I've posted before about the new path tool problems but nothing really came of it. I just had a few new things to add.

The main problem is when trying to stroke a hand made path. If either handle is even the slightest bit pulled out, it will interrupt the stroke and leave a gap. This is a problem for 2 reasons.

1. When placing nodes, the new tool is too sensitive and I think it could use some sort of threshold adjustment. Unless you concentrate to make sure the mouse is completely still when placing the node, click the mouse and fully release the button before the slightest movement, it will inevitably pull the handles out the tiniest bit. This can be very hard to see if you aren't zoomed in extremely close, and really destroys your workflow.

2. My path workflow has always been to just drag the path itself out away from the node to draw out the handles. This again now will affect the handle on the opposing node and push out the handle the slightest bit and mess up the stroke.

I believe the old path tool probably reacted in nearly the same way, but the stroke was never left with these gaps. Something about the new tool is different and requires superior precision on handle placement or you will experience this trouble. So for the longest time now I've had to go back and edit these nodes at full zoom to remove the errant handles or I can never get a clean stroke. I even try to make sure every handle is out and pointing in a good direction to save myself some time in the end, but neither way is as quick as the old path tool.

I'm not sure if the path tool is low priority or not, but before the upgrade, it was a superior tool. I'm all for precision, but there needs to be a threshold adjustment or something to ignore handles that are pulled out by less than X-px.

1 would be a great starting point. :P

-- akovia

On Fri, Mar 14, 2014, at 05:45 PM, Simon Budig wrote:

akovia (akovia1@eml.cc) wrote:

The main problem is when trying to stroke a hand made path. If either handle is even the slightest bit pulled out, it will interrupt the stroke and leave a gap. This is a problem for 2 reasons.

I don't understand what you mean by "gap"? Are you saying that having a corner at a node makes edit->stroke path leave gaps? Can you create a screenshot?

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/93550827/temp/path-nodes.jpg

1. When placing nodes, the new tool is too sensitive and I think it could use some sort of threshold adjustment. Unless you concentrate to make sure the mouse is completely still when placing the node, click the mouse and fully release the button before the slightest movement, it will inevitably pull the handles out the tiniest bit. This can be very hard to see if you aren't zoomed in extremely close, and really destroys your workflow.

yeah, that might make sense - my first attempt would put the threshold at the radius of the node representation.

That sounds good.

2. My path workflow has always been to just drag the path itself out away from the node to draw out the handles. This again now will affect the handle on the opposing node and push out the handle the slightest bit and mess up the stroke.

Note that if you drag the path closely to one node, the handle on the opposite node will not be moved. Only a (largeish) area in the middle moves both handles simultaneously (yet still with a shifting weight depending on where you drag).

Yeah, I am very aware of that. It's probably a bad habit but it always produced expected results with the old path tool so it's kinda ingrained in me now. I am always aware when I pop out the opposing handle in any meaningful way, but this happens at such a small scale that I never know it till I'm trying to stroke something.

I believe the old path tool probably reacted in nearly the same way, but the stroke was never left with these gaps.

Again - I have no idea what gaps you are referring to. Maybe a screenshot can help.

Hopefully the screenshot will clear it up. It's very easily reproducible by just zooming in all the way and tweak a handle in some odd way the slightest bit. I didn't try to find the worst example, but sometimes it will leave a huge gap unlike the small one in the screenshot. Maybe next time I am rendering I will use my normal workflow and capture the results before going back and repairing it.

akovia

On Fri, Mar 14, 2014, at 07:05 PM, Simon Budig wrote:

akovia (akovia1@eml.cc) wrote:

I don't understand what you mean by "gap"? Are you saying that having a corner at a node makes edit->stroke path leave gaps? Can you create a screenshot?

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/93550827/temp/path-nodes.jpg

Wow. I don't know what happens there. Gut feeling: buggy cairo...

Note that if you drag the path closely to one node, the handle on the opposite node will not be moved. Only a (largeish) area in the middle moves both handles simultaneously (yet still with a shifting weight depending on where you drag).

Yeah, I am very aware of that. It's probably a bad habit but it always produced expected results with the old path tool so it's kinda ingrained in me now. I am always aware when I pop out the opposing handle in any meaningful way, but this happens at such a small scale that I never know it till I'm trying to stroke something.

note that "old path tool" is slightly misleading, the only thing that has changed somewhat recently is the way the handles are drawn.

