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MikeA

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Everything posted by MikeA

  1. MikeA
    Hear, hear. My first exposure to QuarkXPress was at a DTP shop (anyone remember desktop publishing? : ). The people there weren't at all into tagging or command-line "stuff." I was, and when I learned about XPress Tags I dove into them and became good at devising scripts that would insert them with as much automation as possible into plain text. This provided a major boost in productivity for long-document jobs. At the time that approach seemed to be pretty uncommon (understandable...it's pretty nerdy stuff). I'd done something (vaguely) similar with translation tables and Compugraphic typesetting equipment—that was when I learned how a tagging system for formatting during text import could be an industrial-strength godsend. I do hope Publisher will have the feature some day. I suspect it would involve a lot of coding and a lot of design. How should the tagging for such a system look? Not just for "hard" formatting; how should tagging for styles look? (Please, not XSLT. Pretty please. : )
  2. MikeA
    >> It doesn't have to be that complicated Perhaps not and yet not all users will agree on how the feature should work. Developers can't assume out-of-hand that all users will want the feature to work a particular way. Should the feature be able to both copy paragraph formatting and character formatting? Should it make a difference if a given paragraph's "return character" is selected at the time the "copy format" command is given? Or should it do different things when the paragraph-marker is selected, as opposed to when it is not included within the copied selection? Or, should it always transfer all paragraph formatting, in addition to the character formatting of the first character selected?
  3. MikeA
    As much as I want the feature, I'm wondering if developers see this kind of request and wonder: "Yes, but what should the program do IF..." In this case, IF might be: The user selects text containing more than one character format. Then: copies the formatting within the selection, highlights some other text, and pastes formatting. What exactly should the program do in that case? The word processing program I use seems to "notice" only the character formatting of the first character of the selected text, then applies it (and it alone) when the paste-formatting command is given. It makes sense. Then again, should a copy/paste formatting feature be able to do more than that?
  4. MikeA
    I puzzled over this for a moment. I find the anchor display in the Properties dialog a bit hard to see, but peering at it closely now I understand what you mean. Clicking the larger anchor point toggles it back to the same size as the others, and then it works as I described in the first comment—getting entirely around the workaround of changing the size minutely. Thanks—it produces the desired effect even faster. I don't think I'd ever have discovered that one except entirely at random...
  5. MikeA
    I seem to be able to scale both frame and image using the outer-most handle (the second handle that appears at the lower-right of the frame). That is, the scaling appears to work as if the two had been grouped, even when I haven't used the Group command explicitly. But that second outer handle appears only when I 1) convert the image to a picture frame and 2) immediately afterward, re-size the frame or image by some very tiny amount. Strange.
  6. MikeA
    Thanks. I found that doing this (alternately: right-clicking and selecting Frame Properties > None) allowed the frame's handles to be moved without any change in image magnification. But the image continues to shift position within the frame as the handles are moved. That just complicates matters for me. So the resize-image-slightly/move-handles-to-crop is still the approach that gets me what I'm after without too many steps. (If it turns out to be a bug, I hope they don't fix this particular one. : )
  7. MikeA
    I place an image on a page in Publisher, then right-click and select Convert to picture frame. Then, if I move the frame's selection handles, the image shifts here and there within the frame and its magnification might change—what happens depends on how I manipulate the selection handles. This seems like normal behavior. But I discovered a different approach by accident: I place the image onto the page and select Convert to picture frame. Before doing anything else and with either the frame or the image selected, I use the Image control in the context toolbar to resize by some minute amount—say, by as little as .01%. After that, moving the frame's selection handles has an entirely different effect: It crops the image, and the image does not shift position or change magnification while the selection handles are being moved. It's almost as if I'd selected the frame, switched on the obscurely located Lock Children control at the extreme right side of the toolbar, and moved the selection handles only afterward. I actually prefer it this way — it's faster, enabling cropping without the need for Lock Children or having to use the Vector Crop tool. Is it working as designed, though? I'm not finding anything in the online help about this effect of changing magnification.
  8. MikeA
    Interesting that it worked once. I haven't been able to get it to work at all. But then I'm still on v.1.8.3 (Windows). Maybe this changed a bit in the newer version. I can imagine someone not wanting the change to be global at times. Providing a choice in Preferences would certainly be a best-of-both-worlds solution.
