JET_Affinity

A few examples of what I'm talking about regarding providing more randomizing options in general:
Random Object Fill

Random Baseline Shift

Random Style

Random Transparency

Random Replace Symbol

 
Not meaning to derail the thread from the topic of a well-designed roughen feature (with which I agree); just a generalization that I find it a curious oversight that math based vector drawing programs don't provide for leveraging a random function in more command option settings.
JET
 
 

It seems to me that artokmt seems to be expecting the various settings for path strokes to work, regardless of which path drawing tool (Pencil or Brush) is selected.
And frankly, I agree. If I'm correct in my reading of the post and the video, I consider this a case-in-point of my argument that an entirely better—more intuitive and elegant—than the current standard fare is possible and long overdue.
And I know that this is a discussion for feature requests, not for beta bugs. But here we have an example of someone interpreting bad interface design as a bug.
Graphics software so often tries to mimic pre-computer physical tools in its interface. But bad metaphors seem to become an assumed 'standard' so things that should get better, don't.
In my real world, brushes and pencils are tools used for making marks. They are not the marks themselves. Calling the plethora of settings for different  kinds of marks that reside in the typical 'brushes palette' interface is a skewed and needlessly cockeyed metaphor.
When describing how I would like to see an innovative program move beyond the typically scattered, cluttered, confused collections of disconnected ad-hoc features that seem unaware of each other because they were piled on and on in ad-hoc fashion througout their history (Illustrator being a worse-case example), I say it like this:
Forget the 'natural media' metaphor for a few minutes. The heart and soul of vector based software is paths. Paths have strokes. Paths have ends. Strokes can be plain, or vary in thickness, or have objects (stored as Symbols) spaced along them. Path ends can be arrows or balls or ellipses or whatever (i.e., objects stored as Symbols). Paths can be open or closed, filled or unfilled. Paths have a direction. They can be simple or compound. We're 35 years into this. We who use vector software know these things. Why do we need to continue to constrain their interface into a rather strained metaphor of physical pencils and brushes and 'natural media'?
Path tools are merely that: TOOLs. Implements for drawing paths that just behave a little differently. E.g., you have one that you just drag. You have another that plots nodes. But the tools just create the paths. All the embellishments and attributes of paths should be applicable to any path. And they should be as integrated with each other as possible. An arrowhead is just a graphic that can be attached to the end of a path. Why does it need an interface entirely different from Symbols? Why can't I just attach anything I store as a Symbol to the end of a path, just like I do an arrowhead. Why is it necessary, or even desirable, to have Arrowheads and Symbols implemented as completely different feature sets that don't seem to know each other exists? And so on, with other disjointed features and attributes.
Metaphors break down. They become outdated. They become unnecessary. For one little example, how many Photoshop users have ever used a real-world Dodge Tool? How many even know what it is and what it does?
Vector drawing is already its own medium. It has been for decades. Logical integration of features can make them vastly more versatile and powerful than the standard-fare.
JET

A few examples of what I'm talking about regarding providing more randomizing options in general:
Random Object Fill

Random Baseline Shift

Random Style

Random Transparency

Random Replace Symbol

 
Not meaning to derail the thread from the topic of a well-designed roughen feature (with which I agree); just a generalization that I find it a curious oversight that math based vector drawing programs don't provide for leveraging a random function in more command option settings.
JET
 
 

Have you been keeping up with the current beta? If not, you should. It's still not "there" yet, but work is at least being done in this area. You can download and install the current beta and run it next to the release version.
The most debilitating Achilles heel of this program, in the context of serious illustration, is its insistence on transformations being based upon infernal bounding box handles instead of providing a set of transform tools that work by dragging and snapping sub-selections of nodes and segments.
I don't know if the rationale is too much focus on 'finger painting' with mobile devices, an overboard fear of tool glut, an ill-conceived reluctance to ever permanently "reset" the original bounding box orientation of any path, or some combination of those. But bounding boxes are usually just needless and redundant clutter that gets in the way when needing to directly and accurately manipulate deliberately drawn freeform paths; which is the predominate norm in serious illustration, not the occasional exception.
JET
 

