Seneca

Hi All,
An update to the beta has just been made available which we are expecting to be the build we release publicly very soon! This means you can update your beta version to be the same code as what we will be our initial public release of 2.1.
We will therefore now have a period where the latest beta version is the same as the release version. That will remain the case until we begin a fresh beta which will either be a patch to 2.1 if we feel it's needed, or hopefully moving straight to the first beta of 2.2. At that point you will be able to update the beta versions you currently have installed for that latest update to test. 
During the period that 2.1.0.1799 is in sync with the release build (when 2.1 is made public) it's up to you if you want to continue to report any bugs in the beta forums or the main bug reporting forums.
I want to take this opportunity to thank you all so much for being so actively involved with the testing of 2.1 - along with all the new features and improvements we have got through a huge number of fixes, and that's only been possible with having so many of you putting it through it's paces. It's made a huge difference, and we're very much looking forward to working with you all on the next beta!
All the best,
Ash

Having played with the Live Paint feature in AI, it does seem to get very confused very quickly.  It's sort of OK until you change the geometry a lot, then it doesn't really know where you intended the fill to be.
The feature also regroups your layers - so will change any ordering you might have had.  Fine, unless your ordering was exposed by occluded fills and strokes.

So, our approach doesn't mess with your original layer ordering (apart from if you insert fill layers in-between).  Also, we create post-editable fill objects - so when you are done, you can treat them like any other layer.

Hello @v_kyr,
You are getting slightly unreasonable here. The team has stated, in numerous posts, that because the APIs are going to be the same for both C and JavaScript that they will keep the documentation in one place. There will be a lot of people for whom JavaScript will be the most important part and they will not regard this as garbage. They will concentrate on the JavaScript part and you can concentrate on the C based APIs. And they lived happily ever after. 🙂

Hi All,
Excited to say this week's build is what we consider to be our first release candidate for 2.1. This means we are now at a stage where we are avoiding making any significant changes the code before release (unless we find some critical issue which must be fixed of course).
Fixes since the last beta build are in this post.
Thanks,
Ash
 

This post is not strictly about the Asset Panel Reordering but related to the Assets Panel.
What I find unintuitive (I know very subjective) is the fact that if I double-click any asset in the panel I don't get any visual feedback that the pointer tool changed into a loaded pointer. That feedback is only visible when you move the mouse outside of the assets panel. So one would keep double-clicking assets thinking that nothing is happening.
Secondly, I would expect (very subjective but present in other applications) that if I double-click an asset in the panel that asset would be immediately placed in the middle of the open document.
Edit: Also, it would be very helpful to have visual feedback in the form of an outline over each asset you mouse over.

This is the approach we are taking. In our world, scripts are just interpreted plugins, with the exact same capabilities as compiled plugins. 

For simple scenarios plain text rules.
There are other ways of working with text in Publisher/inDesign that does not involve constant reformatting of the text.
Imagine you share chunks of text among various publications using different templates and styles. You have carefully formatted your text in Publisher, applied styles to it and saved it for further use later. You also made sure that you name Paragraph/Character appropriately so that they are the same among various publications (in view of sharing).
Sharing this text among publications in inDesign is easy because what unites them is the same paragraph/character style name. Copy and paste portions of that text and voila, done. The copied text adopts the look of the paragraph/character style of the publication you copy your text to. That saves a lot of time.
Publisher instead applies strict rules to the copied text as explained by @walt.farrellearlier creating another style name to the publication, say Heading 1.
To me flexibility exemplified by inDesign trumps Publisher's rigidity any time in my books.
I hope one day we get some sort of preference switch where you could choose strict rule or name based rule when coping formatted text, and I can finally move 90% of my work to Publisher. 

For simple scenarios plain text rules.
There are other ways of working with text in Publisher/inDesign that does not involve constant reformatting of the text.
Imagine you share chunks of text among various publications using different templates and styles. You have carefully formatted your text in Publisher, applied styles to it and saved it for further use later. You also made sure that you name Paragraph/Character appropriately so that they are the same among various publications (in view of sharing).
Sharing this text among publications in inDesign is easy because what unites them is the same paragraph/character style name. Copy and paste portions of that text and voila, done. The copied text adopts the look of the paragraph/character style of the publication you copy your text to. That saves a lot of time.
Publisher instead applies strict rules to the copied text as explained by @walt.farrellearlier creating another style name to the publication, say Heading 1.
To me flexibility exemplified by inDesign trumps Publisher's rigidity any time in my books.
I hope one day we get some sort of preference switch where you could choose strict rule or name based rule when coping formatted text, and I can finally move 90% of my work to Publisher. 

Since the Affinity scripting team already spend some amount of time into it's JS implementation, it's now too late for voting and other script language suggestions. Thus people will have to adapt/wrap their prefered prog languange on their own. And in order to be able to do that at all, having a good reference documentation and some related code examples are mandantory essential here.

I am also a long time inDesign user since the first inDesign beta release in fact.
InDesign works the same way, so if you want to insert an inline picture to an empty paragraph, that paragraph needs to have the leading set to Auto, otherwise the text will not move to accommodate the height of the picture. 

