Paul Martin
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Posts posted by Paul Martin
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I have created an svg file (in DrawPlus, as it happens) and am seeking to import it into Designer. There appears to be a couple of hundred k of content, but the file is empty when viewed in Designer. I've repeated the exercise several times, but with the same result. What's up, Doc?
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PagePlus, of blessed memory, allows a text frame itself to have colour bordersand fills. In Affinity Publisher, it appears that you have to put colour into a box chape, gice it colour and then align that under the text frame. Is this the case? If so, is someone going to call it progress?
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I'm used to this being a "frame property", but I can't find a simple way to put space between the frame border and the text in it, which is silly when you see the six million other ways to adjust text.
OK, game up, I give in - where've you hidden it?
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5 hours ago, walt.farrell said:
Not an option; it's something shown automatically as part of Publisher's Print dialog, on Windows, at least.
Oh very handy.
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I can't find a print preview option at all! Where is it?
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Yes, woefi, that's exactly what I mean. I guess you don't often use long text passages or they have already been fully edited?
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I produce newsletters and flyers where I am generally both the text editor and the layout creator, as well as the designer of simple graphics. So I use the DTP programme as a way of bringing together content - text, pictures, graphics etc. This makes it important to have an effective filing system for those elements, particularly if you periodically re-use them. In Affinity Publisher, I see a panel marked "Assets" but it appears to be prepopulated with stuff that may be familiar to Mac users but baffles me.
I appreciate Affinity Publisher is only a beta, but what are the plans for storage and retrieval of such content?
On a related matter, it took me some time to get the text frames/flow model. It's growing on me, but my first impression was "this is a layout artist's mind-set, rather than a content-originater's". So, for instance, there appears to be no equivalent of WritePlus in which you can actually edit the text. Am I right, or is it just hidden under another name?
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I need to place and edit text and it is almost always going to arrive in a docx file. I know this ie Beta, but shall I just go away until support has been added for Word documents? I mean, seriously, who ever uses rtf for more than a few words lifted from the 'net?
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I haven't tried it myself, but PagePlus X9 has an add-on called bookplus which appears to do the job.
I doubt if you'll find cheaper or better.
Paul
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Thanks, MEB. This has reminded me that I don't entirely "get" the concept of artboards. Which is to say, I don't yet know for which problems the solution is artboard.
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I'm used to old Serif ways of thinking, so can anybody straighten me out on this Affinity Designer problem? I imported a wide jpg as a tracing template. SUbsequently, I changed the layout to a rough square, but I'm stuck with the wider format. I want to trim this to fit the actual graphic which only takes up half the "canvass".
I can't for the life of me see how Designer allows you to do this, although it seems such a basic task. Help!
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Thank you all - Toltec, Callum etc - for your generous and helpful responses. One thing I have learned is that it is too easy to accidentally change the shape of arrows when just intending to change their angle or length. But I'm getting there.
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I'm used to Serif DrawPlus, so I tried drawing arrows with the pen tool before realising that the shape tool was suitable.
Unfortunately, it seems difficult to draw arrows consistently, particularly to get the arrow heads the same. So I can see that two arrows whose properties I have tried to match, don't. I know, I thought, I'll create a style! Tried that, can't see any confirmation that one has been created or any way of retrieving a saved one.
Harrumph!
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Thanks, John, I will try that.
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So AP has no ability to use a scanner? Grief. FOrtunately, I still have PhotoPlus 5which I think was the last Serif programme able to do the job.
Bleah!
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Tragic loss. I will probably use WebPlus until it fails for some reason and just give up website managment, even at the low level that I do it now.
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You and me both, mate. And I've been using graphics programmes for over 20 years.
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Windows folk are definitely weird, but Apple Addicts must live in a world of their own. (Now, how's that for trouble-making?)
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I have completely avoided Apple products for decades, but I think they have a hold on the mentality of people in publishing which goes beyond rationality and is now very entrenched.
My guess is that Affinity/Serif knows that an outsider needs to win friends and advocates to get seen/heard and, sadly, us Windows-using folk just aren't heard in those quarters. Look on the bright side "early isn't necessarily good". The Brits pretty much invented rail but everyone else learnt from our (expensive) mistakes.
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I've been using various image programmes for over 30 years, but I only use paiting photo programmes when I have to.
For some reason I have never understood why every design makes you promote/duplicate a "background layer" before you can do anything with it. What conceivable use to anyone is an unedictable background layer? Why not have it already promoted/duplicated as the default?
I just thought that, with Affinity being pretty much a clean start, someone might want to consider it...
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There seem to be quite a few "manipulate a vector shape" tools/effects that don't exiswt in AD. Perspective might be another.
I'm not under any commercial pressure and generally happy to learn a new way to achieve a similar effect with a new software version, but I rather fear that AD doesn't aim to do this.
If someone was really keen, I'd be intrigued to see "Coca-Cola" can in both programmes, i.e. how you draw a cylinder, view it from a particular angle and then wrap a design around it. In other words, the sort of image you see all the time in commercial art but which is far from easy to achieve.
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I'm a long-term fan of Serif's DrawPlus which doesn't look anywhere near as modern/attractive but does actually Do Stuff, like shear, perspective etc with vector images. I've been assuming that Affinity will aim to do anything DrawPlus can do as a baseline, even if it achieves that in different ways.
But I could be wrong... By the way, you can copy and paste objects from DrawPlus to Affinity, so that's a possibility.
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"Old", perhaps Bhikku, but venerable, too! :)
Invisible SVG file
in Pre-V2 Archive of Affinity on Desktop Questions (macOS and Windows)
Posted
Well, I still don't know why that didn't work but I later discovered that converting the DrawPlus file to curves beforehand produced a smaller svg file that Designer can read.