deeds

This is going to sound weird. And it's a lot of work, but the best environment, at the moment, for making dynamic infographics, is probably Unity's game engine's RectTransform and what's known as UGUI (Unity Graphical User Interface Elements System).
 
The RectTransform and the Canvases these are stored upon mean that there's an inherent child/parent dependency that's exploitable WITH constraints. 
 
Constraints, in this context, means relationships between positions of Canvases (which can be nested) and other interface elements. Due to the nature of game UIs needing charts and graphs for things like health and endurance statistics being presented dynamically and in game world space and HUD space and Screen Space, these features are vastly more powerful and related to one another than in other applications. 
 
If you're interested in this, avoid anything newer than Unity 2019.4LTS and DO NOT USE THEIR NEW RENDER PIPELINES!! 
You won't be able to render Vector outputs, but can scale bitmap outputs to huge sizes and do offline rendering to images, despite it being a realtime game engine.
The artfulness and dynamics you can add in a game engine are unlimited. It's vastly more powerful and capable than something like After Effects or Apple's Motion.
 
 

This is going to sound weird. And it's a lot of work, but the best environment, at the moment, for making dynamic infographics, is probably Unity's game engine's RectTransform and what's known as UGUI (Unity Graphical User Interface Elements System).
 
The RectTransform and the Canvases these are stored upon mean that there's an inherent child/parent dependency that's exploitable WITH constraints. 
 
Constraints, in this context, means relationships between positions of Canvases (which can be nested) and other interface elements. Due to the nature of game UIs needing charts and graphs for things like health and endurance statistics being presented dynamically and in game world space and HUD space and Screen Space, these features are vastly more powerful and related to one another than in other applications. 
 
If you're interested in this, avoid anything newer than Unity 2019.4LTS and DO NOT USE THEIR NEW RENDER PIPELINES!! 
You won't be able to render Vector outputs, but can scale bitmap outputs to huge sizes and do offline rendering to images, despite it being a realtime game engine.
The artfulness and dynamics you can add in a game engine are unlimited. It's vastly more powerful and capable than something like After Effects or Apple's Motion.
 
 

Granted it took Adobe something like 20 years to put this feature into Illustrator, so I'm not expecting this to appear overnight, but is there a way to convert between these two kinds of text types?
 
 

Granted it took Adobe something like 20 years to put this feature into Illustrator, so I'm not expecting this to appear overnight, but is there a way to convert between these two kinds of text types?
 
 

Please only focus on one scripting language, so that it gets done, and done well. There's never been a case where the time spent making multiple scripting language support work hasn't significantly reduced the rate of production of the features that scripting support can provide, because being generic becomes too important. Theoretically good, but very limiting for a domain specific use of scripting.

It is not for our users to police who can, or can't post here on the Affinity Forums - or to decide how often other users can post.
This user has as much of a right as yourself to post, provided the guidelines are being followed.
I have previously covered this in the below post and I'd recommend familiarising yourself with my wording there:
Please use the 'Ignore' function of the Forums if you don't wish to see certain users posts.

If you had thoroughly researched the subject of the acquisition and had at least a slight idea about Serif's sales results, you would not have written such absurdities.
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@loukash take a break for a while. To make it clear to you, when I wrote that Ash failed, it was my personal opinion and the context was the quality of the software nothing else. I don't care if they broke the bank by selling the company. It's not my business. I'm not a jealous person. 
What you scribble in your comments has nothing to do with what I'm writing about.

