loukash

Ha!
Hold on, here's the clue:
It's ye olde DEFAULT ENGLISH (UK) LANGUAGE BUG!
The (temporary) fix:
Change the app language from English (or Default) to English US (or any other language you can read).
English US is what I'm using anyway – and thus suffering from all those related bugs elsewhere – hence I've never encountered this issue until now.
P.S. Although seeing that others are using e.g. German and having this bug anyway, it's likely not the only "source". Worth to try though.

Because we did not know the recipe, despite it being reported many times we had not been quite as good detectives as @loukash it seems

Ha!
Hold on, here's the clue:
It's ye olde DEFAULT ENGLISH (UK) LANGUAGE BUG!
The (temporary) fix:
Change the app language from English (or Default) to English US (or any other language you can read).
English US is what I'm using anyway – and thus suffering from all those related bugs elsewhere – hence I've never encountered this issue until now.
P.S. Although seeing that others are using e.g. German and having this bug anyway, it's likely not the only "source". Worth to try though.

Hi Loukash
Your solution worked very nicely. I wasn't trying to put words in your mouth sorry for any offence and thanks again for the solution.
Not sure why support couldn't have suggested this weeks ago

FREE FREEEEEHAAAAAAAND!!!

Surprise, surprise…
Yeah, because switching to Catalina alone didn't help: I'm actually syncing (ChronoSync app and a bunch of symlinks!) my Affinity settings & prefs between Catalina and El Capitan. So what I just tried was disabling the existing App Support folder and the plist, launching the app with completely default settings. Since that fixed it, my next step would have been to figure out which custom setting is blocking it.
Thanks & cheers!

And I'm all for it!
Basically as always, in fact.
I'd expect they have already read this thread and taken note, or they will do so soon.
As we all know, they won't comment in the Feedback section of the forum.
You don't have to use them. You can either wait until the requests get implemented, or you can use different software, whatever.
Been there done that. I wouldn't use Affinity for any print production if I hadn't a reliably working installation of Acrobat X (and the rest of the CS bunch) to double-check every PDF/X export I make. It sucks, but there you go.
So…
What I'm doing here is having fun exploring what can be done. I'm literally fishing the forums for "problems" that I could try to solve. Whether a solution is ultimately "practical" or not is not my primary motivation. What may seem "impractical" to you may help someone else in a different context. It definitely helps me to understand how some of the less obvious features work. Then I share what I have figured out with the community. (I could be doing this on other platforms or, er, "social" media, perhaps even making money there, but I don't maintain any user accounts on those by choice.)
It's really that simple.™

Surprise, surprise…
Yeah, because switching to Catalina alone didn't help: I'm actually syncing (ChronoSync app and a bunch of symlinks!) my Affinity settings & prefs between Catalina and El Capitan. So what I just tried was disabling the existing App Support folder and the plist, launching the app with completely default settings. Since that fixed it, my next step would have been to figure out which custom setting is blocking it.
Thanks & cheers!

This appears to be related to the language you have selected for the app, if you set the apps UI to Eng (UK) these palettes can be deleted and remain deleted when switching back to other languages. Using other languages the Palettes cannot be deleted - I'll make sure this is logged with our devs now!

Thanks for letting me know, I've forwarded this to our QA team as I don't personally have access to El Captain for testing and I'll be sure to let you know what we find - please do let us know your results on Catalina

Well, I bought ADe on October 8, 2014, a week after its release, looking forward to completely replace CS5 for good very, very soon.
As of March 2021, that still didn't happen.
And in Freehand 9, 21 years ago. Just a few weeks ago I've launched it for the first time in years on my still working PowerMac G4, running in Classic mode in Panther, only to be surprised how many nifty tools I forgot about it had.
Freehand 9, I do miss you!
(I don't miss your crappy PDF export though.)

^ Well, that makes it pretty fast, considering the p.i.t.a. (pain in the arm) you'd have if wanting to right-click each of the 69 swatches manually:

ade_km_macro_make_global_swatch2.mp4 A few times I was apparently too fast with the keyboard shortcuts so that a few swatches were missed. It might help to insert a "Pause: 0.1 s" action after each step.

