MikeTO
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Posts posted by MikeTO
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I know you know this, but this is still an issue in 1.10.0.1103
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16 hours ago, Last Chance said:
@MikeTOI tend to use PNG or TIFF (rarely JPEG) depending on usage. PNG is often far smaller as a filesize.
Be careful about PNG. It was designed for on-screen use and doesn't support non-RGB colour spaces such as CMYK which makes it a poor choice for professional printing.
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45 minutes ago, R C-R said:
For some reason I cannot drag the zoom slider in the context toolbar to change the zoom level on my Mac (in any of the Affinity apps). I can click on the slider scale to jump to any point on it but I can't drag the slider pointer to move it along the scale.
The slider's pointer also does not update its position on the scale if I change the zoom level by other means, like by using the popup menu next to the numeric zoom field to enter one of its preset choices or by dragging on the canvas with the Zoom tool.
Anybody else seeing the same thing?
I didn't even know this feature existed but agreed, it's buggy, at least on macOS. If you fiddle around with it you can eventually get it to slide but it mostly doesn't work.
Also, I assume those are logarithmic tick marks above it but they just look like random noise to me. I'm not sure that they add value.
There is something odd about the slider appearance and I couldn't put my finger on it at first. It's the slider itself. It's the right shape for a macOS slider with tick marks but it's upside down and has a black outline instead of grey.
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Also, I recommend using TIFF for images in a book. Avoid more complex formats such as PSD and formats intended for on-screen use such as JPG.
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I agree with David. Linked images is the way to go for anything longer than a booklet. If you're laying out a book do yourself a favour and use linked images to reduce the amount of memory required, improve the app's performance, and keep your file size manageable. It's also much, much easier to update images later.
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On 4/24/2020 at 1:46 AM, RockyRover said:
I just got this program expecting it to be like PageStream, which gave me the dimensions of my lines... Pagestream had a window with the co-ordinates and dimensions of the drawn object.
Designer and Publisher have almost the same measurement features as PageStream's "Edit Palette" did. Turn on View > Studio > Transform and you'll see X/Y, width/height, rotation, and slant. The other PageStream Edit Palette features for objects such as corner radii and flip can be found in Affinity's Context Bar. I don't think there's anything you used in PageStream that isn't available in Affinity.
On 6/18/2021 at 10:32 PM, Mountain_Villager said:I have not even opened Affinity because it does not give me dimensions.
Soft logic Pagestream had an inspector that draws all the dimensions of your drawing.Dimensions are there, just in a different location. PageStream had only one floating palette or panel because it was a first-gen UI approach to breaking free of menus and dialog boxes. Before that UI feature was introduced, you had to keep choosing menu commands and closing dialog boxes to accomplish anything. Screen resolutions were tiny back in the nineties so there was just one palette, there wasn't space for anything else.
The Affinity apps use a newer UI approach that combines a dynamic palette (Context Bar) with a right column of panels that you can organize however you like. Serif chose to put measurements into the Transform panel instead of in the Context Bar and perhaps you don't have Transform visible.
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I doubt you'll have any problems using Publisher for your needs, I'm creating an equally complex book in Publisher on an old MacBook and it's surprisingly fast. I have hundreds of photos in my book, too.
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My two cents: this is more complicated than it appears.
Let's say you have 3 pages with linked text frames, pages numbered 1, 2, and 3. And on page 4 you have an index that includes markers for pages 1, 2, and 3.
You hide page 2. The text in the story that would have appeared on page 2 would be hidden and not re-flow to page 3. Page 3 would be renumbered to page 2. This is logical but what if you then edit page 1, adding a paragraph and pushing the last paragraph on that page to page 2. And that might push a paragraph of hidden text from 2 to 3. It's logical but weird.
The index markers for page 2 would need to be hidden in the index and the markers for page 3 would need to be updated to page 2.
