[Object like guides?]

Quote

...something that I have found very useful on other software I'm using.

Can you show a screenshot or two of what you're describing, and the names of the software?

I've long argued that rulers are one area in which 2D drawing software in general does a very poor job of matching the simple utility and efficiency of the pre-computer physical tools they metaphorically emulate. In my case, I'm comparing to the freely moveable, rotatable "track drafters" attached to drawing boards commonly found in engineering departments. (The closest software approximation I've seen to that is Lazy Nezumi Pro.)

But I'm not quite sure how to envision what you're describing. Literally "using rulers like objects" sounds like something I could do by actually drawing a set of rulers to accurate scale, storing them as Symbols, positioning, aligning, locking them on the page, and snapping to the nodes of their increments.

JET

[Node-level transformations]

The "sneak peek" thread for 1.7 previews some upcoming enhancements in that regard (among other things):

JET

[Vector halftone (vectorisation related?)]

Quote

This could be a dealbreaker feature for many...

Until someone else comes along and insists that their favorite elaborate-special-effect-of-the-moment should be "built in."

Here's the thing: Do you want your main drawing program to be an elegant environment that provides full-powered base capability for drawing, or do you want it to be a grab-bag collection of elaborate special effects that move in and out of popularity?

Altsys/Aldus/Macromedia FreeHand was Illustrator's nemesis since the beginning of the so-called "desktop publishing revolution." One of many things it provided which Illustrator never has is object-level halftone settings.

This straightforward, unobtrusive feature allowed you to apply actual PostScript-supported halftone shapes (diamonds, ellipses, lines, etc.) at any ruling (LPI) and angle at the individual object level.

And these were real halftones, meaning this: If you pick up your loupe and look at a real halftone, you'll find that it's not a simple matter of making a grid of dots vary in size. In a real halftone, the dots also vary in shape as they scale toward and across the 50% tones. The round dots become gradually more "square-ish" and begin to smoothly merge at the corners as they aproach 50% (like the so-called "metaballs" effects you often see people trying to emulate nowadays). Past 50%, they stop being dots and become "holes." They therefore don't become "star-shaped" voids between overlapping dots with spikey corners and concave sides.

Now, that kind of real halftone effect, unobtrusively implemented at the object level and with clean vector-based results (not sloppy auto-tracing), I'd love to see built-in. But...

The first attached image is one sample result from an AI Javascript I hacked together shortly after that program acquired its scripting features. I call it my "Faux Halftone" script, for the reason explained above; like all third-party effects plug-ins I've seen, the "dots" just scale, they don't reshape and merge as real halftone shapes do.

Still, it's a neat effect; I'm not arguing that—until it becomes over-used and passe, as such things are prone to do. Once upon a time, the ubiquitous fuzzy raster-based drop shadow was the  "killer-effect-to-die-for." It became probably the most overused effect on the planet, to the point that current design trends avoid it.

The vector-based appeal of the faux halftone effect, of course, is that anything (from single simple paths, to whole drawings) can be used as the "dots." To demonstrate that in the attachment, I used something suggestive of an atom and something suggestive of a planetary orbit on the same image.

My point here is this: I am not a programming wizard. Far from it. There's just nothing all that programmatically intense in this effect (processing-intense is another thing). This is how it works in my script:

Illustrator provides three things that are leveraged by the script:

• A little-used Effect called Create Object Mosaic. All this basically does is create an array of vector squares across a raster image. (An auto-trace feature set to maximum accuracy, like the one that shipped with Corel Draw long before AI had a decent auto-trace feature) should be able to do this.)
• Symbols.
• A Javascript DOM.

To generate such an image, I:

1. Draw the vector artwork I want to serve as a "dot." Store it as a Symbol.
2. Select a raster image. Of course this doesn't have to be an imported raster; it can include anything I originally create as vector paths and then rasterize on the page.
3. Run the Create Object Mosaic Effect. Using the grayscale settings, this yields a rectangular arry of squares, which vary in lightness.
4. Invoke the script, which simply loops through the selected squares, and for each:

 

1. Gets the grayscale value of its Fill.
2. Gets its position.
3. Gets its size.
4. Places a Symbol Instance in the same position.
5. Scales the Instance to the size of the square.
6. Scales the Instance by percentage according to the grayscale percentage of the square.
7. Deletes the square.

So you see that the function of the script is just a set of very simple and understandable commands that are not—but could be—provided in the standard interface.

