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Paul Mc

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Everything posted by Paul Mc

  1. Paul Mc
    Thanks @Lagarto As was pointed out earlier by @LibreTraining I'm guessing the the font file was not constructed correctly or automatically generated using old or buggy software. Whatever the reason I'm able to move on. As curious and interesting as this is I feel it is not worth taking this forward (at last for me) as there is a solution: don't use the OTF version but use either of the TTF versions. I don't possess any font editing software or skills so this is a little outside my knowledge and comfort zone. Thanks for the help and support on this.
  2. Paul Mc
    It is very strange. Are you getting the two strings aligned? I've no explanation why this may be happening. Maybe there is a side-effect from the screen font scaling or something like that. Because TTF works I'm content that I can move forward with this. Thanks for your help and trying to get to the bottom of it.
  3. Paul Mc
    ... and bingo! It does work correctly if I use PDF/X-1a:2003 (This is the same file as above just exported differently).
  4. Paul Mc
    Here's the previous test I did when I discovered the problem. I've taken a screen grab of the PDF from Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, changed the colour of the black text to red and then overlaid the original from AD on top. This is using the OTF file. I used the digital high-quality setting (PDF 1.7 (Acrobat 8)). The Arial text has been used as a guide for eyeballing the alignment and you can see that matches up pretty well. The exported PDF and the AFDESIGN files are included below. If you open the AD file and things work correctly then the black text should obscure the red text - apart from a few pixels that might be visible along the edges. kerning OTF test.pdf kerning OTF test.afdesign
  5. Paul Mc
    Thanks @Lagarto, that's really strange. As you can see, my experience was different. I didn't realise that kerning is off by default in Word so that explains why they match. The original issue still remains, though, and that is that the on-screen image of the text was different from the PDF export - at least on my PC, so maybe there's something strange in my setup. I'm away from it at the moment but will get chance later to try uninstalling the fonts, rebooting, and re-installing them one at a time to see if I can reproduce what you are seeing. Of course, this is all academic now as I have a working font and document but I appreciate your efforts here, thanks.
  6. Paul Mc
    Hi @LibreTraining Thanks for doing this. The results appear identical to the TTF file that was included in the package. This confirms that the OTF file was the culprit and it isn't an issue with AD. Here are the results. One small point was that I had to change the Character Kerning setting from Auto to 0‰
  7. Paul Mc
    Hi @walt.farrell, I think I've found a solution. The package comes with a TrueType and an OpenType version of the font. The one I had installed was the OpenType one which caused the issues. Switching to the TTF version allows it to work as expected. Here's a link to the file if you'd like to try it out: https://www.dafont.com/font-comment.php?file=onelove
  8. Paul Mc
    Hi everyone, I'm using a font for a personal project that appears to have a kerning issue. The font is called onelove and is a script font with strokes that overlap character cells. It appears at first glance that AD is using some form of kerning however it appears poorly done. I then tweak it using my own values for the kerning and everything looks fine for any bitmap exports but the PDF export looks like the kerning values have doubled up. Converting the fonts to curves solves the problem but it isn't what I want at the moment while things are unfinished. As a test I used the same font in MS Word and the default look is very different and no kerning was required. Note: the MS Word text is a bitmap screen grab from Word pasted into an AD document for comparison. I've a suspicion that the kerning is somehow mangled and that the changes I'm making are not necessary, but appear to be required from the on-screen image I'm working with in AD, and these changes then appear as extra offsets in the PDF export. Here's what the above AD file exports to PDS as: There is definitely a lot of movement here. I hope I'm doing something stupid here but can't for the life of me see what it is. Any thoughts?
  9. Paul Mc
    I'm working on an animation where I need to be able to rotate a starry sky as if in a timelapse video. I'm using Blender to do the animation but what I need is a convincing sky. I can find quite a few low quality night sky equirectangular HDRis but not high quality/high resolution ones. However, there are quite a few high resolution photographs, some of which are panoramas, that might be available to be used in this way and I wondered if anyone had been down this path with Affinity Photo. I'm thinking this would be done by stitching together stills to cover a region of the sky that is to be used (I probably don't need a full 360 degree dome), then faking exposures to build the HDRi and finally re-projecting on to a dome. For the final step I could always use Blender to create the equirectangular projection if I have a good image that doesn't stretch on a dome - stars don't stretch and the result is very quickly noticed by the human eye! Update: I found some celestial star maps photographed and stitched by NASA that look like they will do the trick.
  10. Paul Mc
    Hi @JimmyJack I hadn't considered that approach, I will try it out. Thanks for the suggestion. Regarding AI, I'm not up to date with it and haven't used it for a while so I was struggling to remember exactly. I've not seen it anywhere else but have seen posts showing masking and clipping being used to create a similar result so it seems it is a desirable feature but no package I familiar with seems to offer it - apart from Vector Styler although I've never used it and didn't know it had that capability.
