JET_Affinity
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Posts posted by JET_Affinity
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I've long argued that in a vector drawing program, any path should be able to be converted to either a selection marquee or a cutting path.
JET
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Lumping arrowheads into a generic stuff-on-lines not only threatens dilution of their utility.
QuoteI am not sure I can share this point of view.
I know I don't. What I favor is something that removes the redundancy of ordinary old fashioned arrowheads and more modern related features (vector brushes, symbols) treated as separate features, but that is more powerful than both.
And as a technical illustrator, I assure you, I fully understand the need for traditional arrowheads. But they don't have to be implemented as the kind of limited feature they historically have been in other programs. Often, that kind of archaic treatment is just kept for backward compatibility with previous versions. That is one area where Affinity should have the luxury of moving beyond conventional wisdom.
JET
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Expanding strokes is very important....
Exactly. It's not just about circles. Or icons. Far from it.
Quote…why not just create the circle using the circle tool and make a wide stroke from the very beginning…
Because although it's not traditionally been called that, being so basic a feature, stroke weight is really just an effect rendered at output. Effects don't cut it for anything requiring actual path geometry.
Ordinary Boolean path operations (subtraction, union, intersection, exclusion, etc.)—required for all kinds of common drawing constructs—are all based on the actual path geometry, not on the merely visual appearance of a stroke weight.
Anything destined for physical reproduction via NC cutters, plotters, routers, etc., also must be actual paths that the tool follows, not just appearances painted on your monitor or rasterized by a RIP.
We all want more sophisticated and functional vector-based brushes in drawing programs. Those constructs and their interfaces are entirely program-specific proprietary. But we all also have to transfer our vector-based artwork to other programs. So such features are pretty much useless if artwork employing those features cannot be reliably normalized to basic paths that survive export to common exchange formats. Having to resort to rasterization in order to reliably keep shape is not acceptable.
Back when drawing program first started acquiring the ability to "convert" text to paths, the differentiating factor was this: Some programs (properly) did it by actually accessing the outlines contained in the font. Others didn't. As I recall, one example was Quark XPress. At the time it was the "standard for professional quality; the industry leader" (i.e., all that jazz Adobe devotees like to say about Illustrator nowadays). But its first conversion of text to paths was hideous until corrected.
That's similar in principle to the now expected quality of "outlining" stroke weights. One of the first things experienced vector graphics users check when evaluating a new program is the quality of expanding strokes and other effects. If it results in excess nodes and visible changes in the shape, it is a very poor implementation and can be a deal-breaker if not soon rectified. It is a very serious problem in Affinity Designer, but I believe the developers have acknowledged it and probably planned for addressing it.
JET
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One could have how many ever side-by-side paragraphs as required for what I often called "tableless tables.
Yep. That's the kind of functionality FreeHand's wrapping tab provided; effectively rows that auto-fit vertically the text in any column(s) that are defined by the wrapping tabs. The beauty of it is the simple elegance of its implementation (typical of FreeHand). It's simply another kind of tab settable in the text ruler, just like left, center, right tabs.
I never had opportunity to use Ventura Publisher. But I've always considered its discontinuance to be Corel's largest competitive disadvantage re Adobe. Corel's bundles offer much more than Adobe's for the price. But the lack of a page-building application dissuades too many graphics users.
JET
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I seldom use them, even a page-layout program. I construct my tables with tabs and proper paragraph styles.
FreeHand had an unobtrusive little feature in its text engine called a wrapping tab. I've never seen it in any other program, but it is such an elegant solution for much of what one typically does with tables.
Now, if the program had a "table" feature that could actually function as spreadsheet or calculator for purposes of data-driven text and graphic content; I could go for that.
JET
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Just as all paths are either open or closed, all paths have a direction. That, in combination with another attribute called the "winding rule" is what determines whether a sub-path of a compound path creates a "hole." (Such fundamental concepts should be explained in the introductory chapters of documentation of Bezier drawing applications, rather than just "which button to push.")
