With Separations Preview on, the renderer copied every node of the
document in every frame and separated each of its colors again. With
Overprint Preview on, it copied each object with an overprinting fill
or stroke in every frame, with the groups and layers that hold it. The
copies were new Arcs, so the geometry, stroke outline and raster
caches missed for each of them in every frame. In a release build,
drawing a 2880x1800 frame of a 50,000-path document again with the
same view and Separations Preview took 795 to 908 ms.
The renderer now keeps the art it prepared and what it was made from,
and in the next frame it uses that art again for each layer, symbol
art and member that has not changed. Only the objects that changed are
prepared again, with the layers and groups that hold them. All of the
art is prepared again when Discard White Overprint changes and, with
Separations Preview, when the plates shown, the proof setup, the
swatches, the Spot Colors option or the color settings change or a
profile is registered (cms::profiles_generation). The renderer now
draws that frame again in 98 to 107 ms, with the same pixels.
Docs: docs/target-app-parity.md.
In the web build, now_ms() in crates/ui-egui/src/lib.rs returned 0.0.
The status bar read "render 0.0 ms · ui 0.0 ms" however long a frame
took, and the Layers panel's budget of 8 ms for the row thumbnails it
renders in a frame never ran out, so only its limit of 16 thumbnails
applied.
now_ms() now returns the milliseconds since its first call, read from
the browser's performance.now() through web-time, which the build
already has through eframe. The desktop clock is unchanged. In Chrome,
after a pan frame of 750 ms over a document of 50,000 paths, the status
bar now reads "render 750.7 ms". The Layers panel now renders the
thumbnails of 24 groups of 2,000 paths one per frame, where main
rendered nine of them in one frame of 217 ms. The canvas has no render
worker in the web build, so it still renders on the UI thread and draws
the same pixels.
Docs: docs/target-app-parity.md.
The worker answered "timeout" after 60 s and left the request on the queue, so
the app ran it whenever it next drained the queue: an edit nobody was waiting
for, and a second one if the caller had retried. A request now leaves the
queue once: taken by the app, or given up by its caller, whichever comes
first. The timeout reply says which ("will not run" / "still running").
The "Performance unverified" bullet in docs/target-app-parity.md said
that the budgets had not been run on an idle machine since 2026-10-01,
that the last loaded run missed the 16 ms frame budget at 50k paths,
and that no user had reported slowness in mainstream work beyond #575
and #758. On 2026-10-11 #1155 recorded idle-machine runs, made before
#1173 merged, and runs of #1173's change met every budget at 50k paths
(load average 4 to 7) and at 25k paths. #1097 (zoom and pan in 0.9.0)
and #1731 (a drag that stutters as it starts) are open. G15 in
docs/gaps.md called the 25k-path run the last one, but on 2026-10-13 a
comment on #1172 reported runs of 0.10.0 on Linux with 4 logical CPUs
that missed all three render budgets at 20k paths.
The bullet now gives the 25k-path run and the runs in #1172, and lists
#1097 and #1731 with #575 and #758 as open user reports of slowness.
G15 no longer calls the 25k-path run the last one and adds the runs in
#1172.
- Preferences › User Interface › Show Tool Group Labels is off as it
ships: the toolbar sets its groups apart with a faint dash, as the
Basic and Advanced toolbars of the public toolbar reference do (the
categories there are the Getting Started toolbar's). It no longer cuts
"Navigate" to "Navi...". The labels are a preference away.
- The All Tools drawer lists the tools one per row (icon, full name,
shortcut on the right), each flyout group framed together under the
heading most of its tools have (the Pencil's group, led by the Shaper,
under Draw). Tools already in the toolbar stay dimmed; dragging and
picking are as before.
- Its ☰ menu has Reset and the Basic and Advanced toolbars, the drawer's
flyout menu of the reference.
- Its Show section shows or hides the controls under the toolbar's tools
(Fill and Stroke, Coloring, Draw Mode, Screen Mode), as the reference
describes; `toolbar.show {control?, on?}`, saved with the preferences
(`ui.toolbar_show`, all on for older ones). Edit Toolbar's ••• stays.
