Re: Customise arrow heads

[Lars Ræder Clausen <lars raeder dk>]

On Tue, 2008-09-09 at 12:32 +0100, Jane Crilley wrote:
> Is there a way add your own design of arrow heads from .shape files?

Short answer: No. 

Long answer: Arrowhead positioning is less trivial that it would appear,
since you actually have to slide the head a little back from where it's
connecting to to allow for the line thickness of both what it connects
to and the arrowhead itself. Since the arrowhead line thickness affects
the distance in different ways according to the shape, this is not
trivial. At the same time, the line of the arrow has to be moved back as
much and then some to account for the rest of the arrowhead.

Any system for customizable arrow heads would either make bad-looking
heads or have to be quite advanced to position the arrow heads
correctly.

Another issue is that .shape files doesn't know about connections, they
only deal with elements. 

-Lars