JET_Affinity

I often work on packaging. The View / rotate function is very annoying because all the tools have their coordinates rotate too. The arrows on the keyboard to move an object, the window sliders also reversed. Point alignment also works with rotation etc... it's like we're working with our head turned too 🐵 If you fix that, will be very helpfull.

Correct.
V1 was a one-time purchase, and you don't need to pay again to continue using V1.
V2 is a one-time purchase, and if you have purchased a V2 license you don't need to pay for that license again to continue using V2.
In other words, this is a perpetual license, not a subscription.

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
 

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

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

I've said this before in other threads, but it is pertinent to this thread, too. so...
Every serious vector-based illustration program should provide for transforming selections disproportionally in any direction needed, not just horizontally and vertically.
So first, it is a very good thing that Affinity bounding boxes 'remember' their contents' rotation. Since Affinity does not provide transform tools, but only provides transform handles on bounding boxes, that is the only way to perform on-page scaling in directions other than vertical and horizontal. Yes, I agree that one should be able to permanently re-set an object's to page-normal when desired, but a rotated bounding box is a very useful thing.
Inkscape, for one example, insists on all bounding boxes always being page-normal. So when you need to scale a rotated  selection in the direction of its rotated orientation, you have to 'un-rotate' it so that the desired direction of scaling is either horizontal or vertical, perform the scaling, and then re-rotate it to its intended orientation. That's needlessly tedious.
But Affinity's treatment is still senselessly limited. Consider an object that is rotated 35 degrees. Its rotated bounding box is 'remembered'. So you can disproportionately scale it in either the 35 degree or 125 degree directions. But by what logic is it assumed that the illustrator does not need to scale the rotated object in some other direction that is pertinent and meaningful to the illustration.
Affinity bounding boxes provide an absurdly redundant FIVE rotation handles! One of them already has a different visual treatment: the 'lollypop' handle. Give that handle a practical and useful difference: Enable it to rotate the bounding box around the selection when a modifier key is pressed, thereby enabling the illustrator to 'aim' the transform handles in whatever direction needed, relative to the selection.
JET

I've said this before in other threads, but it is pertinent to this thread, too. so...
Every serious vector-based illustration program should provide for transforming selections disproportionally in any direction needed, not just horizontally and vertically.
So first, it is a very good thing that Affinity bounding boxes 'remember' their contents' rotation. Since Affinity does not provide transform tools, but only provides transform handles on bounding boxes, that is the only way to perform on-page scaling in directions other than vertical and horizontal. Yes, I agree that one should be able to permanently re-set an object's to page-normal when desired, but a rotated bounding box is a very useful thing.
Inkscape, for one example, insists on all bounding boxes always being page-normal. So when you need to scale a rotated  selection in the direction of its rotated orientation, you have to 'un-rotate' it so that the desired direction of scaling is either horizontal or vertical, perform the scaling, and then re-rotate it to its intended orientation. That's needlessly tedious.
But Affinity's treatment is still senselessly limited. Consider an object that is rotated 35 degrees. Its rotated bounding box is 'remembered'. So you can disproportionately scale it in either the 35 degree or 125 degree directions. But by what logic is it assumed that the illustrator does not need to scale the rotated object in some other direction that is pertinent and meaningful to the illustration.
Affinity bounding boxes provide an absurdly redundant FIVE rotation handles! One of them already has a different visual treatment: the 'lollypop' handle. Give that handle a practical and useful difference: Enable it to rotate the bounding box around the selection when a modifier key is pressed, thereby enabling the illustrator to 'aim' the transform handles in whatever direction needed, relative to the selection.
JET

For those who are searching how you can duplicate a document in Designer (or Photo), and don't want to hod their breath until this feature is added:
Save As, give a new name (e.g. add "- copy"). MacOs and iPad offer the option to "replace or keep both", automatically renaming if required File->Open recent, and choose top most entry (the original file)  