As a retired amateur whose livelihood and general contentment do not depend on what happens to Affinity Photo, I find no reason to become angry at the company nor at the people who work there. Elsewhere I gave my reasons for choosing Affinity about 7 years ago. I remain grateful to the people who created it. I've also described why I bought the Affinity V2 Universal License. With APhoto, I've produced many wonderful photo prints, collages, and family portraits that are framed on our walls. I've restored ancient, damaged photos for friends. It's been great fun.
But this does seem like a good place to recall Granddaddy's Principles of the Compelling Reason that I stated at
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/201403-canva/page/3/#comment-1192784
Granddaddy's Principles of the Compelling Reason
1.) When a person is satisfied using software that is good enough, only a compelling reason will persuade that person to change to different software 
2.) When a person is dissatisfied using particular software, then only a compelling reason will persuade that person to continue using that software 
I recently started using a competing photo editor for my routine photo processing. I at least found compelling reasons to pay for this competing product. Among these are (in no particular order)
completely non-destructive editing absence of extraneous white lines around images on screen tiny sidecar files instead of humongous .afphoto files to preserve work for future modification somewhat scalable UI powerful AI masking/selecting that saves me a lot of time, labor, and frustration image file management flexible and customizable export to desired folder emphasis photo editing (my main interest) rather than desktop publishing frequent free updates with very significant functional improvements every month or two Each of these benefits and more addresses APhoto issues that I've reported on in these forums over several years, issues that many others have discussed also, issues that Affinity has never addressed.
To be sure, I am not certain after just a couple of months experience with this new product whether I will find enough compelling reasons to abandon APhoto. The learning curve on the new software was surprisingly steep as the concepts seem almost the inverse of what I've grown comfortable with in Affinity. There seems to be far less user support. Especially there is a dearth of high-quality, user-produced tutorials when compared to Affinity. There is no free user forum.
The fundamental question for me will come when Canva releases the next major upgrade to APhoto (V. 3, I assume)
Will the next paid release of Affinity provide compelling reasons for me to buy that new version?
At the moment, based on experience, I have strong doubts that it will, but I hope Canva can accomplish such a compelling upgrade.
 

Jus finished last project started  in Affinity. As usual, I encountered several limitations and bugs that I had to deal with and find a workaround. Fortunately,i managed to do it. So it's time for a summary and the last posts on the forum. 
Despite the marketing crap served by Serif, Affinity apps are not intended for professionals. Those apps are for undemanding hobbyists with a tight budget who, in exchange for an affordable price, are willing to turn a blind eye to shortcomings, a limited number of tools, bugs and slow development.
The workflow is far from professional. Instead of solutions and workflows that have been proven for years and liked by users, you get ones that are clumsy, unintuitive and ineffective. Many of the concepts used are one-to-one copies of older software that Serif shipped in the 1990s, which I don't think work very well.
Quality is not the strong point of the Affinity package. I feel like the company ignores users and their requests. It focuses more on profit and generating revenues through numerous promotional and marketing campaigns, improving its image, giving the impression that it has a mission, than on providing users with solid, precise and high-quality tools.
I'm surprised I was so patient. Unfortunately, I had no other choice. Maybe something will change in Serif and they will start providing quality, then maybe I will go back to using their applications. Although I sincerely doubt it.
Note to devs: You need to try harder.
Note to CEO: @Ash You have failed.
Note to QA head: @Patrick Connor You failed to. But with the resources you were given, and such company strategy from my point of view it was a mission impossible.
I wish everyone good luck.

Better communication would be enough and such accusations could be avoided or at least reduced to a minimum. The roadmap could remain public and updated as needed. But it's convenient to keep it secret, then you won't be held accountable for lack of results and poor progress. That's not how you build trust.
Going forward. I am convinced that there are many things that users would not have reacted negatively to if Serif had properly communicated and presented the changes, but also the arguments for these changes in advance.
 
No one expects Serif to implement anything anyone suggests. The requests I used as an example in this post are reasonable, widely supported, and don't require a lot of work to implement. Unfortunately, no one in Serif has looked into them for several years.

Listening is not everything, you also have to "hear".
And in Serif they may be listening, but they act and work as if they couldn't hear.
Examples:
2017 → Artboard export as SVG includes a <rect> named Artboard — Request to improve SVG export. Namely, to not add the artboard <rect> tag in the SVG export. Particularly irritating for people creating icons, but not only.
2020 → Disable update reminder — Request for an option to disable the update reminder and annoying update notification when the program is launched. For an experienced developer, it only takes 15 minutes to write a few lines of code that will modify several relevant entries in the registry.
2022 → how to disable export preview? — Users are asking for a simple thing, to make export preview optional, because it sucks, and they've been waiting for years with no response.
You don't have to write thousands of lines of code to implement these features. For an experienced dev, it's one day's work.
 