Several other drawing programs provide options for display of path end nodes as tiny arrows, indicating the direction of the path. That addresses the complaint (confusion) about what "left" and "right" mean in the context (although, while convenient, it really isn't necessary once the concept is grasped, since paths are assumedly deliberately drawn).
A button (or context menu selection) should always be provided for reversing the direction of any path (as in FreeHand), not just for compound sub-paths (as in Illustrator).
JET
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I agree. When programs that provide for in-setting and out-setting strokes on closed paths do not provide the same for open paths, it can cause users to unwittingly commit mistakes when a closed path is cut or opened, affecting maps, manually-built traps, etc. (One of many annoying inconsistencies in Adobe Illustrator.)
JET
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"Grow" and "shrink" are rather ambiguous. Please explain or demonstrate with a screenshot what exactly you mean.
Quote...by a defined amount of measurement, ex. pixels, inches, etc....or resize a vector by percentage...
You can key values into the Transform fields as simple math expressions. For example, suppose the selection has a width of 1.25 and you want it to measure 1.5. You can click into the W field and type "+.25". Or type "*1.2" to scale it by 120%. (It probably accepts the % character, too, but I don't have Affinity in front of me right now.)
Quote...if you are trying to expand a stroke and shrink it inside of a vector...
The Stroke panel provides a button labeled "Scale with Object," if that's what you mean.
Again, if I'm missing your meaning, please explain. For example, a request to "grow" a path could be a request to have its length change, according to its existing curvature. Also, for clarity, try to use the program's terminology for referring to objects. "A vector" is just a direction with an associated magnitude value.
JET
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A man after my own heart.
Q: What do you call an icon that needs a tooltip in order to be understood?
A: Gratuitous eye candy.
Yeah, yeah, I get it. But I'm also old enough to remember two things:
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Being included in the first group of drafters and illustrators to be trained on the company's CATIA installation just before the advent of the icon-crazy "desktop publishing revolution." For those unfamiliar, CATIA is a fairly "high end" CAE system. In those early version days, its geometric functions were (egads!) spelled out in a tidy list on the right side of the screen.
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Microsoft Word 5, when the horizontal icon bars occupied a full half of the fixed-resolution monitor's screen. (Microsoft rationale, "If 15 icons are good, then 1500 must be GREAT!" is nowadays evident in the number of buttons on the typical Microsoft branded mouse.)
Okay. But yes, those two Disproportional MinFit and MaxFit Constraint icons are prime candidates for tooltips, if I ever saw one (er...three).
JET
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Being included in the first group of drafters and illustrators to be trained on the company's CATIA installation just before the advent of the icon-crazy "desktop publishing revolution." For those unfamiliar, CATIA is a fairly "high end" CAE system. In those early version days, its geometric functions were (egads!) spelled out in a tidy list on the right side of the screen.
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This is a public forum. The reason for that is clearly to allow other users (both those less experienced and more experienced than the contributor) to comment on and discuss the merits of the suggestion.
As with most such lists, some of your suggestions are okay. Others; not so much. But when I have something of value to contribute to a feature discussion, I'm not going to go looking for AXK's (or anyone else's) thread in search of the topic of interest. I'm just going to run down the list of topics organized by subject, not by some screen name's self-claimed expertise.
This fallacy is one pandemic among newcomers to software feature discussion forums. Everyone's posting his or her personal "brilliant list" of features effectively nullifies the forum's hierarchal organization, without which it just becomes unnavigable mass confusion.
If it were just about each user sharing his or her omniscience with the developers, it wouldn't be a public forum, and the developers wouldn't be able to get anything done for having to read the pontification of 10,000 users often saying the same thing, instead of 100 constructive (and often self-correcting and self-improving) discussions on specific features.
Suppose a developer is presently working on a particular feature. Do you want your wisdom to be included in his considerations, or do you expect him to go searching for your celebrity name to see if you had something of great insight to say on the feature?