Vector drawing programs have done fine without the silly lollypop since the 80s. 'Difficulty hitting' a handle is usually controlled by a proximity setting in user prefs.
But it's a moot point anyway. I didn't say get rid of the silly lollypop; I said "...give it the ability...." That could be accomplished by means of  a momentary keyboard modifier when dragging it. I said to give that ability to the lollypop because that 'fifth wheel' rotation handle is the one that looks 'special' in the interface. Giving it the ability I desire would actually make it special.
I assume the silly lollypop is for those using their fingers on touch screens. I gave up finger painting when I was 3.
JET

Bounding boxes have thie
As a FreeHand user for the entire life of the program, I certainly relate. Two things FreeHand users despised about Illustrator's interface was the visual clutter of bounding boxes and its insistence upon two separate selection tools. Unfortunately, almost all drawing programs have mimicked both, just because the market 'majority' is too accustomed to the inferior interface of Illustrator.
But bounding boxes do have their uses, and "always' working with them off sacrifices that utility. In that sense, it's parallel to the way many Illustrator users claim to 'never' use the Selection Tool (black pointer) and 'always' use the stupidly named Direct Selection Tool (white pointer).
The uses of bounding boxes pertinent to technical drawing are far more than just serving as snap points for guides.
Affinity's bounding boxes are better than, for example, Inkscape's in that they rotate with their content. Inkscape's always reset to normalized to the page, no matter how you transform the selection, which is downright debilitating. By what logic does any illustration program assume that a user only ever wants to scale a selection either vertically or horizontally?
Affinity's bounding boxes are better than Illustrator's. Like Illustrator's, they rotate with their contents. This is invaluable in technical Illustration because the side scale handles remain oriented to their content; for example, they remain oriented to the major and minor diameters of a rotated ellipse, and the measures in the Transform panel reflect those of the major and minor diameters. Like Illustrator's they can be re-normalized to the page. Unlike Illustrator, rotated objects still 'remember' their rotated orientation, and their bounding boxes comply. If you 'reset' a rotated bounding box in Illustrator, its rotated orientation is lost. Unfortunately, Affinity's bounding boxes cannot be permanently reset to page-normal, despite this having been requested for years.
But the main ramification you have to keep in mind about any wish of 'getting rid of' bounding boxes in Affinity is that you loose any tactile on-page transformation tools, because Affinity doesn't provide transform tools in the Toolbox, like both Illustrator and FreeHand always have. You have to transform objects using the ridiculously redundant bounding box handles, which of course most often don't even reside on the objects being transformed. Yes, you can perform transformations numerically in the Transform Panel, but that's not "tactile on-page". So I'm afraid you're stuck with bounding boxes in Affinity.
Being stuck with bounding boxes, they should at least deserve far more thoughtful and powerful implementation than they have. What justifies a ridiculous five rotation handles? Almost as frustrated as my comment about Inkscape, by what logic does any Illustration program assume that a user only ever wants to scale or measure a selection in the directions of its bounding box? Do something new and tremendously useful: Take just one of those absurdly redundant five rotation handles (the lollypop one) and give it the ability to rotate the bounding box about the selection so that its scale handles can then be used to scale the selection in whatever direction needed. And provide an option to permanently reset the selection's 'remembered' orientation to the current orientation of that rotated bounding box. This one simple feature would, so far as I know, be unique in this program segment, and immensely useful for technical drawing (and other drawing types, too).
JET