You forgot how often during V1 development the developers themselves released many teasers on the forum of what was currently in development. What happened to make it such a big corporate secret now? If they want to build a bond with the brand, let them return to these good habits.
As for their account balance, anyone who wants to can easily find their financial reports. In one annual report, the management board boasts that 2022 ended with an incredible success. Revenue growth by 32% and operating profit by 24%. Have more developers been hired, has the quality improved, or is development faster? Answer to yourself.
 
To all. Especially to those who have an unhealthy relationship as a customer and supplier with Serif.  If you do not agree with what I wrote, present counter-arguments that prove otherwise. Ostentatious behavior and personal accusations add nothing to the discussion.

I'm much more surprised it took @bbrother as long as it did to reach this point. Just because the lack of reciprocation and ownership on Serif's part has been so terrible.

I expect you are following the thread and I doubt the forum email system is sophisticated enough to remove blocked users from the forum notifications it sends, sorry if that's the case, that really is not bbrother's fault who is only describing his genuine software experience as he's entitled to do. It's not whining, it's feedback.

Everyone wants to use competent software. Therefore, I do not think that drawing attention to shortcomings is inappropriate, as some users seem to suggest. It is important to point out shortcomings and mediocrity. This is what a healthy relationship between a customer and a seller is all about.
Coming back to the point, I believe that despite roughly 7 years of development in the V1 version, Serif has not built solid foundations, and the problems that occur with almost every update seem to confirm my words. There may be several reasons for this state of affairs. They can be mundane or more complex. The worst thing, however, is that Serif does not learn from his mistakes.
Despite my disappointment with the quality and number of bugs, I would never discredit the competence of devs due to their age. I also know that the best of them often have no specialized education and are much more than 30 years old.
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BTW: To the trolls spamming my inbox. I'm not playing Adobe's lawyer here and no one has paid me for anything. These are my own comments, based on my own experience. Even though I have been using Adobe software for many years both professionally and privately, I have not used their services at all for several years now because I do not agree with their practices.

Here's what version 2.5 looked like from my perspective. My review of it.
Pencil improvements
Were met with poor feedback in the beta. Mainly because you can't turn off smoothing or control its amount. You also can't adjust the auto-close tolerance to your liking. The sculpt mode needed some improvements, but that wasn't addressed. They certainly didn't win the sympathy of cartoonists with those improvements, rather they pissed them off.
Line Width tool
Also gathered some bad feedback. Jaggered artifacts, redrawing issues, unprecise geometry, crooked shapes after expanding the stroke. This tool is not ready for release even as a first implementation, yet it was released. Affinity evangelist are happy, any resonable thinking others not so much.
Variable fonts
I think they got most attention from devs. Yet some some usefull  feedback wasn't taken into account. I mean like those.
QR code tool and "Default preset" for grid
Those don't stand out much. Probably an open source library for QR code generation was used and an own GUI was put on top of it. Once agian some useful users ideas where ignored.
Regressions and long term bugs
As usual with updates made by Serif, regresions showed up and long term bugs where left untouched.
User interface
They added some stupid UI changes like some distracting bright outlines in some panels (Windows dark theme). They didn't fix long knowed issues instead.
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And the best for last. To prevent the user from getting bored, due to the not very impressive quality, there were several problems with fonts, program startup and unexpected closing.
If this is what the development of applications according to serif is supposed to look like, I'm sorry, I'd rather avoid it. This release was too early with severely unfinished features to bad even for an first implementation and uncaught regressions. A normal reaction from normal and rational thinking customer for something like this is questions, doubts, and frustration.

