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4.2.2 Paths

A special case of a group is a path. In addition to the features of groups, a path has its own style properties which are used for all its contents. Thus, if you have, for example, a path with blue stroke-color, all lines are drawn in blue regardless of the colors of the individual lines. Moreover, a path can be filled – the fill-color property controls the fill color of the entire path (in the “even-odd” fill style). Apart from the fill style, the way a path is drawn differs slightly from the way VRR would draw all the individual objects: the lines are connected together and line caps are used for path end points only.

The objects in a path obey strict geometric dependency requirements. The start point hanger of each object must hang on the end point anchor of the previous one. Therefore, when you try to use the Anchor rehang tool (see Anchor rehang) on the contents of a path, it usually fails as the dependency rules cannot be (even temporarily) broken). Not all objects can be contained in a path – the suitable objects are segments, Bézier curves and circular/elliptic arcs.