Bounding boxes have thie
As a FreeHand user for the entire life of the program, I certainly relate. Two things FreeHand users despised about Illustrator's interface was the visual clutter of bounding boxes and its insistence upon two separate selection tools. Unfortunately, almost all drawing programs have mimicked both, just because the market 'majority' is too accustomed to the inferior interface of Illustrator.
But bounding boxes do have their uses, and "always' working with them off sacrifices that utility. In that sense, it's parallel to the way many Illustrator users claim to 'never' use the Selection Tool (black pointer) and 'always' use the stupidly named Direct Selection Tool (white pointer).
The uses of bounding boxes pertinent to technical drawing are far more than just serving as snap points for guides.
Affinity's bounding boxes are better than, for example, Inkscape's in that they rotate with their content. Inkscape's always reset to normalized to the page, no matter how you transform the selection, which is downright debilitating. By what logic does any illustration program assume that a user only ever wants to scale a selection either vertically or horizontally?
Affinity's bounding boxes are better than Illustrator's. Like Illustrator's, they rotate with their contents. This is invaluable in technical Illustration because the side scale handles remain oriented to their content; for example, they remain oriented to the major and minor diameters of a rotated ellipse, and the measures in the Transform panel reflect those of the major and minor diameters. Like Illustrator's they can be re-normalized to the page. Unlike Illustrator, rotated objects still 'remember' their rotated orientation, and their bounding boxes comply. If you 'reset' a rotated bounding box in Illustrator, its rotated orientation is lost. Unfortunately, Affinity's bounding boxes cannot be permanently reset to page-normal, despite this having been requested for years.
But the main ramification you have to keep in mind about any wish of 'getting rid of' bounding boxes in Affinity is that you loose any tactile on-page transformation tools, because Affinity doesn't provide transform tools in the Toolbox, like both Illustrator and FreeHand always have. You have to transform objects using the ridiculously redundant bounding box handles, which of course most often don't even reside on the objects being transformed. Yes, you can perform transformations numerically in the Transform Panel, but that's not "tactile on-page". So I'm afraid you're stuck with bounding boxes in Affinity.
Being stuck with bounding boxes, they should at least deserve far more thoughtful and powerful implementation than they have. What justifies a ridiculous five rotation handles? Almost as frustrated as my comment about Inkscape, by what logic does any Illustration program assume that a user only ever wants to scale or measure a selection in the directions of its bounding box? Do something new and tremendously useful: Take just one of those absurdly redundant five rotation handles (the lollypop one) and give it the ability to rotate the bounding box about the selection so that its scale handles can then be used to scale the selection in whatever direction needed. And provide an option to permanently reset the selection's 'remembered' orientation to the current orientation of that rotated bounding box. This one simple feature would, so far as I know, be unique in this program segment, and immensely useful for technical drawing (and other drawing types, too).
JET

I think the most important thing is that the scripting works in the first place. Whether the language used for it satisfies the aesthetic demands of all users is secondary. JavaScript may not be a particularly attractive language for purists, but in the end, all that matters is that I, as a user, can tell the Affinity apps what to do, and they will do it. Everything else is an ivory tower discussion in my eyes. At least for the tasks that I expect a scripted graphic & photo design software to do. For other projects this discussion about the quality of programming languages may make sense.

Hello @v_kyr,
You are getting slightly unreasonable here. The team has stated, in numerous posts, that because the APIs are going to be the same for both C and JavaScript that they will keep the documentation in one place. There will be a lot of people for whom JavaScript will be the most important part and they will not regard this as garbage. They will concentrate on the JavaScript part and you can concentrate on the C based APIs. And they lived happily ever after. 🙂

