loukash

Some of the reason for the pause in information is a change I made to the @Affinity Info Bot posts which used to tell users that a bug had been fixed and {is/would be} available in a beta available {already/very soon}. However I decided that going forward the bot would only post here once a beta build is actually available. So without starting a 2.6.0 beta, the regular nudge nudge of coming fixes has been silent. Sorry but I felt this change was necessary, as I knew that it would be a long time to tease users that their particular issue was theoretically fixed, but without a 2.6.0 beta to download that same fix was not available to try. I thought that would be incredibly frustrating and cause a lot of users to demand a 2.6 beta started before it was ready. Until now 2.6 has not been ready, and we're still a little way off.
So let me explain why there has been this extended period with no significant new beta..... We recognised that, by introducing multi-page spreads in 2.6 (so more than 2 pages per spread), we were making a significant change that would require a long internal testing period. The rearchitecture of spreads is nearly complete. As soon as we're ready with this and the other new features, we will announce the 2.6 beta in the beta forums and a flurry of over 200 bug fixes will be announced by the Affinity Info Bot.
The changes and improvements in 2.6 will, as Walt says, only be public once the beta starts. The multi-page change is unusual in that it has been discussed early.
 

My biggest concern is the amount of energy it needs and the cost, both financial and environmental—including environmental justice issues—that it will require.  (EJ in terms of both dirty generation in EJ communities and redirecting of affordable energy away from working-/middle-class communities.)
(Have I mentioned that I am not a great capitalist?)

^ I actually haven't finished this thought yet (we first wanted to go out for a "sunday walk" while the sun is still shining… )
So, as noted, the linear or decaying Spiral tool with Arc Angle = 360° will create a very specific concentric circle shape with all circles aligned to one side.
To center the circles:
convert to curves Layer → Geometry → Divide Layer → Alignment → Align Center voilà Quite a fast and straightforward workflow, especially if you assign a keyboard shortcut to each required step.
If you need concentric rectangles, select all nodes of the converted circles and convert them to sharp nodes.

Hi All.
My apologies for the delayed response to this thread this has now been logged with our developers to be fixed in a future update. I'll update this thread once I have more info.
Thanks
C

This is why it is worth Affinity doing a DAM that links the three together.  As Aphoto  does image editing, there doesn't need to be any image editing in it.  Though it does need metadata editing,  both EXIF and ITPC. 
 

That's why it will be very likely mentioned and described in the user manual, once the feature has been finalized.
Because e.g. I, for one, also don't remember every field input expression by heart, even after all those years, and may need to look them up every now and then…

Stop adding features for a moment and fix the bugs instead!

Because Assets are something else.
The Assets panel is the equivalent of InDesign's Library panel.
Except that I like the flexible "My_Library_Name.indl" file concept better, rather than the monolithical and buried "assets.propcol" database.
That's not a "workaround", that's the workflow. Vive la différence.
Create a "Symbols" category in your Assets panel to keep them sorted.
~~~
That all said, also in context of the aforementioned "assets.propcol" file:
The truly mindboggling flaw with assets is that each app has its own assets.propcol file, and they cannot "communicate" with each other.
This is definitely bad UI design.
And that's why Adobe's *.indl concept is better.

Meanwhile in illustrator:

… by:
enable Snap to pixel selection bounds (View > Snapping Manager) press "C" for Crop tool let the crop rectangle snap to your selection bounds press Enter I hear you, and for the first five years of having and occasionally using Affinity Photo, I desperately wanted that, too. And went back to PS CS5.1 every time.
Then it suddenly occurred to me that all I really need is to regenerate my Adobe-brainwashed synapses and give myself in to the Affinity workflow by simply rethinking some ways how to do things. The Affinity crop tool is quite powerful. It just works differently. Meanwhile, I've finished my "crop tool transition" successfully.
That said, there certainly is a plenty of room for improvement. Be patient.

https://affinity.help/publisher2/en-US.lproj/pages/ObjectControl/objectDefaults.html

You can use the Master Pages feature for this. Because unlike other layout apps, Publisher can have as many master pages applied to any given page as you want, and those are in fact being applied as layers. So you can create multiple unique master pages to be used as "global layers" only, on top (or "on bottom") of your "regular" master pages, without replacing the latter. Then you can edit them either in the Content, Detached or Linked mode, depending on how you want the "master layers" to be applied on each page, e.g. whether you want to apply their own nested layers or objects globally or just on an individual page.
You may want to experiment a bit first to get the "feeling" for how it works because it's a very flexible concept, and not all possibilities are obvious right away. (Under the hood, Publisher's master pages are apparently based on the same technology as Symbols in Designer and Linked layers in Photo.)
Here a screencast I posted recently in a similar thread:

apu_global_layers_on_master_pages.mp4  

Wingdings?

Editing the default text styles will not change the default font.
To change the default font
Create a temporary new document; its settings are unimportant because it will be deleted when you’re done. Choose the Frame Text tool. Select the desired font. Choose the Artistic Text tool. The desired font will already be selected. You must select it again by clicking the list once to open it and a second time to select it. Choose Edit > Defaults > Save to save the session defaults as Publisher’s new defaults. You can now close the temporary document.

Haha, touché!
Well, that's the beauty of understanding the subject of typography, isn't it? 

Who wants to become annoyed about an ugly font every time I start up any Affinity app?
 
No, it's not. That is as if you enter a restaurant and first thing happens after sitting down is the waiter coming and emptying the kitchen waste bucket over your head. Just to remind you, the food will taste better than the scraps. Nobody needs that.

That includes my trusty old pre-Retina MBP 2008 as well. In fact, my ambivalent relationship with Arial goes as far back as a purple iMac DV 400, back in 2000…  
Yeah, same here. For example, my main computer 1994–1998 was my then-flatmate's PowerBook 140 with a monochrome display and a whopping 40 MB hard drive. It could run PageMaker 4 though, so I was happy with it.
It depends on the glasses: 
For reading and for computer work, currently I've recycled the spectacles I was wearing when I was like 12-13, i.e. 45 years ago. (I replaced the frames, of course…) They just work nicely for distances around 50–70 cm. 
I've posted this screenshot a few years ago in another context on this forum, but here it is, Arial in one of my FM databases in action:

With Helvetica – or any other sans serif font for that matter – it just didn't work for me the way I wanted it.
The core of this database is over 25 years old. In fact, one of my archived early versions was created on 19 August 1999…
~~~
Back on topic:
Hey, it could have been worse!
Comic Sans, anyone?  