Hello @Cogent30,
Yes, this is a problem for me too. A number of users have already noticed that and have reported it as an issue but until this is looked at by the Affinity team you need to accept the fact that this is how Publisher works.
The only way to clean up styles at the moment is to use Find & Replace and then select Paragraph Style/Character Style in Find/Replace options.
For simple text processing this sort of dealing with styles is acceptable but as soon as your document needs to import/paste text from different sources with same style names this becomes a problem.

Hello @v_kyr,
You are getting slightly unreasonable here. The team has stated, in numerous posts, that because the APIs are going to be the same for both C and JavaScript that they will keep the documentation in one place. There will be a lot of people for whom JavaScript will be the most important part and they will not regard this as garbage. They will concentrate on the JavaScript part and you can concentrate on the C based APIs. And they lived happily ever after. 🙂

The SDK will be fully documented. In fact we expect it to share documentation with our Javascript library, which is largely a wrapper for the SDK. 

In my earlier post I commented that Running Header is a great addition to Publisher. With this in mind I decided to take this feature for a spin and try to create scripture references as it is often found at the top of a bible pages. This is pushing this feature to as far as it can go at the moment.
The reference below is composed of the following bits:
1. The book name (Running Header field)
2. Chapter number (First on Page)  (Running Header field)
3. Colon
4. Verse Number (First on Page)  (Running Header field)
5. En hyphen
6. Chapter number (Last on Page)  (Running Header field)
7. Colon
8. Verse number (Last on Page)  (Running Header field)

This works well but I quickly discovered that for this to work correctly  we need another addition to the “Use” option. Currently we have “First on Page” and “Last on Page”. This works well for the majority of cases but here we need something like “From Previous unless First on Page”. I struggle to come up with a better wording for this.
The reason this is needed is shown in the screenshot below. There is no way at the moment to account for the fact that the chapter number can still be on previous page and this still needs to be carried to the current page.

I also discovered that the drop caps feature as we have now is not adequate to make chapter numbers to be dropcaps. There might be workarounds but they will remain workarounds.

There may be other ways to accomplish this that I am not aware of so am looking forward to your comments and suggestions.
I'm including the file I was experimenting with below:
Bible-refs-2.afpub
Bible-refs-2.afpub

A regular expression, whether well-formed or malformed should not bring the program down.
So I would submit this as a possible bug for the development team to look at.

Hello @johndmoulton,
Have you unticked the "Include on Export" option in the Section Manager Dialog by any chance?

Here's a list of some of the bugs which have been fixed in 2.1.0.1769
The Improvements in build 2.1.0.1769 are found in this improvements post
Please reply in this forum only to comment on any fixes which are in this list (in particular to let us know if you notice that something we say is fixed isn't!) To report any new bugs please do that against the relevant new feature post, or if unrelated to new functionality in the Other bugs & issues forum.
Bugs affecting all platforms
Boolean operation causes objects to fall outside of group if performed outside an artboard [AFD-5452] Boolean Operation fails to apply fills to text objects Artifacts showing on dashed balanced lines at shape corners. Balanced dotted lines don't expand correctly [AFD-6503] Content Sync UI on secondary IPC instances is non-reflective [HUB-292] IDML file imports with all embedded images replaced with the same initial image - File specific [AFB-7612] Extremely short dash lengths draw and export improved. Bugs affecting Desktop (Windows and macOS)
Add provides incorrect results when using Smooth nodes, works as expected with Sharp nodes [AFD-6441] Applying Vector Flood Fill to an empty, non-overlapping curve will cause it to crash [AFD-6549] Attached documents cause app to crash when added as a Book Chapter [AFB-7490] Auto-select - alt-drag Hyperlink path button is too narrow Knife Tool is missing Straight Line mode [AFD-6066] use correct profile when converting asset bitmap in a vector fill. Use icons for Knife tool options on context toolbar Bugs affecting Windows
User file - Shape Builder crash on undo, crash when selecting groups in the Layers Studio, crash when creating a new shape [AFD-6304] App crashing creating RGB document whilst running in OpenCL on Intel Arc A770 Graphics [AFP-6077] Export Preview: WebP and JPEG XL formats do not zoom with the shortcut [AFP-5615] Crash deselecting text in specific document [AFB-7574] Crop preset greyed out on Windows [AFP-6106] Custom content not being migrated from 2.0.4 to 2.1.0 EXE installs Dash / Gap hover - mouse wheel behaviour Mouse scroll values for dash pattern are incorrect on Windows On Windows, New Document > Document summary does not show if it is a facing page document Add rename layer to layer menu in pixel persona Edit Pixel brush > Dynamics > Distance Max value box does not show as % on Mac and iOS Export dialog defaults can cause Zoom keyboard shortcuts to stop working. Quick FX panel: scrolling the mouse wheel over an input field to adjust the slider does nothing on Windows. [AFD-6550] Resize Document> Aspect ratio lock missing in Windows [AFP-6098] Rulers: Right-click menu is missing the tick for the document unit [AFP-6103] Shape Builder Tool: The + and - keys on the numeric keypad do not Create or Delete objects Use Fill and Auto Close options state is not correctly remembered/retained when switching Tool [AFD-6523] When using Select Object to remove from the current selection, the menu closes as soon as you hold Alt Add rename layer to layer menu in pixel persona Bugs affecting macOS
Shapebuilder Tool: hintline for Instant delete says 'Click+[TERIARY] to delete this edge' (should show alt/option symbol) Swatches on FX menu displayed as an RGB preview when document is set to CMYK [AFB-7219]  Correct some positioning/size of labels in the Text Style editor  Color Profile Manager should be initialised BEFORE loading saved data  Endnotes take <NoteEnd> into consideration when spellchecking providing unexpected results (Windows to follow) [AFB-7562] Bugs affecting iPad
Help Menu improvements { Help / Learning Portal / QuickStart Guide / What's New } If a document is closed on the iPad whilst editing an embedded file it will cause the document to fail to open again [AFD-5299] Adjusting settings in the PDF Options dialog can cause the page preview to break Assets Category Drop down menu is hard to read as text is black [AFB-7610] Contour tool: Contour Mitre incorrectly uses Miter US spelling in EN install Document viewer document dimensions cannot display decimal places Double tapping a layer in Compact mode doesn't zoom to selection. [AFD-6357] Double-tap of layer thumbnail doesn't Zoom to Selection [AFB-5832] Some UI improvements on 11" iPad Show tooltip when selecting a filter in My Account Export Panel Localisation Long press to show Quick Menu should be disabled in certain personas On Account window, control for selecting whether content is auto/manually downloaded renders incorrectly Change the studio toolbar order Show Curve Orientation option is missing [PD-601] Text Capitalisation options missing on iPad Double tapping on the < > chevrons no longer resets export zoom Place DWG dialog has some mashed text Color Profile Manager should be initialised BEFORE loading saved data Updated style picker/format dropper tool icons.