But this same script (or same series of commands) can also be used to generate things very different from a course faux halftone. For example, it can generate Pixie Dust (the second attached image).

What I want to see in my primary vector drawing program is not a grab-bag of pre-built effects. The main point of all the above is, a serious drawing program needs to provide the robust functional underpinnings that facilitate data-driven creativity. That leads to far more originality potential than just an increasingly cluttered pile of standalone, turn-key, one-trick-pony, instant-gratification effects.

The kinds of things I want to see in Affinity are functionally versatile commands that can be creatively applied for endless originality, like:

• Replace With Symbol (with appropriate parameters, and not limited to just replacing other Symbols, like Illustrator).
• Path strokes that can use Symbols as a repeating pattern along the path (with options for orientation to the path or the page; and for warping or not); or as a single instance stretched along the path; or as path ends (also with the orientation, scaling, and warping options). One such carefully integrated feature set would exceed the potential of a whole collection of separate standalong features (like those in AI and other programs). 
• And of course, a well-documented scripting Object Model.

But consider: A full-blown scripting implementation is a very ambitious feature. And when it comes down to it, my Faux Halftone script effectively just performs a "replace with..." and scaling based on attributes of the replaced object—in other words, things that could be implemented in a few carefully thought-out standard commands.

Such commands could then be semi-automated by a mere macro feature—much less than a full-blown scripting engine, and requiring no scripting expertise on the part of the user—yet has far more creative potential for originality than just another turn-key single effect.

JET

[Feature Request: Vector Brush (repeat vector shapes along path)]

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Long time Illustrator user...ability to draw an vector shape...and use it as a brush.

Agree completely.

Despite the incessant referral to Adobe Illustrator as "the industry standard" and "professional quality," it really only has a very few features which set it apart in comparison to competing programs. The two biggest are multiple strokes, fills, effects (collectively called "Appearances" in AI) applied to a single path, and its vector-based Brushes.

AI's Pattern Brushes can be used to create libraries of adjustable whole objects, like axonometric fasteners of any diameter and length.

That's not to say that they couldn't be improved upon. They most certainly could; and I have specific details in mind, when I say that. But in general terms, their functionality could be tightly and elegantly integrated with Path Ends, Symbols, and with each other (Pattern, Scatter, and Art). So I hope the Affinity team intends to not just "match" but surpass. The opportunity is there.

But generally speaking, yes, this is one of the very few "biggies."

JET

[Technical Drawing with Affinity Designer]

Quote

something like CADTOOLS  for illustrator would be fantastic.

A gargantuan "vertical purpose" plug-in piled on top of the most cluttered, scattered, and cumbersome Bezier drawing interface on the planet? No thank you.

I'm all for technical drawing support. That's my pet desire for Affinity Designer, too. But 2D drafting and axonometric drawing are not rocket science, and it's way past time to take them out of the conceptual confines of the mechanical engineering department (i.e., vertical market). There's no reason the full functionality needed can't be cleanly integrated into the standard feature set of a welcoming, unintimidating, elegantly designed  interface for mainstream general-purpose Bezier-based drawing without overtly screaming "Drafting Mode!" at the beginning user or the stylistically-versatile expert illustrator.

And that's more of what I hope (and suspect) the Affinity dev team has in mind.

JET

[Sneak peeks for 1.7]

Quote

The "finger in the air" method…is subject to the effects of variations in moisture level as well as wind speed and direction.

Not only that, but software development is also a system characterized by extreme sensitivity to tiny fluctuations in initial conditions. I had that figured out before I ever heard of chaos theory.

JET

[Why I am NOT supporting the Affinity range of software]

Egads, Christopher, the original purchase price of an Affinity license is about 30% (or less) of the typical price for a mere version upgrade of most mainstream graphics applications.

For just the most obvious example: Because I will not rent business-critical graphics software, Adobe's arrogant move to entrap all its long-time customers into its Cloudy Captives licensing scheme effectively freed up ~$1200-1500 of software budget from the chronic upgrade cycle for keeping my copy of the so called Master Collection bundle current. That pays for the whole collection of the Serif Plus applications, the Affinity programs, and others, too.

Corel is about to do something similar. As I read the release of its 2018 versions, Corel has announced that version upgrade discounts will no longer be offered to its perpetual license customers (i.e., the ones who pay most per version) unless we also pay a flat per-year "maintenance" fee. A single payment of that "maintenance" fee pays for a perpetual license for both of the Affinity apps.

