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Gex14286
Gex14286
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Expanding apperance on objects with stroke set to outline

Feb 14, 2011 1:59 PM

When you expand an object with stroke set to outside Illustrator creates the objects with the fill coming to the middle of the stroke. Visually it looks the same because the fill is behind the stroke but when you go into outline mode or remove the stroke you can see that the fill is larger than the original one. Any thoughts on this?

1197 Views   4 Replies   Latest reply: Mike Gondek, Feb 17, 2011 6:32 AM
 
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  • Scott Falkner
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    1. Scott Falkner,
    Feb 14, 2011 2:28 PM   in reply to Gex14286
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    I’m not surprised. Almost every feature in Illustrator is only half implemented and has many confusing quirks that make little or no sense. I suspect that Illustrator’s ancient core drawing engine can only support centreline strokes. To give the illusion of outside strokes Illustrator cheats and uses a stroke twice as large, which is draws behind the path, or perhaps expands the path by half the stroke weight. Either way would show the same thing while using a centreline path for rendering. Since the base path is unaffected, when you expand the stroke the base path remains.

     

    It’s just reason number 742 why Illustrator should have been put out to pasture years ago and replaced with a streamlined, modern drawing program that deserves to be an industry leader. You know, like they did with InDesign.

     

    in the meantime, why not just remove the path before you expand appearance?

     
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  • Jacob Bugge
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    2. Jacob Bugge,
    Feb 15, 2011 1:42 AM   in reply to Gex14286
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    Gex,

     

    As I (mis)read the OP, that would be expected behaviour, which might bring the number of reasons back down to 741; or, which might on the contrary confirm that it is indeed the 742nd:

     

    When you set the stroke to outside, which in appearance corresponds exactly to offsetting the path by half the stroke weight, you convince Illy that you actually want to move the appearance of the path outward, and she is already convinced that a fill should go to the centre of the stroke as always, so when you expand it, thereby replacing the actual artwork by a simpler one with the same appearance, she complies with what she genuinely believes is what you want.

     

    You could have fooled me, and I believe we might see more complaints if it worked the other way.

     

    I am with Illy on this, but maybe I am getting too old, too.

     
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  • Scott Bateman
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    3. Scott Bateman,
    Feb 17, 2011 6:00 AM   in reply to Gex14286
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    You could always just hit 'Trim' afterwards...

     
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  • Mike Gondek
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    4. Mike Gondek,
    Feb 17, 2011 6:32 AM   in reply to Gex14286
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    Does not really make a difference  to me, as the result is the same. Only time I use stroke to outside is when I have  a fill of none. Most of the time I move the fill on top of the stokes in the appearance panel cause it is like a natural reflex of doing this since CS.

     

    Now when you set type the fill is automatically assigned to the character appearance level, I would prefer it is set at the type level instead, and only if you select a character should it assign a fill at that level in postscript. When I stroke text, I have an extra step of removing the appearance attributes at the type level and after doing this about 20x a day is getting monotonous. I should probably make an action for this.

     
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