Transform, Rotate, Mirror, Mesh Warp, Liquify and Wipe Stacks#

At a glance#

• Mesh Warp - below the tools in the side rail: click art to mesh it, then drag its pins to bend it, as Illustrator's Puppet Warp does. Enter bakes the bend into the art as one undo step, and Escape throws it away.
• Liquify (Shift+R, after Mesh Warp in the side rail): bend the marks under a brush as Illustrator's Warp tools do - Warp pushes their outline along the drag, Twirl turns it, Pucker draws it in and Bloat pushes it out - one undo step a drag.
• Wipe Stacks - Transform > Wipe Stacks, the canvas's right-click menu, or the Shape Stacker's panel: combine the selected shapes as Illustrator's Pathfinder does - unite them, take one from the others, keep their overlap or all but it, or cut them into every piece of their overlaps - in one undo step, with a quarter-second napkin wiping over the result.
• Expand Text to Shape (Ctrl+Shift+O), in Transform and in Type: turn the selected text into a group of its glyphs' shapes, as Illustrator's Create Outlines does - see Type.
• Effects follow the mark - while Scale Strokes and Effects is on, as it is to begin with, a scale, a turn or a mirror carries a mark's stroke width and its effects with it: a blur scales, and a shadow's offset turns - see Effects.

The Transform box#

Changed in 1.0.0-alpha.5.0.0: the box scaled the characters of a text in a box too, and a mark's stroke width but none of its effects.

Transform (Ctrl+T, the **Transform button beside Mirror in the toolbar, or Transform > Transform Box; the button is pressed and the row checked while the box is up):** puts one box around everything selected, with a handle on each corner and the middle of each side, and scales it by dragging one. The box stays up while it is in use — press Ctrl+T again or Escape to put it away — and a press anywhere off a handle still belongs to the tool underneath, so the selection can be changed without dismissing the box first.

It comes up by itself. With Transform box on selection on, as it is to begin with (a switch in Quick Settings and in Verbose Settings), the box appears around whatever the Select tool selects and goes when nothing is selected or another tool is taken; Escape or Ctrl+T put it away for that selection, and the next selection brings it back. A 3D mark keeps its gumball, which the box would hide, and a path text's brackets, which stand where the box's handles do, are what a press on them grabs. Off, the box is put up by hand, as above.

• The handle decides which axes move. A left or right handle scales across, a top or bottom handle scales down, and a corner scales both — each axis by its own amount, following the pointer. The handle opposite the one in hand stays exactly where it is, so a drag reads as pulling that edge of the box.
• Shift keeps the shape. Both axes take one factor, so the selection grows or shrinks without being reshaped. On a corner the factor is whichever axis the pointer committed to; on a side it is the one axis that handle can measure, which is how a side handle scales the whole selection rather than stretching it.
• Alt works from the centre. The middle of the box stays put instead of the opposite handle, so both sides move together and the selection grows in place. Alt moves the point the scale is measured from and nothing else: each axis still scales on its own, so a corner under Alt alone still follows the pointer in both directions independently.
• Shift + Alt is the two together: uniform, about the centre.
• Either modifier can be pressed or let go during a drag, and the gesture is re-read from where it started rather than bent from where it had got to.
• A whole drag is one undo step, and a press that grabs a handle and lets go without moving costs none at all.
• A text in a box, in a shape or along a path keeps its size. The box scales its frame or its path and the text reflows in it, as area and path type do in a vector editor; a text that grows as it is typed scales its characters.
• Dragging a handle through its anchor stops at 1% rather than flipping the selection inside out. Flipping is what Mirror (O) is for; letting a handle do it too is in TODO.md, along with skew, distort, perspective, and puppet warp, which is the list this one box is meant to grow into.

Rotate#

Rotate (Ctrl+R, Transform > Rotate…, or the Rotate button beside Move): turns the selection about a centre point, in a palette that opens in the top-right rather than centred - the canvas under the selection is where the rotation is dragged, so a centred panel would be sitting on the pixels the gesture needs.