Times have changed. The monolithic old-world graphics software vendors are desperately clinging to their inflated pricing models, remnants from when desktop graphics was a paradigm shift. It's just not anymore. This stuff isn't rocket science, and Serif is proving that an efficient company can thrive by offering great products at affordable prices.

So while you're as entitled to state your case as anyone, I seriously doubt you're outrage is going to drum up much of a movement; at least not among those of us who have been making our livings with softwares that typically cost five to six times (and more) per upgrade than the price of an Affinity app.

If there's one thing no one should be complaining about regarding the Affinity line, its value per dollar.

JET

[Make Scale with Object a default setting?]

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ideally all scale attributes should be set to scale with object by default  - massive time saver - just need a tick box to turn it off, for the rare occasion that you might need things not to scale

Rare occasion? I disagree completely. Many, many of us illustrators do almost all of our path drawing with stroke weight set to "hairline" widths for visual accuracy and clarity at all zooms. (In fact, Affinity sorely needs a proper Hairline stroke width setting.) It's a must in anything the least bit technical, but is just as important at the opposite end of the style spectrum for loose, cartoony drawing with Brushes.

Suppose you're "freehand" sketching a cartoon face with a particular tapered brush stroke setting. Everything presently has a consistent stroke weight. You decide one of the eyes just needs to be enlarged a bit. You really want its stroke weight to enlarge at the same time? That would make its stroke weight look like it was drawn with a "fatter crayon", and would be stylistically inconsistent with the rest of the drawing.

There are literally countless such situations in which don't want stroke weight to scale when you scale the paths to which it is applied.

And yes, by the same token, there are also countless situations in which one would want stroke weight to scale with the paths to which they are applied. Logo design is a case-in-point (although really there should be no strokes in final logo masters).

All of that is why it is a user-defined setting, as it should be, and neither should be a "default" unless the user deliberately sets it as a default. This is one of many interface "defacto standards" that has been effectively "settled" by long decades of drawing software development. I'm all for innovation, but many things are the way they are because it's been long ago proved that it's the most sensible right way to implement them.

JET

[Sneak peeks for 1.7]

Given the...um...affinity toward a widely practical level of technical drawing represented in the upcoming enhancements discussed and demonstrated in this thread, I seriously hope some much needed basics will be also addressed:

I'd be hard pressed to think of anything more basic to drawing than drawing straight lines and using them for object edges or construction.

As has been discussed here and in other threads, there is no dedicated Line Tool as exists in other drawing programs. Instead, the Pen can be put in "Line Mode" which yields mostly the same behavior (mousedown, drag, mouseup). I'm generally fine with that, in that, arguably doing this in Affinity...:

1. Select PenTool
2. Click Line Mode button
3. ShiftDrag a Line of arbitrary length
4. Key in desired Length
5. Key in desired angle

...is functionally equivalent to doing this in, for example, Illustrator:

1. Select Line Tool
2. Click on page (modal Line Options dialog appears).
3. Key in desired Length
4. Key in desired Angle
5. Click OK to dismiss the modal dialog

But Affinity's treatment still leaves crucial related aspects missing which affects measuring, scaling, and rotation in general.

One general example is the fact that Illustrator's Line Tool is (yes, inelegantly) a better measuring device than its separate dedicated Measure Tool. The poorly designed Measure Tool doesn't even abide by snaps. So in Illustrator, when you need to measure elements of your drawing-in-progress, it is better to ignore the Measure Tool and instead:

1. Select the Line Tool
2. Mousedown on any snap-sensitive element
3. Drag to any other snap-sensitive element
4. Mouseup
5. Delete the line you just drew
6. DoubleClick the Line Tool (The modal Line Options dialog opens, and displays the last-used values, effectively telling you both the length and angle of the "measure" you just made).

I'm certainly not calling this elegant, nor intuitive, nor even easily discoverable. But it is at least functional, and serves crucial purposes which Affinity does not yet address:

1. Select the Pen Tool: Click the Line Mode button.
2. Mousedown. drag in an arbitrary direction. Mouseup.

You now have a single-segment path with no extended curve handles (a "line"). But what is its angle? What is its length?

As I've said many times, it's great that Affinity's value fields can serve as trigonometric calculators. But how do you simply and quickly determine the angle or length of the above "line" without invoking Pythagoras? Every serious vector drawing program needs to provide immediate access to the length of any path (including curved paths). 

