adobe.illustrator.featurerequests

Subject: Re: Poll Time: Post Your Top 5 Most Wanted Features For CS 3.

(Freehand has two pointer tools as well.)

FH now has two pointers. As I recall this first appeared in FH9. I (and I suspect most longtime FH users) never used it and saw it as a completely superfluous concession to AI users.

Prior to that time, the behaviors enabled by the hollow pointer were always possible, and were invoked by pressing Alt when the black pointer was in hand. Thus, the experienced FH user has always thought of the alt key press, not as a "tool change" to a separate selection tool, but as a "mode change" for the black selection tool. This difference is more substantive than just "tomayto/tomahto."

For FH users, path manipulation was (and still is) simple, efficient, and elegant: Regardless of what drawing tool you had in hand, at any time, you pressed Ctrl to momentarily invoke the pointer, and optionally added Alt to make it "dig deeper" (or put it in "subselect mode" if you will). This let you select, subselect, extract handles, retract handles, change point type. It augmented the drawing of paths, because it didn't interrupt the drawing of paths by a "hard tool change" to a "convert point tool," etc.

It wasn't until FHMX, when the shape objects (rectangle, ellipse, multigon) acquired their special adjustment handles that the white pointer actually started taking on unique functions. You might say the special handles of shapes and the new on-object grad controls "gave the hollow pointer something to do."

But for the vast majority of routine selection and manipulations, FH users still think of FH as having one selection pointer.

I know that many AI users argue that they seldom (some say "never") use the black pointer, and think this is a counterpoint to the FH argument. It is not. First, using only the Direct Selection tool, you do willingly give up some functionality (that of side handles for rotated bounding boxes, for example). Moreover, though, I dare say that for most users the presence of the two pointers is quite often a stumbling block, because they do sometimes use the black pointer. So then, they're doing something with some tool, press Ctrl to invoke the pointer, get the wrong one, and have to toggle to the other.

Second, the difference between FH and AI is more basic than "one pointer vs. two pointers." Clearly in AI you cannot get along very well while drawing paths if you consider the black pointer your primary selection tool. That means that your primary selection tool is the hollow pointer. But in AI that means that selections are always in a "specific-to-general" sequence. That is, if you click a path with AI's white pointer, you select the "most basic" subpart--a segment or a point. You do additional things (usually press Alt to invoke the group tool) to select more general (the whole path or composite subpath, the group, etc.) So I call this AI's "specific-to-general" selection convention.

It's the other way 'round in FH. Your main selection tool is the black pointer. The first click selects the whole object. A subsequent click "digs deeper" to select specific points, etc. If you want to start at the bottom, you press Alt to, say, lasso a few points within a group.

So if you are an AI user who "never uses the black pointer," and offer that as advice to a FH user, it does not address his trouble. He then feels like he's trying to pick up Jello with a chopstick.

On top of all this you add the need for a hard tool change to the convert tool to extract/retract points. So from a longtime FH user's perspective it's quite easy for me to understand the request to "merge" AI's two pointers. (Although that is not the root of the problem.)

And at any rate, if the response to the "Please merge the pointers" request is "You really don't need to use both pointers"; then I take that as an indication that one of the pointers is superfluous, probably not pulling its own weight, unnecessarily adding confusion, and getting in the way as a stumbling block.

I personally believe an innovative selection/manipulation scheme could probably be devised which would be superior to both FH's and AI's. But as long as AI's existing conventions are considered "sacred ground" that can't be altered, I don't believe the "best of both" can be cleanly merged; and I'd have to continue to believe that FH's setup simply is less tedious and confused, and more efficient once a user is proficient with it.

JET

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