It's here written down:

This morning I was playing a little bit and created a set of droplet assets. Then I thought: "why not share them on the Affinity Forum?". So, here they are.
To install them, make sure the Assets panel is visible (View - Studio - Assets). From the little menu icon that is visible on top of this panel, select "Import Assets…".

Droplets.afassets

The SVG export will have colours specified in the sRGB colour space.
If your Affinity document does not have sRGB profile, then its colours will be converted from the document profile to sRGB in the export, and so the hex codes will be changed  to maintain the appearance of the colours.

I didn't mean to critize your work and your motivation, I hope it didn't sound that way. I see your animatable image of the bird as a really creative solution. Keep on!
In the end we all have the same goal - Affintiy becoming a real competitor.

And I'm all for it!
Basically as always, in fact.
I'd expect they have already read this thread and taken note, or they will do so soon.
As we all know, they won't comment in the Feedback section of the forum.
You don't have to use them. You can either wait until the requests get implemented, or you can use different software, whatever.
Been there done that. I wouldn't use Affinity for any print production if I hadn't a reliably working installation of Acrobat X (and the rest of the CS bunch) to double-check every PDF/X export I make. It sucks, but there you go.
So…
What I'm doing here is having fun exploring what can be done. I'm literally fishing the forums for "problems" that I could try to solve. Whether a solution is ultimately "practical" or not is not my primary motivation. What may seem "impractical" to you may help someone else in a different context. It definitely helps me to understand how some of the less obvious features work. Then I share what I have figured out with the community. (I could be doing this on other platforms or, er, "social" media, perhaps even making money there, but I don't maintain any user accounts on those by choice.)
It's really that simple.™

Confirmed! Thanks for this ultra-fast fix!

I suspect this may be if you are using a non-UK English setup? Hopefully the new build (just releasing right now!) should fix this - sorry

*speaks in a distorted megaphone voice*
This is the Central Affinitizer. It is my responsibility to enforce that all panels that haven't been approved for your application yet will remain non-functional. It is also my responsibility to alert each and every one of you to the potential consequences of various ordinary application activities you might be performing which could eventually lead to The Kernel Panic (or affect your partners’ credit rating).
(A bonus "like" to the first user who can precisely identify where this paraphrase is coming from. )
No, basically the answer was actually "yes, you can".
I don't think it's "overlooked", I'd assume it's literally "by design". (Apart from the "bug", that is.)
Designer is primarily a vector drawing app. If you need more typographical functionality, you can extend Designer by buying Publisher. Then you can simply switch back and forth on the fly via File > Edit In Publisher and File > Edit In Designer (and Photo, if you have it as well). Or open any Affinity document in Publisher and switch seamlessly between its three "Studio Link" personae.
In other words, this is Serif's business model.
In other other words, therein lies the true power of the Affinity suite and its universal document file format.

Yes, all my Affinities are set to English US. (To save some precious screen space, you know: color vs colour, etc. )
Already downloading. Thanks!

Hi all,
Thanks for spotting this. Issue logged. 
We do seem to treat eofill (even-odd) tag as fill(non-zero) at import. 

+100!

This is likely just a variant of the already logged Stroke Pressure expansion bugs:
forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/search/&tags=afd-3914

The boolean operations in Affinity apps have their… well, issues.
Sadly, this is currently a "valid workaround".
I hear you:
Another, er… "option" is to use the VectorStyler app beta (currently still free) as an intermediate "plugin" for advanced vector operations, copying back and forth via the OS clipboard. But VectorStyler has its own set of problems as well; hence it's still "beta".
Vector exchange via clipboard works with Illustrator as well, but there is an Affinity bug (acknowledged and expected to be fixed soon) that converts CMYK vector objects to RGB when copied to clipboard. Copying CMYK from Illustrator back to Affinity should work though.