Stroke Alignment Request

[tatyanade]

Can there be a call for strokes to only be external? useful for outlining i.e. #73 ; if you have a lot of different shapes at once and want your full embroidery outlined without interfering with the inside this would be great to have - useful for many designs and things like patches

ie E.strokeAlignment( CENTER | EXTERNAL | INTERNAL); with thickness of the purple corresponding to E.strokeWeight

or even the same thing with float input where internal corresponds to 1, center to 0, and internal to -1 which would provide more control depending on how precise someone wants to be with their stroke placement

[golanlevin]

Hm, "alignment" isn't quite the right term, since that suggests an orientation. Photoshop calls this attribute "location":

I do think this is a good idea, and @tatyanade, I like your -1...0...1 suggestion. @LingDong- , I think having precise control over the location of the stroke would be helpful. Is this possible?

Also, @tatyanade, having variable control over the strokeLocation() is one thing, but if you just want it on the outside, I guess you have already seen #73 , https://github.com/CreativeInquiry/PEmbroider/issues/73 ...

[LingDong-]

ok! I can add that feature. With TANGENT mode it's easier (by rendering the Processing raster with some extra tricks). With PERPENDICULAR it is a lot more complicated but still doable.

[tatyanade]

@golan I think either I'm missing something or we are using the word outside differently; I'm meaning on the outside as in the first of these 2 images, and 73 does outside as in encircling all the shapes but still overlapping with the inner fill (2nd image), which is what i'm assuming you mean by outside?

[golanlevin]

@tatyanade you're correct; #73 would require some fuckery with booleanGraphics in order to achieve what I was talking about, which was a pure outside outline.

@LingDong- , my proposed API is

E.strokeLocation(PEmbroiderGraphics.OUTSIDE); 
E.strokeLocation(1.0); // same as above

E.strokeLocation(PEmbroiderGraphics.CENTER);
E.strokeLocation(0.0); // same as above

E.strokeLocation(PEmbroiderGraphics.INSIDE);
E.strokeLocation(-1.0); // same as above

with other fractions possible. For sanity's sake I propose clamp the fractions to -1...1, we shouldn't have to think about what it means if someone does E.strokeLocation(-3.0);

[tatyanade]

can also be achieved by culling all shapes from the outline of the union of the shapes, but stroke location simplifies this & yes! nice to be able to finesse the exact value (ie .33, .75) and a limit seems reasonable - guessing values of above that and below that would look something like this which does make sense as long as they don't go too negative lol - over 1 makes sense and might be usefull to some but i dont really thing anyone would need to go lower = if anyone needs to do something weird like that it is still possible through a combination of culling & outlines (stroke purple , actual shape in red)

[LingDong-]

CENTER==3 :/

[golanlevin]

@LingDong- — It's OK, don't sweat it. just make new constants:

STROKE_OUTSIDE = 1.0; 
STROKE_CENTER = 0.0; 
STROKE_INSIDE = -1.0; 

[LingDong-]

Nah I fixed it with method overloading:

    static public final int INSIDE = -1;
    static public final int OUTSIDE = 1;
    static public final int CENTER = 3; // because Processing says so

    public float STROKE_LOCATION = 0.0f;

    public void strokeLocation(float x) {
        STROKE_LOCATION = PApplet.min(PApplet.max(-1,x),1);
    }

    public void strokeLocation(int mode) {
        if (mode == CENTER) {
            strokeLocation(0.0f);
        }else {
            strokeLocation((float)mode);
        }
    }

I already knew how to hack it, just thought it was funny so I posted sorry

[LingDong-]

Hi @golanlevin @tatyanade

Feature added: 6e08f475e14d04cfd464f0544dafc28e437d8400

Also added an example: examples/PEmbroider_strokeLocation. Use mouseX to control strokeLocation interactively

However there's one problem: if the shape has a really skinny part (or a skinny gap) that's smaller than half of stroke weight, the erosion/dilation will devour it