Deleting handles without breaking the curve

Is it possible to delete a handle without deleting the handle of the next node? I’ll try to illustrate:

A simple curve:

If I delete (hit backspace) the handle on the lower right, I get a flat line, i.e. the handle of the left node is also deleted:

A desired (optional) outcome would be keeping the handle of the left node intact, here I set the handle length of the right node to 0 manually in the info box:

Each segment always has two handles. They don’t belong to the on curve nodes (as Illustrator implies). So deleting one, you also have to delete the other (that is the default way to convert a curve in a line).

What you like to have is called a “dead” curve, where one handle is zero length. All you need to do is to move the handle on the on curve node (as you already did to produce the screenshot).

But dragging or entering something in the infobox is slow :confused: I‘ll rephrase: Is it possible to zero the length of a handle with a keyboard shortcut? Preferably something with backspace, like alt+backspace which deletes the whole segment. And it would be cool if it worked on multiple selected handles as well.

Btw, I thought a dead curve is a curve where both nodes have handles at zero length, so essentially a line?

We strongly discourage the use of zero length handles. So I will not add functionality to do it. But you can write a python script that does this and assign a shortcut to it.

That used to be my mindset too, but recently I wondered if there is any real downside if no TT conversion is involved. There are some reports on problems with rasterizers, maybe you can suggest some reading about it?

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If you must, you can work with zero handles, and then use this plug-in to fix them:

(available in Window > Plugin Manager)

But I recommend the use of the Fit Curve palette (described in various tutorials, e.g. in the Sketching tutorial) in combination with a harmonizing algorithm such the RMX tools or the SuperTool. See the Extend page for more details.

I know of the FitCurve, but rarely use it because I find it hard to predict the results sometimes and reproduce the values without a visual indication. The plug-in adds some rounding errors (of course it can‘t work otherwise), so I think I‘ll keep drawing with two handles for now, the rasterizers‘ bugs seem too severe to ignore. Thanks for looking into it.

I always use the shortcuts, ctrl-opt with number keys 1 through 8, for the 8 buttons.