Bye, Simon

That makes perfect sense actually. The precision problem of grabbing nodes happened in the old tool/handles as well. If there is anything I can do to help this along I'm happy to try.

akovia

Just revisiting this to see if it can get a little love. I don't stroke every path I make, but when I do I am still faced with a lot of extra work to repair the handles. I've given this a bit more thought on how to fix this issue and came up with two ways that maybe can work together.

1. A setting or a keyboard modifier that prevents handles being pulled out when placing nodes.

2. A threshold slider in the strokes dialog to ignore handles within a certain margin.

The first option would help prevent problems when creating the path. The second would overcome previously created paths, or fix problems when dragging out handles by accident when manipulating the path by the line instead of by the handles themselves.

Here is a full size example of a render I did. If you zoom in to 100% and follow the path around, you can see how many problems there are. I understand it only takes 5-10 mins to go back and fix, but it really is frustrating.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/93550827/Forums/gimp-nodes1.jpg

Cheers

On Fri, Mar 14, 2014, at 08:02 PM, akovia wrote:

On Fri, Mar 14, 2014, at 07:05 PM, Simon Budig wrote:

akovia (akovia1@eml.cc) wrote:

I don't understand what you mean by "gap"? Are you saying that having a corner at a node makes edit->stroke path leave gaps? Can you create a screenshot?

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/93550827/temp/path-nodes.jpg

Wow. I don't know what happens there. Gut feeling: buggy cairo...

Note that if you drag the path closely to one node, the handle on the opposite node will not be moved. Only a (largeish) area in the middle moves both handles simultaneously (yet still with a shifting weight depending on where you drag).

Yeah, I am very aware of that. It's probably a bad habit but it always produced expected results with the old path tool so it's kinda ingrained in me now. I am always aware when I pop out the opposing handle in any meaningful way, but this happens at such a small scale that I never know it till I'm trying to stroke something.

note that "old path tool" is slightly misleading, the only thing that has changed somewhat recently is the way the handles are drawn.

Bye, Simon

That makes perfect sense actually. The precision problem of grabbing nodes happened in the old tool/handles as well. If there is anything I can do to help this along I'm happy to try.

-- akovia
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akovia

I have had the same problem! When I try to do a "stroke path" selection, there are just gaps that go missing from the stroke. It's so frustrating, and I don't know how to fix it!

willthefifth,
You are using way too many nodes for the path you are creating. You either need to pull out each handle in the proper direction, or zoom in on each node and delete the handles all together.

Have a look at the new path I added. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/93550827/temp/DavidHabashy-1.xcf

"Inkscape", another free program, was recommended to me for vector work. Check it out.

Rick,
I use Inkscape all the time and am pretty proficient for my needs. If I only need to trace something out as a path without the need for vertical guides, I prefer to just work in gimp. This was never a problem before the cairo changes.

I suspect that this is a bug in the cairo library: the problematic points have the property that the control handle is very short and goes into the opposite direction than the actual path. Seems this triggers some cairo misfeatures...

How did you create that path?

Simon,
I honestly think that maybe the new cairo is "too" precise. What happens is when you lay down your nodes and your mouse isn't completely still, it will drag out a handle as if you were holding down the button and dragging intentionally. I'm not sure if it has to do with the resolution of your mouse, meaning the more precise your mouse is, the more likely you are to drag out a handle? No matter the case, the faster you lay down your nodes, the more likely this is to happen.

I've never had a problem as bad willthefifth, but I'm conscious of how it happens so I do my best to avoid it. Unfortunately it still happens. If the ability to drag out handles could be suppressed with a setting or a modifier, this could be avoided.

akovia

The problem could be a result of drawing curves with too many nodes: When drawing with Bezier curves, I consider a node without handles a redundant node.

I always try to use the least amount of nodes necessary, but there are times when tracing around a low res image with lots of jaggedness like a straw hat, where I will just trace around by placing nodes instead of trying to pull out every handle a micrometer. I do think this is more about workflow though. Some people will place a node and adjust the path for that node right then. Rinse, repeat. I tend to place all my nodes first and then come back around and adjust the path. It's when laying down my "outline" nodes that the handles get pulled out from time to time. When I come back to adjust my paths, there are times like on straight lines where a path doesn't appear to need adjusted so I just move past it. Not until I try my stroke do I find out that a handle is out.

When turning sharp corners, I zoom in and place the corner node's handles on the lines leading away from the vertex.

This is exactly the problem. The only way to ensure this is to zoom in to almost max extents on every single node. This is very cumbersome and time consuming and was not required before. I've already done a few things with my workflow to try and compensate for this, especially if I know ahead of time I will be stoking the path, but it's been difficult to completely change everything about how I work after doing it successfully for years a certain way without problems.