What makes me sad is the fact we are not well heard 'unwilling QA staff'. At least not by Serif. After all, some pre-V2 bugs and their workarounds (if any) should already be part of the manual  [really bitter emoji]
Another annoying part of this 'QA job' is perpetual fogging of known/processed/fixed bugs. It comes as a rule at this forum: someone writes about a bug and sooner or later there are comments saying "it is known", "it was discussed", etc. Well, but if it was discussed 5, 6, 7... years ago how should we know if Serif knows? Otherwise it would be solved after all those years, woudn't it?
Frustrated by this attitude you will soon quit this 'job', just hoping maybe some lucky day that annoying bug(s) will be fixed...

No, I don't see the need for it yet. I have reported bugs and written quite a few posts. I don't want them to be deleted.

The title speaks for itself. If you're looking for quality tools for raster graphics, vector editing or DTP, you won't find them in Serif's Affinity-branded programs.
If you have an important commercial project to complete, use proven software rather than Serif products. That way you will save yourself a lot of frustration due to bugs and wasted time looking for workarounds to problems.
Below I wanted to share my review and opinion on several key areas such as bugs, UI/UX, features, updates, development process. This is all that made me draw the conclusions I mentioned at the beginning and abandon Serif products. My patience has run out. I'm not going to wait for something that won't come.
Bugs
There is no such thing as a bug-free program. I am aware of this. The fight is on to have as few of them as possible in the program and not to affect the user's work too much.
Unfortunately, Affinity programs look very bad in this respect. There are a lot of bugs in retail versions that have accumulated from previous versions and updates. The response time from reporting a bug to being fixed by the devs is too long. Suffice it to mention, the V2 version still has bugs that were reported a few years ago in the V1 version.
UI/UX
It appears that not much time was spent on the UI and that it was not designed to be effective, easy to navigate and pleasant for the user to use.
User interface is cluttered, small panels are bloated with lot of controls, grouped into multiple collapsible sections. Navigation reqires a lot of expanding and scrolling. The application's color schemes for both the dark and light theme do not provide sufficient contrast, making the interface unreadable. The alignment and organization of the elements is poor. There is a lack of structure. Visual aesthetics are disturbed. The user interface feels patchy. UI elements are not consistent in appearance and size. Stupid UX decisions don't help. By this I mean no custom export presets creation unless they are distinct in parameters from those provided by the application, export preview permanent on, text frame that remembers the last changes applied to it, or not being able to set the "Align to :" option before performing the alignment operation.
Features and tools
They are of poor quality. They use poor algorithms. Just look at tools like Contour tool, Stroke Width tool, or use expand stroke after using one of the mentioned tools. Open source software offers greater precision and quality not mentioning about competitors.
Updates and development
When it comes to updates, when Serif releases an update it will almost certainly contain regressions or, worse yet, there is a high chance of even more serious problems such as unexpected program shutdowns due to bugs in new features. It all stems from a lack of quality in the development process and insufficient internal testing. There are promises of updates that you will be happy with, but when faced with reality, it turns out that these are just empty words.
At the end, I would like to thank the forum users who always provided advice when I needed it, because I didn't know something or had a problem with something. It was good to know that I could always count on your support and quick response. Regards

100% Agreed!
There's another (implicit) benefit of PDF Manuals... providing one forces the software maker to think about and articulate their product's features in a linear and complete manner. This, quite surely, benefits everyone; including the software maker, as it will more easily reveal workflow problems and excess user interactions for any and all operations.

Problem
Right now, gradients are the most tedious thing to create and edit in Affinity. The problem is that all pop-ups close when you Alt+tab out of Affinity or click outside the program in another window). Aany edits you want to make are nested 3 clicks deep in pop-ups, which you need to do for each and every time you add a colour to a swatch. This means that whenever I want to source a colour from another window/ application (e.g. using Microsoft Powertoy's colour sampler), I need to go these 3 clicks deep (and occasionally also switch to RGB hex) to paste colour values.

Proposal
Add a gradient studio which streamlines editing gradients.
Also see the discussion below:
 

Yes, it is indeed a critical lack in functionality. For example, it is exceedingly contradictory that we can zoom in thousands of percent on a gradient, but we cannot adjust it precisely except in huge jumps, and otherwise from there shakily (!) imprecise with a mouse/pointer.  It irritates and frustrates me that I cannot fine-tune what I almost managed to do with the mouse - simply using an input field.
It must be possible for Canva (!) to pick up on all the feedback that has already come in on the deficiencies in the gradient tool and get its trained employees to use it as a starting point for a new user interface for gradients. 
The interface is also about 10 years old, it is absolutely reasonable to expect a rethinking and improvement at this point.

