Jim Monson

Thanks so much to both of you and your kind patience! As I have found in the past, the Affinity staff knew what we users needed and made it happen ... even if I don't experiment long enough to find the solution they already created. I had searched for such a link but could not find it. Thanks for including it. BTW, that is a beautiful collie you have. Long ago my family raised many litters of collie pups. Nothing like pups and a kid on a farm....

Thanks so much to both of you and your kind patience! As I have found in the past, the Affinity staff knew what we users needed and made it happen ... even if I don't experiment long enough to find the solution they already created. I had searched for such a link but could not find it. Thanks for including it. BTW, that is a beautiful collie you have. Long ago my family raised many litters of collie pups. Nothing like pups and a kid on a farm....

It was a Mac font issue. Since I could not see the problem on his computer I did not see the warning. Thanks for your note, Walt.

Yes, Sean. When the tool "jams" it is on the View (hand) tool, but once on the Zoom tool (perhaps a fluke). I click on various tool icons to try to "release" it and also try various of my shortcuts, but nothing helps. It is difficult to document. It would simply show my cursor clicking on the tools, and you could not see my use of keyboard shortcuts. Also, but the time I realize what is happening I've forgotten what my previous actions were. It has not happened for a few days ... perhaps because I reported it! I'll let you know when it does. Thanks for your concern. You folks are fantastic!

Thanks, Old Bruce. I have headers with section name and auto-page numbers but then added the section at the top of each individual page with its place in the section. Crude but it works. It would be so slick to be able to collapse the pages under each section in the page panel.

My request above may be too much of a challenge for present programmers. There are other, perhaps less challenging improvements. 
1. By holding the Control key (Mac) allows me to use the cursor keys to move upon and down my history, but it does not show me what changes on my screen as I move. I have tried various combos of modifier keys but none appear to make this happen. Am I missing something,  and if not, this optioni would be very useful in History.. Otherwise I must use my mouse, and this requires more time to see what is happening in History and takes my eyes away from  the doc.
2. Being able to bold or cap various points in History would also be very helpful, or even just entering  blank or a line at certain points. The longer the History the greater the challenge to locate a special point. 

In certain AfPhoto docs I save my history for future editing. However, my history can be quite long and finding a certain edit very difficult. It would be great to add time and date at certain places in the history panel, or perhaps a very short note that the user could enter.  Thus within the hundreds of potential edits I could quickly scroll to the desired place. This would also be helpful in AfDesigner but for sure in AfPhoto.

This works in the Node Tool as long as all of the selected Objects are Smart Shapes, as seen in the attached screenshots.


Best regards!
 

I am very grateful for your video, Methferion. I finally realized that I could easily open it in Chrome rather than in Safari.
What you showed is exactly what I need. However, I cannot find the icon that you used in your toolbar. You appear to be using a Windows version of the latest 1.7 Designer Beta and I am using the Mac beta version. Could you send me the name of the toolbar icon so that I can inquire if it is coming soon for Mac users? I really hope so.
Thank you so much. This feature will save me tons of resizing time in  my very complex map work.
All the best!

Thanks so much, Walt. I should have thought of that since this is dealing with nodes. Much appreciated for all advice above. 
I'm a much happier camper now and can't wait for AD 1.7 to be out of beta. These Affinity folks and these forums are fantastic

On Mac, "transform separate."

.

Here. I made a short video showing how the feature works:

ice_video_20190415-205438.webm Best regards!

It should be there, as gdenby showed earlier. It will only be available under some circumstances, though:
Move or Node Tool active; and At least 1 object selected;. and You have Designer configured to show the Context Toolbar. When those conditions are satisfied, it should appear on the Context Toolbar:
The tooltip says "Transform Objects Separately", as gdenby showed previously.

As yet I have not found any way to group swatches, like we can have sublayers under a top layer. This would be very useful when one has so many swatches that one has to scroll to find them. Up to now I simply put is a "title swatch" (a color I do not use) and make an artificial heading for swatches that are common to that part of my work. A group-type approach to swatches would be great.

A way globally to change a layer's property color, in all layers, as well as assigned that color to all sub-layers under the top layer, perhaps by a modifier keys. This would be very useful in identifying specific objects in a complex document,  much faster than changing the color property individually on each of my hundreds of layers.

Is there anyway to change frame text to artistic text (or the opposite) or must it be recreated?

To be fair, I think Publisher is set up to compete against inDesign and Quark rather than other DTP. I have used inDesign for the best part of 15 years and for most designers, the only thing holding us back from switching to Affinity Photo and Designer was "the complete suite". Print designers rely on inDesign every single day so it made sense to stick with the Adobe Creative Cloud (that being the industry standard). I don't expect Publisher to do anything amazing (yet), but it hopefully fulfils the need of most print designers looking to leave Adobe behind.

Your solution, Alfred, worked! Thanks. I should have guessed that AD's staff would have thought of a more creative solution with options and more possibilities. Very nice that adjusting the scan and the color layers separately in AP, not to mention the blends, give so much flexibility. Of course, I did have to change the grey scale to RBG color to bring up the color swatches. Much appreciated quick response.

I'm working in AD 1.6. As before, I can chose the option I want in the Swatches pane under Appearance and the change remains. However, when I click "Fill" or "Stroke" in the Context Toolbar, the default is "Color" and there does not appear to be a way to change that. Thus, if I want "Swatches" in the Context Toolbar (in "Fill" or "Stroke"),  I must each time go through the same process. It would really be nice to change this default to "Swatches" or some other option and have it remain so when I go there again, and when I bring up the doc again.

I'm working in AD 1.6. As before, I can chose the option I want in the Swatches pane under Appearance and the change remains. However, when I click "Fill" or "Stroke" in the Context Toolbar, the default is "Color" and there does not appear to be a way to change that. Thus, if I want "Swatches" in the Context Toolbar (in "Fill" or "Stroke"),  I must each time go through the same process. It would really be nice to change this default to "Swatches" or some other option and have it remain so when I go there again, and when I bring up the doc again.

Thanks for the tip, owenr. Also, one simply wants to check something quickly in each object it would be very useful to be able to move through layer objects and actually have them selected to be edited. Mouse clicks on layer objects can do this, but this takes more actions.

.affshortcuts files are not saved in the document. The shortcuts are stored in per user app support files (like in ~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinitydesigner/Data/Library/Application Support for AD Mac) but not as .affshortcuts files, which are the exportable & importable versions that can be saved or loaded in Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts.
 
So each computer has its own application shortcuts that are independent of those on any other computer. There is no way to merge saved .affshortcuts files with the currently loaded application shortcuts, so the best you can do is export from one Mac & import to the other.

I think what is happening is this is being interpreted as a double-click, which enables the Artistic Text tool & puts you in text entry mode in the artistic text block.
 
If you want to move a text block with the Move Tool just drag it -- IOW, press but do not release the mouse button & then drag with the mouse. Remember that a click is actually two distinct actions: pressing the button & then quickly releasing it. A double-click is four quick actions (press, release, press, release). A drag is three actions (press, move, release). Each may trigger a different result, depending on the context.

Good idea, Alfred. I'll try this. Get some sleep....