JET
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(im a new user on affinity so dont shoot me if its already in use)
Not shooting you, but welcoming you as a fellow axonometric illustrator: Important enhancements relative to the subject have been previewed in the "sneak peek" thread for version 1.7.
JET
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Create a layer called GUIDES.
Draw a line with the pen tool.
Rotate it to any angle you like.
Ensure that snap to geometry is turned on.
You now effectively have a rotated guide!
Except that you now cannot:
- Select a pre-existing path.
- Select all of its Nodes.
- Mousedown on one Node and drag to snap that Node to the "guide."
- Snap the Transformation Anchor to that Node. (Transform Anchor is not available with the white pointer active, and black pointer active only lets you rotate by dragging bounding box handles.)
- Rotate the selected path by dragging one of its other Nodes and snapping it to the "guide."
The core problem is that all of Affinity's interface for manually performing on-page rotations is based on bounding box handles (i.e., being selected with the black pointer), which quite often (in my use, most often) does not correspond to the selectable detail of the path which needs to be snapped to angular alignment. And entering the rotation value numerically in the Transform palette does not serve this common need either, because it also is based on the orientation of the bounding box (or the 9-point proxy), and because the program does not tell you the rotation or length of a temporary construction "guide" (straight, single-segment path) which was drawn by dragging the Pen in it Line Mode.
This fixation and dependency upon bounding boxes for transformations (i.e., absence of transformation tools) is one of the most debilitating foundational aspects of Affinity Designer's interface.
QuoteYou can also set a look for the guides layer, such as 0.25 point, dashed, magenta lines, to keep your guides distinct from your design.
But that is a sub-standard throwback to the days before FreeHand allowed you to convert any path(s) to proper "Path Guides"; which nowadays is provided in other mainstream drawing programs. Proper guides (and pathGuides) are displayed as "hairlines" so their width is always drawn as thin as the display allows.
(Hairline stroke weight for ordinary paths is another feature that sorely needs to be added to Affinity Designer; one of many opportunities to surpass standard-fare. I get so tired of having to use a .25 pt (or smaller) stroke weight in Illustrator as a workaround for the needed hairline feature.)
JET
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...I wonder if you guys actually use it or you secretly use Illustrator.
In your list of "pro" suggestions, you keep mentioning PS (assumedly Adobe Photoshop). This sub-forum is Suggestions for Affinity Designer on Desktop. Why with your charge that "you guys...secretly use Illustrator" would you expect Affinity Designer to act just like Adobe Photoshop?
QuoteI'll likely come back with more in the future.
When making suggestions in a software-specific suggestion forum, it is far better practice to create separate threads for your suggestions, if you really want them to be "heard." That way, the merits of your individual suggestions can be found and discussed. When everyone just posts their personal "Santa list" there is no way to peruse the suggestions in the topic list, and it causes disjointed repetition of the same suggestion scattered and buried somewhere in multiple such lists.
Few users are going "memorize" every other user's wish list in order to know where a particular suggestion is being discussed.
As for "pro": I can create a list as long as yours specifying "sub-pro" behaviors and missing features in Adobe Illustrator. Adobe Illustrator is no more inherently "professional" than any of its mainstream competitors. Professional quality work is done in all of them (including Affinity Designer) and is more a matter of the user than the software. A professional can do professional quality work with a crayon.
JET
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Adobe is the standard because they've provided the most widely available integrated toolset...
Integration. Another myth. Merely having the same brand on the boxes and selling them as a bundle does not make disparate softwares "integrated." Corel's suite is more functionally "integrated" than Adobe's. And clearly, functional integration between apps is part of the driving agenda with the Affinity line.
I think you need to differentiate what kind of "seamless integration" you're talking about if you insist on continuing this line of argument. When you're talking about "seamless integration" between different workers under different roofs actually editing the same files, workflow is of course more "seamless" if everyone is using the same software. But that would be true of any software. But not everyone works that way. No one modifies my illustrations but me. And I can "integrate" them into any "industry standard" publishing workflow with any of the drawing programs I use, via commonly-compatible exchange formats.