  9. MikeA
    Another up-vote for this feature, which could be a huge time-saver fortext-heavy projects . This isn't a workaround to be thrilled about, but it seems to work and if there's a lot of format-copying and -pasting to be done, I might use it in the future. First, style the text to be copied/pasted as need be (within Publisher). Copy the text needing additional styling changes to the clipboard. Paste it into a Word or Word-like program (I use TextMaker). Do the copying and pasting of the formatting there. I assigned those editor features to Shift+Control+C and Shift+Control+V so that the operations would be similar to those in other programs I use (Capture One, for example—same keystrokes for copy and paste image adjustments). Copy the styled text in the editor to the clipboard. Paste it back into the Publisher document. My test of the idea is only brief for now but it appears to work, and without introducing junk into the Publisher document that I don't want there. The other text styling is preserved and the Publisher text style names aren't altered in any way after the updated text is pasted into the Publisher document. It certainly isn't as fast as a dedicated command within Publisher would be, no question.
  10. MikeA
    Thanks very much. I hope they'll consider it as an option. I thought about posting it as a feature request, but easily half the time something that doesn't seem to exist or doesn't seem to work turns out to be some newbie-level error I've made.
  11. MikeA
    Several times I've tried to set the ruler's "zero" position (spread origin) away from the default location and have the change apply to the entire publication. But the change seems to apply only to the page where it was made. I tried it on a master page, thinking the change might be "inherited" by all document pages based on the particular master page. That didn't work. Is there a way to set the spread origin position globally so that the "zero" position is set for all pages or spreads—until you reset it manually?
  12. MikeA
    Perhaps we will find this has changed in version 1.8.5?
  13. MikeA
    I have run across this same problem. I'm using version 1.8.3 for Windows. Alt+Shift+V does paste the layer effect, but it does not duplicate the settings as expected. I don't know how the program is making its decision about which slider values to transfer. For example, I select "copy" for an object whose Outside Shadow effect slider settings are (top to bottom): 21%, 43.2px, 36.4px, 0% When I attempt to paste the layer effect to another object, the slider settings (again, top to bottom) are: 21%, 16.8px, 14.2px, 0% At first I thought this must be happening because the source object's layer effect had the 'scale with object' check-box selected. But when I un-checked the box and tried again, I got the same result. It might be a feature and not a bug, but if it's a feature I'm at pains to know why I'd want to use it—I'll end up having to open the dialog and adjust all the settings anyway, just as if I were adding the effect entirely from scratch. No time-savings there.
  14. MikeA
    A while back I referred to this in passing in a thread here — I kept finding that my custom tool panel (Character + Paragraph + Text Frame + Transform) would vanish unexpectedly. I'd have to reassemble the custom panel all over again. But it wasn't a bug after all — they didn't "just vanish." I use Alt+F4 to exit Affinity Publisher. But it turns out the program has been using the keystrokes to close the front-most window, which always seems to be that custom tool panel. Using the keyboard shortcuts feature to bind Alt+F4 explicitly to the Exit command has fixed this. Alt+F4 no longer affects the custom tool panel.
  15. MikeA
    A recent video about removing backgrounds points out a web-based technology that would be outstanding if it could be licensed by and incorporated into Affinity Photo or available as a plug-in. The video link is below (screen shot is from the video). It would be very, very useful for images with complex foregrounds. https://youtu.be/_N5EIn90bWw
  16. MikeA
    That handle is also a property of picture frames and I've since gotten it to appear. When it is not present: • Moving the handles of the picture frame resizes the frame AND its contents. When it is present and you work with a handle that is not the "outside" handle at the lower right: • Moving a handle changes the size of the picture frame and can possibly crop the image—and does not resize the image itself. When it is present and you work with the handle at the lower right—the one outside the other handles: • This resizes the frame AND its contents and no cropping occurs. I got the "missing" handle to appear in one of two ways: 1. Make the tiniest possible adjustment to the image's size using the picture frame's size slider. Or, 2. Select the image itself (not the frame) within the layers panel and "nudge" the image (not the frame) by some tiny amount using one of the arrow keys. Following either of those, the next time you select the picture frame, that outermost lower-right additional handle now appears. The curious thing is why that outermost handle at the lower right did not appear immediately after the image was added to the frame.
  17. MikeA
    As I'm still unable to add screen shots to forum posts I have to do this as a link to an image on Google Drive. I hope it works. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aABcWxnxTHtgUFO7z6o-MmPuWg9LbsOK/view?usp=sharing That screen shot shows the aftermath of the following steps: With an image in the clipboard (a screen shot): 1. Draw a frame with the Picture Frame tool. 2. With the frame selected, right-click and select Paste as Content The screen shot now appears within the picture frame. But there's something missing. There should be a second outer handle at the lower-right of the frame. But there isn't. When that kind of additional handle is showing, moving the picture frame handles can crop the image, though moving the outer handle at the lower right will resize frame and image together without cropping. Have I omitted some required step? What became of that outer handle?