I've used Canvas since it was a Macintosh Desk Accessory. Its primary differentiator had nothing to do with 'CAD', but that it combined raster and vector editing at the object level, as opposed to treating them as separate 'layers' like Silicon Graphics SuperPaint. Canvas is and always has been a general-purpose illustration and design program, squarely in the same category as FreeHand, Illustrator, Draw, and all the others.
Deneba's marketing just never acted 'ashamed' of its being suitable for technical-commercial illustration, as if that's some kind of red-headed stepchild, like most other vendors in this category do. It later turned that into its 'niche' marketing theme. But the program is not really as niche as its marketing suggests.
Canvas's interface  style is 'dated' much in the same way that Inkscape's is: merely in regards to the fadish blacked-out everything that has become the defacto standard these days, which I'm convinced just spins off from the aesthetics of the video game generation. That's a fad which itself has become cliche and dated, and I'll be more than happy to see it fade away. (It's as bad practice to do serious graphics work in dark environments as it ever was.) But just as in Inkscape, that has nothing to do with functionality.
The more significantly 'dated' aspect of Canvas's interface is organizational metaphor. For example, 'Inks' and 'Pens' are arguably more metaphorically intuitive than 'Swatches' and 'Strokes,' but not to those now long accustomed to Illustrator and all the brands that incessantly mimic it.
Affinity is doing just that, in principle. Canvas's marketing has long touted its…um…affinity for technical illustration. But, for example, browse its feature set and show me what's actually there expressly supportive of axonometric drawing.
But here's the deal regarding Canvas:
I rejoiced upon hearing that venerable Canvas had finally escaped the stifling clutches of ACD. I immediately thereafter abandoned it altogether when its new management foisted the Adobe-esque rental-only licensing scheme. So here is an over 30-year advocate of Canvas who will never pay another cent toward its continuance.
No, Affinity Designer does not yet have a DXF import filter. But I'm confident it will, simply on the basis that it clearly does not eschew technical-commercial drawing discipline. It's just a matter of priority.
You want to talk about Canvas? Has anyone here tried Corel Technical Designer? (A program I do still pay for because it so far does not force-feed that money-for-nothing marketing scam)? Do you realize that Affinity's axonometric grid feature is much like that program's (slightly earlier) similar feature, at a cost of about 8% as much? So no, Serif is not afraid of providing for tech-ish commercial illustration.
It's not helping 'the cause' to continually trot out the 'CAD word.' I dare say most users of mainstream vector drawing programs have never done any drafting, and are turned-off by (if not downright fearful of) any mention of it.
Why do we need DXF? It mostly boils down to this: Generally speaking, CAD programs don't export flattened drawings of their models as Bezier curves. They export curves as dumbed-down, penup-pendown-moveto faceted polylines in an increasingly archaic format called DXF that effectively undoes the supposed resolution independence of vector-based paths in the first place. It's needed for the sake of commercial illustration, not for the sake of CAD. That's what users with little-to-no CAD experience need to understand.
The format itself is pretty lame. But for a decent mainstream general-use vector drawing program to work with it efficiently, other features are needed. You need a good flood fill feature. You need a really good join and smooth feature, hopefully (since this is the 21st century, after all) with at least some shape recognition capability. (Want to know how many times I've had to tediously 'inform' the drawing that those holes in the frame rails are closed ellipses?)
So my hope, as always, is that delays for features in Affinity really do stem from its developers' desire to do something better than standard-fare, and their understanding that well-implemented features are not standalone, but need to integrate well with the rest of the feature set. That's how an elegant program becomes more than just the sum of its individual features. Doing that requires systematic priority.
JET

But why only the midpoint of a segment? What if I want to snap to thirds of a segment? Or divide a segment into fifths.
An Add Nodes Per Segment command would enable one to create snap candidates at any fractional increment along a segment.
JET

It would not make sense to be able to marquee select (quote 1) the parameter handles of live shape objects (quote 3), because those handles do different things for different kinds of live shapes.
It's standard-fare in any drawing program that provides live shape objects with adjustable parameters to have to "break apart," "ungroup", "expand", "convert to path", etc., those objects before being able to directly manipulate their individual Bezier nodes and handles.
Again, I'm not enamored with Affinity's selection scheme either. I think it needs serious re-work, especially in regards to the overdone dependency upon bounding boxes. My complaint with the basic selection interface actually starts at the ground level question of why a drawing program needs two separate selection tools in the first place. (As a long-time FreeHand user, I know experientially that its single selection tool was both more efficient and more powerful than the now 'de facto standard' of having two separate selection tools, and all the caveats stemming from that. But that ship has, unfortunately, sailed.)
But the quotes above are what I'm reading your meaning from. Suppose, for example, the box object in your video were a live star object. It wouldn't make sense for a marquee selection to select enclosed nodes of a text frame, enclosed nodes of a basic path, and one of the parameter handles of the star object. Nor would it make sense for enclosed nodes of actual star-shaped path to be selected, because the positions of those nodes are programmatically determined by the parameter adjustments; you'd be "breaking" the behavior of the live object. That's why all programs with such constructs require you to deliberately de-construct them to more basic objects.
JET