Look, I've been making my living doing this stuff since before Macs and graphics software. Throughout their competitive history, Aldus/Altsys FreeHand led Illustrator in functionality, often to the point of embarrassment. Even in those pre-PDF years, I was doing national level advertising and product collateral with FreeHand in the days when the claim of Illustrator devotees was that one "can't get files output at the service bureaus without using Illustrator." Those same single-program devotees rent their garments and proclaimed the coming of the apocalypse whenever anyone merely suggested that an Illustrator file should be able to have a "page 2."
Adobe is what it is (big) primarily because of one reason: PostScript. That was the baby that put Adobe on the map because it was the software half of the industry-changing "desktop publishing" equation in the 80s. That's how Adobe first acquired its mindshare. Many of its software products were acquired from other companies (and some of them wrecked).
It takes a while for users to get over their fear of learning new and different software, but times do change. And Adobe's applications (especially Illustrator) are increasingly dated. In terms of "professional" quality and functionality; Illustrator is as mediocre as "competing" programs which mimic it, and the widespread addiction to that mediocrity has stifled the advancement of the 2D vector drawing segment. I mean, honestly; an ostensibly "professional" 2D drawing program in the 21st century that can't handle user-defined drawing scales?
It's way past time for something beyond that, and the Affinity line is one of the promising specs of light shining at the end of that long tunnel. But it, too, will fall into mediocrity if the goal is to simply focus on playing "me, too" to Adobe.
JET
- Alfred, Mithferion and CartoonMike
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You're setting up a straw man here because AI -> PS isn't an appropriate comparison and isn't at all what I'm arguing for.
The way I read it, that's exactly what you are arguing for. Again, these were your words (emphasis added):
QuoteSeamless handoff means I can provide an end user editable format either vector or raster and know that they can open the doc and make any necessary changes in Photoshop or another app.
EPS as an exchange format has been pretty much deprecated since the early 90s, because PDF is like capturing the elements "halfway" on their way to deconstruction and normalization.
QuoteTake 3d formats for example.
I did. 3D modeling softwares in the genre oriented toward graphics and the gaming industry do indeed play amazingly well together. But not nearly so well in the engineering genre.
QuoteAdobe owns the design industry...
Adobe only dominates the design industry because users keep calling it things like "THE standard for any kind of professional design workflow." That's not just nonsense, but rather insulting. I've always considered it a matter of professionalism to maintain at least working familiarity with as many mainstream drawing programs as I can, and I dare say my graphics work is as "professional" as yours. And Illustrator's development since the 80s has arguably been the most sluggish of all.
Frankly, I'm not really interested in seeing the Affinity team expend its energy on some kind of mythical "perfect" content exchange with Illustrator. Since CS6, my use of Illustrator is just withering on the vine, and that suits me fine. Quite the contrary, I want to see Affinity and other innovative offerings energetically focus beyond the mediocrity of Adobe Illustrator.
JET
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Seamless handoff means I can provide an end user editable format either vector or raster and know that they can open the doc and make any necessary changes in Photoshop or another app.
But that is an unrealistic expectation. For example, you can't even provide an "end user editable" Adobe Illustrator file and "know that [the recipient] can make any necessary changes in Photoshop." Illustrator can't "seamlessly" open an Adobe Fireworks or an Adobe Flash file and "make any necessary changes" nor vice-versa.
Are you aware that Adobe InDesign can neither open nor even import native Adobe Illustrator content? It can only import the PDF content that is stored within the Illustrator file. You can try this yourself. Simply save an Illustrator file without turning on the "Create PDF Compatible File" option, and then try to import it into an InDesign file. Turning that option on merely tells Illustrator to create a PDF of the entire file's content and then include it within the supposed "Adobe Illustrator" file.
File exchange between raster imaging programs has always been more "seamless" because, when it comes down to it, a raster image is a simpler construct; basically just a rectangular array of pixel color values. And since the beginning, their cross-application exchange has been accomplished by means of cross-application raster formats (.TIFF, .GIF, .JPEG, PNG, etc.)