Hi All,
Thanks again for all your continued help with this release. We are getting very close to launch. This will be the final beta build before what will hopefully be our first release candidate next week. For that reason we are not really making any further significant changes (or anything which could be considered risky). 
The main thing I want to make you all aware of is that we have decided to not release the cross-references feature with 2.1. For that reason this feature has been removed from this week's build.
Any documents you may have created which include cross references will still open (and they will even still update), but you will not be able to edit or create new cross-references in 2.1. We understand this might be disappointing for some of you, however we will be moving into 2.2 beta very shortly after 2.1 release, and as soon as a 2.2 beta is available that will include cross-references again (and will definitely make it to 2.2 release!)
We have made this decision primarily as we have been working on adding better formatting options (as have been requested on these forums) into the feature, but we have not quite managed to get it to a point where we feel it will be releasable in time - and considering all the other great stuff / fixes we have put into 2.1 we don't want to delay the whole of 2.1 because of it.

Other than that in this build it's mostly just fixes which you can see in this thread.
Thanks,
Ash

Hi Ezbaze, 
We'll have our hands full with JavaScript for the foreseeable future, but we aren't ruling out other languages eventually. 
In addition, the JavaScript engine is itself implemented using our plugin SDK, to which we plan to add support for alternative scripting engines (i.e. you could in theory write your own plugin to support Python or any other language).

Hi Intuos5,
Yes that's correct -  the plan is that commands exposed by scripts/plugins will appear in the Shortcuts settings page, alongside native commands. 

I would like to say thanks for letting us know that it happened and the data that may have been compromised.
IP addresses are no issue as your provider will allocate a new fixed IP if necessary but I always recommend dynamic, as for the email it just adds to the spam.
Once again thanks to Affinity for coming forward and warning us of this compromise.
 

Yes - I have had a bit of a hard time with importing in this last couple of weeks. [ And I qualify this with saying I love the Affinity suite. ]
I have several related political leaflets all with the same set of text styles set up as a hierarchy .  content -> intro para -> intro para bold ......
One candidate has a good idea with his text and I  copy it to another candidate's leaflet. Bingo - multiple 'content/ content 1/ content 2' styles that then have to be cleaned up rather that smoothly dropping the text in 'content' para style into the destination 'content' para style.   
PLEASE can we have a paste that moves text to the intended target style where the style names are the same.
Probably a  'paste keep style' would satisfy those that want a literal image of a source document in the  target and there is a clash of style names.
 

I was one of the umpteen million people whose ADOBE accounts were hacked several years ago, including every bit of our information.  Had no idea until several WEEKS after the breach when I was finally notified.  Then we were offered a bandaid approach “in case,” plus the suggestion that we watch our bank accounts for an extended period.   Serif has notified us almost immediately with detailed information.   Just another very important reason why Serif has my unequivocal vote for One in a Million!  Thank you for letting us know so speedily.  Hopefully we will all watch our P’s and Q’s and send the bad guys to Junk/Trash.

This is a general rule that we work to. If one OS does it, the other should (if possible). There are exceptions but I think this is just an accidental omission.

Hello @af-user,
this looks to be Windows specific. I am on a Mac. I've just created a sample doc with a table placed on a master page and I can create pages based on that master page and edit the contents of the table without any problem.