- New strings in every catalog.
Reference: https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/tools.html (the look
is VectorCraft's own, with its own icons).
Gradients (off unless asked for) found a blurred or noisy linear gradient in
part or in pieces, with bands around it.
The areas that may be a gradient are tried largest first, and one that is a
gradient is grown over every pixel next to it whose colour is within 10 levels
of the gradient's there: the pixels noise put a little off, a soft rim, the
pieces noise cut off it.
Linear-gradient inputs with Gradients on, paths beside the gradient, before ->
after: blurred 3.0 -> 0.5 (6 Colors) and 55.5 -> 0.5 (High Fidelity Photo);
noisy 11.0 -> 0.5 and 23.5 -> 1.5; scanned 5.5 -> 3.0 and 46.5 -> 37.0; clean
and aliased as before; dE within 0.02. No gradient on any input that is flat
colour, with any preset (the harness fails if there is one).
Each documented preset has an enhanced version (`enhanced: true` in
`imageTrace.make`, an Enhanced checkbox under the panel's preset): the preset
with Auto Grouping, and with Shapes in all but High Fidelity Photo. Gradients
stay an option. Flat Logo, a preset of our own, has none. The legacy presets,
and documents traced with them, are as they were.
So that an enhanced preset is no worse than its preset on that preset's inputs:
- A hole that one colour fills is the same shape as the path that fills it, so
the two still share one outline (a shape beside a fitted hole left slivers).
- A rectangle is as large as where its sides lie on average, not their farthest
points.
- Auto Grouping keeps the paths of a group in the order they were traced in. It
put a path first and what is inside it on top: a white counter traced under
its black letter was then painted over the letter's edge, a light seam
(Default with Auto Grouping, edge dE 10.24 -> 9.88; legacy 10.05).
The harness measures every enhanced preset beside its preset.
Create: Strokes drew every line with round caps: a square-ended line 10 px wide
had its corners 2.94 px outside the stroke.
- A line's ends are square when its ink reaches as far a third of the width to
either side of its middle as along it (a round end stops short there by a
seventh of the width); told from lines 3 px wide and more, all the ends of a
line together. The stroke then has square caps (`TracedPath::square_caps`).
- The last points of a wide line's skeleton can turn towards a corner of its
end. An end that has left the line the skeleton followed a width back (by a
quarter of the width, 1 px at least) is put back on it; and an end may be
pulled back as well as pushed out to where the ink ends.
Outline on the thin-line inputs: largest distance from the art 2.94 -> 0.88 px
(clean 2.94 -> 0.41; aliased 0.88 -> 0.81), mean 0.055 -> 0.050 px, anchors
14 -> 10.
- A sharp corner may fall up to 0.75 px short within 3 px of where it should be:
anti-aliasing and blur take that much off a corner (not on a thin bar, which
is all corners).
- A rounded rectangle gets the radius that fits its outline best, searched
around the one its area says, instead of that one alone.
- A rectangle's direction is tried along its longest straight side, the longer
axis of its area and the pixel grid: a blurred one may have no straight side.
- A regular polygon's sides, corners and size are read from the outline's shape
(how its distance from the middle goes round, and its area), not from how many
anchors the fitter gave it.
- An outline without anti-aliasing is known to half a pixel: it gets half as
much room again.
Plain shapes found with Shapes on, all sizes and variants: Default 57% -> 98%,
6 Colors 62% -> 100%. The harness counts false shapes: none on any input but one
thin line (a rectangle 2 px wide) whose trace is 0.70 px off with or without
Shapes.
With Type › Show Hidden Characters on, the canvas laid out every
visible text object in view in every frame to place the dots on
spaces and the ¶ and # marks. With 1,000 two-line labels in view,
drawing the marks took a median of 19.7 ms per frame in a release
build.