Vector-based graphics program (drawing and page-layout) files are collections of individual, independent objects. (vector based paths, raster images, live text, and various proprietary constructs which combine and elaborate upon those objects). So unlike raster formats, there was no plethora of cross-application open exchange formats. (This is a large part of why vector-based graphics has been so long and slow in coming to the web.) There was only PostScript (EPS); basically an uneditable "locked box" which the importing program could just pass along to the printer. And not all drawing programs created PostScript output, and not all of those that did were actually full-blown PostScript interpreters.
So vendors of vector programs had to sort of "reverse engineer" their own import filters so as to claim to "open" (dissect and try to convert) competing files. And that has never been perfect, and still isn't; not even between different programs from the same vendor, because all such programs create native constructs which the other programs don't understand. For just one of many examples, both Adobe Illustrator and CorelDraw provide path Blends. But that doesn't mean they are identical constructs. Both programs claim to "open" the other's files. But in either direction, the Blends are often dumbed-down to just stacks of individual paths with no "blend" functionality. Similar issues occur with other proprietary constructs.
It's the same way with CAD/CAE programs. You don't directly "open" a native Solidworks file with, say, AutoCAD; you export the Solidworks file to an exchange format, and then open that exchange format file with AutoCAD. And much is lost in the "translation."
But today there are at least a few standardized open exchange object-based formats which the various vendors can choose to implement (primarily PDF and SVG), and Affinity supports both. But even of these, PDF is not actually intended to be an editing format. And with either format, full editability at both ends of the exchange is far from "seamless" in terms of native round-trip editing, because the exchange formats do not fully support all of the native editing constructs of all the programs that use them.
That doesn't mean one can't use multiple drawing programs in the same workflow. But you have to be aware of the limitations and devise your workflow accordingly. It's always been that way anytime you try to share files between competing products, and Affinity is not to blame for that.
JET
- Mithferion, R C-R, Aammppaa and 4 others
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...everyone needs to decide for themselves which one(s) best fit their needs...
One little character says so much.
Mission-critical dependency on a single tool is self-defeating folly, especially in something as volatile as graphics software. Heck, I still have six different airbrushes I used every day before Macs and graphics software.
JET
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I'm still unable to switch from Illustrator...
So who says you have to "switch"?
If there were things I absolutely had to be able to do that I simply could not do without Illustrator, then obviously, I would have to use Illustrator for those things. There aren't, and I don't. But even if there were, how does that preclude my using Affinity, Canvas, Draw, DrawPlus, Gravit, Inkscape, Xara Designer for many (or even most) other things? (It doesn't, and I do.)
The way so many people in the vector drawing segment talk, one would think there is some law that you can only use one drawing program. If there is, I've been breaking that law since the beginning of the "desktop graphics revolution."
It's not so much that way in other graphics software genres. Drafters, game developers, video producers, photographers--you name it--commonly use multiple programs and routinely switch between them, even sometimes within a given project.
Illustrator has a few features unique to it. But that's just as true of all the others. I quit paying for Adobe apps as soon as the rental-only license scheme was announced. The money I was paying for Adobe software until version CS6 pays for most of the other graphics software I use.
Illustrator has been around since the mid 80s, and it still fails to provide dimension tools, user-defined drawing scale, support for full multi operator expressions in value fields, proper shape primitives (what is more basic than that?), connector objects, a full-featured find and replace, axonometric grids, hairline stroke weight, and much more. Evidently, that didn't keep many of its users from "switching" to it in search of the mythical "do it all" program.
I'm sorry, but those with this oft-repeated "I still can't switch" complaint are simply habituated to Illustrator's convoluted, confused, scattered, cluttered interface; and not just to its abilities, but also to its limitations. Logically, it makes about as much sense as would my complaining that I can't "switch" from my table saw to my jig saw.
I can't "switch" from my dualsport motorcycle to my trials bike. Heck, I can't even bring myself to "switch" between my two trials bikes (one a 2-stroke; the other a 4-stroke).
