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lacerto

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Posts posted by lacerto

  1. 2 hours ago, DianeF said:

    print dialog box in the Sonoma OS is different from the print dialog box in earlier versions. It is less clear how you choose which pages to print.

    In a way it is possibly clearer and hopefully unifies printer interface so that it is pretty much similar to choose options for different printers in different apps. But changes of course require also new learning, and having minimalist scrollable options seemingly grayed out does not necessarily make learning easier! Also, the option for double-sided printing is not available unless you have at least 2 pages (which is of course logical but also might fool a user to think that the option is grayed out for the active printer in general).

  2. As AirPrint and Sonoma are specifically mentioned, and the mentioned printer is also listed as one of the officially supported [AirPrint] printers, there might be point in consulting

    https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/print-documents-mh35838/mac

    ....which basically shows the UI shown in my first post. But perhaps there is some printer-specific that causes that the option for double-sided printing is not available.

     

  3. I am not sure if I have done something to enable the feature, but whenever I select the Gradient Tool and start dragging within a selected object, the result is a linear gradient with start and end stops at ends of the dragged line (I tried to make elliptical, radial, or conical gradient as the default, but could not, so the app just seems to remember the last used setting document-wise). 

  4. 8 hours ago, DianeF said:

    Now, when I go to print with this printer, the option to print double-sided is no longer available.

    Do you mean that the control for double sided printing does not exist, or that it does, but is grayed out and not selectable? What if you try to print from within other apps (e.g. Pages, or some other app by Apple)?

    The issue is not related to OS, not at least Sonoma 14.1.2, since I have the following shown whenever printing from Affinity apps:

    double_sided.png.948f36e8affd04545593bc51d0dd506f.png

    Sometimes availability of double-sided printing can be dependent on general printer settings, e.g. some printers might require that ability to print double-sided or from multiple trays is explicitly enabled in printer's "hardware" options, so I would check if such settings are available within operating system's Printers & Scanners settings. 

  5. On 1/14/2024 at 3:17 AM, nbk_haw said:

    Is there a way I can auto-populate each cell to be numbered in sequence without any extra characters besides the number?

    I would use Data Merge feature to fetch an autofilled number sequence from an Excel sheet and use Data Merge Layout control to specify the number of columns and rows per page, and then use a paragraph style so that it is easy to change formatting afterwards. An underlying table with an equal number of cells (columns and rows) could be used to add a desired border formatting.

    image.png.95b99cbe19b41ed2f3b10472a4f673db.png

    After the data merge:

    image.png.6985704fc4cbb5038d79261cbbffafb6.png

    UPDATE: If the table to be created is something that is desired to fit on a single page, obviously the easiest method to have sequential numbering in a table would be creating an autonumber sequence in e.g. Excel or other app supporting this feature and then converting a number sequence to a table with desired number of columns in Word, LibreOffice Writer etc. and save it as a .docx file and then import into a Publisher document. Using the data merge feature would allow creating multipage table-like constructions and complex designs with multiple items placed per cell.

  6. In Excel sheet, I would define both visible data fields and more complete link fields that can contain e.g. mime prefixes like https:// and tel:, and for email, could additionally contain subject and message parameters (or group multiple email addresses, cc and bcc addresses):

    image.png.3f19bf29feb09cc4ec14cd13d9af89b7.png

    When setting up data merge, you would then extract both the visible fields, and then select the data merge field and use Text > Interactive > Insert Hyperlink, and pick the appropriate data field where you have the link format:

    image.png.25c1586a053d7f6c519a51986a428cbf.png

    When you merge and export to PDF (enabling inclusion of hyperlinks), you will get this:

    mergedlinks.pdf

     

     

  7. Please post some further information on the document you have and what the printshop requires.

    I wrote lengthy instructions for diverse cases but accidentally lost the text  before sending it, and do not want to re-create the post. The instructions depend on whether what you now have is in CMYK/8 color mode (and you have color photos in the job, and/or native shapes and other elements defined in color), or Gray/8 color mode, and whether what you need to output must be in CMYK or Grayscale mode, and whether the printer requires a transparency flattened PDF (or possibly a PDF/X based PDF).