Nonsense. Since when is merely specifying a line by length and angle or drawing to user-defined scale only for 'CAD tools'? Egads, man, by that kind of logic, no 'CAD tool' should be able to colorize a vector object, either. Do you know why it's called a Bezier curve, and what industry Mr. Bezier was working in?
Mainstream vector drawing programs are very general-purpose. They are not just used for loosey-goosey freehand scribbling in an ill-conceived attempt to emulate 'natural media' on a tiny cell phone screen with a pudgy finger. These programs are routinely used for:
Cleaning up and augmenting CAD exports to make them suitable for commercial-quality reproduction Drawing die cuts for commercial collateral and package design Drawing garden plats Maps of all kinds Typeface design Bird's-eye views of theme parks for visitor's brochures Conceptuals and working drawings for commercial signage, storefronts, interior designs, point-of-sale displays, billboards Cutting paths for sign vinyl plotters and routers Architectural concepts Trade show displays and booth sites, both as conceptual renderings and as final working drawings All manner of info graphics And, yes, axonometric drawing (assembly diagrams for everything from colorful pre-school toys to mundane light fixtures) …I could go on indefinitely. Since the mid-80s I've been using FreeHand, Canvas, Draw, Illustrator, Flash, and most others that have come along in this software category since then to do these kinds of things, all of which are squarely within the real world domain of profitable commercial illustration.
JET
 

Agree. EVERY vector based drawing program should provide for user-defined ruler scales. There is no need for any CAD related "apologies." User-defined drawing scale is just as basic to general-purpose illustration for print, signage design, whatever. I've been saying this for decades.
And it's yet another no-brainer, low-hanging-fruit opportunity to exceed the archaic functionality of Adobe Illustrator.
JET

No, because noone outside of Serif knows. It's just not there yet.
d.

How do you know that the Developers know what you are expecting? I don’t like taking anything for granted, do you?
Best regards!

I've used Canvas since it was a Macintosh Desk Accessory. Its primary differentiator had nothing to do with 'CAD', but that it combined raster and vector editing at the object level, as opposed to treating them as separate 'layers' like Silicon Graphics SuperPaint. Canvas is and always has been a general-purpose illustration and design program, squarely in the same category as FreeHand, Illustrator, Draw, and all the others.
Deneba's marketing just never acted 'ashamed' of its being suitable for technical-commercial illustration, as if that's some kind of red-headed stepchild, like most other vendors in this category do. It later turned that into its 'niche' marketing theme. But the program is not really as niche as its marketing suggests.
Canvas's interface  style is 'dated' much in the same way that Inkscape's is: merely in regards to the fadish blacked-out everything that has become the defacto standard these days, which I'm convinced just spins off from the aesthetics of the video game generation. That's a fad which itself has become cliche and dated, and I'll be more than happy to see it fade away. (It's as bad practice to do serious graphics work in dark environments as it ever was.) But just as in Inkscape, that has nothing to do with functionality.
The more significantly 'dated' aspect of Canvas's interface is organizational metaphor. For example, 'Inks' and 'Pens' are arguably more metaphorically intuitive than 'Swatches' and 'Strokes,' but not to those now long accustomed to Illustrator and all the brands that incessantly mimic it.
Affinity is doing just that, in principle. Canvas's marketing has long touted its…um…affinity for technical illustration. But, for example, browse its feature set and show me what's actually there expressly supportive of axonometric drawing.
But here's the deal regarding Canvas:
I rejoiced upon hearing that venerable Canvas had finally escaped the stifling clutches of ACD. I immediately thereafter abandoned it altogether when its new management foisted the Adobe-esque rental-only licensing scheme. So here is an over 30-year advocate of Canvas who will never pay another cent toward its continuance.
No, Affinity Designer does not yet have a DXF import filter. But I'm confident it will, simply on the basis that it clearly does not eschew technical-commercial drawing discipline. It's just a matter of priority.
You want to talk about Canvas? Has anyone here tried Corel Technical Designer? (A program I do still pay for because it so far does not force-feed that money-for-nothing marketing scam)? Do you realize that Affinity's axonometric grid feature is much like that program's (slightly earlier) similar feature, at a cost of about 8% as much? So no, Serif is not afraid of providing for tech-ish commercial illustration.
It's not helping 'the cause' to continually trot out the 'CAD word.' I dare say most users of mainstream vector drawing programs have never done any drafting, and are turned-off by (if not downright fearful of) any mention of it.
Why do we need DXF? It mostly boils down to this: Generally speaking, CAD programs don't export flattened drawings of their models as Bezier curves. They export curves as dumbed-down, penup-pendown-moveto faceted polylines in an increasingly archaic format called DXF that effectively undoes the supposed resolution independence of vector-based paths in the first place. It's needed for the sake of commercial illustration, not for the sake of CAD. That's what users with little-to-no CAD experience need to understand.
The format itself is pretty lame. But for a decent mainstream general-use vector drawing program to work with it efficiently, other features are needed. You need a good flood fill feature. You need a really good join and smooth feature, hopefully (since this is the 21st century, after all) with at least some shape recognition capability. (Want to know how many times I've had to tediously 'inform' the drawing that those holes in the frame rails are closed ellipses?)
So my hope, as always, is that delays for features in Affinity really do stem from its developers' desire to do something better than standard-fare, and their understanding that well-implemented features are not standalone, but need to integrate well with the rest of the feature set. That's how an elegant program becomes more than just the sum of its individual features. Doing that requires systematic priority.
JET