In the drawer next to me, I have these ostensibly "do it all" multi-tools:
- The original Leatherman (the one with the full-size pliers)
- A Leatherman Juice (a more compact one with pliers)
- A Leatherman Micra (more compact still, but has a really good scissor)
- A Victorinox Sailor (even has a splicing fid!)
- An early Craftsman (has a hex bit socket)
… and others.
I sometimes prefer one over the others, depending on whether I'm on the dualsport, the trials bike, the sailboat, or just fiddling around the house. But the one by far most often in my pocket is hardly the one most "fully equipped": A pretty standard medium size Victorinox, because it has the all-important (to me) T-handle Philips, pliers (albeit tiny), and tweezers; and because it doesn't have a stupid, useless corkscrew.
But be it shop tools, motorcycles, pocket knives, or drawing software, if I suddenly had to rent any one of them to keep using it, it would be gone in short order. And I'd do just fine without it.
JET
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On perhaps a less ambitious scale, I'd specifically like to see some kind of built-in API (reasonably approachable for most users) for creating one's own Shape objects, with live adjustable parameter handles. I can, for example, easily imagine creating a plethora of "extruded" objects (things like threaded holes and fasteners come immediately to mind), so that one such Shape can create similar objects of any size, diameter, and orientation.
Typical vector brush and blend features enable the user to define custom artwork and then "step" it along a spine path. But such features universally assume "flat on the page" design rather than actual illustration. (Remember illustration? This is an illustration program.)
Imagine how much more powerful it would be if such features provided for at least two base artwork "tiles" (each of which could contain either simple art or other adjustable Shape objects). Imagine further that this "Shape Lab" environment allowed the user to attach and program adjustment handles. So a handle is added and coded such that dragging it scales one "tile" by the cosine of the distance dragged while the other "tile" scales by the sine of the distance. The resulting tactile effect would be that dragging the handle "tilts" the object relative to the page.
JET
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Maybe it's a language localization thing? In US English version, those are not rulers; those are Guides.
JET
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...and not only to the ends, please...
QuoteNow that's an interesting point. Would that mean that I could create a "leaf" "arrow head"...?
Oval will have to explain what exactly he envisions. I hope he's just reinforcing the need to specify a Path End's position relative to the path's endpoint (e.g., whether an arrowhead's point is on the endpoint, or beyond the endpoint).
But if otherwise, as it sounds to me, both of the above situations (and countless more) would be addressed by what I have been trying to describe as tight integration between what Illustrator and other programs treat as too-isolated features: path Strokes, Fills, Ends; and Symbols.
Imagine an interface something like this:
Any path has three intuitive graphic attributes: Stroke, Fill, and Ends. (It's time to abandon many of the ambiguous, strained pre-computer metaphors like "Brush" or "Pen," not to mention increasingly outdated esoteric terms like "Dodge" and "Burn.")
- A Stroke is either "Art" or "Line."
- An Art Stroke has options for:
- Scale: ("Fixed" or "Per Stroke Weight")
- "Stretched" or "Repeated."
- A Repeated Art Stroke has options for:
- Count: (Value)
- Spacing: ("Auto" or "Specific")
- Bend With Path: (Boolean)
- Offset (Distance, Random [Boolean] )
The content of an Art Stroke can be a stored Symbol, just as the content of a Path End can be a stored Symbol. So there is no need to confusingly position something specifically called a Path End midway along the path. That can be done with a Repeated Art Stroke, with any Count, Spacing, Offset, etc., desired.
Or something like that. The devil, of course, is in the details, so I'm not claiming the above is perfect. Some of the options, for example, would be inter-dependent. But the concept is sound, and would be more concise, intuitive, and versatile, while less scattered and confused than most existing treatments. For example, it effectively unifies functionality of Illustrators separate "Art Brushes" and "Pattern Brushes."
All three path attributes (Stroke, Fill, Ends) should support application of multiple instances.
