[Layers a little confusing]

On 10/21/2019 at 11:39 AM, fde101 said:

For the benefit of anyone newly joining this discussion, layers exclusively being at the document level is not going to happen.

Document-wide "global" layers in some form will almost certainly be added eventually, but we don't know when yet.

The three applications in the Affinity suite (Designer, Photo and Publisher) share a common file format, and prior to Publisher they did not support multi-page documents.

The current layer concept is an extension of the layers that were already present in Designer and Photo before Publisher came about.  These layers are perfect for those applications and to disregard them would make those applications far less useful, so for compatibility reasons they will obviously remain present in Publisher.

What I could see happening is an option in preferences that simply keeps the layers collapsed underneath the top level and does not automatically expand them to show layers as they are created or selected (I think this might actually be there already?)  and with global layers being introduced I would certainly hope that newly-added page-level layers would be organized underneath them consistently so this would mimic the way they currently behave in InDesign, for example, which also allows you to expand the document-level layers to see the individual objects on the page.

This is a huge disappointment. I agree that innovation is a desirable thing. But, as other pointed out, basic features like global layers, used for ages in other DP apps, should be taken seriously into consideration. I really regret investing my money in Publisher. I guess I'm stuck with Indesign after all. Really sad.

And that is not the only gripe I have with Publisher. I won't go into all of them. The layers issue is big enough for me. But the styles sheets and color palettes are also problematic and confusing. Or at least over complicated.

I didn't start with DP yesterday. I work on this before computers were used in art departments, for crying out loud. And have been using DP since the early nineties. So, I kind of know a couple of things about what is expected from a desktop publishing app. I see the logic behind the single document concept that Serif took. But that just don't work for everything.

Best of luck.

[Use font collections]

Good point. If the metadata is really problematic, the automatic categorization would work for default fonts only. And perhaps for those fonts with no issues during AD's categorization process. For the rest there might be another category, for instance 'uncategorized'. When user opens AD after installing a new font, he is asked if he wants to manually categorize fonts which were not recognized.

 

I believe some order in list of fonts would really help designers be more effective and a bit more conscious when thinking about type.

 

A real shame that font metadata is not used properly by foundries and neither by font managers. At least is what is seems. Maybe some sort of AI could be used to determine if there is serif, non serif, non straight... and so forth in the fonts to categorize them.

Or maybe a community maintained DB with font names associated to styles

Anyway, a killer feature in my opinion.

Cheers.

[Use font collections]

In the apps that support it and FontBook itself has had the ability to create custom font sets since, I believe, OS X 6 or thereabouts. I have sets set to contain Comic Dialog, Comic Sound FX, Display, Sans serif faves, serif faves, and so on. ComicLife 2 and now 3 calls up the Mac OS font thingamabob (at least that's how I think of it. Because, artist here) and the sets are there. so there has to be a way to incorporate these "sets" in a panel/dialog/whachamacallit for easy utilization by the user. This would be, imho, the best way since these sets would be system-wide and not change (or be dependent on memory to recreate each time) from app to app.

 

so +1 (conditionally on the above) for this.

 

Oh, that would be very nice indeed :) though I think that separated font sets by app is not something to dismis, but I admit that it may be be too much to ask. I'm thinking in the different scenarios or working in graphic design vs editorial/page layout vs web design, for example.

Overkill, anyone? XD

[Use font collections]

Yes Yes Yes.. but why not go a bit further?

 

Imagine you could create your own groups and organize fonts in them..

 

Google Web Fonts; Logos; Headings; Paragraphs; Favorite, Serif, Sans-serif, Textured etc....

 

This would be so great..

 

+1

 

Actually,  I think that by now this should be a global, system managed, standard feature in Mac OS X.

Count me in :)

[Use font collections]

It's to come I thnk :) "Font sub-setting control" (I think it's that what You mean)

 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/842-affinity-designer-feature-roadmap/

 

Actually I don't think it is the same thing, the subset in the road map refers to the PDF font embeding subseting, I think.

[Keep the "Save As" option]

Please don't adopt the "No Save As" option that Apple implemented in all their apps. It is a real nightmare. The workflow gets really complicated without "Save As" option... Lots of mac users are complaining about it...

 

I think that since Mountain Lion OS the Save As menu item is back, kind of hidden, but it is there pressing the alt key while the File menu is visible.

You can make it available all the time following the instructions in the link below. I did and forgot about the duplicate option forever :)

 

http://osxdaily.com/2012/08/27/enable-save-as-os-x-mountain-lion/

 

Hope it helps you.

[Use font collections]

This is something that should have existed since the dawn of time. Instead we need to juggle through hundred of useless fonts, some of them are not event supposed to be available to the user (hello Adobe and Microsoft) as those are used by the Apps UI.

Some sort of list to uncheck font familties and have them removed from the font menu.

Nice idea in my opninion.

[Anti-aliasing: don’t treat guides like art]

Interesting but just because those lines in Illustrator look aligned doesn't mean they actual are. The object could be 0.5 away but because they draw the bounding box pixel aligned you might think it is. Pros and cons I guess. The thing I do agree with though is when you are dragging your object the handles shouldn't be shown at all.

This always drove me really mad about Illustrator, things look aligned, and sometimes even there are snapping guides in place, just to zoom in and found objects are fractions of points apart. Really annoying.

I think that as with most UI things, this definitely should be optional.

Though I prefer the UI elements not anti-aliased.

 

Cheers!

[Shortcut for Convert to curves]

Maybe in the future you guys can dev an user defined shortcuts map to assign any key to any menu item/function.

 

Thank you!

[Moveable zero-point on rulers]

I was not aware that this was not possible.

This is an absolutely must have basic feature.

[Reverse "Text to Curves"]

Actually, what could be done is that at the time of the type to path conversion, the text object could be 'stored' as hidden data for the path group in some way as to have it available if you change your mind, so you could always revert to the original text, this obviously should happen behind the scenes, and not activated by the user.

Or even better, maybe have a live 'convert to path' filter to manipulate the path and keep the text attributes 'live' to have both worlds.

That would be great :)

[Add a Lighter/Brighter UI-mode (implemented)]

I also "just set up an account on this forum specifically to make this request " :)

 

Other users already explained the matter in detail so I won't do that.

Suffice to say that GUI and usability are quite sensitive topics and this it is a really important subject.

Please give the user the option to choose the UI brightness.

 

Thank you all.

[Zoom tool behaviour - tweak]

Doesn't Space+Cmd do that?