funwithstuff

Loving the dedication to finding out exactly what modifier keys do what in TextEdit! I'd still love to see Command give me a move tool in every context available. :)

Thanks. I did discover this, but I find it fussy, because moving to select an edge requires clicking on a very small target with precision, and in some contexts it doesn't work. For me, the cursors also don't always change to indicate if the "drag at edge" feature will function. Holding Command to move has been a convention for decades, and it's been the #1 problem I've had adapting to Affinity apps. Command does work pretty well when drawing a shape — it switches to the Node tool, like Illustrator's Direct Selection tool — but it doesn't do anything useful when working with text. I do realise that holding Command allows selection of non-contiguous text areas, but Command-Option also works for that, and could continue to work.

Is there a way to customise how the modifier keys (alone) work? Not simply with shortcuts, but on their own? I've got all three Affinity apps too, but without the ability to hold Command (on the Mac) to quickly and temporarily access the Move Tool, I'm really feeling limited. If I'm editing some text, and it's in just the wrong place, I can't just quickly Command-drag it to move it as I would in all the Adobe apps, and as I've been doing for 25+ years. To leave text editing mode and move it, I have to press Escape (sometimes twice) and then V, and lose my current place in the text too. Worse, Command-dragging on the Mac makes duplicates like Option-dragging does! Option-dragging is the standard way to make copies all through the Mac system, not just Adobe, so that's not changing. But please, can the Move Tool automatically be selected when Command is held, at least as an option? It's really slowing me down and I don't see a good alternative. I don't mind differences, but this is a regression. Suggestions welcome; apologies if I've missed something.

Power duplicate is roughly a match for Transform Again in Illustrator, and it's not nearly as good as InDesign's "Gridify" feature. (In fact, Illustrator doesn't have a great way to make grids either.) The way InDesign builds grids is that you press the arrow keys while you're dragging a shape. Up/down change the number of rows, Left/right change the number of columns, Command-arrows change the gaps, and when you let the mouse go, the entire grid appears, taking up exactly the amount of space you chose. The same thing while you're placing multiple images places those images in a grid. Alternatively, there's also Edit > Step and Repeat which can make grids instantly. The guide manager is probably the best way to get the job done here, but it's not much fun to poke around in dialog boxes.

Loving Affinity Publisher so far, but one total deal killer for a couple of my clients is the absence of captions. In InDesign, I can automatically create static captions based on the image name (or any other metadata property). This is a massive time saver for creating image-heavy catalogues and there's no equivalent feature in Publisher, so please consider adding it? Along the same lines, a tool for creating grids of picture frames would be terrific, and there's room to improve over InDesign's tricky method (arrows while holding the mouse button) too. Many thanks for what you've done so far — it's great.

The joy of the A sizes is that their ratio of 1:√2 makes resizing easy. More info: http://betweenborders.com/wordsmithing/a4-vs-us-letter/ And here's a map of metric adoption (no offence intended!): http://mentalfloss.com/article/55895/countries-havent-adopted-metric-system

Optical kerning is sometimes essential to avoid disasters, even in common fonts. Writing about Tchaikovsky in Gill Sans, for instance, isn't possible without it, because the designers forgot to provide for the "Tc" pair.

Confirmed that different profiles give different breakdowns in different profiles. Also confirmed that this actually happens in InDesign as well. I think it's still going to freak people out, but it's a good reminder that you need to pick colours for a design using Pantone OR CMYK, but not both. The remaining differences between InDesign and Affinity Publisher are probably due to the new Pantone Coated V2 breakdowns, but check profiles if you're comparing the apps.

The "hold down the key" feature is the newer way to add special characters, but the "dead key" feature (option-i then e for ê, option-u then o for ö) has worked forever in every app, is a system standard, and needs to work properly too.

Great start to the app, a few rough edges obviously. 1. While it's easy enough to use any Pantone colour in the Swatches panel, it's hard to add one to the document swatch. The #1 way people will try is to go to the Swatches panel, then choose "Add Global Colour…", but if you choose Pantone in that modal dialog box, you can't show the list of swatches by name, and you can't search. You can hover and wait for a tooltip, but that's a nightmare. 2. Going a different way, choosing Pantone from the Swatches panel, then 485C, then applying that to an object, then right-clicking the object and choosing Add to Swatches > From Fill works, but it's not obvious. 3. Converting the Pantone 485C swatch back into CMYK doesn't give the values I'd expect. In InDesign, this is 5.84/97.64/100/0.57, but in Affinity Publisher I see 0/81/87/15? Another: Pantone 130C in InDesign is 2.43/37.87/100/0, but in Publisher it's 0/30/100/5. What's going on? Is there some kind of double conversion happening? Is it just that the new "V2" of Pantone+ Coated is completely different *again* from the last version? (Pantone+ Coated is not the same as Pantone Coated, all the CMYK breakdowns changed in CS5 but few noticed. 485C used to be 0/98/100/0.) Worth noting that the Pantone+ CMYK Coated values *do* seem to be the same between InDesign and Publisher. Still, if Pantone numbers in Publisher are so wildly different from Pantone numbers in InDesign, clients will be pretty unhappy. Most people only use the "C" numbers but then print in CMYK anyway — the breakdowns are really, really important. This may be Pantone's fault, but Affinity will get the blame if colours don't match.

Just trying out the app, and a few missing shortcuts slowed me way down. Many of the shortcuts shown have been lifted from Photoshop, so please take a few more: Command-Delete (i.e. backspace) and Option-Delete to fill with foreground and background colours. Shift-Delete should bring up the fill dialog. D to return to default colours, X to swap foreground and background. Those, together, make working with masks much, much easier. I also need a bigger brush than 1000pixels to work on larger images. There are many subtle points in the UI which need work, but it's a beta so that's OK. A few first impressions are that the checkboxes on the right (not the left) of layers are distracting; there are eyes in Channels but not in Layers? Also, I like the clipping workflow as is more advanced than Adobe's, but not sure that it's obvious enough, especially to those used to the Photoshop way. When items are clipped, it looks like they're just in a group together, and it should probably be clearer that something entirely different is happening. Thanks, though! Great to see alternatives out there.