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0.9.0-beta.9Beta

Released

New entries go here under Added, Changed and Fixed, and move into a version's section when it is released.

For testers: beta.9 is the branching release. A point in a vector can now have three or more segments, and every area the lines enclose can be filled, recoloured or emptied on its own. To try it, select a shape, take the pen and start a line on one of its points or segments (or, in vector edit, use Add or Extrude (E) on a point in the middle of the path), then paint the areas with the Paint bucket. A project that holds such a shape is saved in a newer file format, which beta.8 and older can't open, so keep a copy if you go back and forth. Please tell us where an area fills wrongly, where a click doesn't do what the status line said, and where anything feels slow on a big drawing.

Added

  • Branch a point, and paint the areas it makes. In a vector, three or more segments can now meet at a point. With the pen out and a vector selected, start on any of its points, or on a segment, and the line you draw grows from it; end on another point and the area it crosses splits in two, both halves keeping their fill. In vector edit, Add grows a branch from a selected middle point, and Extrude (E) does too, snapping to the line straight out of the corner, with "on the guide" in the readout. Each is one step, and Ctrl+Z takes it back whole.
  • The Paint bucket paints areas. Hover an area and it shows stripes in the colour the click will give, over what is there now; the status line says what the click will do. Click to give the area the bucket's colour, click again to give it back the shape's fill; Alt-click takes its fill away (a checkerboard shows first) or fills an area that has none. Where lines cross without a point, the first click adds the points and says how many.
  • Select an area in Move. Hover an area to see it, click to select its points and segments, drag to move it; Shift-click adds another. With areas selected, the Inspector's Fill section becomes Area fill: the area's own colour, "Use the shape's fill", "Fill with the shape's colour", or Mixed. With none selected it counts the areas with their own colour and those with no fill, each with Locate.
  • Deleting in a shape with areas says what happened. Delete a segment between two areas and they merge, keeping the larger one's colour, and the status line says which; delete an outside segment and the shape opens there; delete a point where several segments meet and its segments go with it. A point where three or more segments meet has no mirroring or corner radius, and the Inspector says why.
  • Agents can grow a branch from any point of a shape and paint the areas it encloses. Over MCP, edit_vector can now add a point from the middle of a path, and a segment that gives a point a third one, where it used to refuse. A line across a filled shape divides it into areas, and the new paint_region gives one area its own colour, the shape's fill or no fill. set_regions writes areas whole, and planarize adds a point wherever lines cross. get_vector lists every area with a point inside it and what fills it. The first such edit switches the shape to fill by areas, in the same undo step, and keeps every area filled as it was. A project holding such a shape is saved as file format 13, which Polyform 0.9.0-beta.8 and older refuse to open.
  • The Knife, Join, Bridge, Merge and Dissolve work on areas. In a shape with areas, the Knife adds its cut as segments across the areas it crosses: each piece keeps the colour of the area it came from, and the shape stays one piece instead of falling into separate halves. A Join, Bridge or Merge that makes three segments meet at a point switches a plain shape to areas in the same step, so a line joined across a filled shape leaves both halves filled, and the space a Bridge closes off takes the shape's fill. Dissolve removes the selected segments that have the same fill on both sides, so those areas become one; a segment between two different fills stays, and the status line says to delete it to merge them. Each is one step, and the status line says what happened to the areas. Agents get the same over MCP (knife, dissolve, join, merge and bridge in edit_vector).
  • An area can follow a colour style. With areas selected, the style button in Area fill links them to a colour style, and editing the style repaints them, as it repaints a layer's fill. Giving a linked area another colour, by hand or with the Paint bucket, detaches it in the same step, and the status line says so; Detach in the same menu keeps the colour and drops the link. Agents can do the same with paint_region {at, style}.

Changed

  • Shapes with thousands of areas edit two to three times faster. Finding a shape's areas, adding points where its lines cross and carrying each area's colour through an edit now run in Polyform's Rust engine. On a whole illustration flattened into one shape with thousands of areas, switching it to areas, deleting a segment or cutting it with the Knife used to take up to a quarter of a second; it now takes under a tenth. The results are the same as before, point for point and colour for colour, and if the engine can't start, the previous code does the work.
  • A Figma vector with areas in different colours comes in as one shape. Importing a .fig, a vector whose areas are filled differently (a logo cube in three shades, for example) arrived as a group of one path per colour. It now arrives as one vector with areas, read from Figma's own points, segments and areas, and draws exactly as before; each area can be repainted with the Paint bucket. An area coloured by a colour style keeps its link to the style, so a Figma logo keeps every style link it had. A project holding one is saved as file format 13. If Figma's network can't be read, the group of paths is used, as before.
  • History says "colour" in every step. Undo steps such as "Set Color" and "Apply Color Style" now read "Set Colour" and "Apply Colour Style", as the rest of Polyform does.
  • A project from a newer Polyform says so, and what to do. Opening one used to say "Project schema v13 is newer than this build supports (v12)". It now says the project needs a newer Polyform, which file format it was saved in and which this version reads, and to update through Help → Check for Updates. Nothing on disk is changed.

Fixed

  • Booleans of rings and even-odd shapes now show their holes. A ring, a letter's counter or any shape with a hole lost the hole when it went into a union, a subtract or another boolean: a ring came out as a solid square, and a square minus a ring lost the ring's hole too. Holes now stay holes, in shapes that fill even-odd, in shapes whose holes wind the other way, in shapes with areas, and in a boolean inside a boolean. Booleans whose shapes have no holes draw exactly as before. Files that combine booleans with such shapes draw differently from earlier versions, now showing what the shapes show.
  • Selection colours include the colours of painted areas and parts. The palette in the Inspector listed a selection's fills, strokes and coloured text, but not the colour of an area or a part painted with the Paint bucket, so recolouring from it missed them. They are listed now, and recolouring one is one step.
  • A point added on a straight segment lands where you click. Clicking a straight segment in vector edit (in Move or with Add) put the new point at the segment's middle, wherever the click was. Curved segments were right.
  • A shape painted in several colours keeps them when it has a shadow or a blur. A vector whose parts had their own colours (painted with the Paint tool, or cut with the Knife and painted) was drawn in one colour on screen as soon as it had an effect, such as a drop shadow, an inner shadow or a blur. Exports were right. It now draws its colours on screen too.