This also relates to rotation. Affinity does not provide transformation tools. It just provides transformation handles which you interact with using a selection tool. It retains bounding box orientations and provides a rotation field in the Transform palette. And again, I'm fine with that in principle, but not in the current implementation, because it does not provide all the needed functionality.

At the risk of stepping on what is likely "sacred ground" I'm going to go ahead and say this:  I know Affinity is not the only recent program to use it, but I just don't like the needless visual clutter of a rotation "lever" attached to a bounding box. I'm okay with (I won't say fond of) the typical momentary rotation icons that appear when you mouse around outside corners of a bounding box, but here's the thing: Having to perform tactile rotation by such bounding box-based handles (whatever their interface treatment) feel cumbersome and inaccurate because both the "lever" and the corner icons are off the object(s) being rotated.

Suppose that arbitrary diagonal line described above is an edge of a drawn object. Now I want to draw a straight line of a given length precisely at that same angle.

I can use the Pen Tool in its Line Mode to snap at both ends of the pre-existing "line", effectively doing the same thing as just duplicating the original. But how do I now make the new path the desired length? There is no Length field, and because the "line" was initially drawn at an angle, I can't use the W or H field as a substitute.

Okay, so I draw the new line, shift-constrained to either horizontal or vertical, so I can use the W or H value field to specify the length. Say I key in a value of 1 inch. But now I need to rotate the new path to the angle of the original path. But again: In other programs, even if the angle is not provided, I can still at least:

1. Move the new "line," snapping one of its endpoints to one of the nodes of the original "line."
2. Set the transformation anchor at that endpoint.
3. Mousedown on the opposite end of the new "line," drag it, and snap it to anywhere along the edge of the original "line."

But I can't do that in Affinity because the bounding box rotation "lever" is off the object. So using that "lever" to do the rotation, when I get the path I'm rotating visually aligned to the  angle of the original "line", there's nothing pertinent to the transformation being performed within snap distance of the cursor.

What about those corner bounding box rotation handles? They would have the same problem of being off-object, but it's moot anyway, because you can't even get them to appear in this scenario, because the "bounding box" of a horizontal line has no height. (Try it.) And that brings up an issue with scaling.

Suppose I just go ahead and rotate the horizontal path and just "eyeball" its alignment to the original path. I know the length of the new path, because I expressly keyed it in, and the Transform palette still shows that value. Suppose I now want to scale this path to the measure of an object edge in the subject, say, 2.875 inches. Knowing that the new rotated path is 1 inch long, I should be able to key this in as a multiplication value. So I:

1. Transform palette: Turn on the Proportional link.
2. In either the W or H field, key in *2.875.

But when I do this, the path disappears entirely. Affinity interprets this "uniform scaling" of a "line" as zero, because even if the bounding box is rotated it's still considered to have a "height" of zero. It even does this if the straight path is already rotated. Yeah, I can click the Reset Selection Box button to temporarily make Affinity treat the object as unrotated (by the way, we do still also need to be able to permanently reset a rotated bounding box), but continue...

So now I have two single-segment straight paths which were drawn in exactly the same manner (Pen Tool in Line mode) except that I didn't press Shift to constrain the first one to horizontal or vertical. Yet when the original path is "uniformly" scaled, it doesn't disappear. And if I select both of the now diagonal lines, and perform a uniform scaling, neither of them disappear.

Honestly, of what use is this behavior of "uniformly" scaling a straight path to zero width and zero height and then deleting it? Since when is 0x0 "proportional" in terms of aspect ratio to 2.875 x 0? What other drawing program does this? None of the six or seven on this computer do. (Perhaps it's been reported as a bug and I've just missed it?)

For the sake of interface elegance, I'm not saying we must have a dedicated set of transformation tools like other programs do. But if all transformations are to be performed with the selection tools, they need to be just as easily performed and just as fully functional as if there were transformation tools. I'm not finding that to be the case.

What's needed is the ability to:

1. Set the transformation anchor to anywhere, abiding by all current snaps.

2. Rotate any current selection about the current rotation anchor by mousing down on any snap-sensitive element (any node, center, etc.) of the current selection and dragging it to snap to any snap-sensitive element of unselected objects (including path edges), regardless of the rotation of the current selection"s bounding box(es). And this should not have to be done with the white pointer after selecting all of the selection's path nodes.

