Now that you can transform your objects by a myriad of methods, it’s time to look closer at what exactly gets transformed when you do it. As it turns out, Inkscape can optionally affect or not affect some specific parts of objects. This is controlled by the Affect toggle buttons on the right end of the Selector controls bar:
There are four Affect toggle buttons, in the following order:
Stroke width
This button applies only to scaling and has no effect on moving, rotating, or skewing. When this button is on, any scaled object that has stroke (8.1.1 Paint) will have the width of the stroke scaled by the corresponding ratio. For example, if you scale an object with a 2-px wide stroke to twice its current size and this button is on, the resulting object will have 4-px wide stroke. If the button is off, it will have the same unchanged stroke width of 2 px.
If you scale an object without preserving the aspect ratio, with the Affect stroke width button on, stroke gets scaled by the square root of the product of vertical and horizontal scale ratios. For example, if you scale an object to twice its width horizontally but leave its height unchanged, the stroke becomes wider by a factor of 1.415 (the square root of 2).
Keeping stroke width unscaled is more commonly useful. For example, in a plan or draft, you normally want all your objects to have the same fixed stroke width, unaffected by scaling, so there you would toggle this button off. It only makes sense to toggle this button on when you use stroke as a purely visual element (such as brush-like strokes in a freehand drawing).
Note
Profiled strokes that the Pen and Pencil tools create (Chapter 14) always scale their width when the object is scaled.
Rounded rectangle corners
This button also applies only to scaling and has no effect on moving, rotating, or skewing. It controls whether Inkscape scales the rounded corners of rectangles (11.2.2 Rounding). When it’s on, a rectangle is scaled as a whole, just as it would be scaled if converted to path; this may lead to the rounded corner becoming larger, smaller, and/or nonround. When it’s off, Inkscape preserves the rounded corners exactly as they were. This can be useful, for example, in a flowchart diagram where you want all your boxes to have the same rounded corners independent of their sizes.
Gradients
This button controls whether transformations are applied to the gradients in objects’ fills or strokes (10.1 The Gradient Tool). Since gradients (more precisely, positions of gradient stops) can be moved, rotated, and skewed as well as scaled, this button applies to any kind of transformations. When it’s on, the gradient stops are transformed as a whole with the object carrying the gradient. When it’s off, the gradient stays glued to the canvas (unchanged in position, direction, or scale) while the object is transformed.
For example, with this button toggled off, it is possible to move an object beyond its own gradient, or scale it up so that more of the gradient becomes visible. This is useful when the gradient’s position is exactly coordinated with other objects in your drawing, while the object itself is simply a “window” onto that gradient, and you want to move or adjust the edges of that window without touching the gradient itself.
Patterns
This button is completely analogous to the Affect gradients button except that it applies to the patterns (10.8 Patterns) instead of gradients.
Note
In future versions, more Affect buttons may be added—for example, for scaling or not scaling path effects (Chapter 13) or filter effects (Chapter 17).
Note
There’s an annoying but harmless bug: Regardless of the current position of the Affect buttons, interactive transforming of objects by the mouse in the Selector tool always shows stroke, rounded corners, gradients, and patterns as transformed while you’re dragging the mouse. As soon as you release the mouse, however, everything is corrected according to the current state of the Affect buttons.