The overlay now keeps each text object's marks in document space,
together with the node it laid them out from. In a frame it lays out
a text object only when its node is a new `Arc` (an edit makes one)
or the frame before did not draw it, and it lays out all type in view
again when the fonts or the hyphenation exceptions change. The marks
are still placed for the current view in every frame. With the same
labels, drawing the marks takes 0.8 ms per frame, and the shapes drawn
are the same as before.
Docs: docs/target-app-parity.md.
When the last frame took more than 8 ms to render, the desktop app's
canvas sends the next frame to the render worker and draws the last
one until the new one arrives. After a pan or a zoom it draws the last
frame moved and scaled. After the view angle changed, it drew no art
until a frame at the new angle arrived. The angle changes during a
Rotate View drag and when the status bar's angle menu, Reset Rotate
View or a saved view sets it. In a headless run of the canvas on a
document of 50,000 paths, none of the 60 frames of a turn from 0° to
90° drew any art.
The canvas now draws the last frame as a mesh turned into the new
view. Each corner goes where the new view puts the document point that
the corner showed. The frame at the new angle replaces it when it
arrives, as before. Pixel Preview's frames already turned with the
view and are drawn as before.
Docs: docs/target-app-parity.md.
Only type at full opacity, in Normal blending and without object
effects took its glyph outlines from the geometry the renderer keeps
for each type object. Type at less than 100% opacity or in a blend
mode, and the art drawn for type with a drop shadow, glow, blur or
other raster effect, were laid out again in every frame.
draw_text now takes the geometry from text_geom_of when the type it
draws is fx_owner, the node draw_arc is drawing, and the frame does
not snap type to pixels. While the effect-art cache keeps type art,
that art is drawn as fx_owner. The geometry is laid out again when the
type is edited or the fonts change, and frames with Type Optimized
anti-aliasing lay type out as before. On 8 threads at 2880 x 1800, a
page of 1,000 type objects at 80% opacity takes 13 ms a frame instead
of 23 ms, with the same pixels.
Opaque type kept the layout of earlier frames when a symbol it shows
as an inline graphic changed size and the document's inline graphics
had not been resolved again. text_geom_of now lays type out without
the cache when the text it is given is not the node's own, such as the
copy that Document::inline_resolved makes with the new size.
Docs: docs/target-app-parity.md.
For a name that is neither a loaded nor an installed family,
FontDb::canonical built the list of names of every loaded face on
every call. Layout asks for a style's face for each span it shapes
and three more times per paragraph, so the time to lay out type set
in a font that is not installed grew with the number of fonts loaded:
a story of 1,000 paragraphs took a median of 409 to 507 ms in a
release build with 400 fonts added.
The database now keeps canonical's answer for each such name and style
until fonts are added or rescanned, and it keeps at most 4,096
answers. The same story takes a median of 56 to 71 ms, and canonical
gives the same answers as before.
Docs: docs/target-app-parity.md.
The VPORT view direction fix and its test stay. The Export Strokes as
Centerlines option and the preset button are not in the documented DXF/DWG
export options, so they wait for the owner's decision.
The Corner Radius field in the Properties and Transform panels has a
link toggle behind it (the "singleCornerRadius" preference, on by
default). When the link is on, one field sets every corner, as before.
When it is off, the panels show one field for each corner of a live
rectangle: Top Left, Top Right, Bottom Right and Bottom Left. Each field
sets its own corner through object.setLiveShape {corners, radius}.
This is the part of #1594 that does not change the corner widget drag
or its modifier keys, split out for review.
Tests: a Properties panel test (the link on shows one field; off shows
the four labelled fields with each corner's radius, in line and in
order). The new labels are translated in all 15 catalogs.
The public 3D and Materials panel options give the Light Settings as
Intensity (0–100 %), Rotation (-180° to 180°), Height (0° to 90°),
Softness (0–100 %) and Ambient Light (0–200 %), with the light moved to
the back or the front of the object. The 3D effects (Revolve included)
had Direction and Elevation (an azimuth and elevation), Intensity and
Ambient (0–100 %).
- Rotation turns the light round the object on the page (our reading:
0° on its right, counterclockwise); Height raises it from beside the
object (0°) to straight in front (90°); Light behind the object puts
it at the back. The light gizmo's ring and line are Rotation and
Height.