JET

[Sneak peeks for 1.7]

Quote

So I guess I wax sympathetic to the devs when people criticize Adobe and Affinity...

If you re-read my post, you should see that I also am sympathetic the graphic design of the Affinity products. I don't see how anyone considers it worse than any of the other mainstream programs. But it's from the standpoint of functional inelegance that I consider Adobe Illustrator's interface worst-of-class.

As for dark backgrounds, etc.: Human vision is highly adaptive. It seeks out contrast and exaggerates it. (You can see this demonstrated in many popular optical illusions.) Besides the simple fact of eye strain caused by reading too-bright screens in dark surroundings, designers, artists, and photographers have been taught for many decades that surrounding your work-in-progress with darkness causes your artwork to look more vibrant than it really is. This is particularly problematic when designing for print on glowing devices. I can't tell you how many times I've seen photographers and illustrators who like to work with dark surroundings complain that the printed results of their work comes out disappointingly muted and lacking detail in the shadow areas.

Pre-computers, it was common practice for photographers and pre-press color houses to go to considerable expense to surround working and proofing areas with color-neutral midtone grey surroundings for the very same principle.

Quote

...when I was in school we actually had to design an alternative Photoshop concept...Give it a shot sometime...

In conjunction with being an illustrator, designer, and product photographer since before the "desktop publishing revolution", I also happen to be a workgroup database developer, which  involves interface design on a daily basis.

JET

[Sneak peeks for 1.7]

The biggest problem I had at first exposure was yet another "trendy" blacked-out treatment adopted by far too many graphics programs (including Adobe's) a few years ago, which is about as dumb for serious graphics work as it is for the pirate dress-up "biker" segment of motorcycling. Thankfully, Serif provided a retrieve from that hopefully short-lived fad in response to user demand.

There are no doubt as many opinions about the graphical design of the interface as there are designers. Personally, I'd love to see a seriously-capable drawing program designed to look seriously down-to-business, with emphasis on clean, unobtrusive functional clarity devoid of distracting gratuitous eye candy.  But mainstream drawing programs are designed to look "friendly" and "inviting" to casual hobbyists and "technically capable" to professional users at the same time. The balance of wide appeal is a narrow tightrope.

Overall, the Affinity design compares pretty well against current competitors in the same segment, and there are plenty of far more "childishly" confusing offenders even in "higher end" software (ever worked with Solidworks, for example? Great program, but hideously garish runaway icon-crazy interface.)

So I don't have any huge problem with Affinity's graphic design, but for one element: The "cogs" preview icons of the Style palette. Because they are large and randomly colorful (both consequences of their purpose), they disproportionally dominate the presentation when the program is first launched, and more than any other single element do give an initial "kid stuff" impression that's out-of-sync with the rest of the interface and belies the sophistication level of the program.

JET

[Affinity Publisher - Sneak Preview]

Quote

Do we have an idea of the Affinity Publisher retail price ?

I'm kind of expecting $50.

JET

[Sneak peeks for 1.7]

On ‎6‎/‎8‎/‎2018 at 9:36 AM, VFXTobias said:

Are we getting improvements on the pen and brush tools that will allow us to draw constrained paths, eg shift-drag in direction, as opposed to the current shift-click a second point option?

When the Pen Tool is active, you can put it in "straight line mode" by clicking the straight path button in the options bar at the top of the window. That makes the Pen act much like the separate Line Tool in Illustrator. (Someone had to point it out to me, too.)

JET

[Sneak peeks for 1.7]

Quote

I had to cave in regardless of a very long explanation as to why snapping curve handles to grid points was practically and artistically a pointless exercise. All that you would ever really want is the ability to constrain curve tangents, and set handle lengths.

I can't wait for the chronically-repeating threads in which newcomers ask why they can't position curve handles precisely where they want them, and have to be told to turn off that snap.

It's not uncommon to want to replicate the angles and lengths of curve handles across multiple nodes. But snapping curve handles to the grid is a crude way of accomplishing that.

JET

[Sneak peeks for 1.7]

Quote

The consensus in the team here is that it is not really that useful ...

Frankly, I see it as an unnecessary "comfort level" crutch for those new to drawing Bezier paths, and as I recall, that was the intent when it was originally added to other programs. But it's a false one in that it only actually predicts the next segment if the next node will have no curve handle. And it just adds visual clutter if you are working with automatic alignment guides turned on.