Preferences > Tools > Nudge Distance
What values do you see there? Shift key is the modifier here, which might imply that your regular nudge value has accidentally been set to 0.
For the record, in APh I use nudge values 1 px and 10 px.

Speaking of Arial, it can cause me literally physical pain when I'm looking at it printed on paper.
And boy, was I angry when one of my former clients decided to change their corporate identity and forced me to use Georgia (which is alright) and Arial (ouch!) for the brochures I laid out for them, replacing Helvetica Neue.
But…
There are instances when Arial is hard to beat in terms of readability, and that's when it's used at small sizes on a computer display. After all, essentially that's what it was originally designed and optimized for. For example, I do some FileMaker programming every now and then: Arial 9pt is perfect for UI labels, and Arial 11pt for text fields, easily readable on any of my 15" MacBooks. And yes, of course at first I tried Helvetica et al; Arial just works better in those situations, no matter how hard I tried…

Speaking of Arial, it can cause me literally physical pain when I'm looking at it printed on paper.
And boy, was I angry when one of my former clients decided to change their corporate identity and forced me to use Georgia (which is alright) and Arial (ouch!) for the brochures I laid out for them, replacing Helvetica Neue.
But…
There are instances when Arial is hard to beat in terms of readability, and that's when it's used at small sizes on a computer display. After all, essentially that's what it was originally designed and optimized for. For example, I do some FileMaker programming every now and then: Arial 9pt is perfect for UI labels, and Arial 11pt for text fields, easily readable on any of my 15" MacBooks. And yes, of course at first I tried Helvetica et al; Arial just works better in those situations, no matter how hard I tried…

I don't remember the default MacOS keyboard shortcut for "Emoji & Symbols" as I usually modify many of those shortcuts anyway (hey, my muscle memory goes as far back as System 7 and I don't like to change my habits all too often… )  But it could be that an Affinity shortcut conflicts with it, and overrides it.

@JoJu means the global MacOS Character Viewer which is – confusingly enough – listed in every Edit menu as "Emoji & Symbols" (at least on Ventura).

I believe Serif chose Arial because it's good for the apps to have the same defaults on Mac and Windows. Adobe does the same, except they chose Minion Pro. Affinity doesn't come bundled with fonts so Serif's had to choose from a limited selection of fonts.
To change the default font, you must change it separately for both the Frame Text and Art Text tools, and you must do it for all three applications, so six settings. I've provided instructions on how to do this in my Publisher manual - there's a trick to it because you must select the font family a second time even though it's already selected. And after doing it you should edit the default text styles so they use your selected font and not Arial. My manual also includes steps on how to do that, too. Refer to the Getting Started chapter.
Good luck.

I know it's no bug, but I also know I cannot slap the person responsible for choosing this ugly Arial font as default font in the face. On a Mac is the genuine Helvetica available so pleeeeease give me a decent font rather than a bad copy of it as default. Every time I start up an Affinity app like Designer or Publisher I face an anger attack, completely needless.
Or, if you want to be extra nice, tell me how I can change this stupid font as default once and forever.

Hi,
 
I'm teaching myself Affinity after 30 years with Photoshop. Meaning I may have just missed something. If so, somebody please speak up.
If we accept that best non-destructive practice with any of the cloning or healing tools is to work on a blank pixel layer, that means using "Current layer and below" 99% of the time with those tools. Yet for each new file, I have to re-select this option in the context bar. 
It would be a time-saver if that option was either sticky or was simply the default.
Please.
-Carl