- Softness wraps the light round the object: at 0 % it falls off with
the angle as before, at 100 % it reaches nothing only straight away.
- Ambient Light runs to 200 %; faces stay no brighter than the art.
- lightRotation, lightHeight, lightBehind and lightSoftness replace
lightAzimuth and lightElevation. An earlier light is read as the same
direction, so it shades exactly as before (old and new code give the
same colours for the four effects and five lights); effect.setParams
turns a stored one into the new form before applying new values, and
the parameter description names lightAzimuth and lightElevation as the
earlier form, so effect.apply and effect.setParams still take them. The
default light is the earlier default's: Rotation 125.26°, Height 30°.
- The dialog's Lighting tab shows the settings in the documented order;
Softness, Ambient Light and Light behind the object are in every
catalog, and the unused Direction, Elevation and Ambient are gone.
Light colour, presets, several lights and shadows are not built.
The public 3D and Materials panel options give Perspective as 0° to 160°
("how close or far the object appears"); it was a 0–100 % strength, for
Revolve, Extrude & Bevel, Inflate and Rotate alike.
- The eye stands where a sphere about the object's centre, √3 times its
half size (the box around it fits inside), fills that angle of the
view: 0° is none, wider brings the eye nearer, and at 160° it is just
outside the sphere, never inside the object. The documentation doesn't
say how the angle places the eye; docs/three-d.md says this is our
reading.
- `perspectiveAngle` (degrees) replaces `perspective` (%). A strength from
an earlier file or script is read as the angle that shows exactly the
same view: sin(angle / 2) = √3 × strength / 4, 100 % about 51.3°. An
angle given too wins. effect.setParams turns a stored strength into the
angle before applying new values. The parameter description names
`perspective` as the earlier form, so effect.apply and effect.setParams
still take it under the key check of #1592. Old and new code draw the four effects identically at 0, 25,
60 and 100 % (bounds equal to 1e-9).
- The dialogs' Perspective fields run 0–160°.
# Conflicts:
# docs/target-app-parity.md
After every edit of a document with threaded text, each frame of a
drag included, threads::reflow copied the runs and the text object of
every frame of every thread, and then dropped the copies for each
thread whose frames the edit had not changed. With a story of 50,000
characters threaded through 8 frames with a style change at every word
(9,618 runs), moving another object took 7.8 ms in a release build,
and a frame of a drag took 7.2 ms.
reflow now copies a thread's story only when one of its frames
changed. The same move takes 0.013 ms, and the drag frame takes
0.012 ms. Threads with a changed frame re-flow as before, and the
documents and undo steps after edits are the same as before.
Docs: docs/target-app-parity.md.
When the desktop app opened a document on a thread of its own, that
thread parsed it, but open_read, which the app ran on the UI thread,
read the document's linked files, decoding BMP, PSD and RGB TIFF files
and storing them again as PNG, and laid out the type. In release builds,
a document with 12 linked 3000 x 2000 TIFFs kept the UI thread busy for
1.04 s, and one with 300 Auto Size area type objects, every second one
in three columns, kept it busy for 0.85 s.
read_for_open now reads the linked files and lays out the type on the
opening thread, with the path and the Update Links preference that
opening::start passes it, and open_read only adds the finished document.
open_read now takes 0.02 ms and 0.1 ms on those documents. For the
measured documents, the opened documents, results and undo states are
the same as on main.
Docs: docs/target-app-parity.md.
Every symbol instance was measured as its transform applied to the
20 × 20 square around the origin, which symbols made in the app keep
their art in. The SVG and DXF importers keep symbol art as drawn, so
the box of an instance of an imported symbol did not match its art.
The SVG Star instance at x 20, y 30 draws from (20, 30) to (40, 50)
and was measured from (10, 20) to (30, 40). Align moved such an
instance by the wrong amount, clicks and marquees beside its art
selected it, and the canvas, exports and prints left it out when its
art reached the view or the page and the square did not.