I've used Canvas since it was a Macintosh Desk Accessory. Its primary differentiator had nothing to do with 'CAD', but that it combined raster and vector editing at the object level, as opposed to treating them as separate 'layers' like Silicon Graphics SuperPaint. Canvas is and always has been a general-purpose illustration and design program, squarely in the same category as FreeHand, Illustrator, Draw, and all the others.
Deneba's marketing just never acted 'ashamed' of its being suitable for technical-commercial illustration, as if that's some kind of red-headed stepchild, like most other vendors in this category do. It later turned that into its 'niche' marketing theme. But the program is not really as niche as its marketing suggests.
Canvas's interface  style is 'dated' much in the same way that Inkscape's is: merely in regards to the fadish blacked-out everything that has become the defacto standard these days, which I'm convinced just spins off from the aesthetics of the video game generation. That's a fad which itself has become cliche and dated, and I'll be more than happy to see it fade away. (It's as bad practice to do serious graphics work in dark environments as it ever was.) But just as in Inkscape, that has nothing to do with functionality.
The more significantly 'dated' aspect of Canvas's interface is organizational metaphor. For example, 'Inks' and 'Pens' are arguably more metaphorically intuitive than 'Swatches' and 'Strokes,' but not to those now long accustomed to Illustrator and all the brands that incessantly mimic it.
Affinity is doing just that, in principle. Canvas's marketing has long touted its…um…affinity for technical illustration. But, for example, browse its feature set and show me what's actually there expressly supportive of axonometric drawing.
But here's the deal regarding Canvas:
I rejoiced upon hearing that venerable Canvas had finally escaped the stifling clutches of ACD. I immediately thereafter abandoned it altogether when its new management foisted the Adobe-esque rental-only licensing scheme. So here is an over 30-year advocate of Canvas who will never pay another cent toward its continuance.
No, Affinity Designer does not yet have a DXF import filter. But I'm confident it will, simply on the basis that it clearly does not eschew technical-commercial drawing discipline. It's just a matter of priority.
You want to talk about Canvas? Has anyone here tried Corel Technical Designer? (A program I do still pay for because it so far does not force-feed that money-for-nothing marketing scam)? Do you realize that Affinity's axonometric grid feature is much like that program's (slightly earlier) similar feature, at a cost of about 8% as much? So no, Serif is not afraid of providing for tech-ish commercial illustration.
It's not helping 'the cause' to continually trot out the 'CAD word.' I dare say most users of mainstream vector drawing programs have never done any drafting, and are turned-off by (if not downright fearful of) any mention of it.
Why do we need DXF? It mostly boils down to this: Generally speaking, CAD programs don't export flattened drawings of their models as Bezier curves. They export curves as dumbed-down, penup-pendown-moveto faceted polylines in an increasingly archaic format called DXF that effectively undoes the supposed resolution independence of vector-based paths in the first place. It's needed for the sake of commercial illustration, not for the sake of CAD. That's what users with little-to-no CAD experience need to understand.
The format itself is pretty lame. But for a decent mainstream general-use vector drawing program to work with it efficiently, other features are needed. You need a good flood fill feature. You need a really good join and smooth feature, hopefully (since this is the 21st century, after all) with at least some shape recognition capability. (Want to know how many times I've had to tediously 'inform' the drawing that those holes in the frame rails are closed ellipses?)
So my hope, as always, is that delays for features in Affinity really do stem from its developers' desire to do something better than standard-fare, and their understanding that well-implemented features are not standalone, but need to integrate well with the rest of the feature set. That's how an elegant program becomes more than just the sum of its individual features. Doing that requires systematic priority.
JET