The kind of "extrude" tools depicted in maxmax's post are not 3D modeling tools. They are straightforward 2D drawing tools.
However, nor are the specific examples shown "isometric," because the original squares to which they have been applied are drawn "in-the-flat." In any axonometric orientation (of which isometric is just a special case), if the face of the extrusion were viewed "straight on", no perpendicular extrusion of that face would be visible. So those two screenshots are just arbitrary obliques.
Those extrude tools can be used to help draw objects in an isometric (or other axonometric) orientation, but to do so you would first draw the shape being extruded as if it were already parallel to one of the iso planes. In other words, you would have to do other transformations and calculations in order to correctly call the result "isometric."
Affinity Designer does not as yet have such an "extrusion tool." But constructing such an extrusion is fairly trivial. Just draw any shape on one of the iso grid planes, duplicate it, move it along the perpendicular axis the correctly proportional distance, use the Pen Tool in Line Mode to draw the  edges of the extrusion, and delete the "hidden" edges.
I quite agree that an Extrude Tool would reduce that tedium. But as always, I don't want to see Affinity merely mimic the functionally trite tools of other programs. I already have those programs. I'm frankly tired of the same old kindergarten stuff. I want to see innovatively better implementations. In this specific context, what I would envision is an enhancement to Affinity's Shape Tools.
First, a little explanation: Consider that most familiar example of an "isometric" cube. The reason why the perimeter of that cube forms a hexagon is simple 2D geometry. The cube is drawn as if oriented such that the diagonal between its nearest and farthest corners is parallel to your line-of-sight. Therefore, each side of the cube makes the same angle with your line-of sight. That angle is the specific angle imprinted on every isometric drawing template: 35°16" (thirty-five degrees, sixteen minutes). Each of the three visible sides of the cube are foreshortened (scaled in one direction) by the sine of that angle. Each of the visible edges of the cube are foreshortened by the cosine of that same angle. That simple "sine and cosine" proportional principle applies not just to isometric, but to any orientation in any axonometric drawing method.
The existing Shapes palette already provides a plethora of common shapes, each with special handles by which to adjust their own appropriate parameters. Corresponding numeric input fields also appear in the Control Bar for numerically specifying those parameters.
Now imagine this: Suppose all of the Shape Tools simply had two additional parameters, labeled "Tilt" and "Extrude."
So, for example, you use the Cog Shape Tool to draw a cog. You adjust its various parameters (inner and outer radius, number of teeth, etc.) It works as it always has for drawing a "cog" viewed "straight on." But now, in the Control Bar are the two added parameter fields. Entering an angle (or expression that yields an angle) into the Tilt field scales the shape vertically by the sine of that angle. Entering a length (or expression) into the Extrude field offsets a copy of that scaled shape and moves it vertically by the value entered multiplied by the cosine of the Tilt angle, and draws the connecting "extrusion" lines between the two. In other words, it does the same thing as those ordinary "extrude" tools in other programs, but does it in correct geometric proportion for any 3D orientation. And it does it in concert with the power of all the already existing shape-specific adjustable parameters of the Shape Tools.
That's an example of adding functional elegance to a program in which a small addition compounds the functional power of existing features. That would blow the doors off any 2D Extrude Tool in any of the existing mainstream 2D drawing programs.
Now imagine further that, over time, other Shape Tools were added. With the Tilt and Extrude parameters in place, imagine a Spiral Shape Tool which didn't simply "extrude" the shape along the Extrude value, but repeated the shape along the extrusion length. That could equate to a more powerful and more versatile drawing tool than the tool in Corel Technical Designer for drawing threads and threaded holes. It would be far more intuitive and less tedious than the little-known technique of using Illustrator's under-appreciated Reshape Tool for the same purposes.
Imagine further that, over time, functionality were provided for something called a Shape Group; a means by which to combine two Shape Tools which could share given parameters. A Hex Bolt Shape Group would include an instance of the Hexagon Shape Tool and an instance of the Spiral Shape Tool, and the result would be the ability to instantly create correctly-proportioned hex bolts of any diameter, head size, and length—at any visual orientation.
JET

I appreciate your explanation I was just clarifying our current position for others, I believe you already understood.
This is very new for Serif. People like you making reasoned arguments will influence us going forward I'm sure. 

Hi all. Thanks for your patience over the weekend when our offices were closed.
We've had a meeting this morning and decided to ALSO offer MSI installers, to those people who would like them. I can't tell you when this will happen, as there is engineering work that will be required to allow this to happen, but we hope it won't be long.
Thanks for your feedback!

Classic Microsoft...

