Bauke

Since the above post, Affinity for Windows was announced. I think this only strengthens my case, since using the original style names that are specified by the typedesigner, will help making the software on the two platforms more consistent. Otherwise, communication between multiple designers (working on different platforms but on the same project) could become confusing.

Good idea, this would be very useful indeed!

Ahoj Lexislav, Is your OSX language set to Czech? And does the typography section in the context toolbar display a different style from the typography palette? If so, this looks a lot like the bugs I encountered which I try to get solved in this topic: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/12589-font-translations-mixed-up/ Best, Bauke

Thanks for adding this feature. Much appreciated!

Hi Lille It looks like this is already included in the 1.5 beta. See my attached screenshot. Is that what you meant? Best Bauke

Hi Matt Thanks for the great update; the added text-styles and asset panel were unexpected but are true timesavers! One question about the text-styles: One can specify a following style, which works when typing directly into the document. But I haven't found a way to apply the style to a paragraph, followed automatically by the next style being applied to the next paragraph. A workflow I have in InDesign is to create a loop of following styles and apply it on large texts with recurring patterns. (i.e. heading → subheading → bodytext → heading → subheading etc.) Have a nice weekend! Bauke

Hi Working with the sampling tool is great right now, although I think it would be useful if we could sample the average of multiple pixels. What do you think? Best regards Bauke

I use the full version of Glyphs, but depending on what you need, Glyphs Mini is excellent for trying out the software (you can get a discount when you upgrade to the full version).

I have never used anything else but Glyphs, and so far I'm only drawing Latin script, but I can absolutely recommend it. It has a very active community, good documentation and a lot of third party plugins. The whole application has a smooth and modern feel.

I just had a quick look in Glyphs.app. It looks like importing and exporting shapes between AD and Glyphs.app works, except for the fact that somewhere during the transfer, all connections between curved segments are broken (round node-icons become square node-icons).

Hi I'm very impressed by the grid manager of Designer, and I'm having extra high hopes for Publisher's grid manager. Adobe InDesign has a disappointing grid system out of the box, but there is a top notch commercial plugin for making grids for professional magazine and book design made by a Swedish art director. You can view some videos about it here: https://designersbookshop.com/grid-calculator-pro-edition.html It would be great if Publisher had a comparable grid manager. Please let me know what you think! Bauke

Hello This is not really a question but an interesting article I found about a new view on vector paths. It might be relevant to the interests of the Affinity developers. https://medium.com/figma-design/introducing-vector-networks-3b877d2b864f#.7ragtzms3

I totally agree with this. It's a bit related to this topic I made a few days ago.

Hello At this moment, the input fields in the Affinity programs behave in a way that is not native to OSX. I don't know if this is a deliberate choice, but I feel like it would be nice if they behaved consistent with other OSX apps. I also noticed that not every input field behaves the same in Affinity. An example in the Transform palette: - When hovering over an input field, the cursor should transform to the text-selection icon. - Clicking in an input field yields the expected behaviour; you can start typing where you pointed the cursor. This works perfect. - When using the tab key to jump from field to field, I expect the content of that field to be selected so I can immediately start typing thus replacing the previous content. But right now, if I start typing, my typing replaces the quantity while the units (i.e. px or mm) stay put. I get that you designed the input field this way because in most situations, the designer wants to adjust the size in the same unit. But when this is not the case, a few extra actions are required to clear the input field. Often I want to use the expressions in those fields like "sh" or "sw/2" (which are terrific by the way!). So if I jump to the height input field and type "sh" and press enter, nothing happens because it keeps the px unit and thus the expression is incorrect. In my opinion, this wouldn't be a problem if the whole content of the input field was selected on tab-jumping to it; if I just wanted to change 200 px to 400 px I could type "200", and Affinity would automatically append "px" (as it does now), but if I wanted to use expressions, I wouldn't be hindered by the sticky unit. I'm looking forward to hear your opinion! Bauke

Hi Seneca, Thanks for replying! Don't worry; I do read them. :) As I mentioned in my original post, the use of some of these settings are controversial. In my opinion that doesn't mean the option shouldn't be there in the first place. It's up to the typographer to use the available tools as he sees fit. For example it's also considered inappropriate to letter-space body text, or to put white text on a black background. Both of these things are (luckily) perfectly possible in most design applications. In the specific case of the Hz-program: I merely mentioned this case in detail because to my knowledge, it's the most famous and most elaborate justification engine. I wanted to give the developers of Publisher some food for thought by providing different views on the subject. Bauke

Hello I'd like to stress the need for a (very) good justification engine in Affinity Publisher, in order to produce high quality text-heavy publications. Because I'm not sure what the status on microtypography in Publisher currently is, I'll drop this info for your consideration. In the 1990's type designer Hermann Zapf and engineer Peter Karow developed the Hz-program, a justification engine which has gained a somewhat mythological status. Its algorithm combines multiline composing, hanging punctuation with word-spacing, letter-spacing and most controversial: glyph-scaling. Adobe has bought the patent, but it's not known whether they actually use the program in InDesign. You can however change most of these parameters (word-spacing, letter-spacing and glyph-scaling) in the justification engine in InDesign with a minimum, maximum and optimal amount. In my opinion, a paragraph composer with these settings, combined with extensive hyphenation settings are an absolute must for professional typographers. Some sources on this topic: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microtypography - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hz-program - http://www.typografi.org/justering/gut_hz/gutenberg_hz_english.html Thanks for your consideration!

Using a harmonic scale has been an important element in professional typography for centuries. The classic typographic scale is diatonic: 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 21, 24, 30, 36, 48, 60, 72. Of course, harmonic scales based on different ratios can be found too. You can read more about the scales here: http://spencermortensen.com/articles/typographic-scale/ and in the book The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst. Because of those different scales, and the request from users above, I would like to see the ability to make presets yourself and save and import them like you can with brushes. That way we can have multiple scales of our own liking, and easily transfer them between users. If this is not possible, I'd vote for the classic typographic scale.

Hello This feature was requested by me when discussing a bug, so now I'm requesting it here at the right place. At the moment, when a user has OSX in a non-english language, the OS offers a translation of certain common font styles like bold, italic, regular etc. In a few applications made by Apple such as Numbers or Pages, and also in the Font Book app, these translations are used when selecting fonts from the fontmenu. Most professional design applications however use the original (non-translated) names in the font selection. At this moment, Affinity applications use the translated names, even though the rest of the user interface is English. I personally think the way OSX translates font styles is quite primitive, and I often encounter fonts where half of the styles are translated in Dutch, while the other half are not translated because the typedesigner chose non-traditional names for these styles. Other design-related applications ignore the OSX translations and use the original style names, which is more practical in a professional environment. As long as Affinity doesn't offer application wide translation, I personally think it's better for Affinity to ignore the OSX translations, because we now get a inconsistent user interface with two languages. I'm looking forward to hear how you think about this.