It is not yet decided how much we want to get done before releasing Alpha 8 – so not possible to set a release date – but it is a matter of a few weeks from now.
Yes, our line-engine is very special, so it feels like traditional bitmap/pixel/raster, but it has vector data under the hood. This will give us a lot of advantages with planned features coming up – but already has a great advantage now when changing resolution or just scaling and rotating lassoed parts.
You say, you accidentally draw on clones. So why do you turn the lock off? It doesn’t change the fact that they are clones, it just makes you not able to update them by accident. Anyway, you want clones to be independent duplicates. I don’t see how this would be preferable generally. You say you will never ever use this clone linking. Why is that? It saves you a lot of time when colouring for example. Anyway, as I said above, I suggest you just hit O when you have copied a drawing, then you turn it white (so it is not a clone anymore).
Copy whole frames: Remember, the lasso is used for parts of drawings. Copy/paste is used in the X-sheet for whole drawings. When you pick up something with the lasso, you just stamp it down at the position and frame you want it. You don’t use Ctrl C / Ctrl V.
Sorry for all my writing 😉 It’s not that I am trying to defend anything, I am just trying to explain things. If you feel strongly about a point, please elaborate further. I really want to fully get where you are coming from, so I can make Animation Paper as good as possible for everybody.