You have all made your points in these recent posts but enough is enough. These are community support forums and I cannot believe some of you do not understand others do not have the same priorities and perceptions as you. These forums are not about what you think others should think. If you want that sort of discussion go to twitter. ANY more posts about what you perceive to be other people's motives will result in a timeout or full ban. Period. You are here to discuss Affinity software functionality not the motives of those who post here.
If you disagree then hover over someones avatar and use the ignore option on them. 

Nonsense. Since when is merely specifying a line by length and angle or drawing to user-defined scale only for 'CAD tools'? Egads, man, by that kind of logic, no 'CAD tool' should be able to colorize a vector object, either. Do you know why it's called a Bezier curve, and what industry Mr. Bezier was working in?
Mainstream vector drawing programs are very general-purpose. They are not just used for loosey-goosey freehand scribbling in an ill-conceived attempt to emulate 'natural media' on a tiny cell phone screen with a pudgy finger. These programs are routinely used for:
Cleaning up and augmenting CAD exports to make them suitable for commercial-quality reproduction Drawing die cuts for commercial collateral and package design Drawing garden plats Maps of all kinds Typeface design Bird's-eye views of theme parks for visitor's brochures Conceptuals and working drawings for commercial signage, storefronts, interior designs, point-of-sale displays, billboards Cutting paths for sign vinyl plotters and routers Architectural concepts Trade show displays and booth sites, both as conceptual renderings and as final working drawings All manner of info graphics And, yes, axonometric drawing (assembly diagrams for everything from colorful pre-school toys to mundane light fixtures) …I could go on indefinitely. Since the mid-80s I've been using FreeHand, Canvas, Draw, Illustrator, Flash, and most others that have come along in this software category since then to do these kinds of things, all of which are squarely within the real world domain of profitable commercial illustration.
JET
 

Nonsense. Since when is merely specifying a line by length and angle or drawing to user-defined scale only for 'CAD tools'? Egads, man, by that kind of logic, no 'CAD tool' should be able to colorize a vector object, either. Do you know why it's called a Bezier curve, and what industry Mr. Bezier was working in?
Mainstream vector drawing programs are very general-purpose. They are not just used for loosey-goosey freehand scribbling in an ill-conceived attempt to emulate 'natural media' on a tiny cell phone screen with a pudgy finger. These programs are routinely used for:
Cleaning up and augmenting CAD exports to make them suitable for commercial-quality reproduction Drawing die cuts for commercial collateral and package design Drawing garden plats Maps of all kinds Typeface design Bird's-eye views of theme parks for visitor's brochures Conceptuals and working drawings for commercial signage, storefronts, interior designs, point-of-sale displays, billboards Cutting paths for sign vinyl plotters and routers Architectural concepts Trade show displays and booth sites, both as conceptual renderings and as final working drawings All manner of info graphics And, yes, axonometric drawing (assembly diagrams for everything from colorful pre-school toys to mundane light fixtures) …I could go on indefinitely. Since the mid-80s I've been using FreeHand, Canvas, Draw, Illustrator, Flash, and most others that have come along in this software category since then to do these kinds of things, all of which are squarely within the real world domain of profitable commercial illustration.
JET
 