The other part of my workflow is that I tend to grab the path itself and not the handle for some adjustments. If I do this now and don't grab the path very close to the base of a node, it will inevitably drag out the opposing nodes handle ever so slightly, but you really don't see it happening while working. I've been working hard to only adjust a path by pulling out the handle explicitly, but my muscle memory is hard to overcome. :P

The errors I see when stroking paths usually happen when paths turn sharp corners; this is fixable by adjusting the mitre limit in the stroke style dialog. I have had to tweak this fairly often when stroking the perimeter of vectorized text elements. It may be possible to use this adjustment to remove unwanted kinks when stroking paths where nodes have 'unintended' handles.

I've used this adjustment quite a bit for text like yourself, unfortunately I am not seeing any difference when using it for this problem.

If this can't be fixed to work like it used to be, maybe something can be done to change the nodes to visibly show when a handle is out by changing the color or something?

Here is the workfile for the example I posted above. It's a big file but this is the scale I'm usually working with. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/93550827/temp/Mnemosyne%20-%20Render.xcf

akovia

Shot in the dark: Have you tried just using the Lasso tool - which will also play connect the dots - to make selections, then convert the selection to a path? If that works it might point to other options in the "area selection" arena that could be useful.

I might play with that later just for the heck of it...

Thanks for thinking of ideas to try, but I don't think the lasso will fit my needs.

I did want to check for myself and went back and found an old xcf that I had used a stoke on and still had that stroke on a layer. Then I stroked it again on a new layer so you can see the difference between the old and new gimp.

What I discovered is that the handles on the old gimp were pulled out as well, but stroking didn't show those minor imperfections. Maybe this will help get to the root of the problem.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/93550827/temp/Kannazuki%20no%20Miko%20-%20Render.xcf

akovia

Shot in the dark: Have you tried just using the Lasso tool - which will also play connect the dots - to make selections, then convert the selection to a path? If that works it might point to other options in the "area selection" arena that could be useful.

I might play with that later just for the heck of it...

I think I misunderstood what you were suggesting here. I get it now and might give it a shot. ;)

akovia

I agree with Rick. Although this issue needs to be taken care of, GIMP doesn't seem the most appropriate tool for the work you're doing. As long as GIMP doesn't have a vector layer feature, the strokes produced with this technique will be always resolution-dependent, which is not really useful for what you're doing (i.e. if your source image is low resolution, your strokes will be low-res too, and you won't be able to scale them up keeping detail and smoothness).

Use inkscape instead, it will work better and you'll keep the editability of the strokes all the time.

That's fine. I'll just keep working around the issue as needed. I don't stroke very often, so when I do I can weigh my options then. For the work I'm doing, gimp has been the perfect tool. I can use gimp's features to find edges, give contrast, and many other functions on the fly while tracing a path. I also have no need to scale up after making a path for this work. I always start with the largest source I can find and always scale down from there. Not having to switch between programs saves me a lot of time.
When I need to create a vector image, or have use for angled guides, I will then fire up Inkscape.

It just strikes me funny that there is a built in excuse to not improve, or fix bugs for the path tool.
"Use Inkscape"
It's not a bad excuse for sure, but when functionality is going backwards, I would think it should be looked at and fixed if possible. My 2 cents.

akovia

Please note that you are currently taking part in the process of looking at it. The remarks above seem a bit unjustified when people are trying to help you to achieve your goal faster...

I apologize. This isn't the first time I've brought up path problems in gimp and it always seems to end up being pointed to Inkscape. It was knee-jerk and uncalled for.

That being said, I still think that a vector drawing program is more adequate for that kind of uses. You gain editability, being able to see the result (the stroke) as you draw, resolution-independence, etc.

I do appreciate your suggestion, but for simple paths I really do prefer gimp. Everything else I do with the image is done in gimp so It saves time, generates less files, and it has served me well for many years. Any path/vector function at all is better served in Inkscape for sure, but gimp has a path tool exactly for simplistic path creations like this. I just want to regain the functionality gimp used to have. Sorry for the sharp remark.

akovia

What do you mean delete the handles? What does that mean?

The handle is the little square in this image, coming out of the path node.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/93550827/temp/path-nodes.jpg Ctrl+Shift+Click on that square to delete. You should check out the multitude of tutorials and videos on the web. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJE70PyYu2k http://lightningismyname.blogspot.com/2008/06/gimp-path-tool-aka-pentool-tutorial_15.html and of course the official docs.
https://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-tool-path.html

akovia