  18. MikeA
    I have found "Lock Children" useful but hard to reach. I haven't found it in any menus yet. So far the only access I've found is to click a very tiny icon at the extreme upper right of the Publisher window, drop down a small menu, and select Lock Children. This involves hitting tiny icons or UI elements with the mouse, which is not what I'd call the most user-friendly thing ever. Then, do the same if you need to toggle the setting off again. With this apparently not being anywhere in the keyboard shortcuts dialog, there's no way to assign a keystroke to the command that I know of. But is there some easier way to get to the command? Maybe I've just missed something obvious. If not—publisher developers: Could this check-box not be available at least in the Frame Properties dialog? Or be a menu item in its own right when you right-click a frame? Or be part of the Frame Properties fly-out menu when you right-click a frame?
  19. MikeA
    @Gabe Thanks kindly.
  20. MikeA
    Following up another thread in which I wrote about having trouble putting a simple rule (stroke) around a rectangular object of type "pixel." The controls for adding a rule work with an object of type "image," but don't work with one of type "pixel". The convert-to-picture-frame menu item is inaccessible when you right-click a pixel object. By accident I discovered an odd workaround: If you select the vector crop tool and crop the pixel object by even some imperceptible amount on one side, suddenly the convert-to-picture-frame menu item does become accessible. Which of these features are by design? Might any of them be bugs? 1. Can't draw a rule (stroke) around a pixel object* 2. Can't convert a pixel object to a picture frame—not immediately. BUT: 3. Slight crop with the vector crop tool enables converting the pixel object to a picture frame * It can be done with the Outline layer effect, but that dialog does not permit enabling square corners (it supports only rounded ones) as far as I know.
  21. MikeA
    Well. Interesting. More futzing-around with this and I find... a pixel object (I'm working only in Publisher right now) cannot be converted to a picture frame. But select the Vector Crop tool and make the tiniest crop—and for some reason the pixel object now can be converted to a picture frame. Completely accidental discovery. Feature? Bug? Don't know. Anyway, the if-it's-a-bug-I-don't-mind-it-at-all feature enabled the following: 1. Paste the two image objects into the page. 2. Align them as need be. 3. Group them. Ensure the group is selected. 4. Right-click the group and select Rasterize. The group is now a single pixel object. 5. Select the Vector Crop tool; crop as need be. NOW the object can be converted to a picture frame and NOW a stroke can be added to create a rule around it in the conventional fashion. I wonder why that happens with the Vector Crop tool. It'd be nice to be able to tweak it numerically when need be (if you needed only the tiniest amount of cropping—hard to do with the mouse).
  22. MikeA
    I'm finding that an image object can be given a stroke without a conversion to curves being needed. And yes, then the corner shape can be controlled.
  23. MikeA
    If not, you'd think that the Stroke and Fill portions of the UI would be "greyed-out" (inaccessible). That might be the best solution, yes.
  24. MikeA
    Ok... select the Photo persona (control+clicking in Publisher doesn't seem to make a pixel selection, or at least there's no visual indicator of its having been created) and do in Photo there via Select > Grow/Shrink. "Growing" the pixel selection certainly expanded the size of the selection. I don't know enough yet about Photo to know which control would fill the expanded selection with a color (Flood Fill simply filled the entire object). But changing the color isn't what I'm after. I'm after changing that rounded corner to a square one. I didn't see a control within Grow/Shrink that would pertain to it. Ok, I see now. Interestingly, unchecking "Preserve layer FX" (which I'd have thought would discard the effect just added) retained the effect. Maybe that isn't the purpose of the checkbox.
  25. MikeA
    So far the solution, sort of, seems to be: Add the two images to the document. Align them as need be. Group them. "Rasterize." Now use the Outline layer effect to draw the rule around the object (rasterizing the group makes it a single pixel object). And, just live with the rounded corners. And in case anyone knows, I'd be grateful to find out: Both "Rasterize" and "Rasterize and Trim" menu items end with "..." — the ancient UI feature indicating "there'll be additional controls for this command." (Example: "Save" vs. "Save as...") But there aren't. The commands execute with no other dialog boxes appearing. Is the inclusion of "..." in these command names a simple error in the UI, or should I in fact be seeing additional controls?
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