Nonsense. Since when is merely specifying a line by length and angle or drawing to user-defined scale only for 'CAD tools'? Egads, man, by that kind of logic, no 'CAD tool' should be able to colorize a vector object, either. Do you know why it's called a Bezier curve, and what industry Mr. Bezier was working in?
Mainstream vector drawing programs are very general-purpose. They are not just used for loosey-goosey freehand scribbling in an ill-conceived attempt to emulate 'natural media' on a tiny cell phone screen with a pudgy finger. These programs are routinely used for:
Cleaning up and augmenting CAD exports to make them suitable for commercial-quality reproduction Drawing die cuts for commercial collateral and package design Drawing garden plats Maps of all kinds Typeface design Bird's-eye views of theme parks for visitor's brochures Conceptuals and working drawings for commercial signage, storefronts, interior designs, point-of-sale displays, billboards Cutting paths for sign vinyl plotters and routers Architectural concepts Trade show displays and booth sites, both as conceptual renderings and as final working drawings All manner of info graphics And, yes, axonometric drawing (assembly diagrams for everything from colorful pre-school toys to mundane light fixtures) …I could go on indefinitely. Since the mid-80s I've been using FreeHand, Canvas, Draw, Illustrator, Flash, and most others that have come along in this software category since then to do these kinds of things, all of which are squarely within the real world domain of profitable commercial illustration.
JET
 

I'm sorry but it looks like your all complaining that AD is missing CAD functionality. It's like complaining how your fridge lacks air-conditioning functionality. 
"It makes stuff cold so why don't they just add the blower in there to get the cold air out?! Unbelievable! It's such a quick win!"...
I can understand how it could be convenient but it's not a CAD tool. Don't expect it to be what it's not.

Again, these features need no appeal to CAD, architecture, mechanical drafting, or any other kind of technical illustration. Programs in this class are for 2D general-purpose vector-based (i.e., scalable) illustration. By its very nature, such functionality should be assumed, precisely because there is no telling what kind of use it may be put to. Yet it (and Affinity is certainly not alone in this) fails to emulate some of the most basic intuitions of 2D geometry.
For example, one needs to define a straight line in terms of length and direction whether designing an airplane dashboard layout or making a prop for the high school prom.
That's what happens when too little thought is given to a basic interface that is supposed to be emulating real-world pre-computer drawing, and just off-handedly defaults to whatever is already 'out there' in other drawing programs.
What is more fundamental than drawing a straight line? But who is concerned about having a bounding box around a straight line? That is so annoying, especially on a horizontal or vertical straight line, the height or width of which is (respectively), by definition, zero? So why is it done? Probably just because Illustrator does it. The fact that Illustrator's historic nemesis, FreeHand, didn't do that was one of its many, many advantages. It took many years for both Illustrator and FreeHand to acquire the simple intuitive expedience of directly defining a line in terms of length and direction. (And as I recall, that was done in FH by means of an Xtra; its word for plug-in.) Yeah, you can do it in any program by drawing it vertically or horizontally and then rotating it, (much as in Affinity), but that always feels like a workaround for what is usually needed and intuitively desired.
And who is more concerned about the height and width of a diagonal line than about its length? And who considers a straight line that is initially drawn diagonally to not be rotated, as indicated by infernal persistent omnipresent bounding box?
It's hard to stop there and not stray off topic because interface concepts are so closely related to each other. Speaking of bounding boxes, why does a bounding box need five rotation handles, usually none of which even correspond to any point of interest on the object(s) that I'm rotating? Most of the time, I don't even want to see bounding boxes. The vast majority of the time, when I rotate something, I want to drag that something by a specific point on it and snap that point to points or edges of whatever other object I'm intent on aligning it to. I couldn't care less about bounding boxes in that situation. Yet displaying those infernal bounding boxes is the default behavior. on every selection.
I'm not saying bounding boxes are useless. And it can certainly be advantageous to be able to reset a bounding box to its 'normal' orientation. But we can't permanently reset what orientation we want to be the 'normal' one. Why not? Why can't we press a momentary keyboard modifier to rotate a bounding box without rotating its content? That would enable us to define what orientation of its scale and skew handles should be considered 'normal' for that object or just during the current transformation. That would be an intuitive and efficient interface when I need, for example, to scale an object in the direction of the line it supposedly orbits.
Many metaphors break down and just create confusion when not thought through. Just a couple of examples:
In my real world a brush is a tool I hold in my hand. It is not the mark that I can make with it on the page. Those are two entirely different things. In my real world, a page is not a layer. A layer is a transparent overlay on which marks are created in a contiguous order, and which can span all pages.  Neither a page nor a layer is a mere group of objects contiguous in a stack. And an object is not a layer, yet that is how they have become treated in pursuit of a 'convenience' which introduces its own inconveniences and needless tedium, but has been so widely done that now no one things about it and just tolerates it. These are the real fundamental. Not this or that specific instant-gratification feature that draws-some-particular-dillywhop-just-like-Illustrator-does. It't a 2D drawing program. Why doesn't it enable the user to use 2D geometry in the most thorough, efficient, and intuitive manner? All programs in this class need to lose their infernal pandemic fixation on the horizontal and vertical of the page.
"2D" does not mean "horizontal and vertical". "2D drawing" does not mean drawing everything horizontally or vertically.
JET

