Paul Martin

One of the things that I enjoy about the Affinity trio is being able to open a file in one programme and switch to another if that seems better suited to the task. If I need forwards compatability (and that would be a very rare thing in my thirty-plus years' experience) I will just have to remember to save a copy with a different name, leaving the version 1 file unsaved in version 2. The real test is, of course, at what point do you decide the new version is stable and you really don't need the old one any more. I've very rarely had a file crash in Affinity v1 - in fact, I can't think of an instance - so I hope to make the transition soon.

If you're going to use metaphorical language, at least use the appropriate relationships: users are much more akin to good neighbours in a digital village.

Excellent. Any chance we'll be getting a new series of Workbooks? I really need some new book smell in my life. 

There's a Bible story about labourers in the vineyard that you might glance at. I'm pretty chuffed at getting three good Xmas presents at a very reasonable price of £90 here in blighty. Your complaint is that your discount isn't greater than a new customer's. Sounds like that old sin of Envy to me.

There's a Bible story about labourers in the vineyard that you might glance at. I'm pretty chuffed at getting three good Xmas presents at a very reasonable price of £90 here in blighty. Your complaint is that your discount isn't greater than a new customer's. Sounds like that old sin of Envy to me.

There's a Bible story about labourers in the vineyard that you might glance at. I'm pretty chuffed at getting three good Xmas presents at a very reasonable price of £90 here in blighty. Your complaint is that your discount isn't greater than a new customer's. Sounds like that old sin of Envy to me.

There's a Bible story about labourers in the vineyard that you might glance at. I'm pretty chuffed at getting three good Xmas presents at a very reasonable price of £90 here in blighty. Your complaint is that your discount isn't greater than a new customer's. Sounds like that old sin of Envy to me.

There's a Bible story about labourers in the vineyard that you might glance at. I'm pretty chuffed at getting three good Xmas presents at a very reasonable price of £90 here in blighty. Your complaint is that your discount isn't greater than a new customer's. Sounds like that old sin of Envy to me.

Honest answer from me would be that I've never met a Dutch person under 50 whose English wasn't better than many of my colleagues and neighbours! Just teasing, I am a great admirer of the Dutch.

I've used the tracing feature built into DrawPlus for many years. It is often sufficient to work on , say, a logo.
I have now found Vector Magic which you can test online, subscribe to monthly or buy outright for $250. It's astonishing! There will be sources it can't handle, but it does an incredible job with most subjects, including photos. But do use the web version to see if it meets your needs.
My guess is that few Designer users will want to buy the full desktop product at that sort of price, but it might suit a group of users who only need it occasionally.

That's very helpful, Walt. Sometimes I am dazzled by the range of options.

Duh! The bleedin' obvious it is! What I'm now baffled by is why this hasn't troubled me before and what is the best option to choose instead.
As ever, thank you, Alfred

That is absolutely first class, thank you h_d. About twenty times more helpful than what is availble via Help or the tutorial.
If there is a way of preserving this anwer for posteriority, I would support that.

That is absolutely first class, thank you h_d. About twenty times more helpful than what is availble via Help or the tutorial.
If there is a way of preserving this anwer for posteriority, I would support that.

Much cuddlier, thanks, Alfred.

Good question! I don't think I'd heard of "cut-outs" until Alfred mentioned them.
The simple answer is that I expected a cross tool to work the way Serif Drawplus's version does, even though I know there is virtually no overlap in approach between the two programmes.
I am completely flummoxed at the idea that anyone would think of using a "square star" tool, though Walt has kindly shown how it is possible.
I will almost certainly use the modified rectangle approach as it's easier to remember, but it would be nice if somewhere in the help/tutorial there was a hint.

That's easier to use and quick. If you know where to look! Thank you, Alfred.

Bit like an older man's "comb-over", Alfred? 😁

I agree about text editors being a personal choice, but I would guess that the largest market is for coders. I'm from the rather smaller one of editors. I commission, edit, provide DTP layout including artwork for two voluntary organisations' journals.
My irritation about not having a built-in text editor is because I frequently receive content that a) needs more editing b) arrives late c) is altered futher by the "editorial board" d) has errors subsequently revised by the original contributor! As for most editors, there is a deadline set by others. (This was the market that Serif PagePlus had come to dominate over decades.)
Being able to dive into the layout you've set previously to change two words or rewrite several paragraphs is an everyday occurrence.
Rough Draft is aimed at writers including journalists, novelists, playwrights etc with some neat features. It seems to have been last updated in 2005, which either make it "old-fashioned", like me, or "classic" (ditto, naturally).

Thanks, Walt. I might use LibreOffice, though loading a complex Office suite for this purpose seems a bit over the top. Rough Draft also has some good features like making it easy to have a subset of files e.g. "current issue stories" in a window of their own. It does all the usual text characteristics, which you wouldn't get in more basic text editors. It is fundamentally a writers' tool, which is what I need. Still not as handy as a built-in text editor and that's why I was checking to see how you could get text back out of Publisher to re-edit in RD.

I finally got it sorted out with a tip from a user in Affinity Photo group on Face Book. The main thing I was missing is deselecting the selection after duplicating the section. It's in the attached video. 
PasteInsideEJW.mp4

I'm a DrawPlus user and I can't see how you cut a vector object into parts. What am I missing?

Nope. Some of us have been badgering for this feature for many months. It's vital to anyone who has to be their own editor as well as layout artist, we have been ignored/fobbed off every time. For reasons I cannot understand, in terms of Serif's existing customer base, they don't want to do it. I'm waiting for someone to provide a tutorial for poor sods who, having prepared their layout, get told that one or more articles must be rewritten. I hope this issue has moved on since I - and others - first raised it, but there's nothing I have found in the tutorials to suggest it.

I have just tried this, haakoo, and I don't think this would be much use for managing a 2,000 word article. I watched the tutorial for how the linked/embedded item worked for pictures and was initially hopeful, but they simply haven't done the equivalent for text. Which is a pity, as I would be perfectly happy to do the text editing in Word and simply let the updated version appear automatically in Publisher.

I've had my say, here and elsewhere, about the bizarre lack of an internal wordprocessor, importing Word files etc. Currently, I'm trying to find ways of working with what we have.
So here's a for-instance. I have a 2000 word article that I need to include in my newsletter and a contributor supplies it, late as usual, in Word format. I'm a cheapskate who hates Gates and uses LibreOffice Writer. It's pretty good, so I can load up the Word file and save it as RTF. I check it for the idiot contributor's usual mistakes, mis-spellings and inaccuracies and use Publisher's Place function to put the text into my standard newsletter template. I pipe the content through a few text frames and wait for some other key contributions to arrive.
At the last minute, the resident legal eagle says on no account must unflattering references to a certain celebrity be published while she-who-must-be-obeyed says the article must be cut by 15% and an explainer added.
Now, if AP could export the (already revised) text back into LibreOffice so that I could edit the content as a piece of English, rather than pretty fonts on a nice background, I might not have the oft-threatened heart attack. But can I do that quickly and easily? Maybe twice to get it right?
Answers on a digital postcard, please.