Nope. Adobe changed it because I guess a lot of inexperienced users were confused when working within the (inappropriately named) “Suite”’ that the coordinates didn’t agree between programs. I find that a sound complaint. There is no preference except to continue to use an older version.
There was discussion in an older port about this and people could not reach consensus that a preference would have been a good idea. I don”t buy it. Illustrator files store all coordinates in points. Changing your preference to work in millimetres or picas doesn’t confuse things, nor does changing the ruler origin. Adding a preference to let people choose the polarity of the rulers should not be that hard and, if well implemented, should not cause problems when opening files on other computers or when frequently switching the polarity of a ruler.
Ah, but the magic words in that last sentence are, “well implemented,” when explains why that is not how Adobe made the change. Illustrator features are rarely well-implemented. They are usually added piecemeal without though to intuitiveness or smooth integration with the program. That’s why we now have four distinct tools (Pathfinder panel, Pathfinder effects, Live Paint, and Shape Builder) all to accomplish the same task, each in very different ways and each completely unconnected to the others.
The saddest part of this story is that I don’t think Adobe would have made such a dramatic change to the way the program works if they didn’t expect the program to be around for a long time. I keep praying that Adobe will take Illustrator to the glue factory (and not for the two-day tour) and replace it with a lean, modern, efficient drawing program free of all the old legacy code and terrible work-arounds that have become institutionalized within the program. That worked for InDesign when they knew PageMaker was a lost cause. It can work for Illustrator when they realize it has been a lost cause for about a decade.
.jpeg)
