CM0

The content fill is truly a revolutionary level game changer for compositing work. The difference between the tools has mostly been manageable, but AI is providing a separation in capabilities that is enormous.
However, as fast as they can be implemented, they can also be copied. As openAI recently stated, there is no longer a moat to the capabilities you build. Anyone can copy them rather easily.
IMO, the quickest path to these capabilities is for Affinity to focus on finishing their plugin/scripting capabilities. They are a small team compared to Adobe, so getting the API out there allows Affinity to leverage the community and 3rd parties to greatly expand Affinity's capabilities including integrations with AI.

Are there any plans of adding a two-dimensional alignment option? Akin to the "Tidy Up" option present in Figma.
I understand the objectives of those programs are a bit outside of the central scope of Affinity, but additions like that seem like the next logical step. Thank you!

Fantastic feature. Though, one thing I am not a fan of is that the checkbox for maintaining aspect ratio is greyed out and unusable unless you click the coloured buttons. I just want to have the option to have this on by default when I open the panel without the extra clicking every time.
Also, the panel could be designed like the Move Data Entry panel by being active while doing other changes. For instance, I tried alt+L clicking another object to make it a key object to change which object affected rotations, but that also applied the match rotation I did with this new feature at the same time. It would be nice if it only applied when I tell it to while making edits like it was done with Move Data Entry.
Another thing that would be appreciated is having a regular floating panel version of Alignment. As of now you need to click the button at the top of the toolbar to use or open the Layer menu. Having a floating panel version and the ability to make a shortcut for it would be a solid quality of life change to go along with this improved feature set.

This.
The scripting devs are going to have to dedicate a significant amount of time towards documentation. We can't expect our docs team to document the ins and outs of an API (technically multiple APIs), it's simply not fair or realistic. Besides, we'd have to tell them what to write, which would mean pretty much writing the documentation anyway. Sure, they'll be able to present it in a way that looks good and integrated with the normal app documentation, but the devs are going to have to provide much of the content.
We're planning to use one of the many available documentation tools to do most of actual generation for us. The current favourite is Doxygen, largely because most of us have had at least some exposure to it.
Please remember too that the scripting team sometimes has to do bits of work away from scripting development. As the dev who wrote the DWG/DXF importer (and now exporter - see here 🙂), I tend to be the one tasked with its fixes and improvements. The same goes for Move and Shape Data Entry. Everyone in dev could put in those fixes, but it makes so much more sense if I do them because I'm most familiar with the code and should be able to do the work faster. The members of the scripting team do spend most of their time doing scripting work, but it's not 100%.

Hi All,
Below is the list of all new feature and improvements which are included in the 2.4 beta (bug fix list is available here).
To learn more about these features please click on the link to go to each feature's dedicated post. To give feedback or report bugs against any of these features please reply to that same post (also check out bug reporting and feedback tips).
Layer States added to Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher DWG and DXF Export added to Affinity Designer Set Selection Box Double click / tap to switch from node to move tool Filename available as variable in Export Persona Ability to lock insertion target Space modifier for Lock Children Space Horizontal / Vertical now considers key object Size / Rotate objects to same 32-bit HDR PNG support added (PNG Third Edition) Additional RAW format support Getting the 2.4 beta
If you have not enrolled into the beta program yet and would like to take part, you can do so here. This will immediately give you access to the latest 2.4 beta builds to try for yourself.
If you are already enrolled in the beta program you have two options:
1. If you still have the 2.3 beta installed, you can now run up those beta versions and you will be prompted to update them to the 2.3 beta.
2. If you have uninstalled the 2.3 beta, you will need to go back to Your Account -> Downloads and product keys and find your previous order for the Affinity Beta Software Program, and you can download the 2.4 beta from there.
Thanks,
Ash

Apps: All
Platforms: Windows, macOS and iPad
Within alignment options you will see three new options to make all items in your current selection adopt the same width, height or rotation. By default this will transform all objects to match the first item selected, or alternatively if a key object has been nominated (alt-click) it will use that as the source.
Additionally you can choose to maintain the aspect ratio of the objects being resized.
On desktop this is available via the alignment dropdown:

And on iPad via the alignment options panel which you can get to via the transform panel:

 

It could be really useful and powerful to allow expressions in the input fields where there is a variable 'n' for the current instance number of the copy.
You could then create some interesting patterns.

