mean to keep the length of the second one the value it already is and only adjust the length of the clicked one as you move it around. (Ctrl-Shift-Click means delete)
Maybe even Shift-RightClick ...
Anyway, if I get time some time (in the future ...), I might try to find the code and hopefully it shouldn't be too hard to add that extra option myself since all the code really should be there already anyway - yay :) -Thanks again!

On Sun, 2007-01-21 at 01:17 -0800, Saul Goode wrote:

I don't know if the feature is available in version 2.2, but the development version (2.3) is currently able to "lock" the control points in a manner similar to what you describe by holding down the CTRL and SHIFT keys while moving either of the controls in the Edit Mode.

I would like at least one particular option that is available in both Inkscape and PS: to be able to 'lock' the control points of a single point such that the line joining the two control points intersects the point itself (i.e. the two control lines are parallel)

--------
"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit." -- Harry S. Truman