Hear hear! It's been demonstrated that a lot of nice things can be done with the brushes in Designer, but calling them "vector" brushes just because the raster images they contain follow a spline path, is entirely misleading.
Actual vector brushes (in which the brush's base artwork is vector paths) enable you to do an entire world of more powerful things:

 
For example, A single "Pattern Brush" in AI can be built to enable creation of a mechanically correct hex bolt of any length and diameter. As always, Illustrator's implementation could be easily exceeded in power and versatility, and that's what I want to see in Affinity Designer. Hopefully, that's what the eventual goal is (perhaps after sorting out the problems associated with the present sub-par expanded stroke results).
But it is disconcerting that the current brushes are called "vector" brushes. That doesn't suggest that what you (and I) would call "real" vector brushes are on the unpublished road map.
This is also why I am so very disappointed in the merely "me, too" treatment of arrowheads. I am convinced that a truly innovative implementation of what I call path stokes and path ends that could be combined into user-defined path styles could yield both a much more powerful "arrowheads" feature and a vector-brush feature more powerful, versatile, intuitive, and elegant than Adobe's treatment.
It would be a true game-changer even for long-time AI users who have never really discovered the kind of brush-based applications I'm talking about, just because Adobe's treatment is too "standalone" as opposed to being truly integrated with its own preexisting features of the program.
That is what I see as the core of potential advantages over Illustrator: The fact that it is a decades-old stack of newer features merely "bundled with" a bunch of outdated basic features. I see that opportunity diminish whenever I see a feature implemented in a mere "me, too" fashion, as is arrowheads.
JET
 

Again, these features need no appeal to CAD, architecture, mechanical drafting, or any other kind of technical illustration. Programs in this class are for 2D general-purpose vector-based (i.e., scalable) illustration. By its very nature, such functionality should be assumed, precisely because there is no telling what kind of use it may be put to. Yet it (and Affinity is certainly not alone in this) fails to emulate some of the most basic intuitions of 2D geometry.
For example, one needs to define a straight line in terms of length and direction whether designing an airplane dashboard layout or making a prop for the high school prom.
That's what happens when too little thought is given to a basic interface that is supposed to be emulating real-world pre-computer drawing, and just off-handedly defaults to whatever is already 'out there' in other drawing programs.
What is more fundamental than drawing a straight line? But who is concerned about having a bounding box around a straight line? That is so annoying, especially on a horizontal or vertical straight line, the height or width of which is (respectively), by definition, zero? So why is it done? Probably just because Illustrator does it. The fact that Illustrator's historic nemesis, FreeHand, didn't do that was one of its many, many advantages. It took many years for both Illustrator and FreeHand to acquire the simple intuitive expedience of directly defining a line in terms of length and direction. (And as I recall, that was done in FH by means of an Xtra; its word for plug-in.) Yeah, you can do it in any program by drawing it vertically or horizontally and then rotating it, (much as in Affinity), but that always feels like a workaround for what is usually needed and intuitively desired.
And who is more concerned about the height and width of a diagonal line than about its length? And who considers a straight line that is initially drawn diagonally to not be rotated, as indicated by infernal persistent omnipresent bounding box?
It's hard to stop there and not stray off topic because interface concepts are so closely related to each other. Speaking of bounding boxes, why does a bounding box need five rotation handles, usually none of which even correspond to any point of interest on the object(s) that I'm rotating? Most of the time, I don't even want to see bounding boxes. The vast majority of the time, when I rotate something, I want to drag that something by a specific point on it and snap that point to points or edges of whatever other object I'm intent on aligning it to. I couldn't care less about bounding boxes in that situation. Yet displaying those infernal bounding boxes is the default behavior. on every selection.
I'm not saying bounding boxes are useless. And it can certainly be advantageous to be able to reset a bounding box to its 'normal' orientation. But we can't permanently reset what orientation we want to be the 'normal' one. Why not? Why can't we press a momentary keyboard modifier to rotate a bounding box without rotating its content? That would enable us to define what orientation of its scale and skew handles should be considered 'normal' for that object or just during the current transformation. That would be an intuitive and efficient interface when I need, for example, to scale an object in the direction of the line it supposedly orbits.
Many metaphors break down and just create confusion when not thought through. Just a couple of examples:
In my real world a brush is a tool I hold in my hand. It is not the mark that I can make with it on the page. Those are two entirely different things. In my real world, a page is not a layer. A layer is a transparent overlay on which marks are created in a contiguous order, and which can span all pages.  Neither a page nor a layer is a mere group of objects contiguous in a stack. And an object is not a layer, yet that is how they have become treated in pursuit of a 'convenience' which introduces its own inconveniences and needless tedium, but has been so widely done that now no one things about it and just tolerates it. These are the real fundamental. Not this or that specific instant-gratification feature that draws-some-particular-dillywhop-just-like-Illustrator-does. It't a 2D drawing program. Why doesn't it enable the user to use 2D geometry in the most thorough, efficient, and intuitive manner? All programs in this class need to lose their infernal pandemic fixation on the horizontal and vertical of the page.
"2D" does not mean "horizontal and vertical". "2D drawing" does not mean drawing everything horizontally or vertically.
JET