An instance is now measured by its symbol's art, which
Document::symbol_boxes looks up in the document each time
(Node::geometric_bounds_with, visual_bounds_with and
reach_bounds_with). With Use Preview Bounds on, the strokes in the art
count at their own weight, as the canvas draws them, and
object.setBounds counts them at that weight when it sizes an instance
or an object that holds one. When strokes do not scale and a width or
height of 0 or more is smaller than what a path's stroke adds,
object.setBounds now gives the path no width or height, as it does
for an instance whose art has strokes; before, it mirrored the path.
With Use Preview Bounds on, object.setBounds now measures the margins
that strokes add object by object, the members of groups and the
objects in symbol instances' art included, and solves for the width,
height and reference point asked for when the width and height are 0
or more. Before, it measured the margins of the whole selection and
could miss the size or the reference point asked for when strokes did
not scale and the objects' strokes added different margins, and when
strokes scaled and the width and height were out of proportion, even
for one path. A clip group, a Shaper Group, a compound path, type, and
a group or instance with effects or an opacity mask of its own are each
measured as one object, and so is an instance in perspective or one
turned or slanted relative to the bounding box, other than by quarter
turns. When the selection holds more than 4,096 objects to measure this
way, each selected object is measured as one. Instances inside symbol
art are measured by their own symbol's art. An instance is measured as
the square when its symbol is missing, when its symbol or a symbol
nested in its art holds an instance of itself, and when symbols nest 32
deep in its art.
Align and Distribute, the Transform panel, the bounding box and the
selection outline, clicks, the marquee, document.inspect and
document.node, Fit to Artwork Bounds and Fit to Selected Art, canvas
culling, thumbnails, the SVG filter region of an instance with a
raster effect, raster effect images, Export Selection, the SVG of an
artboard, printing, and the PDF, EPS, EMF/WMF and DXF writers use the
new box. The renderer also culls an instance by the effects and
brushed strokes in its art, and it culls a blend, envelope or repeat
by the brush art of what it holds and the effects in the art of the
instances in it. It culls an instance with geometry effects of its own
by the effects in its art after those geometry effects reshape the art.
It measures the effects in a symbol's art once for each symbol and
linear part of the transform that places it. For symbols whose art
holds instances, it measures at most 4,096 placements a frame, and at
most 4,096 more for each pattern tile it rasterizes and each placed
document it draws. Past that, it estimates the reach from the symbol's
reach with no transform, which it measures once. When the drawn
document's symbols change, the renderer drops the cached bounds of the
instances and of the objects that hold them.
The PDF and EPS writers, the SVG of an artboard and Skip Blank
Artboards grow the box of an instance whose art holds brushed strokes
by 16 times the widest stroke (at least 1 pt) of the objects in that
art that have a brushed stroke, plus 8 pt, as the renderer grows the
cull bounds of a brushed path. They keep an instance whose brush art
reaches the page. The SVG of an artboard also keeps an object that
holds an instance when what the canvas paints for it, the effects in
the symbol's art and the instance's own included, reaches the artboard.
Not yet: other commands that measure objects, such as Select › All on
Active Artboard, Transform Each and Convert to Artboards, still measure
an instance by the square.
Docs: docs/mcp.md, docs/target-app-parity.md.
The SVG import's style cascade tested every <style> rule against each
element it was asked about. The import asks about the objects outside
<defs> and the like when the file contains `display`, about each shape
when the file contains `non-scaling-stroke`, and about each <text>, its
spans and its ancestors. On a file with 2,000 class rules and 100,000
rectangles, `vectorcraft-cli info` took 3.54 s with one `display`
attribute in the file and 2.03 s without it.
The rules are now filed under the id of their selector's rightmost
compound, else under its first class, else under its type. An element
is tested against the rules filed under its id, its classes and its
type, and the rules filed under none of these, in source order. It
matches the same rules in the same order and gets the same
properties. The file with the `display` attribute now takes 2.10 s.
Docs: docs/target-app-parity.md.
skylar taylor-barrick