If you were using facing pages and pages 2-3 were a spread but you hid page 2 which changed page 3 from a right to left page, how would publisher handle it?
What if you were using numbered paragraphs and started numbering on page 1 and continued through 2 and 3, would the paragraphs that fell on page 2 not be counted and numbering would resume on page 3? Probably.
Worst case scenario - hiding a page could also cause the text composition of subsequent pages to change if you're using something like numbered paragraphs. This is an edge case but it could happen.
And in a future world where we have cross references, if page 3 has a cross ref to page 2, the field couldn't display a 2 now and would have to display # because the cross ref was invalid.
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10 hours ago, garrettm30 said:
Except that in Publisher's case, a document title is displayed, even in the "integrated" title bar. Probably that means it is not displayed using any macOS API, but a title is still there, and if Serif coded their own approach (as it appears to me), there is no technical reason why they could not also make that title clickable to display a path to perform similarly to the macOS titles.
Agreed. The "status" control in the toolbar isn't a native macOS feature so Serif would have to duplicate Apple's code. I think it would be better to just lose the integrated titlebar if they wanted an interactive title. While I'd find it useful, I work exclusively on a laptop so I'd prefer to keep things the way they are to save a few pixels.
I think the reason Serif doesn't make the titles clickable even in Separated Mode is because they're also using the space for the zoom level. I assume the "status" toolbar control was added as a way to provide the same information when Separated Mode is off. It's an odd control because it looks clickable but it's not, and if the title is too long you can't see the zoom level anyway.
I'd happily lose the integrated title bar if there was a way to combine the toolbar and context bars. I know the Affinity toolbar is intended to be static while the context bar is dynamic but I use only a handful of toolbar commands so I'd have space. I know I can hide the title bar entirely but it feels weird not to have the friendly stoplight controls in the upper left.
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16 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:
Many thanks for clearing up some stuff I didn't understand. Apple's guidelines have become more and more complex over the years.
Agreed, and with iOS's design concepts bleeding into macOS it's getting to be a bit of a mishmash. I'm hoping that Monterey will clean up some of the inconsistencies introduced with Big Sur but I'm not holding my breath.
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On 6/29/2021 at 4:13 PM, Old Bruce said:
Should work in Consolidated mode too. The active document (or selected tab) has its file name in the window's frame. Plus File > Reveal in Finder shows that file.
It's not possible with an "Integrated" title bar, one which has the toolbar integrated with the title bar. The document title isn't displayed when a window's title bar and toolbar are integrated. To do what you want Serif would have to stop using an Integrated title bar which would take up more vertical space. From Apple's HCI guidelines:
In Photoshop 2021 with Application Frame disabled (similar to Separated Mode disabled in the Affinity apps), each window has its own title bar and can you interact with Photoshop's title bars like normal macOS windows. I think it's reasonable to ask Serif to do the same, all Mac apps should offer this.
Photoshop 2021 with Application Frame enabled doesn't use an Integrated title bar and doesn't display the current document title there, wasting the space and losing the ability to interact with the title. Serif also designed the toolbar to be identical between platforms but used the Integrated approach so that the sizing controls could be placed to the left of the toolbar controls, saving space for all of their Mac users. I think they've done the best they can.
Apple created this Integrated title/toolbar design for apps that aren't document-centric like Safari and which didn't need to display a document title or interact with it. But it was adopted by apps which are short on space and want a cleaner look.
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This could only work in Separated Mode of course.
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1 hour ago, Mindwerk said:
Herewith file
I opened it in 1.9.3 and the latest 1.10.x betas on macOS Big Sur and had no issues editing the text. It worked completely normally.
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8 hours ago, Petar Petrenko said:
We may expect Adobe will start again to redo its trio from scratch. i don't think they are very happy what is happening here with Affinity.
I doubt Adobe is planning to start over.
The original crop of 1980s page layout apps needed to be scrapped and replaced because they were written in assembler. At some point their code became too complex to maintain and and the developers couldn't wrap their head around the text composition code so with increased RAM it was easier to rewrite them in C.