You've already added the "redrag" keyboard shortcut. The video clip doesn't show its being used in the context of moving the node currently being placed during mousedown, but I assume it will do that, as in other programs. That does accurately predict the shape of the resulting segment in all cases, whether a handle has been dragged out during mousedown or not.

On that topic, although I can sometimes make use of the redrag shortcut, I still winced a little bit when I saw it's being added. Many do not realize that the spacebar press is necessary in Adobe Illustrator just to overcome the infernal insistence of its Pen Tool auto-joining to endpoints of pre-existing paths. (The Pen is not a selection tool, and has no business affecting unselected paths. As of CS6, that stumbling-block behavior cannot be turned off in prefs. In other words, it's mostly a cumbersome workaround for a poorly designed behavior.

For anyone not getting this: It's a very common circumstance when drawing Bezier paths to want to start or end an independent path at the endpoint of a pre-existing path, without joining to it. So in Illustrator, to do that, you mousedown the Pen somewhere you don't want the path you are drawing to begin or end, press the Spacebard, drag the Pen to where you do want the current anchor to be placed, mouse up, and then release the Spacebar. Utter nonsense.

But I wince more strongly at the "rubber band" preview thing, because I consider it useless, and just another example of wanting ill-conceived interface elements "like Illustrator." 

Illustrator's is the worst-of-class interface. It is largely why beginners find vector drawing to be more bewildering than it really is. But those who've never used anything other than the conventional-wisdom "leader" don't know that.

Sorry for the sermon. I just want Affinity to jealously guard its elegance.

JET

[Sneak peeks for 1.7]

6 hours ago, Ben said:

@A_B_C The rubber band is really just a projected preview of the Pen tool.  This is something I can look into for 1.7. 

If this is implemented, it should be a user-preference setting, as it is in some other apps. I personally find it annoyingly distracting, as many who "cut their vector drawing teeth" without it no doubt do.

JET

[Scripting Support (again)]

Quote

And the typical home-user or small company doing photos or web graphics wouldn't miss the features they don't have.

Please speak for yourself, not others.

I dare say most of the best Javascripts for Illustrator are written by individual illustrators who actually understand what they need the script to do for illustration, not just as project workflow automation,  whether they are working as independent freelancers or as drones in a corporate graphics sweatshop. I've done both and have quite a handy collection of unique AI scripts myself, but quit investing time in developing them as soon as Adobe forced its Captive Customers sales model.

So while I can be counted among those most desiring a JavaScript API and object model for Affinity, I am not willing to pay hundreds of dollars for each license for just that feature.

It's the same fallacy evident in Adobe's customer-abusing pricing. Adobe wants to pursue a more "corporate" entrenched (i.e. habitually dependent) customer base regardless of the impact on the individual and small-company skilled creatives who historically created the demand for Adobe products within the corporations they worked for in the first place.

 I lived through that. It was (and in many companies no doubt still is) a common scenario; a constant battle in which graphics creatives hired into the company's advertising or marketing departments have to escalate needs to upper management in order to compel IT to obtain and support the specific tools with which they are proficient. 

If corporate IT departments had had their way, we'd all be using Microsoft applications for graphics (and command-line interfaces for handling data).

But things have changed in the three-and-a-half decades since the "desktop publishing revolution." 2D graphics is not rocket science anymore. The simple fact is, Adobe and its sibling competitors from back then are still trapped in an outdated pricing model, which I doubt strategies like customer-manipulative subscription-based pricing are going to perpetuate. The customer base is not going to put up with having—as you say—a knife held to their throats for long. Companies rise dramatically at the beginning of a "new paradigm" and can diminish just as quickly when what they offer becomes commonplace. Frankly, there's no justification any more for the prices of Illustrator, Draw, Canvas (and FreeHand, the best of the original "Big Four" was acquired and removed by Adobe).

There are newer and more reasonable  business models delivering excellent 2D vector drawing apps. Serif is on that. Yeah, Affinity definitely needs its own ECMA implementation. But it doesn't have to cost $400 a pop. I'm working on educating myself in Python in hopes of creating some scripted Inkscape solutions for axonometric drawing. Gravit Designer is not open-source, but still free, and it, too, is already pursuing a Python-based scripting solution.

And I suspect Serif knows all of that. I trust Serif is clever enough to recognize the importance of a scripting model. But it would be premature to build it when much of the core functionality that will further differentiate Affinity from the status quo is still under development.