  11. Paul Mc
    I said exactly the same thing in another recent thread. I couldn't agree more. Although computationally this is possible to solve there is a huge culture of expectations to satisfy. You only have to look at the Standards documentation and meeting notes for the SVG standard on this point alone to see that there are many unresolved issues here. It has been proposed and rejected several times now. I'm not up to date on the current state of affairs on this specific point but if it were part of the SVG format then I think this would provide a good basis for an AD future feature. As far as I know (and I may be wrong here) AI is the only application to provide this function.
  12. Paul Mc
    Thanks @Old Bruce, this is being wise after the fact though. I had a brief to design several icons to fit within a specific rectangle. I started the work by creating guides that were pixel aligned to that rectangle. I then created some ellipses and a rectangle with the desired stroke thickness and snapped these to the guides. The default being centre aligned meant that the strokes extended beyond the size limit I was working to. I then modified the alignment to inside and at that point everything looked fine. I then went to trim the curves and delete some lines and that's when I was surprised that the new half ellipses reverted back to centre aligned. These were not what I wanted, or expected. This was my ignorance about how this software worked. I realise that now. At the time I don't think this was an unreasonable expectation. This is further frustrated by the fact that I've coded curve offsets in the past which do this so I know it is perfectly possible - just not how AD works. I've managed to get the work done now but it involved a lot of use of the Transform panel and calculation of offsets of the node coordinates in conjunction with the stroke width. It just felt like it was a lot more work than it should have been.
  13. Paul Mc
    For me a collection has no implied order whereas a list does. The order is what fives the curve a sense of direction. We agree then! 😉
  14. Paul Mc
    Nope. It's a list. There is no answer - because it is not a valid question? It should be whichever side the designer wishes it to be, no? Just like inside, centre and outside, shouldn't you be able to choose. There is no de-facto standard for this. Why would you want AD to decide for you? This is getting a long way from my post and not helping answer my original question. I accept that what I was trying to do isn't going to work. @MEB has already confirmed this. What I was wondering was whether anyone had found a workaround that allows non-centred curves to retain their size and position after being broken. After the responses so far and my experimentation here I feel that this not possible without a lot of planning and mathematics i.e. use of the transform panel to position and size elements precisely after calculating offsets.
  15. Paul Mc
    You, the designer, should decide on which side of the curve you want the stroke to appear. To do this you need to have a convention or a rule so that the user can directly specify this. This is where the curve direction is important. Behind the scenes there is a direction stored in the curve representation in memory. I realise you might not agree with this but trust me, this is the case. Please export a multi-node curve to SVG and look at the file contents. You will see something like this: <path d="M0.12,30.538c107.935,31.399 135.899,51.514 98.122,144.24c-37.777,92.725 59.364,193.791 116.766,156.996c57.401,-36.796 196.245,-208.02 90.273,-241.872c-105.973,-33.852 -235.494,-79.479 -106.463,-89.782" style="fill:none;stroke:#000;stroke-width:0.24px;"/> Direction is often used to help fill shapes in a predictable manner as well. Each curve will have a first and last node. In some cases these will share the same position on the plane and if the tangents align then this would be considered a closed curve. In any case, travelling from the first node in the direction of the first handle gives you a vector which has a left side and right side. You can think of this as rotating the vector around the start node in an anticlockwise direction for the left side and clockwise for the right side. Alternatively, standing on the start node on the canvas and looking towards the first handle you will have a left hand side to the curve and a right hand side to the curve. Personally, I feel that the terms inside and outside are inappropriate for this as they have additional meaning which does not always apply in some scenarios e.g. the cases you show above. At this point the choice of side is an easy matter.
  16. Paul Mc
    I think we are probably arguing over terminology here. Control Points is a term that is used in mathematics i.e. outside of Affinity, for the points that define the ends and handle positions of a Bezier curve. A string of these form a Bezier Spline which is what most of the curves in AD are comprised. I think you are using the term Parametric Control Points for those shapes that are defined procedurally via the Tool panel, like the cog etc. Although they do provide control and could be argued as being named correctly I feel they are confusing the discussion here. The parameters to the shape tools are not only points as they also include values which are not points as you mentioned earlier. On those points I think we have been in agreement all along.
  17. Paul Mc
    Like I said there are two levels at work here: high level shapes and low level curves. They are completely separate and are only related because the high level shapes need to be converted to curves in order to be rendered to the screen. Normally this happens behind the scenes and the user isn't aware of it. If you change a parameter value then the procedure is re-executed and a new curve or set of curves is created. That same conversion is also applied when you use the Convert To Curves function. Just to be clear a cog, for example, is not a curve - it is a Bezier spline that has been created by a procedure that generated the (Bezier) control points based on computations driven by the input parameters. You don't think it is a curve because you can't see or access the nodes in the UI. They are there though, behind the scenes. If you drag one of the shape control points to a new position then the procedure gets executed again and a new set of control points is created and a new spline curve displayed. Click on Convert To Curves and the nodes appear.