It's been "raised as a feature request" in Adobe Illustrator since the beginning, by FreeHand and Canvas users who took it for granted.
Every vector drawing program should provide user-defined drawing scales. Just as every vector drawing program should show length of a selected path, and provide for straightforwardly specifying lines in terms of length and angle, not 'height' and 'width.'
Vector-based drawing is—by intent, purpose, and definition—all about resolution independence and therefore all about drawing scale.
JET

It seems to me that artokmt seems to be expecting the various settings for path strokes to work, regardless of which path drawing tool (Pencil or Brush) is selected.
And frankly, I agree. If I'm correct in my reading of the post and the video, I consider this a case-in-point of my argument that an entirely better—more intuitive and elegant—than the current standard fare is possible and long overdue.
And I know that this is a discussion for feature requests, not for beta bugs. But here we have an example of someone interpreting bad interface design as a bug.
Graphics software so often tries to mimic pre-computer physical tools in its interface. But bad metaphors seem to become an assumed 'standard' so things that should get better, don't.
In my real world, brushes and pencils are tools used for making marks. They are not the marks themselves. Calling the plethora of settings for different  kinds of marks that reside in the typical 'brushes palette' interface is a skewed and needlessly cockeyed metaphor.
When describing how I would like to see an innovative program move beyond the typically scattered, cluttered, confused collections of disconnected ad-hoc features that seem unaware of each other because they were piled on and on in ad-hoc fashion througout their history (Illustrator being a worse-case example), I say it like this:
Forget the 'natural media' metaphor for a few minutes. The heart and soul of vector based software is paths. Paths have strokes. Paths have ends. Strokes can be plain, or vary in thickness, or have objects (stored as Symbols) spaced along them. Path ends can be arrows or balls or ellipses or whatever (i.e., objects stored as Symbols). Paths can be open or closed, filled or unfilled. Paths have a direction. They can be simple or compound. We're 35 years into this. We who use vector software know these things. Why do we need to continue to constrain their interface into a rather strained metaphor of physical pencils and brushes and 'natural media'?
Path tools are merely that: TOOLs. Implements for drawing paths that just behave a little differently. E.g., you have one that you just drag. You have another that plots nodes. But the tools just create the paths. All the embellishments and attributes of paths should be applicable to any path. And they should be as integrated with each other as possible. An arrowhead is just a graphic that can be attached to the end of a path. Why does it need an interface entirely different from Symbols? Why can't I just attach anything I store as a Symbol to the end of a path, just like I do an arrowhead. Why is it necessary, or even desirable, to have Arrowheads and Symbols implemented as completely different feature sets that don't seem to know each other exists? And so on, with other disjointed features and attributes.
Metaphors break down. They become outdated. They become unnecessary. For one little example, how many Photoshop users have ever used a real-world Dodge Tool? How many even know what it is and what it does?
Vector drawing is already its own medium. It has been for decades. Logical integration of features can make them vastly more versatile and powerful than the standard-fare.
JET

So why are you reacting to this?

As far as I can understand your tirade, you do not give any rationale or explanation why you regard Designer as a Raster program.
You also seem to conflate Vector and SVG. SVG is a storage format and Vector Description language. Once you load an SVG file it becomes a series of vectors and other objects in Designer until such time as you export it back to SVG.
John