sfriedberg

If you mean simply that they are not children of other layers, sure. If you mean they must be at the top of the Z stacking order, then no. There are lots of uses for "background" global layers which are under most/all other layers in the Z stack. BTW, many other applications distinguish between layers and groups of objects. In most of those applications, all layers are "at the top level" because you can't place layers inside other layers. And you can meaningfully have an empty layer, which is great when you also have scripting.

@skyzyxAt a bare minimum, it should be possible to restrict regex matches to the current selection. But even that is lacking, as you have found.

This is something that should be supported, and it illustrates a basic weakness in the Affinity suite across a whole range of features. What I'm referring to is, first, a general lack of support for user-supplied field contents on various sorts of objects (e.g., captions on picture frames, or TOC/short/summary version of text, as in this particular situation), and second and closely related, the inability to specify which field, attribute or property of a referenced object should be substituted at the point of reference. Ideally, this is something that would be fixed across the whole range of possible references and not just specifically for TOC entries. And by "fixed" I mean "substantial new functionality added in a major feature update". But I am not holding my breath.

I am pretty sure I've described this document setup in another thread, so forgive the repetition if you read it elsewhere. Using CorelDRAW, which has a single master page with global layers, I created a set of about 50 documents, each of which contains the content for one digitally-sold product. Each product is made in several variations, by turning on or off various combinations of per-page and global layers. Most of the global layers are positioned below all the per-page layers, but a few are positioned near the top of the Z stack, below just a couple of per-page layers. In a typical file, there are 7 per-page layers on odd pages, 2 per-page layers on even pages, and 7 global layers. In this application, I use global layers like master pages, for content which is identical on all pages on which they appear. The global layers in this set of documents include: guides, registration marks for my automated vinyl cutter, manual cutting guides for people using scissors, feature boundaries, a printable background grid, an internal-use positioning grid, and the document-wide pasteboard. On a per-page basis, every even/odd page uses exactly the same layer setup. Odd pages have two layers of labels or text content, and two pairs of boundary and fill layers, plus a layer of guides. Even pages have one layer of labels or text content, and a layer of guides. For this situation, I could use the "global layers with per-page content" feature that I believe thomaso is describing. However, I find it comfortable to have the truly replicated content on the global layers, and a parallel but independent set of layers per-page. Assuming a sane UI for duplicating pages or copying global layer content between pages, I could work either way. Using global layers with per-page contents would definitely speed up the process of turning on/off the necessary layers for a variation of the product. (If you are wondering why there are so many guide layers, these are a built-in feature of CorelDRAW. Every page has one, and there is also a master one. The master page pasteboard is also a built-in feature.) One feature of CorelDRAW's layer system that is a bit unpleasant: The ordering of master page global layers can be different on each page. So I have to visit each page and drag the global layers to their proper positions in the Z stack, interleaved with the per-page layers. I only have to do this once, during document setup. But I have changed my mind after the first dozen or so documents were created, so had to revisit every page of those documents correcting the stacking order. This problem presumably would be eliminated using global layers with per-page contents, as there'd be a consistent master page stacking order for the global layers. In the CorelDRAW object manager (which is basically like the Affinity suite layers panel), you can choose to display a list of all the pages (master page included) with the Z-stacking of layers per-page, or just the current page with the interleaved Z-stack of per-page and global layers. Both views are convenient. I normally use the all-pages view, but when correcting the interleaved stacking order (see previous paragraph) it is necessary to use the current page interleaved view.

Maybe he means the transparency top and bottom?

The bleed area is what you might lose when the pages get trimmed. So no content that actually needs to be read should be in the bleed. In fact, no content should butt up against the inside of the bleed, you need a gutter or margin, generally. The bleed is where you extend things like backgrounds or paper textures to ensure they will run all the way out to the worst-case paper trim. Text frames don't extend into the bleed (unless having your words chopped off is a deliberate design decision).

I wouldn't read too much into that description of <hr>. The letters abbreviate "horizontal rule" which has more typographic uses than "a thematic change between paragraph elements". Going from lines across the page to endless hours of speculation might not be the best way to spend that infinite time...

No need. I diagnosed and fixed that problem. which was a mix of release versions for individual font files, as reported toward the bottom of the other thread. It's just so annoying that the Affinity suite was the only thing on my system that couldn't deal with it.