  18. Paul Mc
    As you say, the user-interface doesn't change which begs the question as to why it is visible, enabled and can be modified without having any effect. Clearly this parameter is ignored for open curves but remains with the data set for that curve. Technically, there's no reason for the open curve not to have the stroke retained on the side(s) it was set when the curve was closed so I'm hoping this is an indication that this functionality will be introduced in a future version of AD.
  19. Paul Mc
    Hi @R C-R sorry, but I think you may be confusing the parametric model used to define the high level shapes (like the cogs, conics etc.) with the underlying representation of the curve for drawing or after you apply Convert To Curves. All the lower level curves are represented by a list of control points. The higher-level parametric models eventually reduce to a set of individual lower level Bezier curves. Bezier curves have a direction and can be strung together to form longer curves. They can also be given thickness by calculating an offset curve. I used the term nodes because of the node tool and the fact that the control points (that are referred to as nodes in Affinity) are used in the curve specification. The higher level parametric models are not really curves but procedural methods by which a set of curves is constructed. A set of technical drawing procedures. You are correct in saying that Affinity parametric shapes do not have nodes - they have parameters, some of which are positions on the canvas. Technically, Bezier curves are parametric curves - the parameters being the control points.
  20. Paul Mc
    Hi @MEB, sorry, I didn't mean to suggest that you weren't aware of the issue. I misunderstood your point about the Break Curve button. Yes, the CTRL+ hover and Click method is quicker that what I did. Thanks.
  21. Paul Mc
    Thanks, @MEB I (roughly) followed the steps you describe in my approach. Surely deleting a segment breaks the curve? Deleting the segments wasn't the real problem though. The issue is that a closed curve with an align of inside or outside effectively turns into an open curve when you delete a segment which also changes the align to centre. Align0001-0629.mp4 Just for clarity in case anyone else is wondering what I'm talking about here. From a UX perspective this was a surprise. Although there is visual feedback in the form of the curve changing position/alignment there was no other indication that this change had occurred.
  22. Paul Mc
    I did consider that but I couldn't get the alignment to work as I wanted. The thickness was on both sides and centre had no thickness.
  23. Paul Mc
    Yes, I'm sure that would work too. I think anyone's approach is going to be from a comfort perspective and that's driven by familiarity. The Boolean Add ensures that all the curves are closed so the alignment wouldn't be a issue here. In my workflow I try to end up with the only the curves that are required, it's just me I suppose! Of course, for transparent line drawings this wouldn't work, and that's been a lot of my work in the past. For this example it is fairly simple and your method would work well. Now that I know about the Align issue, the closed curve approach would probably be the best for work like these small icons. Thanks for taking the time to comment.
  24. Paul Mc
    Hi @NotMyFault, I am designing a set of logos for an application that will be used as button graphics. The desired format is SVG. Here's an example: These are to fit in a precise size (128px square), so I create the top ellipse first, and set the curve Align to inside, I then copy and paste the second ellipse below and then duplicate the next two. I then added the vertical side curves. I then converted the bottom three ellipses to curves and then went to break the curves at the intersection points with the two vertical lines. The bottom three ellipses then change in size (in reality the Align : inside changes to centre without warning!). I re-did the design keeping all curves centred but the Transform panel uses the centres to define the size and not the true extent of the curves including their thickness so some maths seems to be needed to get this correct. It's not difficult but it just seems more hassle than it should be. Expand curves would help with the final resizing. I've also used an "outside" curve with the same colour as the background in the past to remove the excess on a centred open curve that's part of a closed curve but that's not applicable in this instance. I can also use a set of scaled PNGs but SVG is more flexible and usually less work (the small PNGs often need pixel tweaking).
  25. Paul Mc
    I agree. I've done a lot of coding in the past with parametric curves and almost without exception they are all represented by a list of control points (nodes) which have a start and end and thus a direction (even if the UI doesn't show this). The conic section representation used for closed circles and ellipses make it easy to calculate the offset. Convert To Curves converts this to parametric form. Open and closed parametric curves are usually represented in the same way - the only difference is in the rendering usually with an attribute that defines whether the curves is closed or not. I'm impressed with passion in the above discussion about inside/outside & left/right etc. but this is a user perspective issue and not an implementation issue. The maths involved in calculating the offset curve is the same whether open or closed. i.e. (I'm guessing here because I have no sight of the source code) but I'd put money on the fact that the code for handling open curves is 90% there and just needs tweaking for open curves and the UI handling. The direction visibility issue is only a problem in the UI. Blender does a good job of showing the direction of a curve using chevrons along the length of the curve. I'm chipping in with this post because this caught me out this morning while working on a design which used thick curves with alignments that were not centre which I had to break and found that the alignment jumped to centre.
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