Fixx

OK, you can make a path active and continue drawing it. Here is the trick: This looks like active node but it is not. Instead: Now the node is active and clicking to it with pen tool will continue as single path. Clear? (Not very. Why the first image node is red when it is not active? :-D)

I think the problem is that PDF and svg do not support text on path feature but need to cut text to separate objects.

While Affinity read and writes gif format it does not really understand its animated variety. Probably it just reads the first frame which may be empty. If you want to use a static version of your gif in Affinity you should probably open it with some app that support animation better and select the right frame and export it to Affinity. Apple's Preview can do it.

No, not ready cropped, but having crop selection ready, enter key crops if you do not want to adjust any further.

Walt, those are destructive tools and they cannot be adjusted after using them. The aim is to click "auto" in non-destructive levels/curves tool panel and refine result that manually in the same go.

Should be other way round. Caption should be pinned (anchored) to photo (frame). Which of course could be pinned to body text, allowing it to move as layout evolves. And yes, there should be also a mechanism to automatically copy caption text either from filename or meta description (user choose). And prefix that with "Fig. [running number which updates automatically]. "

Maybe not even an option but default. As I posted some time go, when you have selection, pressing "C" should give you crop tool with selected area cropped, press "ENTER" to commit and return to move tool.

I did a test document with and without bleed and both versions show in Acrobat "PDF/X version "PDF/X-3:2003"".

I would think that if you select PDF-X and then add tick to "include bleed" it will still be valid PDF-X. Just the preset name disappears.

Agreed. Preflight should check if there are text or vector objects using rich black. And there next to it should also be a big button [ FIX BLACKS ] Having rich black objects in Affinity documents which are meant to be printed is a problem at the moment. It is also one of the most common print problems in Adobe softwares too. In Affinity catching and fixing them all is a bit harder that in Adobe. Having a preflight tool for it would take care of it for good.

I do not think there is room for actual animation software, and also bettering AAE would take considerable effort and finances. Also there are some video animation/fx packages which are OK though not quite with AAE feature set. That said, if Designer aims to compete in UX field it should offer some way to do prototyping, either with built in animation tools, or with connection/export to some other prototyping package. Also, there really is no simple gif animation tool in he market at the moment that can take layered file and animate it.

I think Finder is getting the QuickLook view from actual image data if the file is not set to provide prerendered preview. This can be slow with large images. That is why JPEG files show large QuickLook previews. That said, maybe preview render size could be user preference option. But even small preview is better that no preview at all (like in Illustrator).

too much too good competition

If you can upload the idml we can check how it behaves. If you just open idml it should carry its own colour profiles with it.

PDF for digital, small size & high quality (no, not at the same time)

Documents must be created as CMYK 8. Then it has 100K black. If you start with RGB setup black is a mix of CMYK %. Even if you change document setup from RGB to CMYK blacks will stay rich black. Yes, it a damn nuisance.

True, it does that. Pixel dimensions stay as they are in document canvas (unless you change them) but you may change resampling method. I think that was not available n previous versions unless you changes size. This is better. I would use bicubic (which is softer) or Lanczos (which is sharper). I think nearest neighbour and bilinear are too coarse. Lanczos non-separable may be even sharper than separable I presume. Notice that sharper is not always better as there may appear artifacts.

Yes, preserve local overrides should be default and force style an option.

Export in CS5:

I would keep files local.

You can export to IDML using InDesign CS5. You can probably even run a batch script to export them en masse.

Drop cap I would think. I would use it as text style feature, there is such style available in default styles.

Would not 200 % be close enough? It is available readily CMD 2.

That is available only in english keyboards, I think. It is a problem that brush size is only available with mouse (as I do often quick fixes on the go with trackpad only and use also XP Pen often) and I have not really learned to use this feature naturally with mouse either.