The truly compelling and stark question is: How much of your hard-earned savings would you wager with a bookmaker on the prospect of improvement or change under Canva? When all the free talk in this forum is to be transformed into action with potential and genuine repercussions? Your assertions should result in loss or gain, with nothing in between?
The numerous submissive pleas contained within, delicately and nervously wrapped in declarations of affection, have thus far not made a difference. You have now reached a point where you stand in an even more uncertain situation under Canva - like beggars with even more at stake.
I can assure you that all your talk has been read and understood by Serif over the years; it's just that it hasn't been acted upon in the way you've dreamed of for the past 10 years. How long will you emphasize a word before you doubt the effect of yet another emphasis?
I'm here working to finish projects in Designer, leveraging the strengths of the program (which derive from its initial releases, not much has changed), but I'm currently not starting any new ones. NOW, I damn well need to see results before renewing a license. Results in algorithms, usability, professionalism, and understanding of workflows.

I am not a dude, @ronnyb and the rest of you and I merely thought that you would appreciate an even more intricate variant of your own language—not dull and colorless like on X, Instagram, or elsewhere. Where I come from, it's called a challenge, provocation, and beyond feedback, it's a kind of stimulus-response test. But the content was quite simple and serious; it was just the form that confused you.
The absurd and puzzling part is that you value and understand your own logic here, especially with PLUS ONE numbers as high as +1 or even +400,000, despite the fact that writing numbers from 1 to even several millions have given you nothing. Hundreds or maybe thousands of posts in this forum have also not yielded anything special.
But the cited post says it all, simply everything. Let me outline the problem with Serif and Affinity:
It's been the same company since 1987. 37 years in the same groove. They fundamentally make the same products they have always made. It's the same issue with bugs that were never resolved in Affinity as in Plus. 37 years in the same groove. It's the same issue with features that are thrown in, but never matured, 37 years in the same groove. It's the same corporate culture. It's the same types of deliveries. Everything is the same, Serif just started with a new product line, the style, the errors, and the problems carried over into Affinity, and after a hyped start where everyone clung to hope, we all see that it resulted in more of the same. And STILL, you believe it will be different? What can you possibly base your hope on? Miracles? That you should write +500,000 instead? That you haven't asked humbly enough? That you didn't write enough posts? 
What's interesting is that so many here stay with the faulty software, writing thousands of posts. They are practically here night and day. They doubt my professional background despite the obvious lack of their own professional background or any professional weight. But instead, they prioritize writing in a forum and point me out as a potential junior? I just have to conclude that I tread reality daily where the form, content, and format are quite different. In addition to missing the mark, statements like that doesn't change my life. You aren't changing Affinity's form or features either, other than having a marginal influence, and now Serif has indeed been bought by a huge company that isn't specialized in graphic excellence, and you are now even more ineffective in affecting the course of events. But you do the same. Serif does the same. The future really isn't created here, nor does change thrive. It's just a trip around in a circle year after year.
And so I asked: Instead of all this mess, how MUCH of your money would you bet with a bookmaker that it will be very different in the future? Shift focus away from me. How many thousand dollars/euros would you gamble on significant change? Think about it. No sullen answers to me; think about how much of your savings you would gamble on it. The amount will tell you whether you should start making other plans.
You're shooting yourselves in one foot here. When you sling mud at me, you shoot yourselves in the other foot. Two perforated feet significantly increase the odds that you can't keep up with us out here, and that you don't look up and around.
It's an absolute pleasure for me to return to reality and leave this behind. It is beyond any doubt that there are virtually no professionals here. Nor is it any coincidence that of all the companies on earth, Serif was bought by Canva, for crying out loud.

And how right I was - again - lots of critical bugs were released to the customers in version 2.5.0. 

Massive spill chucker fail!!