So then why not also - (minus) & all of the other applicable formulaic field expressions? AFAIK, support for that is already built into apps so it should not be too hard to add that to the move data fields -- IOW, add one & the others should come in for free, so to speak.

Hi @CM0,
Thanks for the sample file and screenshots, I've now logged this with the developers

So happy that my 12" record now has a real spiralling groove rather than a set of concentric circles. 😃

Love the new Spiral Tool!

It could be really useful and powerful to allow expressions in the input fields where there is a variable 'n' for the current instance number of the copy.
You could then create some interesting patterns.

Question to the devs, will it be possible to have custom keybinds for whatever script is being created through this new system, or will that be something happening later down the line?

I sincerely appreciate the time to just drop a small comment here and let us know a bit how things are going.

I sincerely appreciate the time to just drop a small comment here and let us know a bit how things are going.

I sincerely appreciate the time to just drop a small comment here and let us know a bit how things are going.

I sincerely appreciate the time to just drop a small comment here and let us know a bit how things are going.

I sincerely appreciate the time to just drop a small comment here and let us know a bit how things are going.

I sincerely appreciate the time to just drop a small comment here and let us know a bit how things are going.

Any progress report on this front is more than appreciated.
From what I know a lot of new development in inDesign is done in JavaScript, so I'm not surprised at all that JavaScript is performing so well in Affinity apps too.

Hi all,
The team has been making good progress. I don't have any updates on a release date but please be assured we are not sitting on our haunches - we want to get this feature out as much as you want it out!
Naturally we've been exposing more of the apps' functionality to scripts, but we've been working on plugin-specific technology too. For example, there's a new asynchronous file i/o and networking API, initially driven by the Javascript layer but then we thought it would be good for the lower level C/C++ plugins to have access too. Obviously with local and remote i/o, we've had to be careful that a script isn't covertly sending user data somewhere, so we've introduced a permissions system for Javascript plugins - unless you allow a particular script network access, it won't be able to use the networking API. It may not be a big shiny WOW! feature, but it's important to get these things right.
Anecdotally, I can tell you we've actually used some scripts internally to do some genuinely useful stuff that would have taken literally days to do manually. One script I wrote optimised a document and removed about 60000 layers. There have also been relatively simple layout and alignment tasks that scripts can munch through in the blink of an eye. Last week I wrote a script that split a pixel layer into new pixel layers containing the blocks of grouped pixels. Even the pixel processing was done in the script - I didn't have to rely on the app to do the heavy lifting for me because our performance is good enough to implement DBSCAN in Javascript.
Please be patient. We know you all want scripting available yesterday, but we're getting there!

So to summarise:
- Because of the growth of the Japanese market for Affinity the devs are now working on "vertical writing" and "ruby" to support Eastern languages. Good news for a lot of people I think.
- A cloud service to be able to easily switch between platforms and keep all your work assets. Will help with a steady revenue stream and I personally think is a reasonable way of monetising the Affinity platform without backing away from comitting to perpetual licenses.
- AI functionality has been worked on for 2 years, but nothing concrete about what that feature is. Kind of implying that it will be released next year, but that's just my speculation.
- Any of these are highly likely to be officially announced within the next 3-6 months.
So we have some idea of what to expect for 2024. Sounds good to me!

I mean that is an extremely minimized view of the significance of that post. It is huge reveal that there is a concrete implementation in progress using a modern JS engine. That communication and demos were sufficient and very well received if you follow the rest of that thread. There is no need for a timescale for its release. Showing progress is far more effective than anything else they could ever post and the solicitation of feedback in that thread was very welcomed.

Yes, that was exactly the point I made above in another post. The new smaller iterative development is a very welcomed change. More interactive with the community of users. And yes, my same observation on the announcements as well. Would be great if they would post on social media.