  8. 3 hours ago, Eisbar said:

    If I create tonal values from the Spotcolor, then the individual tone values are created - but converted into process colors. But it would be very practical if these tonal values were defined as a percentage of the spot color. (So print density, ink application)

    I may have misunderstood something so if you have questions, please post comments and I try to answer.

    A spot color (or any other color) that serves as a master (parent) must be marked as a global color swatch to be able to serve as a parenting color. All tones that are children of a master retain this relationship so for user-defined global colors (including spot colors) if the master changes, the children change accordingly; however, the library based spot colors cannot be redefined:

    Tints of a spot color (whether library or user defined) however show correctly as shades of parenting inks:

     Note that unlike in InDesign (and possibly other layout apps), you cannot use a tint of a spot (or another global) color as a base and parent of sub child swatches (and still dependent of the original master) so the dependencies can only be direct master-children based within Affinity apps. Affinity apps also do not allow replacing one global color with another, and inheritance of tonal dependencies, so the ways you can benefit of master-children dependencies in Affinity apps are rather limited.
  9. 1 minute ago, Dan C said:

    personally I'd expect both '@' and '%40' to be supported :)

    Yes, it is not clear why this changed (but is still supported when entering multiple receiver addresses) -- perhaps it is related to just requiring in actual parameter part only valid url-encoded special characters, and accordingly spaces, too, needing to be encoded (version 1 allowed space characters e.g. in at least the subject parameter).

  10. This topic has been discussed multiple times on the forum, to some depth e.g. here:

    For Windows users, it is probably easiest to use G'Mic plug-in and Photo. GIMP itself can be used for this, too (both to produce palettes and reduce colors with palettes).

    If Affinity app alone is wished to be used, then using Gradient Map, Posterize (with exact number of colors specified) and Black and White adjustments in this specific order can produce something similar (with exact number of colors and no shades in between). An alternative is using LUTs.

    The result of course is not an indexed image because they are not supported in Affinity apps but the effect is similar.

    Searching the forum using e.g. the following keywords should result in some hits: indexed, palette, palettized, color reduction, quantization, posterization, colorization

     

  11. On 1/10/2024 at 6:46 AM, Sirajum Munir Galib said:

    I am also facing this problem with object that has a opacity gradient.

    If you export using PDF (any other than PDF/X-1a or PDF/X-3 which flatten live transparency), you should be able to export gradients containing <100 opacity values without causing rasterization. The objects will show as "Non-Native Art" in Illustrator (at least CS6) if you have only two gradient stops. But if you have three or more, they show as gradients also in Illustrator (even if the transparency is achieved with a transparency mask rather than gradient stop values with an opacity percentage).

     

  12. Related, but a bit off-topic: expanding a stroke can deviate from what is seen on canvas also in diverse situations where stroke parameters are somehow extreme or untypical (e.g. abrupt smart nodes with bevel joins). In these kinds of situation rasterizations typically give what is rendered on screen while expanding gives what will happen when the stroke is exported to vectors (in OP's case the opposite is true: exporting to vectors retains the visual rendering).

    expanding_anomalies.thumb.png.254ada4891b322b694076fa535d62ed3.png

    expanded.pdf

    It is also interesting to compare how different apps do expanding. E.g. in VectorStyler the resulting shape at least in auto-expanded strokes can be dependent on current zoom level (accuracy of rendering on canvas). In CorelDRAW (2023) expanding strokes often causes distorted shapes. Illustrator (CS6) appears to outline paths generally as rendered but similarly as Affinity apps struggles with untypical node type + attribute combinations and might produce three different versions (when rendered as stroke on canvas, expanded, and stroke exported as vectors).

  13. 15 hours ago, Dan C said:

    I'm getting this logged with the team now, as it may be an oversight of the panel, rather than a decisive removal :)

    @Dan C, I just ran another test, and if you replace the @ signs in cc and bcc with %40, all the mail fields work fine, and you can have multiple receiver addresses marked with @, so having

    email@address.here.com;another@mail.com;third@testing.com?subject=This%20is%20a%20test&cc=secondary%40mail.com&bcc=hidden%40mail.com&body=This%20is%20body%20text

    entered in the Email-type of Hyperlink box, gives you this:

    mailparameters.png.af2d999ea16cca596802838e3f917c65.png

    The screenshot above is from macOS Mail (Sonoma 14.1.2), but it works the same on Windows (Outlook in latest Office 365 on Windows Pro 11 tested).

