Apply stroke color without using the fill/stroke toggle — plus an indicator desync bug

Hi all,

I work in prepress — multi-layer label and packaging artwork, CMYK output, Illustrator 30.5.1 on
Windows 11. Two related items: one bug, one feature request. They have the same root cause, so I'm
posting them together.

--- BUG: the fill/stroke indicator can show a stale state ---

Steps to reproduce:

1. Draw a rectangle that has both a fill and a stroke.
2. Press X so stroke becomes the active paint. The toolbox indicator correctly shows stroke in front.
3. Switch to another tool and back, or draw a new object, or press D.
4. Click a swatch in the Swatches panel.
5. The FILL changes, while the toolbox indicator still shows stroke in front.

Workaround: press X two or three times. The indicator repaints, and swatch clicks apply correctly
again — until the next tool switch.

So the active-paint flag itself is probably correct; the indicator is being repainted asynchronously
(or missing a redraw), which means it can display a state that no longer exists. Since that
indicator is the only feedback telling the user which attribute a color will affect, a stale
indicator silently produces the wrong result — in my case, a wrong stroke color that only shows up
after output.

Two things that would fix it:
a. Repaint the fill/stroke indicator synchronously whenever the active-paint state changes.
b. Treat the active-paint state as a single source of truth shared by the toolbox, Swatches, Color
   and Gradient panels, so panels and indicator can never disagree.

--- REQUEST: let the user target stroke directly, without a toggle ---

Independently of the bug: applying a color always routes through one global toggle. A toggle is the
wrong control for something I do several hundred times per job, because it is stateful — the result
depends on what happened before. I want a way to say "this color goes to the stroke" that does not
depend on any prior state.

In order of preference:

A. Right-click a swatch → "Apply as Stroke" / "Apply as Fill".
   Fastest path, no mode, no shortcut to remember. This is what CorelDRAW users have had for
   decades, and it's the main reason people who move between the two applications keep making
   stroke errors in Illustrator.

B. Modifier-click on a swatch: Alt-click (Win) / Option-click (macOS) applies to stroke; plain click
   keeps applying to the active paint. Optionally Ctrl-right-click / Cmd-right-click as an
   alternative for users whose Alt is already overloaded.

C. Give the Swatches panel its own always-visible Fill / Stroke target pair, the way the Color panel
   already has one. A swatch click could then be aimed at stroke without touching X.

D. At minimum: expose "Apply Fill Color" and "Apply Stroke Color" as menu commands in
   Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts, so users can bind an idempotent key (always set stroke) instead of a
   toggle (switch to whatever isn't active). A toggle can't be made reliable; a set command can.

Any of A, B or D solves it. A alone solves it for everyone without asking anyone to relearn anything.

--- WHY THIS IS A PRODUCTION ISSUE, NOT A PREFERENCE ---

Changing stroke colors is a hundreds-of-times-per-job action. A misapplied color that isn't caught
before output is a wrong plate, a wrong separation, or scrap material — a reprint. When the indicator
can lie, every color application has to be verified, which removes most of the speed the keyboard
workflow was supposed to give me.

Prior context: I suggested that artboard names be shown directly on canvas in normal (non-artboard-
edit) mode. That was implemented as the "01 - Artboard 1" label, and it saved a full round-trip per
document. This request is a smaller change than that one, and it costs more time per job.

Happy to record a screen capture of the indicator desync if that's useful.

Thanks.