Thanks, Garry. I just became aware of V2 yesterday, rushed to order it, and that was the first thing I checked for.
Of course, searching the Help files for "Cycle Selection Box" returns no results. (Affinity still sorely needs a far better implementation of its documentation.)
Having the keyboard shortcut for it is certainly nice, but keyboard shortcuts are not limited to menu selections. The main toolbox icons have them. No reason the Context Bar icons can't have them.
I still insist that one of the best features that could be done for Affinity Designer's interface is to make the 'lollypop' rotation handle able to rotate the bounding box independent of the selected content. This would be a godsend for illustration. Where do developers get the notion that the only direction in which something needs to be scaled is parallel to the bounding box?
For the simplest and most common example, consider any ellipse that represents a tilted circle: The minor diameter of such an ellipse must always be aligned parallel to the direction of the 'thrust line' that the circle 'orbits'. But this principle applies to countless other things, too, including shapes and artwork that are not bilaterally symmetrical like an ellipse. One needs to be able to:
Rotate any shape drawn 'in the flat' so that it is oriented correctly about its thrust line. Then scale it in the direction of its thrust line to make it appear tilted. This is essential in axonometric drawing, but just as valid in general commercial illustration.
JET

COPY / PASTE from Scripting Forum, TonyB (Moderator):
Affinity will support Javascript and also have a 'C' based API binding interface that people can use to write plugins. We will also have the ability to create UI to support their scripts and plugins with dialogs and panels. 
We have a team developing this but the amount of work is very large so unfortunately users will need to be patient.
 
Crystal clear, mates.

I have a large book project for a musician that involves several hundred PDF file placement (links). This project has been tough to work on with the last V1 update necessitating rolling back the version of Publisher to limp along. 
V2 is running without a hitch. This project alone make the price incredibly reasonable. 
A couple weeks ago I bought V2 for iPad Publisher and Photo. Today, purchasing the Universal License still saves me money.
Thank you for the incredible launch price and the Universal license. Even more importantly thank you for allowing me to OWN every app in the Affinity suite and across platforms. The complexity of what you've developed is mind boggling. I'm so very appreciative!
So amid all of the complaints that are dominating the forums right now, I offer my whole hearted 
THANK YOU!

Mmmm… Freehand…  

Still there in my office on my "vintage" PowerMac G4.

I learnt Illustrator first (it's what they taught us at uni), which is probably why I preferred it. I never quite adjusted to Freehand's drawing tools. But whichever one you happened to prefer, the competition between the two apps was good for everyone.
 
Yes, a truly anti-competitive move—one that benefited no one but Adobe and its shareholders. At the time I was naively enjoying the promised integration of Macromedia's web tools (Fireworks, Dreamweaver and Flash) with the classic Adobe apps, and didn't realise that Adobe was becoming too big and too powerful. Within six years of killing Freehand, they killed perpetual licenses too—another big middle-finger to customers like us. Since then, I've come to believe that we all suffer when we give too much power to big companies—one of the reasons why I'm very happy to give my money to Affinity instead of Adobe (even if Affinity's apps still have a way to go).

In Preferences > User Interface, you can change the icon style to mono. I much prefer this iteration.
Yes, Freehand is sadly missed.

Macromedia Freehand was (and still is) the best vector app that has ever existed. There is one feature alone in that app that was better than anything I’ve ever seen in any other app. It was the Graphics Find & replace panel. Apparently, no one else ever used it but me, because no one is submitting feature requests for it to Adobe. You could use it to find anything in your Freehand doc and replace it with anything else. It was amazing. I will never forgive Adobe for buying Macromedia and killing that app. I have to use Adobe software at work, but I will never again install their apps on my home computer. 
I also cannot ever get used to having more than one arrow tool. It seems so dumb. The one arrow selection tool was able to do everything that multiple arrow selection tools do in all these other apps.
I also share in the frustration of the UI elements, especially the new poorly drawn icons compared to V1. The UI was fine in V1. What we needed were things like a blend tool. Hopefully, those other things that have already been requested before will be added in a future free update and not 5 years from now.

Don't do that.
Each feature request should be a separate thread, and most of these things already have one, so any additional comments should be added to those, not proliferated into numerous threads on the same topic.