Dave Harris

You're right, I'm not designer. I am a computer programmer, and I wrote most of the text handling in the Affinity products. (I also wrote most of it in the Plus line of products - I've been with Serif for many decades.) We do listen to designers and text is something we strive to refine continuously. I already mentioned how getting out of the Art text tool has changed from 1.3 to 1.4 and now again in 1.5. Since 1.5 is so new, I am hoping to get a little more feedback on it, but I hope you can see that we are open to change.

I'm surprised. Why is it easier to create a text object, type in the text, then create the shape, then select both, then Attach text to path? Why not just type the text onto the path in the first place?

The Art text tool turns the shape into a text path, and the Frame text tool turns it into a text frame. You can also use the menu options Layer > Convert to Text Frame or Layer > Convert to Text Path. I'm not getting the slow-down either, incidentally.

Not really. For me, a double-click is easier than holding down a modifier key while clicking. Also, double-click is more consistent with using double-click to switch to the Text tool in the first place. Finally, adding modifier keys is rarely simple because we have to consider conflicts with other keys, differences between different language keyboards, and differences between Windows and Mac keyboards.

It's actually very common to create some text and then want to type into it immediately. For the Art text tool, it's essential, because an Art object will disappear when the Move tool is selected if it has no content. It's also common to want to create several shapes consecutively. Or to create a shape and then want to tweak its nodes. Another thing worth pointing out is that in Affinity you don't need the Move tool as often as you may in other programs. The Text and Shape tools can select other objects, and can move, resize, rotate, or shear them.

I disagree; I think consistency is more important. None of the other tools do that. However, there's another tweak which is in the current 1.5 beta but which didn't make 1.4.2, whereby double-clicking on the canvas switches to the Move tool. So if you have the Move tool selected, then double-click on text will switch to a Text tool, and then double-click on the canvas will go back to the Move tool. This also works with the Node tool and the Shape tools.

That option is a quick way to ensure nothing will be rasterised, but be aware that it may mean unsupported effect simply won't appear at all. Conical fills may become solid, shadows will disappear, transparencies may become opaque, etc. It does the best it can, but it's not magic.

Yes, they cumulative. You only need the latest version.

I've moved this to Feature Requests, as Affinity is working as designed and Windows is behaving the same as the Mac always has.

Our goal is to include all the features from the roadmap as free updates for version 1.x. Tracing is not in that list so it almost certainly won't get done until after everything else there has been. It most likely will be a 2.x feature, and we're most likely talking more than a year away.

Dhohoch7, the Paragraph panel is in the View menu, under the Studio submenu. It's also on the Text menu as Show Paragraph. Do these not work?

No, it's always been like this. Text frames don't currently have their own stroke or fill. The UI for it changes the stroke or fill of the individual characters. The only way to get what you want is to copy the shape before you convert it.

Try opening the PDF in Acrobat. The layers should be present there, if you've used a compatibility setting which supports them (eg, "PDF (for export)", but not PDF-X). If Acrobat understands them then it may be that the other app just doesn't import them. Text is not normally converted to curves for PDF export unless you've requested it or used a feature that PDF doesn't understand. Again it's worth checking whether Acrobat understands it as text. It can also be worth opening the PDF in Affinity again. We don't add special data that only we understand, so if the text is imported to Affinity as text then it must be text in the PDF.

I've looked into this further, and I'm afraid we're not going to be able to support PDF/X-1a:2001, only PDF/X-1a:2003. Sorry.

This is by design. It is happening because you have set Tracking to 60 permille. You are telling Affinity to space out the characters, so the 'f' and the 'i' get separated and then they are no longer a ligature. If we didn't do this, the text could look very uneven. In extreme cases you can get "fi x" when you expected "f i x".

When you say, "once ... we start typing", I don't follow what you mean. In order to type, you need a Text tool selected. We can't know when you have finished typing unless you do something to tell us. We have made it a bit easier to get out of the Art text tool in 1.4.2, in that you can now get rid of a text selection by clicking on the canvas, and then V works. (Previously clicking on the canvas would create more Art text.) Presumably if you are wanting the Move tool, your hand has gone back from the keyboard to the mouse.

I've moved it to Feature Requests.

Yes, it has.

I just tested it in 1.5 (beta 2) on Mac, and it did work for me. It doesn't need a restart, but if you have an object selected you'll need to unselect and then reselect it to so the difference. Also, it only affects the 4 corner handles. Using the 4 centre handles will always distort shapes - that's by design. If this isn't what you are seeing, can you give more details as to which shape and tool?

This is quite an old thread. The option Matt mentions got added to Preferences sometime ago. It's in the Tools section, called Move Tool Aspect Constrain.

In addition to not getting the warning message when the export fails, the export shouldn't fail because we should flatten the transparently automatically. This is also wrong on Mac; I'll add it to the list.

File > Export does have many more options, that are hidden under the More button at the bottom of the dialog. These include options for setting the number of colours for PNG and GIF. However, for GIF on Windows those options seem to be permanently disabled when they should be permanently enabled. I'll add this to the bug list.

This is by design. The idea is that having used a particular font etc, you'll want to keep on using it. All the object attributes work this way, not just text. However, if you want to revert to the original document defaults, there is a button in the top toolbar that does this. Incidentally, you can make the current defaults the defaults for new documents, by using Edit > Defaults > Save. You can use this if you want the default text to be other than 12pt Arial, for example. In 1.5, Designer will have text styles (currently in the Mac beta), which should make formatting text easier too.

Most apps that can import AI can also import PDF. If it doesn't work directly, renaming the file extension to .pdf may be enough to make it work. It can also be worth trying EPS.

Oval, we do appreciate bug reports. Mostly in this thread I've been trying to understand what you have been saying. Especially your mysterious #159 post. I explained why I thought other apps might be getting different results, and you said it didn’t explain it, and then went on to say you were calculating some value that it sounded like you thought Affinity should be using instead. Never mind. I will look at fixing this. If the font metrics are unreliable, then we can use the method I described in #158 instead. There are drawbacks to that, which is why I didn’t do it that way in the first place, but it won’t be the first time we’ve had to work around problems with font files.