I should probably add that this occurs most often when I am launching Publisher and Designer and a couple of web browsers all right after logging in. If I let the system "settle" after login, and launch apps one at a time, I don't recall seeing this issue. This suggests a race condition of some kind, but that alone would not explain why the problem persists over closing and reopening the Affinity apps.

There is a related issue on Windows I have run into with the Affinity suite several times (although I cannot claim it is "frequent"). Affinity Publisher and Designer (presumably Photo, too, but I haven't made any attempt to check) will sometimes fail to understand that certain long-installed fonts are still installed. On several occasions, one of a family of fonts is recognized, but none of the others. And on restart of the application, it sometimes becomes a different single member of a family of fonts which is recognized. On other occasions, an entire family of fonts is not recognized. During these episodes, all my other font-aware applications are happily recognizing the complete set of installed fonts, and all the fonts appear in the Windows Fonts folder. Stopping the Windows Font Cache service, clearing out the cache files, and restarting the WFC does not always clear up the problem. However, it does reliably go away when the computer is restarted. Based on this, and my earlier experience with Affinity choking badly on mixed release versions for members of a single font family (see ), there seems to be something rather fragile about the Affinity suite's handling of fonts on Windows. I would really, really like to know if Affinity has its own list or cache of fonts someplace, so I can try cleaning that out.

And here's yet another place it was requested:

I can rarely "enter" a table to edit the cell contents by selecting the table with any of the left-hand toolbar tools. The only thing that works 100% for me is to locate the table in the Layers panel and select it there. Then I can get at the cell contents.

One of my favorite "lost" drawing applications is Expression from Creature House. Microsoft ended up buying the IP, and then burying the application, at least in English-speaking markets. Expression is based on the "vector-driven raster brushes" approach. Basically everything in Expression is a vector stroke, but every vector stroke is rendered as a brush, and both the stroke and the brush properties can be changed at any time. With this in mind, ClipStudio Paint is sort of mid-way between Expression and Corel Painter, because it has both vector-driven brushes and plain raster brushes, although it doesn't do either thing as well as the two specialists.

I may be wrong, but I think the answer is "no". The Affinity suite has a very weak color palette mechanism compared to CorelDRAW, and very very weak (nearly nonexistent) prepress and separations support. So in CD, I draw with any paletted Pantone, HKS, Trumatch, FOCOLTONE, TOYO, etc. color, and the object properties tell me it's colored PANTONE 114C (or whatever), not the RGB or CMYK approximation, and will highlight the appropriate entry in the color picker palette. That's true whether I've set my document color model to RGB or CMYK, either way. I've never gotten Affinity Designer to do that for me.

OK, this analogy is not perfect, but if you are familiar with CorelDRAW, Corel PhotoPaint and Corel Painter, then Affinity Photo is like Corel PhotoPaint, Affinity Designer is like CorelDRAW, and Clip Studio Paint is like Corel Painter. Affinity Designer and Clip Studio Paint have substantially different objectives. If I wanted to focus on vector illustration, I would choose Affinity Designer over Clip Studio Paint. If I wanted to focus on natural media illustration or manga illustration specifically, I would choose Clip Studio Paint over Affinity Designer. (Actually, I would choose Corel Painter over both for natural media illustration.)

@MikeW Which format do you export from Lyx and import to Affinity suite?

Last I tried was LibreOffice 6.4. First off, I just don't like the LibreOffice Math 6.4 interface. Feels relatively inefficient compared to other applications. I think a big part of that is having to pull down a dropdown list every single time to get at a set of tools, and then frequently have to scroll. Other formula builder apps have a much more compact UI, even if there's a similar number of mouse clicks. And some things I was using heavily (the stack operator) cannot be accessed through the tools list, but must be typed out explicitly. (And the UI is quite misleading on first impressions, because you'd expect the icon for scalable brackets to have the stack operator built in.) Secondly, it's got its own formula language, which I don't care to add to the other formula languages I've already got taking up space in my brain. Finally, if memory serves me (it's been some time!) I had issues where I could not successfully import what LO Math had exported. LibreOffice 7.2 may have addressed some of those issues; I haven't checked. I am sure LO Math can work well in someone else's workflow. I stopped trying to find that workflow, because I found something else adequate for my needs.

While you can't join three curves at a node, you can combine the separate curves. That might have the effect you want.

