Comment 2 for bug 459811

confirmed, this is a regression.

The icons for choosing ellipse type work properly on Oct 13, 2008 build 19989, they do not work properly on Nov 20, 2008 builld 20225.
In the broken version, a switch between the ellipse type arc-unclosed to arc-closed will be remembered and used both on the current ellipse and on new objects, but a switch from an arc object to a whole ellipse will not be remembered when drawing new objects.