[Oisín]

I haven’t noticed this happening before (though I might just never have tried to do it before), but today when trying to open the Pen Tool options in Illustrator CS4, by double-clicking the tool icon, nothing happens. Every resource I’ve been able to find on the Net, including the adobe.com support pages, says that that is how you open the Pen Tool options: by double-clicking. The same goes for all the other tools—double-clicking just does nothing.

This is on my (mid-2008 alu unibody) MacBook running 10.5.8. I’m not at home right now, so I don’t know whether it’s the same on my desktop computer, too.

Is there some other way to get to these options, or am I just SOL? And what might be a way to fix it?

[Thorzdad]

In CS5, the double-click doesn't work for the Pen tool either. Dunno why. It works for other (but not all) tools. Do you get a window when you double-click on the Pencil tool? You should. Same with the Eraser and Blend tools.

I skipped CS4, so I am not familiar with the UI. Is there a Control panel across the top of the screen? In CS5, this is where all the options for the Pen tool appear when you click on it. It's activated by going to Window > Control in the Menu bar.

[Oisín]

There is a control panel, yes, but it doesn’t have the tool preferences, only the on-the-fly options (or whatever you want to call them). Double-clicking is supposed to bring up a window with options/prefs like filedity, smoothness, etc., which aren’t in the control panel bar thingy at the top.

(Doesn’t work at home, either, now confirmed)