Russ Johnson

You can use a PC or Mac to download a video, then sync it to your iPad. But it needs to be in the correct format. You can download HandBrake to transcode, if your video isn't the right format for your iDevice.

Since we’re talking about Macs, you can do this by setting up (I think it’s called) an hard link. You’ll need to learn some Unix to make this happen, but OS X’s underlying Unix kernel has the ability to make itself think a file is in two locations at once. So you could have the file in the export folder hard linked to the same file in your Dropbox, and both AD and Dropbox would treat it the way you want, no extra coding on Serif’s part required.

Sorry it took a while to get these posted. But here are examples of what I’m talking about. Some of these aren’t super obvious, but where curves touch in these examples, they touch at one point and only one point exactly. I threw in a couple extra I thought of as I was doing these, too, including something that will make long shadow aficionados like me swoon. HTH! —Russ

I hope I end up with some kerning values that aren’t whole numbers! My opinion: make the thing as close to analogue as possible. Oh, there still will be those who want x points of kerning exactly, and sometimes I’ll even be one of them, for one reason or another. But that’s what text input fields are for. We already have 1,000,000-plus-per-cent zoom. I see every reason kerning should be exactly the same. And besides, having the ability to work more æsthetically than mathematically is one of the things that will separate a good tool from a great tool. And Serif already have proven they intend AD to be a great tool.

Honestly, I wasn’t … at least in AD. That having been said, I've been doing typesetting long enough to know that stepping through discrete values, whether by typing or repeatedly pressing ⌥→ and ⌥←, tends to build some bad habits, not the least of which is paying attention to setting values at the expense of getting the look of a piece just right. The trick is to make changing spacing as analogue a process as possible.

I can appreciate launching a feature like this in a page layout program first. That having been said, some of us (:::raises hand REALLY high:: :) are basically junkies for hand-setting text. Any chance you could code a shortcut for character spacing, something along the lines of ⌥⇢ to increase and ⌥⇠ to decrease kerning, maybe with an optional ⇧ modifier to affect tracking instead … and while we’re at it, ⇧⌥⇣ to increase leading and ⇧⌥⇡ to decrease leading? I could blow through some headline text in seconds with one hand on my mouse and the other on my modifiers & arrow keys! PS: The dotted arrows here indicate scrolling with the mouse wheel/Magic Mouse or one-fingered swiping on a trackpad.

Examples I got. Which would you like me to clarify?

The feature was removed because of the problem being discussed in this thread.

@evtonic3: @A_B_C is absolutely right. Relying on automatic curly quotes to choose between an apostrophe and open-quotation mark is a bad idea. The choice between them is a matter of meaning; unfortunately that’s a bit hard to program. So, it's coded in terms of context, which actually produces the wrong glyph more often than not. ⌥[, ⇧⌥[, ⌥], and ⇧⌥] (and ⇧⌥W for German, plus ⌥\ and ⇧⌥\ for most European languages) ought to become some of your very best friends. By the way, which keyboard layout are you using? Some don't support the ⌥Option key combinations in the same way. Try using US or US Extended. If you're using German, for instance, the key combinations I gave you will result in •, °, ±, , „, ‘, and ’, respectively. Only ⇧⌥W gives the „ I was talking about, and the European quotes « and » I was talking about change to the open-quote mark (‘) and apostrophe-cum-close-quote mark (’), respectively. ________________________________________________________________________ This was taken out because most of our users had problems of unintended scrolling with the magic mouse. … @Andrew Tang: I have to agree that manually typing numbers gets a bit tedious. How about implementing a feature so that dragging up or down performs the same action? (This could be triggered only if the pointer leaves the bounds of the text box, to keep the feature from being activated by someone who's actually trying to highlight and type a value.)

I’d have to agree that the Character and Paragraph panels … contain generous amounts of white space.

Well if that's the case, I'm going to have to insist on Amiga and OS/2 versions as well. You can have the CD-ROMs to me in the mail by the end of the week, if it's not too inconvenient.

MattP: It was raining for you today? You’re not in Tennessee, are you? lol —Seriously, though, thanks! I actually thought that would involve a decent bit of eye-bleeding math. Glad to know it’s so easy. So, here’s hoping the forecast calls for more showers before the next beta! ;)

I'd like to see tools that leverage geometric measurements to make shape making easy. Specifically: Path tangent to 1 curve Ditto 2 curves Arc tangent to 1 curve Ditto 2 curves Ditto 3 curves Circle tangent to 1 curve Ditto 2 curves Ditto 3 curves Path perpendicular to 1 path Ditto 2 paths Path along shortest distance between paths Arc by three points Arc by start-end-direction Circle by three points Circle by two points and direction Shape exactly inscribed in another shape

@MEB: When this is implemented, will it work with the upcoming distort feature, so strokes and fills can be poked and prodded independently of their parent objects (I sure hope!) ?

It's a little convoluted at the moment, just because you can't just click a path and press ⌫, and the Break Curve command doesn't yet work on multiple points at once. Anyway, here are the steps. 1: Make sure your shape is made of curves (which yours already is, but for ellipses, rectangles, cogs, etc., press ⌘⏎ to convert the shape to curves.) 2: Using the Node Tool, click on one of the nodes adjacent to where you want the break. 3: Click the Break Curve button (the first button in the Action group of the main toolbar. 4: Still using the Node Tool, click the other node. 5: Click the Break Curve button. 6: Deselect. 7: In the Layers panel, find the newly created shape (the segment you cut out), then delete it. Hope that helps! —Russ