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![[Jongware]](/people/%5BJongware%5D/avatar/30.png?a=21044)
Hi Ted
OC Photoworx wrote:
I have a polygon in InDesign. When I stroke it, the "inside" and "outside" are reversed; when I specify align the stroke outside, it appears inside the polygon, and vice versa. How can I tell InDesign to flip its notion of what is inside and outside for this particularl polygon?
Object menu -> Path -> Reverse Path
It sounds like either the path gets reversed while copying, or it is in fact 'the wrong way around' in one of the programs but the other does not mind.
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@Jongware – at first, I thought "Reverse Path" was the solution, but in my experiments that does not work.
To illustrate the problem (InDesign only) with text converted to "outlines":
InDesign composite path of two rectangles:
(left: align center; right: align outside)
Illustrator composite path with two rectangles:
(left: align center; right: align outside)
I think the problem arrises due to a bad design decision of the "Composite Path" feature in InDesign.
Can we consider that as a bug?
Don't know…
Uwe
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@Steve Warner - If it were a preferences issue, I would expect the behavior to be consistent. It's not.
@Laubender - While I initially saw this strange behavior with a composite path, it's also occurring with a polygon. While there's room for discussion about what is the inside and outside of a compound path, I don't think there's any ambiguity about inside and outside for a polygon. (I appreciate you taking the time to duplicate the result!)
An additional question occurred to me last night: If the fill color is inside the path, why does "inside aligned" stroking appear outside the path?
In this example, the shape on the left has "outside" aligned strokes; the one on the right has "inside" aligned strokes. Both have a red fill.
Seems like an "undocumented feature" (aka bug) to me...
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@Laubender - Reverse Path doesn't produce any results. Which probably makes sense: This is a polygon, not a compound path.
Here's some more fun for you. I used the Pen tool to draw a square at the left edge of this image. The stroke alignment works as expected. Then I selected the left "w" polygon, turned off the stroke, then used the Pen tool to draw a polygon just slightly larger than the original. No games; I started at the upper left corner point and went clockwise around the original polygon, with a total of 21 clicks, the last one closing the path. I was startled to find that the stroking of this new polygon -- created entirely within InDesign -- is backwards.
Left as an exercise for the reader: At what point between a quadrilateral and an irregular icosagon does InDesign lose its mind?
I tried uploading an IDML file, but the forum editor doesn't allow such things and I don't have a place where I can put it on the web. But if you download the image from before and use it as a drawing guide, I'm guessing you'll be able to reproduce my results.
I can tell you that it's more than just the number of sides (20). When I created a new file in InDesign and tried a random 20-sided design, the stroking worked "correctly." Loosely outlining the w shape gave incorrect results, as did a 10-pointed starburst:
So the copy/paste from Illustrator appears to play no part in this puzzle. Unfortunately, this shoots down what I had hoped to use as a workaround: Use the pen tool to copy the items in InDesign.
Extra credit: Figure out the least complex polygon which demonstrates this behavior.
And the last tidbit for now: I created a roughly square quadrilateral with the Pen and then added four more points to each side. Starting at the upper left corner, I dragged points into a rough approximation of the w. When I dragged the 15th point into place -- the stroke flipped from outside to inside by itself. Here are the before and after figures. I know you can't see the path line, but if you look at the space between the vertices and the edge of the image, you can see that the stroke on the right is now inside the polygon. The only difference is that I grabbed the second point over in the bottom left corner and dragged it up and to the right.
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Here's a simpler version. Place the following image into an InDesign document:
Select the Pen tool. Select Align Stroke to Outside. Reproduce the shape with the Pen tool. I started in the upper left corner and proceeded clockwise around the figure. For me, the stroke stays outside until I close the path -- and then it flips inside.
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@OC Photoworx – ok.
With tracing the "W" image with the pen tool (clockwise) I can reproduce the issue. Just before closing the path the appearance of the stroke is like I want ("outside"); after closing the path the appearance changes to "inside".
And another thing, too: when moving the last point before the starting point to the left, the stroke appearance suddenly will change from "inside" to "outside". THAT is really strange!It changes in the moment the point moves to the left of the imaginery straight line between the first point and the point before the last point:
Not moving the path point:
Moving the point a bit to the left, NOT crossing the line:
After crossing the line:
Uwe
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