    So the only difference to version 1 seems to be that in version 2 the additional parameters &cc and &bcc require the @ sign to be url coded as %40. 

  14. 1 hour ago, DJP said:

    So I wish there were a better solution.

    These kinds of problems often require manual work and some "cheating".

    We have done lots of books and basically always aim at "full columns" for flown (continuing) text so I get your point, while I also agree that these things can be a matter of personal preference and taste -- sometimes they can also be kinds of house rules, and then you just need to show your professionalism and try to achieve what is asked.

    Often problematic layouts require adjustments made to preceding pages and can be time consuming before a satisfactory result is achieved, but when working with ragged text alignment (as in your glossary example), you can often get columns evened out by forcing extra line breaks without visual distortion (it does not matter even if you occasionally have clearly shorter lines). A common cheat is also widening or narrowing columns (just make sure to keep the alignment with header and footer elements, and if necessary, change their positions spread-wise -- this can of course be easily seen when browsing pages in a PDF viewer, but this works just fine in a printed product. It is also perfectly fine (IMO) to make exceptions and add extra space before headings (like glossary capitals).

    I would also clean those ending "to"s -- not necessarily each and every instance, but especially when something like this repeats, it becomes a disturbing pattern. In a glossary context I would probably always tie "to" to the following verb -- splitting a clear infinitive definition seems just "wrong".

  15. 49 minutes ago, Dan C said:

    it appears as soon as there are multiple '@' symbols within the Hyperlink, Publisher deems this invalid

    Note though that it (both versions 1 and 2) still accepts multiple email addresses separated by a semicolon (the delimiter might depend on regional settings?) so it is not just the number of addresses as parameters, but possibly a deliberate omission of cc and bcc fields (probably not very often needed, though bcc can be quite convenient sometimes).

  16. Perhaps there is some reason for making this feature less powerful in version 2, but at least in Windows 1.x version (1.10.6), the full email url syntax was still supported and worked without any obvious issues:

    image.png.50cc91f0852bdbf33b7fcaccce19d66c.png

    Note how in the body part even line break works. Perhaps there was some security concern, or possibly IDML compatibility based cause (as InDesign only supports the sender address and subject line)? 

  17. 24 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

    True. Some viewers have an option to examine the text and "invent" links for things that look like they should be linked.

    Yes, e.g. Acrobat Reader. But in case of tel: link, the link works as it is, so the link physically exists and works as it is, so there is no assistance on behalf of the app itself when it invokes the app call, it basically just passes what is given, what it recognizes as a link, so what happens, depends on the system configuration. So in Adobe Acrobat Reader, app call is invoked based on existing link, whether app based link generation is disabled (like it is below):

    image.png.fc168ab71308e2c2ee221ba74efd5c55.png

    But when clicked, Adobe Reader will require document-specific acceptance from the user before actually passing the call.

    In the following link are formal specs by Nokia from year 0, and also examples, so the link above is formally correct:

    https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2806

  18. 1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

    But, from a PDF, it may depend on what PDF viewer you use.

    It may be so, but e.g. in Adobe Acrobat Pro and Reader, the link works as it is, without Acrobat needing to generate a link, and where ever I have tried this, the link basically invokes something like this (this time in Firefox):

    image.png.6034964a5bb2af8568706e3a6ebfae4d.png

    ...both on Windows and macOS, so the link itself seems to be syntactically correct, and if an app is configured to make a call, this will happen. But it may of course be that some PDF viewers do not invoke an app call, or that making this to happen requires a supporting app preference, or user-confirmed system security agreement, or that the system ignores the call if there is no calling device configured. But e.g. Windows will suggest downloading Microsoft based Windows store apps that allow creating such configuration if it does not already exist. On macOS it may be that only Apple mobile devices are supported...