• Drag on the canvas to turn it by hand. Clockwise counts up in positive degrees, counterclockwise down in negative ones, and the field shows what the drag has measured. Swinging past half a turn keeps counting the same way round, and a second lap counts as a second lap. Releasing commits the turn as a single undo step and puts the field back to zero.
• The tool stays in hand. Letting go of a drag commits the turn and leaves the palette up, and so does Apply: an angle is rarely the last one, and closing on the first answer threw away the pivot that had just been placed and the snap that had just been set along with it. Ctrl+R and the Rotate button now behave the same way; either is dismissed with Rotate, Cancel, or Escape. Move is the other kind of panel — it asks one question and goes once it is answered — and which of the two a panel is is declared in one place rather than decided in each Apply handler.
• The centre of rotation moves four ways: click anywhere on the canvas to put it there, drag the crosshair (the pointer offers a grab where it can be picked up), pick one of the nine handles of the selection's box from the preset grid, or type an exact Centre x / y in px, in, mm, or pt. The presets are the quick way to the corners and the middle of the box; a click is the loose way to everywhere else — a shoulder, a heel, a point off the shape entirely. Click and drag are told apart by the same few pixels that separate a click from a drag everywhere else, so a press that turns is still a turn. A centre that has been clicked, dragged, or typed lights no preset, which is how the panel says it is custom.
• Angle, direction, and snapping: the angle field is signed, and the CW / CCW pair re-signs whatever magnitude is in it rather than clearing it - so 90 and a press of CCW gives -90. Snap to 15° rounds typed and dragged angles alike; Shift does the same for one gesture. Arrow keys step a degree, or 15 with Shift.
• Live preview (off by default) shows the typed angle on the canvas before it is committed, taking no history step, exactly as the Move dialog's does. A canvas drag always previews, whatever the checkbox says.
• Vector anchors and their tangent handles turn with the path, and a Copic stroke's broad nib keeps its bearing relative to the mark. Text and images have no orientation to turn, so they orbit the centre upright - an image by its middle rather than by its top-left anchor.

Mirror#

Mirror (O, Transform > Mirror…, or the Mirror button after Clear): reflects the selection, in a palette that opens in the top-right like Rotate's.

• Orientation: Horizontal swaps left and right, so a figure facing right faces left; Vertical swaps top and bottom. Both together turn the selection half a turn. With neither ticked, Mirror has nothing to do and says so.
• Create Copy keeps the selection and mirrors a copy of it, reflected about the selection's trailing edge - the right edge for Horizontal, the bottom edge for Vertical - so the copy lands beside the original as its mirror image and the two meet at that edge: draw half of something symmetric, mirror a copy, and it is whole. The copy is left selected. Without Create Copy the selection flips where it stands, about the middle of its box.
• Live preview (on by default) shows the result on the canvas as the choices change, copy and all. Cancel or Escape takes it back and leaves no trace - not even an undo step - and Mirror or Enter keeps it as one undo step and closes the palette. Starting another edit on the preview, such as dragging the previewed copy, keeps the mirror and builds on it.
• Show Selection Borders is the same switch as the Move palette's.
• A reflection is exact on vector geometry: anchors and both of their handles are reflected, so a curve keeps its control points rather than being resampled. A Copic stroke's broad nib and a linear gradient's direction turn with the drawing, and a Wave-profiled stroke - the one profile that leans - swaps its sides, so its mirror image leans the mirrored way. Text stays readable - its box moves to where its mirror image would be - and a placed image's pixels are flipped.

Mesh Warp#

Mesh Warp (below the tools in the side rail): bends art by pins, as Illustrator's Puppet Warp does. It has no key, as in Illustrator.

• Picking the art. Hovering outlines in green the art a click would pick, with "(click to select art)" beside the pointer. A click picks the group one level below the top of the mark's layer tree - a figure's leg assembly, rather than the whole figure or one of the leg's paths - or, for a mark in no group, its own layer; the layers panel highlights that row. Chosen with something already selected, the tool meshes the selection at once.
• The mesh. The art's silhouette, grown by 3 px, is filled with grey triangles - about a thousand, whatever the art's size - and outlined in green. Show mesh in Quick Settings (and in the Settings window) hides the triangles and leaves the pins. Two pins go in along the art's long axis, a fifth of the way in from each end, and one goes in every separate piece.
• Pins. Click in the mesh to add a pin, and drag straight away to move it. Click a pin to select it, Shift+click to add one to the selection or take it out, and drag to move every selected pin: the art bends between them as rigidly as it can while the others hold. Delete or Backspace takes the selected pins out - never the art. A piece with one pin follows it rigidly, and a piece with none stays put.
• Ending. Enter, choosing another tool, or a click on empty canvas keeps the warp; a click on other art keeps it and meshes the new art. Escape throws it away, putting the art back exactly. While a warp is open, Ctrl+Z steps back through the pin moves; once it is kept, one Ctrl+Z takes the whole warp back.
• What moves. A freehand mark moves point by point. A Vector Path keeps its Bézier structure: its anchors and handles move, and a curve is split only where one piece could no longer follow the bend to within a fifth of a pixel. Text and images move with the point that anchors them, unbent, and a Copic nib turns with the art. No width is stretched.