JET

[Sneak peeks for 1.7]

2 hours ago, dominik said:

Does [Lazy Nezumi Pro] really work with AD on your computer?

It works fine on my desktop machine and on my Surface Pro, both running current version Windows 10.

JET

[Sneak peeks for 1.7]

I don't care to see anything akin to the cheezy Cube Tool in Inkscape as an excuse for a converging perspective solution. Things like that are far less than the depth of the parallel perspective axes and grids feature previewed in this thread. I'm sure that if a converging perspective feature is planned for Affinity, it will be worth waiting for.

Frankly, I find the software-independent concept of Lazy Nezumi Pro more sophisticated. Have you tried that? You may be surprised at the construction you can do with it in a vector drawing program. In Affinity, just set the Pen to Line Mode and start drawing your perspective rays.

JET

[Sneak peeks for 1.7]

Ben,

If path A is normally selected, and path B has a subset of its Nodes selected, can the selected Nodes of path B be aligned to the bounds of Path A? Or does that have to be done in two steps (aligning the sub-selected Nodes of path B, and then use snap construction guides to drag them into alignment to the bounds of Path A?

Also, if all of the nodes of a path are selected, can they be aligned? Or does an alignment just behave as if the path is selected at the object level, and not at the Nodes level?

JET

[Sneak peeks for 1.7]

Quote

Shh. Not so loud. They might start taking notice.

Not likely. It's been requested for decades.

JET

[Sneak peeks for 1.7]

Quote

To use it, in the Node tool with a curve layer selected, you just hold Alt and either click to start polygon mode or drag to start free hand mode.

Nice, Ben.

I hope everyone knows that the sensible, useable polygon behavior of this is absent in the Lasso Tool in Adobe Illustrator (even though its raster version has long been present in Photoshop).

Quote

...in the Node tool with a curve layer selected...

However, does this not work if the path(s) are not already selected? And it's not limited to one path, correct?

JET

 

[Auto Trace for Affinity Designer]

Quote

Having an auto trace sooner rather than later is a very basic feature wanted by so many.

BrightBold,

No offense, but almost everyone says that about his/her most desired feature. As just one individual example, another "me, too" autotrace feature is not even on my list of desired features. I almost never use one, there are plenty of them out there (even free ones), and they all do pretty much the same thing (which I expect is unlikely to change unless and until an affordable one acquires some measure of shape recognition intelligence).

That doesn't make me "right" or you "wrong," but as has been explained, it's on the planned features list. But priorities are up to the developers. I would imagine that sometimes features are inter-dependent, and have to be developed in sequence.

JET

[Sneak peeks for 1.7]

Quote

From the image he posted here, it would seem that Max wants to be able to adjust a number of different shapes so that they all have the same area.

Right. So just seeing the area value for each lets you determine the needed scale factor.

If I have four objects with areas of 225, 275, 300, and 265, and want the first three to be scaled to have the same area as the last, I can simply key "*265/225" in either of the first's size fields to scale it by 118%, enter "*265/275" to scale the second by 96%, and "*265/300" to scale the third by 88%.

JET

[Sneak peeks for 1.7]

2 hours ago, Fatih19 said:

That's what I'm talking about in my transform improvements. 

Uses for knowing the area (or length) of a path would be very user-specific. Max may want to perform scaling based on area or path length, either of which, as Ben mentioned, is a simple matter of uniform scaling which can already be keyed as an expression into the dimension fields. I, on the other hand, may want to know the area or path length in order to convert the value to another unit of measure (e.g., acres or miles) in order to paste it into a dimension callout on a land plot drawing. Or any number of other things.

So there's no need for any elaborate re-work of the Transform palette for this. Object attributes like area and length just need to be visible in any sensibly unobtrusive location of the interface so the user can use them as values in whatever specific calculation needed.

Sure, the Transform palette is one logical place to display dimensional object attributes, but it's not the only place to do it. Consider: There are other kinds of object-level attributes also very useful to know (count of nodes, open or closed, etc.) which are not dimensional, and would not be used as transformations.

Such specific uses are not things every user would do every day in the same way. The user just needs to know the values in order to use them as fits the needs. They could appear in an attributes pane, or in a contextual cursor menu, for example. Let's trust the developers to know how to best integrate such things into the established interface schema so as to preserve the overall elegance.

JET