Re: Scheper's Catmull-Rom curves, and Spiro curves

On 7/14/10, Dave Crossland wrote:

> I also have a better idea along the same line: Spiro splines.
> http://www.levien.com/spiro/  and HTML Canvas demo at
> http://fontly.com/sandbox/spiro.html If the patent on Spiro could be
> put through the W3C policy grinder, wouldn't that be great - Inkscape
> already supports it as a Live Path Effect.

Spiro-like curves as part of SVG would be a huge step forward,
especially for Inkscape users who do illustrations and type design.

The problem with existing implementation of Spiro in Inkscape is that
it is implemented as a live path effect, and LPEs have a significant
disadvantage: you never see what you created until you stop drawing.
This badly affects both Spiro Spline and Pattern Along Path effects
which, being artistic effects, are supposed to be interactive.

Another real problem with Spiro as LPE is that you can't apply boolean
operations. There is a badly working LPE for boolean operations that
is currently not built by default, does only few simple operations,
crashing Inkscape half the time anyway and is conceptually clumsy.

Alexandre Prokoudine
http://libregraphicsworld.org

Received on Wednesday, 14 July 2010 00:08:51 UTC