sfriedberg

How long ago what that? CorelDRAW has had pretty decent CMYK prepress separation controls for a couple of decades now. Or, perhaps I should ask, "what was specific to the downstream system that CD couldn't satisfy?"

+100 Every time I am reminded that Designer doesn't have vector pattern fills, I am just dumbstruck.

I think I would put the text in an Artistic Text frame, select the text, use Layer > Convert to Curves to turn each letter into a separate object, select all the objects, then use Layer > Alignment > Space Horizontally. You will have to make some provision for inter-word spaces in your text (invisible em quads, maybe?). By default, Space Horizontally will space the objects evenly, leaving the leftmost and rightmost objects where they are. But there are options. Check out the Help page section on "Spacing using key objects". By making a 2mm spacer object, you can set the desired spacing between the first two (or last two) letters, set the 2nd (or next-to-last) object as the key object, then Space Horizontally will replicate that spacing between all the other selected objects.

Text > Reapply Text Styles and Text > Reapply Base Styles. Check out the Help pages for those two functions, as I never remember exactly what gets reset for each.

Being a long-time user of the Corel graphics suite and also a happy user of Ventura Publisher, I must sadly state that CorelDRAW did not gain any significant functionality from Ventura that CD didn't already have. Corel proudly proclaim that CD made Ventura unnecessary, but that is just a grotesque piece of marketing puffery stepping over the line into outright untruth. CD is fine for a 1 spread design-/art-centric layout. It's never been capable of long document text-centric layout. In fact, I have a hard time putting a finger on any specific functionality that CD picked up from Ventura. I've got Corel Graphics Suite 2024 installed and I don't see anything to change my mind...

I miss Ventura very, very much. Another sad case of "Company acquires SW project, doesn't know what to do with, lets it languish and then kills it off, proclaiming victory."

I'm confused. Are you talking about curve (Bezier or polyline/polygon) nodes, color gradient nodes, or what?

I routinely set up numbered and bulleted paragraphs so the left edge of the text is all aligned vertically, so that effect is easy to achieve. I'm not sure what you mean by "get the diamond centered". Are you only showing us the right half of the page in that screenshot? If I understand what you want, use a tab stop instead of a space after the bullet(s). Adjust the tab stop, first line indent (outdent in this case) and paragraph indent to align the text in the first and subsequent lines. The order in which you set the first line indent and paragraph indent matters, but if you do it in the wrong order, just do it again in the other order. If you want the whole thing (bullets and all) to start halfway across the page, I'd strongly recommend using a text frame to confine the half-page bulleted paragraphs. If you're using Publisher you can even make that text frame flow inline with the rest of the text for more-automated layout, although it will not automatically break across page boundaries. If you can get everything to work except the desired justification mode and if you are using Publisher, in a pinch you can use multiple text frames to control the layout precisely. The story/flow text goes in one frame without bullets using the left edge of the frame to govern the left-side text alignment. No bullets, no indents or special margins in the story/flow text paragraph style. The bullets are made into tiny text frames (or symbols) and pinned to float with the story/flow paragraphs. In the pinning panel, align vertically to inside top of line, and horizontally to inside left of frame. I repeat this is an "in a pinch" sort of solution. I've done it a couple of different ways in the attached document. On the first page, I did it the hard way. On the second page, I did it with a bulleted paragraph style using a tab that matches the paragraph indent. If you don't want normal story/flow text to the left of the block of bulleted paragraphs that is very easy to achieve. Either set the text wrap style on their frame (to get nothing to the left) or add another to include more special paragraphs. test.afpub