JET
- lepr, Krustysimplex, A_B_C and 1 other
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...actually it would make sense in both applications...
Agree wholeheartedly!
This is yet another example of conventional-wisdom being based on nothing more than that the mediocrity of Adobe apps currently dominate the market. For many years prior to Illustrator ever gaining such things as threaded textframes, users of its historic nemesis, FreeHand, enjoyed and took for granted such things as auto-fitting text frames, multiple pages, robust find & replace, user-defined ruler scales--and many other whole-document advantages including in-line graphics.
Why? Because for the vast majority of freelance illustrator-designers, or those working at marketing firms or in corporate in-house advertising departments, the vast majority of a year's projects are not text-heavy "bookish" documents with long-threaded stories (often themselves externally linked), highly-repetitive same-size page layouts (master pages), requiring footnotes, indexes, and TOCs, etc., etc.
No, the majority of whole-document projects are graphics-intensive layouts for single-sheet, front-back, or low page-count saddle-stitched brochures, mailers, placement ads, trade show posters, packaging designs, labels, identity packages, and, of course, let's not forget Illustrations (everything from free-wheeling artsy to info-graphics, to technical). Such non-repetitive and graphics-intensive documents are actually more conveniently and efficiently built in an illustration program where most, if not all, of the graphic elements are native to the program, rather than externally linked as mere spot graphics. And such documents need inline graphics just as frequently, if not more so.
Inline graphics are used for charts, tables, bullets, icons in instructional text, callouts, labels, dimensions, workflow diagrams...
The capability is not just appropriate for conventional-wisdom page-layout apps. I know for certain I would use it more frequently, and in more varied ways, in drawing programs. It's just one of many features that are still absurdly absent from Adobe Illustrator. Like dimension tools, user-defined drawing scales, connector lines, auto-fitting text frames, live shape primitives...
Adhering to current conventional-wisdom doesn't necessarily make something right.
Or smart.
Just ordinary.
JET
- lepr and Krustysimplex
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Arrowheads please. . .
in Feedback for Affinity Designer V1 on Desktop
Posted
From your original post:
I assume you understand how Adobe Illustrator's arrowheads work?
As of CS6, they exist in an ordinary .ai file inconveniently buried in a directory of the default installation:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CS6 (64 Bit)\Support Files\Required\Resources\en_US
In that ordinary .ai file, they are just simple path artwork stored as Symbols.
To "customize" an arrowhead, you have to dig for that file, open it, draw your custom arrowhead, store it as a Symbol in that document, save that document, switch back to the document you're actually working on, in order for it to finally be usable.
That is extraordinarily cumbersome for anything claiming to be a "professional quality" drawing program. That's not an interface; it's a worst-of-class hack.
What, exactly, do you find in anything that I've written as cause for fear that what I suggest would be in any way more limiting than Adobe Illustrator's hacked-together treatment? How do you see my suggestion that arrowheads should be elegantly integrated with the Symbols functionality as less functional than Illustrator's awkward and cumbersome storage of arrowheads as Symbols? And why should such straightforward, clean, intuitive interface efficiency of closely-related features not be extended to the other attributes you also must apply to any path (e.g., strokes)?
Again: Illustrator's arrowheads are just simple drawings stored as Symbols in a particular file that is anything but convenient. In typical Adobe fashion, that sloppy hack was thrown together because it was very late to the game (to the point of embarrassment) in providing for user-defined (and user positioned) arrowheads. FreeHand, Draw, and Canvas (its three historic competitors) already provided for custom arrowheads years before.
And how do you think anything you currently do with Adobe Illustrator's arrowheads would be broken if, for example, selection of path ends were logically integrated with the interface for setting the same path's strokes (including brushes)? Illustrator's Pattern Brushes have...wait for it...End Tiles. But guess what? That feature is totally ignorant of the existence of Symbols and Arrowheads. That is anything but the kind of integration of functionality that can make each separate feature more powerful and more versatile. It's just the archaic hodge-podge, grab-bag, "me, too" approach to software design.
JET