Angelramos

Alright this is a lot of intake but knowing the description is really useful.  I really appreciate this. I have the affinity workbook and it surprisingly doesn’t bring these up. Definitely going to experiment with these tomorrow, thanks!

I don't have know of any tutorials but the help file describes the purpose fairly well. 
 

What DM1 said, and see the Help under the Node tool for all of those icons (leftmost 5 are snapping, rightmost 4 are about transform. Note: you're missing a couple of transform icons that may not show up in portrait view).
Accessing the help on an iPad: go back to the gallery and tap on the question mark in the top right corner. Type node into the search box i the top left corner, and tap on Node Tool, scroll down to see the icons and their explanations.
Not sure if this will paste properly (note: if you hold Ctrl, or Cmd on a Mac, and rotate your mouse wheel, you can zoom your browser for a better view):
Action—Manipulates the curve(s):  Break Curve opens the shape at the selected node.  Close Curve joins the start and end nodes to create an enclosed shape.  Smooth Curve modifies a line or shape, by adding and removing nodes, to make it more aesthetic.  Join Curves connects two separate curves together to make one curve. Curves need to be both selected with the   using either the Node Tool or   as you draw.  Reverse Curve lets you draw from the opposite end of the curve—The start node becomes active, ready for further drawing. Transform—Transforms the selected node(s):  Transform Mode—when selected, creates a bounding box around the selected nodes, allowing them to be transformed as a grouping.  Enable Transform Origin—displays a movable transform origin about which the selection box can be rotated.  Hide Selection while Dragging—when selected, the selection box is temporarily hidden when transforming. If this option is off, the selection box remains visible during transformation. The selected behavior persists across all objects unless it is manually switched.  Show Alignment Handles—when selected, displays alignment handles at the center and edges of the selected object. Hovering over these handles displays a floating guideline across the page. You can drag the handles to position the center or edges of the selected object in line with this guide.  Transform Objects Separately—when selected, where multiple objects are selected, they can be be resized, rotated and sheared independently of each other instead of transforming the bounding box.  Selection Box From Curves—when selected, the selection box encompasses and includes all curves that extend outside the array of currently selected nodes.  Cycle Selection Box—after reshaping, rotating, or shearing the shape, this option resets the selection box to vertical. Snap—Controls node snapping:  Align to nodes of selected curves—aligns any moving node you drag to any other node on the same or a different curve.  Snap to geometry of selected curves—will snap moving node to the same or different curve's path or node.  Snap all selected nodes when dragging—will snap multiple selected nodes, when dragging, to a "target" node on any selected curves.  Align handle positions using snapping options—will snap a control handle to a curve's path (or node) or shape's geometry. With global snapping's Snap to Grid enabled, you can also snap control handles to grid.  Perform construction snapping—allows control handle snapping: inline with adjacent node. to 90° from inline. to reflected angle with adjacent control handle. parallel to adjacent control handle. 90° to parallel control handle. to logical triangle. These options are independent of the global snapping options.

Thanks, really appreciate that help, I hadn’t realized the expand stroke tool was still in development. The lines come out a bit bumpy but much better than previously. Thanks so much for your help!

Hi Angelramos,
There aren't many differences besides what you stated regarding pencils not being able to have a stroke applied to them at the get go. However the Pencil tool is typically used for rough sketching and then built upon with the brush tool. One feature the Pencil tool has that the brush tool doesn't is the sculpt feature I will include a short video showing this feature below.
Thanks
C
Pencil sculpt.mov

Thanks for this thread I was going crazy 

Another option that works reasonably well in the interim is the use of the blend source graph. Provided you don’t want a black background, it works with most colour ranges. Hopefully Affinity will set imported text background to transparent. It used to import with transparent background so I suspect the capability already exists in iPad but the controls have not been included in the iPads UI.
A78D8645-E0E0-4583-A49D-F6A69096CFE8.MP4

This is yet another instance of the iPad versions missing something compared with the desktop version, which could potentially be of use. 
Designer for Mac has a Character panel that includes the option to choose a color for the font as well as for the font's background color. For this particular document, the Background Color is set to WHITE. But if you choose transparent, then all vector text will look normal again, without any background color. 
The options for changing the Background Color doesn't seem to exist in the iPad version YET. 

Yeah linear burn seems to do the trick, I really appreciate the feedback, it’s saved some time in this personal project. Hoping for new text adjustment options now. You definitely know your stuff though I didn’t even consider looking into blend modes tysm (:

If you play with the text layer blend modes you may get the white to disappear against the background.

Another addition that would be amazing would be a Glyph tab where to get all the special characters available from fonts. Similar to Illustrator and Indesign the explain it better.