tjpanda

This old timer, and fan of Multi-Master Fonts, recalls that Adobe agreed to discontinue MMF in order to get MicroSoft's approval for putting a "Works With Windows" label on their box.

Especially now that Serif is selling its apps as a suite, it would be very helpful if various preference settings like UI, text handling, etc. did not need to be tediously set one by one for each app. Settings do seem to persist when switching personas, but when individual apps are accessed basic settings do not transfer. It took me 10 minutes to get one app tuned up to my preferences. I would like to not do this again and again. Later when I adjust a setting I would like to not need to launch each app to manually keep my settings in synch. This would be very tedious. One option would be to split settings into global and app-specific sets. Or at the very least provide a way to synchronize settings among the apps in the suite. As fixing this merely requires the manipulation of some XML files I would expect a fix should not be difficult. How about it? P.S. While searching for a solution I saw your customers complaining for years about the inability to store sets of studio settings. Some have resorted to manually creating and manipulating sets of XML files. Maybe this could be addressed at the same time? Make customers happy!

"Fiddly" is not good. Causes achy fingers and eventual deposit of your software into the dust bin. Need snap to for every ruler mark. A bit of history: in the early days of desktop publishing, PageMaker succeeded over several competitors because they figured out how to make on-screen layout not fiddly. Also, ruler gradations should change with the degree of zoom. At high magnification a proper ruler has a long gradation mark at midpoint (6pt) and medium mark at the quarters (3pt and 9pt). At lower magnification the minor gradations are every 2pts with a longer mark at 6pt. Please don't make us go blind reading rulers.

Great explanation, thank you. Sad that something so basic had to be explained to Affinity's developers. Clearly they need lots more input from potential users. To produce a program that professionals will want to adopt Affinity needs a better understanding of the job their software will be used for.

This discussion has me seriously worried about AP's success. I had assumed that AP was being created as a tool for the publishing industry. The basic units of measure in the publishing industry are the PostScript point and the PostScript pica. Those are fundamental units: the units that are used internally by all of the devices that convert our computerized designs into reality. It is the same throughout the world. If AP is using some other measurement system internally I worry that everything it produces will be just a tad off kilter. That would not be a good thing.

Depends on where one clicks: on one ruler vs intersect of both rulers.

That's sad @MEB. Not supporting picas will relegate AP to "toy" status in the USA. A blunder a serious as, for example, Microsoft failing to support CMYK which resulted in almost 0% market share in the pro market. AP will never gain any traction against Quark and InDesign in the US by ignoring the needs of professional designers. That a big market to give up by being stubborn over stuff that is easy to fix.

This does remind us that it would be great to change ruler units by clicking or right-clicking on the rulers...

Schaedler rules are magically efficient...

Correct GarryP, there is a benefit to using the units that are most suited to the job. We want this because we have learned through experience that it makes work faster and less fatiguing. The difference is so great that I vividly remember (from 30 years ago) the first time I changed ruler units in PageMaker to match the leading grid. I was working on a publication that I regularly produced and I thought I had gotten very fast with it, but customizing the ruler cut about 20% off the production time. What I remember most was my high energy level at the end of the day. It felt great! So in addition to picas, I suggest supporting custom ruler units, as can be set via preferences in InDesign.

V58 (Mac) beta crashes immediately on open of a very simple single page document (1 jpg & 1 text block).

A US professional designer will find the lack of picas to be a show stopper. Typically we use computer picas 72 per inch. Your competitors both allow for setting a preference to use either computer picas (72/inch) or traditional picas (72.27/inch). For lack of a nail... the kingdom was lost. Yes it is that serious a deficiency!