  19. 15 hours ago, Callum said:

    Would you be able to provide the .afpublisher file used in this demonstration so I can log this issue with our developers?

    I seemed to have deleted it but re-created it now based on a generated PDF and the one attached below should behave similarly (it was initially a Designer 2.3.0 file but this one, created with 2.3.1, still seems to behave similarly, so [a PDF export created from ] it opens fine in Inkscape but a bit confused in Designer 2.3.1).

    Layers_designer_v2_threelevels.afdesign

  20. For me a URL hyperlink using the format tel:+#######  works both in PDF viewers tested (Adobe Acrobat Reader on macOS Sonoma 14.1.2 and Adobe Acrobat Pro and One Drive reader app on Windows 11 Pro), and also when selecting a hyperlink in Publisher and choosing Go to Hyperlink Target from the context menu (but not if I click the Go to Target button in the Hyperlinks panel, which seems to "clean" the tel: prefix from the address and accordingly does not invoke the system caller app linked to telephone urls). EDIT: Just checked, and "Go to Target" button does work on macOS, but not on Windows.

  21. 51 minutes ago, PaoloT said:

    Let me try to make an hypothesis: AfPub will simply not save the features it doesn't have!

    I think we have exchanged some thoughts earlier about degree of usefulness of IDML serving as a kind of an exchange format between different layout apps (considering how it is currently implemented e.g. in QXP and VivaDesigner), but I certainly agree with you that these kinds of "incompatibility" concerns are silly.

    IMO, speculations of "proprietary" or "nondisclosure" issues related to IDML are equally nonsensical. I am not sure how Adobe handles downgrading of features so that "new", post CS4-features get at some level included, but I have understood that IDML specs basically do not get upgraded because the idea is that layouts saved in IDML format, including ones saved in latest CC versions, can be opened also in CS4. If something is not "understood" by earlier versions, it is just skipped/ignored, .

    As for reasons of current non-availability of (over a decade old) IDML specs on Adobe dev network (while IDML tools and cookbook are still available), we can only make guesses, but anyone googling IDML File Format specs gets the needed documentation as second and third find entry on Github and CreativePro (not particularly dark internet)... IDML file format itself is nothing more than zipped XML = plain text, so anybody can see how ID features are expressed in mark up. If Serif can convert that to native Affinity objects there is nothing in the technology that stops them doing it in the other direction. 

  22. Not just allowing extended visibility of guides, but also ability to place guides off the page/canvas. Both requests are kinds of no-brainers in context of professional graphic design. Not having these features places Affinity apps in the same class of graphic design apps as Microsoft Publisher. Pretty much every other app supporting guides has them (not just ID, AI, QXP, CorelDRAW since forever, but also Inkscape, Xara, VectorStyler, even PS and Corel Photo-Paint (with less obvious off-page/canvas positioning/sizing needs) -- even obnoxiously minimalist Pages where vertical ruler is an option and where there is no pasteboard allows placing guides off the page. 

  23. 8 hours ago, Luscious Tuba said:

    Thanks a ton!

    You're welcome. Note that the PANTONE color representations were initially defined in Lab, but I used their CMYK conversions in Coated Fogra 39 color space, because the AI file itself was in CMYK color mode. Also, the specific PANTONE colors that were used in the file do not look noticeably brighter even if the document color mode were changed to RGB (specifically sRGB), so there is no significant loss in color fidelity. Also, if logo(type)s with brand (spot) colors are printed without using special inks, it is often meaningful to use CMYK representations of them to have as much as possible identical visual appearance in printed (CMYK) and digital outputs (PNG and SVG) (provided, though, that correct color profiles are used). 

    Note, too, that transparency flattening done by Illustrator (when converting to PDF/X-1a) did rasterize part of the gradients that were used in the logo. Adobe apps can often flatten transparencies using pure vectors, but not necessarily in complex cases like this. I tried selective transparency flattening on the canvas (where it is possible to define to what extent rasterization is used, if at all), but results when exporting were clearly poorer than when using automated conversion (rasterizations were much coarser). It might be possible to get a pure vector design without transparencies and color rendering issues, but it would probably take pretty much time and lots of testing.

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