The next generation of page layout apps were written in C but not in an object-oriented language such as C++/Objective C/Swift. While this code was much easier to maintain than assembler it was still crude by modern standards. For example, when you click on a text frame in an app written in an OO language, the text frame's event handler is triggered automatically, the text frame object "knows" it's been clicked on. If you write your app in just plain old C, your code will be informed only that the user clicked on a specific x/y coordinate and then your code has to figure out which of the many objects on the current page is the top-most object at that particular coordinate and what part of the object was clicked. This is a trivial example but page layout apps are so complex that at some point each company realized that rewriting in an OO language would reduce the amount of time that developers needed to debug their code.
There are few reasons to start over if your app is written in an OO language. One reason to do so would be because you want to go cross platform or add support mobile and your existing code is too platform dependent to easily port. Another reason would be because you realize that your original architecture is constraining your ability to add the features you want so it's better to start with a fresh architecture.
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Using 1.10.0.1098 on mac
The new beta definitely feels snappy and I'm not experiencing crashes with a test copy of my 1.9.3 file. However, there is a serious new bug with inline images which makes them impossible to use at the top of columns.
I've created a repeatable test document which I've attached. This is a 1.10 beta file but it can be opened in 1.9.3 for comparison.
- Watch the inline box in column 2
- Select the first line of type in column 1 and delete it which will move the first line of text from column 2 to the bottom of column 1.
- In 1.9.x, the inline box will be aligned to the top of the column.
- In 1.10 beta, the height of the inline box will be ignored and it will extend far above the top of the column.
The inline image feature worked perfectly before so the desired outcome is to restore the way it used to work. Thanks!
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3 hours ago, FrustratedandConfused said:
i guess, i appreciate your feedback. I do however find it very interesting when a question that is framed regarding Adobe is asked - that same attitude and position is not taken.
They really did have to start from scratch. It's like when Adobe built InDesign from the ground up, they didn't re-use PageMaker's code. If Serif had attempted to build every feature of the old app and every feature they needed to be competitive with Adobe all in 1.0 they would have failed.
But I'd be surprised if this feature wasn't in a future 2.0 release.
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This is an easy feature to code so its absence presumably means it's low on Serif's priority list. There is some UI complexity though. What should be selected after transforming? The choices are the original object, the copies, or the original plus the copies. The best answer is just the copies because standalone Duplicate commands always leave just the copy selected. Also because duplicating an object inside a group could create the copies inside the same group for convenience, and of course you can't select objects inside and outside a group at the same time. And also some users will hit Delete when they see unexpected results and leaving the copies selected would do what they expect.
One more UI wrinkle is if this feature adds the ability to put each copy onto subsequent pages. This is useful for things like offset tabs. In this scenario, it's obvious that copies cannot be created inside of a group and that only the last copy be left selected. This introduces some UI inconsistency which isn't great but the alternative is to add UI complexity. And of course this may mean that the function may have to create additional pages if they don't already exist.
If Publisher and Designer were scriptable one of us could write a transform script.
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18 hours ago, Dada Shiilabhadrananda said:
I purchased and downloaded the Affinity Publisher app on my MacBook Pro using OS Catalina 10.15.7 version on May 4, 2021. But I cannot open the application. I transferred the Affinity software to my Applications Folder. I have my product key. When I click to open the Affinity Publisher app it always hangs. I wait for at least 15 minutes each time to see if it will open. But finally I have to Force-Quit the program. I tried on about 8 different occasions. It has not opened since I purchased it.
While you're waiting for a more knowledgeable person to answer, I recommend turning off your wifi or unplugging from ethernet and then starting Publisher. Some people have reported a problem with the app checking for updates and causing it to hang. If this is your problem you can turn off the automatic update feature in Preferences > Software Update > Never.