I have been using free Formulator MathML Weaver (mmlsoft.com) to construct equation blocks, exporting as SVG, and importing the SVG into AffPub. This is not my preferred workflow, but it's been adequate. I very seldom attempt to edit the placed SVG in the Affinity suite, in part because you can only make rather limited changes while preserving a decent layout, and in larger part because the placed equation blocks would no longer match the source MathML files, which would cause me confusion and trouble at a later date. What I'd like is a tool like Formulator with the typographic "tweaking" controls of MathMagic. What I'd like even more is for the Affinity suite to offer a plugin interface with sufficient control over character positioning that we could port MathJax or something similar to it. I am not holding my breath waiting for Serif to implement their own equation system, but have some faint hope they will someday allow a 3rd party to fill that hole.

@antoThanks for collecting those. And yes, I know it is a bug, that's why I reported here in the Publisher Bugs found on Windows forum.

Go into your profile (top of page, right hand side, drop down with your username on it, 2nd item in the dropdown list). Over by the round icon with the letter, there's an icon button. If you hover your mouse over it, it says "Profile Photo". Click on it and upload your photo.

Windows 7 Pro and Windows 10 Pro, 64-bit. I was working on a project with AffPub 1.10.1 and just upgraded to 1.10.3.1191. The document has many SVG files placed as Linked files. While updating some of the SVG illustrations, I found a regression in the Resource Manager. Specifically, if you Update a Linked SVG with Modified status, the image presented in the document updates, but Resource Manager reports Missing status, and the options include Relink and Replace but omit Update, Embed and Collect. If you try to Relink, no files are presented in the file browser. (Yes, the directory is correct.) If you Replace, you can see all the files in the directory, but selecting one returns you to the Missing status. Similarly, if you choose to Replace rather than Update when Resource Manager tells you that a Linked file has Modified status, you get Missing status, with Relink and Replace offered, but Update, Embed and Collect omitted. While the Resource Manager is reporting Missing status, any further changes to the Linked file are not detected. So there's no cue to update/replace the file. If the Resource manager is reporting OK status, changed to the Linked file are detected and reported, as expected. So the Resource Manager is detecting changes to individual Linked files in OK status just fine until they get an Update/Replace, at which point the individual files get stuck with Missing status and no further changes are detected to those individual files. Eventually, most or all of the Linked files become Missing, if you are busy tweaking illustrations. I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter, but the SVG files are being exported from AffDes 1.10.3, and were previously exported by AffDes 1.10.1 on the Windows 7 Pro machine. See the next paragraph for the Windows 10 Pro machine. To try to track down what the problem is, I started with 1.10.1.1142 AffPub and 1.9.1.979 AffDes installed on a Windows 10 Pro machine. I confirmed, by reexporting the file from AffDes, that Update of a Linked SVG worked as expected in AffPub, i.e., the Modified status changes to OK. I then upgraded AffDes to 1.10.3.1191, and confirmed that this still worked properly. Then I upgraded AffPub to 1.10.3.1191, and reexported the file from AffDes a third time. Doing an Update on a Linked file of Modified status produces a Missing status, exactly as I described above. So this problem is not dependent on Windows 7, you can put that objection back in your pocket. I'm about to drop back to 1.10.1 until we get a patch.

Automatically? No. But you can do it manually by breaking curves at nodes, and deleting the redundant lines.

@GarryPI'm pretty sure I understand what he doesn't like. When he zooms in, the existing grid lines not only get further apart (as you would expect), but Designer also inserts intermediate gridlines. It's not always obvious which of the new set of lines at a zoom-in corresponds to a older line at the zoom-out. And if you are using the grid lines for a reference to maintain some consistency with objects that have been zoomed out of view, that confusion is an anti-feature, not a feature. For myself, there are occasions when I want the finer and finer gridlines added when I zoom it, and there are occasions when I don't. Fortunately, the grid and axis manager does offer a mode that accomodates the times when I don't. @JimD, try changing from Automatic to Basic mode in the grid manager, and see if that takes care of the annoyance.

@v_kyrThis is all absolutely correct. I'd been playing with the idea of writing a "Desiderata for References in Publisher" that covers that sort of thing, and how the reference feature relates to use of (variable) fields, plugins, numbering, indexing, etc., etc. Complete lack of spare time prevents that writeup, but your list overlaps with the list in my handscribbled notes about 85%.