No, we aren't sure without looking at your file. But I speculate that your transform origin was not pixel-aligned, so when you rotated your nice clean pixel-aligned rectangle it was offset by a half-pixel in both X and Y leaving the result with anti-aliased edges. You can do the following experiment. With the Transform panel, select the transform origin in the middle the square of nine points. Try rotating one of your nice clean pixel-aligned rectangles (with Transform). Then try the alternate experiment of selecting a transform origin at any one of the corners of the square of nine points and rotating another nice clean pixel-aligned rectangle (with Transform). I expect the first experiement will give you blurry results, while the second experiment will give you clean results. But you can report back with what you actually get. I speculate that in Photo the transform origin for right-click rotations is set to the middle of the object. Designer lets you persistently set the transform origin for an object anywhere you like, including the corners, so in Designer you could do your right-click rotates and get clean results. Photo apparently does not have the Point Transform tool, so you may have to use the Transform panel and pick a corner. Or, try rectangles with even width and length, as the middle would then be pixel-aligned. Although your example with the two-pixel wide red lines suggests it's not as simple as getting the width right. [Added in edit] Actually, Photo has the same basic functionality but presented with a completely different UI than Designer. With the Move tool selected (in Photo), the content toolbar at the top offers an Enable Transform Origin mode. In that mode, you can drag the object's origin cross hairs. Right-click Transform > Rotate Right/Left does not respect the new origin, but dragging the object's lollipop handle (and snapping to nice angles by holding Shift) does. I have to say that if I were doing fussy layout with lots of lines and positioning, I'd be inclined to do it in Designer, not Photo. But if you only have the one app, run what you got...

I am not suggesting that Publisher add this feature, but it would be nice to view the spreads with the foldouts folded in, and also with them folded out as in Hangman's sample layout. It's easy enough to show both sides of the foldouts, but they'd naturally fall in different spreads. For example, the very first spread would have not only the 1st right-hand page but also the visible-when-folded-in face of the foldout on the 2nd left-hand page. It would be nice when viewing the second spread to be able to switch between folded-in (foldout overlaps left-hand page and one face of foldout is visible) and folded-out (foldout is next to left-hand page and the other face of foldout is visible).

Ahah! Thank you. That makes perfect sense, together with your original description. Signature of 3 folios, each with two foldouts.

Interesting, I had v1 fired up to work on an older project so that's what I looked at. The additional fields are new in v2. The balanced option in v2 is very useful, can't believe I'd forgotten it.

For dashed lines, there is an interaction between the width of the stroke and the pattern of the stroke, both of which you can control. To make the dashes narrower, reduce the stroke width. This will also make the dashes shorter. To restore the length of the dashes, edit the pattern. This appears at the bottom of the Stroke panel when you select the dashed style. There are four fields. The first is how long to make a dash, the second is how long to make the space between dashes. If you use the 3rd and 4th fields, you can define dash-dot patterns with alternating pieces of different lengths (and spacings).

@Wolfgang T., I have some tangential questions concerning the tricky bookbinding. The spreads show how the book would appear as read. I'm interested in how you will be arranging folios (physical sheets) and signatures (groups of folios sewn as one unit) from the spreads. Can you make a quick pencil sketch of the top/bottom view of the text block for Hangman's sample layout of spreads? Are you doing any imposition (combining multiple physical (cut) sheets on one larger (uncut) physical sheet)? Are you doing any tipping (adhering two physical sheets, such as a foldout with narrow folded lip to a main signature sheet, or two one-side-printed folios back-to-back)? Are you doing any guarding (sewing in a "stub" sheet, to which a folio or signature is secured by sewing or glue)? Thanks in advance!

FWIW, most graphics apps have confusing or misleading UIs with regard to color management. While I do not expect a UI to provide a built-in tutorial on a complex and highly technical subject, I do expect to be able to find all the applicable profiles, learn exactly what they are applied to, and all the applicable color space conversions, and learn exactly when they are applied. A lot (all too often the vast majority) of that information is not easily found. And there are far too many over-simplifications (for the benefit of the non-technical user, no doubt) and confusions of terms (such as color mode and color space). None of that excuses the Affinity suite. I wish they would do a better job on this. Anybody doing pre-press work needs to know what they're sending to the printer, without having to do a dozen experiments to discover the undocumented (or very badly documented) behavior of the app. The CorelDRAW color management UI is among the better ones. You can clearly see (and set) the document, the printer and the monitor profiles, and the color engine to use, and what profiles to assign to sources or devices without one. No surprises, which is my main complaint about how color management is handled. Too many surprises! Some CD release prior to CD X6 (2013, the oldest release I have installed) had a nice graphic display for the transform flow among scanner, document, printer and monitor but they seem to have removed that. Regrettable, as that was an instantly interpretable UI feature.