Tracker: Tools

[novhack]

The following list also contains some suggestions from me that come from what is available in other pixel art tools.
I also went through issues and compiled the ones that are related to tools.

Pencil

• Tools suggestions: Brushes & dithering #574
• Brush improvements #569

Shape tools

• Circle and Rectangle shape tools #359
• Shift to make a circle or square
• Ctrl to move center of shape to click origin

Line tool

• A dedicated line tool
  Could have the v0.7 way of drawing to make it different from pencil shift mode

Curve tool

• A dedicated curve tool. EDIT: Implemented in Curve tool implementation #1019.
• Graphics Gale has a very nice implementation of this
• Aseprite and MSPaint have a little simpler implementation
  
  

Polygon tool

• Advanced tool in Aseprite that seems useful. EDIT: The curve tool has a fill shape option, which can be used to make filled polygons. Is a dedicated polygon tool needed?
  

Contour tool

• Implemented in "Fill inside" option in pencil tool #489 which is based on Add shape fill tool #459
  This one is in Aseprite
  

Text tool

• Text tool #589 (Implemented in Add a text tool #1134, destructive-only)

Move tool

• Move Tool #313
• Click + drag could move the whole layer
• Option for looping so pixels moved over the edge appear on other side of canvas
• Useful in animation

Zoom tool

• Zoom as tool is weird #211
• It could be more useful to react to mouse click + drag
  • Drag left from click origin -> zoom out
  • Drag right from click origin -> zoom in

Advanced selection tool

• Rectangular, Elliptical selection
• Magic wand Improvement: Better selections and more selection options #567
• Lasso Improvement: Better selections and more selection options #567
• Other related issues:
  • Improve the rectangular selection tool #56
  • Feature: Rotsprite #563 (rotate selection?)

Lighten/darken

• Lighten/Darken Tool configurable shift. #189

Other tools related issues:

• Add Tool Hints at bottom of the window #577
• User interface. If a keyboard shortcut exists, there should be a button for it. #575
• Request: Pick Color with Alt and mouse button. #125

[OverloadedOrama]

The contour tool seems pretty straightforward. If I'm not wrong, it's basically the pencil tool, but after you release the mouse it connects the end point to the start point and then just fills the area. I think it might be better if it was a pencil option, like "Contour mode" instead of a tool of its own.

[novhack]

then just fills the area.

This part might be a little bit more complicated with overlapping lines but the idea of adding it into Pencil seems alright.

[OverloadedOrama]

Leaving this for future reference for ellipses and Bézier curves: http://members.chello.at/easyfilter/bresenham.html

[Variable-ind]

The text tool is added in 1.1 (list should now be updated 😁)