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It's hard to find good information on scanning photos. I'm an amateur when it comes to photography but I've inherited thousands of film negatives and am slowly scanning them in.
When I bought my slide and film scanner a couple of years ago I found the market didn't present a lot of choices because this isn't something most people do or care about. I quickly discovered that the plentiful $99 scanners should be avoided. Flatbeds work but are slow and not the best quality. Good film scanners are expensive but there are some mid-range models from Nikon and Plustek. I wasn't sure if I was really going to scan thousands of negatives, the idea was daunting, so I went with the Plustek OpticFilm 135. Now that I've scanned a couple of thousand photos I wish I'd gone with the 8100. It wasn't much more expensive but offers double the resolution or twice the speed at the same resolution. It also comes with better software but I didn't care about that, I can process the photos in photo editing software instead.
I am satisfied with the quality of the 135 - I did some tests of scanning prints with my flatbed versus scanning the negatives with the flatbed versus scanning negatives with the Plustek 135. There was a dramatic difference in scanning negatives versus prints, it was night and day different. Also I had forgotten how much was cropped off of old prints. The Plustek 135 was also markedly better than my very good flatbed.
So yes, I recommend buying a film and slide scanner if you can afford it.
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Don't forget there are options to disable rotating the document view. I was going crazy rotating the document view until somebody else pointed these options out to them.
To switch on/off document view rotation (for Trackpads):- From Affinity Publisher>Preferences (Tools option), check or uncheck Enable Canvas Rotation with Trackpad.
- From Affinity Designer>Preferences (Tools option), check or uncheck Enable canvas rotation with Cmd+scroll wheel.
- Sasatari and annamilano
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I was confused at first because Affinity Publisher and Designer don't show keyboard shortcuts in most contextual menus and I'd never noticed that the Layers panel does include some. As you pointed out, it doesn't display them all so it's inconsistent.
However, Apple and Microsoft both specify that keyboard shortcuts should not be shown in context menus so there shouldn't be any shortcuts shown at all.
Apple: Show keyboard shortcuts in menu bar menus, not contextual menus. Contextual menus are already shortcuts to task-specific commands; it's redundant to display keyboard shortcuts too.
Microsoft: Don't display shortcut key assignments within context menus. Context menus don't display the shortcut key assignments because they are optimized for efficiency.
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9 hours ago, robinp said:
I would also like this to be settable as a default option for paste.
I rarely want to paste with formatting. For now, I've altered the keyboard shortcut so that Command+V has a binding to Paste Without Format instead of Paste. I guess that's an OK solution for me, but I imagine lots of others will never do that.
The problem with doing that is you lost formatting when cutting and pasting within the same document. What I suspect you (and I) really want is for Affinity Publisher to offer a setting like this:
Paste from other applications: <paste with format | paste without format>
I know some people would prefer to paste with format because they want to leverage MS Word styles, while people like you and me don't want styles created when importing copy from an external source.
- SRThomp and Olaf Welling
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5 minutes ago, ColinPr said:
Converting the PDFs to JPEGs seems to have solved the problem, but I don't understand this because previous versions of my document had the same PDF files in and I didn't have the same problem.
I agree with Walt, the file sizes will go up and down as space is not released until there is sufficient space to make it worthwhile. Save As has always been the go to approach to compacting files in many apps for decades. So if it's not compacting then there really is something bloating the file. I'm glad you figured out which objects it was.
My advice is to stick to EPS if it's vector, TIFF/JPG if it's raster, and avoid PDF. There's just less overhead with basic vector and raster formats compared to PDF.
I find APub documents with linked images are quite compact. I can't speak to embedded images.
48 columns is the maximum? Why is there a limit?
in Feedback for Affinity Publisher V1 on Desktop
Posted
If you need more you could just create a second text frame on the spread and link them. I think 48 is a high limit for this feature but InDesign offers 40 so Serif likely couldn't go lower due to IDML import.