How do I distribute space between paths within a compound path?

Question

It seems impossible to distribute space between paths in a compound path. If I shift select all the paths in compound path isolation mode and choose a distribute spacing option, nothing happens. But if I cut and paste the paths outside the compound path I can align them as normal and then cut and paste them back into the compound path. Obviously this is not a pleasant workflow. Why can't I just distribute space between paths within the compound path?

Similarly, ungrouping seems completely broken inside compound paths. I can group paths but ungrouping does nothing. I must cut the group outside the compound path, ungroup the paths and then cut and paste them back in. Why is compound path editing mode so seemingly broken?

Answer 1

Ok the reason is that the compound path object can not have structure. So it seems that being able to group at all is a bug caused by unpacking the compound path for editing. So technically you shouldnt, most probably, be able to do this at all.

Reason for this is that the compound path object does not have internal structure that would allow grouping. They would need to change the primitive to allow this. This would have some deep comsequences.

1. Currently compound path mimics the structure in both SVG and PDF specification. Which also dont allow structure in the compound path.
2. This would neccesitate building a wrapper class on top of the engine. This would also mean that you would need a mechanism to expand this layer.
3. For all intents and purposes this interdiction layer does exsist in the form of live boolan operations (holding alt, option or somesuch in pathfinder for live operations just release and do live boolean). Its support for grouping is a bit limited though.
4. It would make illustrator harder to use. All of the indirect tools on top of illustrator are badly understood by users who in general just want direct modeling (but with all the benefits of the indirect modeling).
5. Point 4 in turn would mean re engineering illustrator. Since if you go indirect route then there is no good reason to preserve compound path object at all. It would be asy to design so that neither clipping paths, nor compound path objects are needed as first class objects. Doing this would make alpha masking, knockout geometry etc fit better in the overall design.

Anyway, since Adobe is trying to reengineer the system for better indirect support it may be that what you are asking is a effort towards that and this may in fact be a implementation oversight. But just as likely you should not be able to group at all.

Answer 2

A compound path by definition creates one single path from separate individual paths. The distribute option, even in Isolation mode, is trying to distribute one path- which does nothing- you are correct.

As for the grouping- you can think you are grouping the various separate paths that make up your compound path- but in fact you are creating a group which holds only the single compound path itself and not a group of its various component paths. If you look inside the group in the layers panel it will show only the compound path- a single item.

It seems you might start off just grouping all the separate component paths so you can easily select them and they can be manipulated and moved together easily. Then after you have them distributed and laid out properly make them into a compound path.