Gradients and dash styles are written into exported SVGs as real <linearGradient> / <radialGradient> paint servers and stroke-dasharray values, so other editors see them, and they round-trip back into napkin unchanged.

Liquify#

New in 1.0.0-alpha.4.6.0.

Liquify (Shift+R, Transform > Liquify, or its button after Mesh Warp's below the tools in the side rail): bends the marks under a brush, as Illustrator's Warp tools do. The key or a press on the button opens its panel of four brushes, two by two; the arrows move round it and Enter chooses.

• The brush. A ring round the pointer with a small cross at its centre, 100 px across the page unless changed. What it bends falls off smoothly from its centre to nothing at the ring. Alt-drag sizes it: the ring stays where the press went down and its edge follows the pointer. [ and ] make it a step smaller or larger. A toast gives the new size.
• What bends. The selected marks, or, with nothing selected, every mark under the brush on a visible, unlocked layer, as Illustrator chooses. Ctrl lends the selection tool, as on the drawing tools, to choose them. Pencil marks are the Smear's to blend, so Liquify leaves them, and says so the first time. Text, pictures and eraser marks have no outline to bend.
• Held and pressed. Twirl, Pucker and Bloat keep working while the press is held still, faster under a pen pressed harder. Warp works as the pointer moves, and pushes less under a light pen.
• What moves. As under Mesh Warp, anchors and handles move, and a segment is split where one piece could no longer follow the bend. A drawn rectangle or ellipse, which has points rather than anchors, bends as a path, its straight sides too. When the drag ends, each mark it bent is fitted again at the Freehand fidelity (Verbose Settings > Sketch Support), so its anchors stay few. A Vector Path the brush never split keeps the anchors it was drawn with. Widths are kept, and a Copic nib turns with what it is on.
• Undo. One drag is one undo step. Escape before letting go puts back everything the drag bent.

A script bends with warp, twirl, pucker and bloat (Drawing with napkin script).

Wipe Stacks#

Wipe Stacks (Transform > Wipe Stacks, after Close Shape, the canvas's right-click menu, or the tiles in the Shape Stacker's panel): combines the selected shapes as Illustrator's Pathfinder does. It takes two or more shapes, and its rows are greyed until two are selected. As in Illustrator the rows have no keys; Edit Keyboard Shortcuts can give them some.

• What counts as a shape. A filled mark, or a closed outline, is its inside. Anything else - a line, a Copic stroke, a profiled stroke - is its ink, the width it paints at: a thick line taken from a square cuts the square in two. A result painted as a shape keeps that shape's fill, outline, width, opacity and effects; one painted from ink is a filled shape in the ink's colour, with no outline.
• Text, pictures and placed files are passed over. They stay as they are, and the notice says so.
• Curves are kept. Where the result runs along one of the shapes' own curves it keeps that shape's anchors and handles exactly, and a corner is made only where one edge crosses another.
• One undo step. The result is on the page, selected, the moment the row is chosen, and Ctrl+Z takes the whole wipe back. A wipe takes up to 32 shapes at a time.
• The wipe. A paper-coloured napkin, a third of the shapes' width and leaning a little, sweeps across them in a quarter of a second: ahead of it the picture from before, behind it the result. A press, a key or the wheel ends it at once, so it never holds anything up. It is skipped when the system asks for reduced motion, and Wipe animation in Verbose Settings (Extras) turns it off.
• In the right-click menu the Wipe Stacks are a block at the end of the canvas menu. The window opens one panel beside a menu, so Wipe Out's two rows are laid out in the Wipe Stacks panel itself, as Wipe Out: Subtract Top from Below and Wipe Out: Subtract Below from Top.
• In a script, wipe in|out-front|out-back|mid|outer|clean { ... } combines the marks its block draws the same six ways, and draws what is left in their place: wipe out-front { circle 100 100 60 circle 150 100 60 }. The drawing reference has the verb.

Docking the editing panels#

Docking the editing panels: Move, Rotate, Mirror, Page Settings, and Sharpen Selection are floating palettes - dragged by their title or by the narrow band at their border, resized from their corner, and kept on screen if the window shrinks. Each also carries a small button in its title bar that docks it: the panel leaves the drawing and becomes a column beside the layers and properties panels, so the canvas gives up the width rather than being covered. The same button undocks it, back to the exact position it was floating at. A docked panel that is closed stays docked, and the dock takes no space at all while it is empty.