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fde101

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  1. Like
    fde101 got a reaction from Przemysław in Please let me use the Navigator as a 100% pixel preview   
    Way back at the dawn of computers there were big expensive monolithic systems that people had to schedule time to use because they were so expensive to buy and maintain that there was no way for everyone to have one at their desk.  Later terminals would allow multiple users to access the computer seemingly at the same time, but sharing the processing resources of one big computer.   Centralized computing.
    Then came micro-computers and suddenly users might have their own computer sitting at their desk.  Distributed computing.
    Then came the whole client-server thing where major processing was pushed to a server but each user accessed it through a personal computer much like they would have used terminals to access a mainframe in the past.  Centralized computing.
    Then came peer-to-peer solutions which shared data among separate computers without the need for a centralized server.  Distributed computing.
    Now we have the whole "cloud" thing going on where big companies are farming out major computing resources and users access them remotely from their various "devices".  Centralized computing.
     
    The computing industry in general seems to go through cycles where what was unpopular in one generation becomes the "in" thing in the next.  As people start to realize the limitations of what is currently "popular" they try something else and with the effect of the latest buzzword things swing so far in that direction that it needs to correct itself and things get carried back in the other direction.
     
    There is nothing wrong with floating windows, and things that were designed in the 1980s are not inherently bad in the 2010s.  Don't let yourself get suckered into the buzzwords that happen to be popular at the moment without understanding first that there are tradeoffs to all of it and what is popular at the moment might not be the best thing for your particular problem or situation.
     
     
    Most things do.  I kind of like what the Haiku OS project is doing with their "Stack & Tile" functionality, for example...  a definite step in the right direction as it provides the flexibility of a multi-window interface while still allowing for windows to be stuck together, even including windows from different applications if that helps with organizing how you are working...
  2. Like
    fde101 reacted to Pšenda in Press Esc key to cancel any command   
    No, because it is not an automatic and hidden background operation performed by an assistant, but an operation that I performed with the tool that I selected.
     
    OK, you're right, sorry. I applied it to the behavior of the assistant (the possibility to undo the operation using Ctrl + Z).
  3. Thanks
    fde101 got a reaction from CartoonMike in Too many bugs?   
    The Mac versions have been fairly stable for me also.
  4. Thanks
    fde101 got a reaction from Alfred in Blending shapes   
    No, I understand now what he is complaining about, and it has always been this way.
    The corner tool doesn't work on "smart" shapes, only on paths.
    If you try to apply it to a shape object, it does convert the shape to a path before you can use the tool.
    I don't really consider this "destructive" - it is simply a helpful mechanism that turns the shape into something the tool can actually work with.
     
    @deeds, note that if you are working with rectangles, you don't need to use the corner tool to get the same effect - you can set the corner type for each corner (either all of them at once or separate corners individually) using the context toolbar while using the node tool with the shape selected.  This keeps it as a shape, but it only works for rectangles.
    I'm not sure how that tool would even begin to work with some of the other shapes as not all of them have sharp edges anyway.  For those that do, what are you trying to do with them that still keeps them as that shape?  For the kind of adjustments I can think of offhand where you would use that tool on one of them it wouldn't really be the original type of shape any longer (unless you can already make the adjustment using the properties of the shape, using the node tool), so I'm at a loss as to why you seem to think it is unreasonable that this would convert to curves?
  5. Like
    fde101 reacted to JET_Affinity in Seriously guys, the lack of typography options for "text on line" is killing me.   
    No, they're merely skewed vertically. That's one of the "old standard" pathType variations. FreeHand and some other programs had it long before Illustrator, which as I recall didn't gain it until around version 8 or 10. It's one of the most useful, but just like the normal rotating of the characters' baselines along the path, the horizonal edges of the glyphs remain straight. So they work best when the type size is small relative to the tightness of the curve.
    Both rotating  and skewing characters along the path are useful for things like the ubiquitous text surrounding a circular or oval emblem. Rotating is still the straightforward default for things like curve road names along the roads on a map. Skew was once more commonly used for "Superman" sweep treatments, and was once the only quick way to suggest text wrapping around a cylinder.
    I agree they are still useful and should be included in Affinity Designer, as they are in most programs.
    But nowadays, Skew is rather passé  since the advent of live envelope distortions, which do cause the horizontals of the glyphs to match the curve of the path, and which can also accomplish progressive lengthwise scaling. That is far more convincing when used to "map" text around a cylinder, etc. And some kind of envelope/warp feature has long been acknowledged as something that will eventually be added to Affinity.
    I've often wondered, however if it would be possible to devise more "text intelligent" envelope distortions. You see bad examples of enveloped text every day when users try to emulate retro sign painting styles or treatments common in things like team sports graphics, while assuming every such thing is just a matter of figuring out which button to click. Much of the ugliness boils down to the fact that widening text by scaling widens the verticals of the glyphs, but not the horizontals. That wrecks the design of the type, turning what was designed as a "single stroke" typeface into a "thick and thin" typeface. So could text-aware enveloping improve automation of such things, at least for fairly "normal" typefaces?
    JET
  6. Like
    fde101 got a reaction from BennyD in Seriously guys, the lack of typography options for "text on line" is killing me.   
    It's not just rotation and presets, though individual-character-transform controls (at least scaling and rotation, preferably shear as well) in artistic text (on or off a path) would definitely be a most welcome addition.
    If you pay close attention to the screenshot from the other program in the original post, the letters are actually reshaped to the path - the lines from that "E" are reshaped somewhat to follow the path while the left edge of it is very nearly vertical.  That might be more of a shearing transform but if time is going to be spent on trying to automate such things I would suggest that the ability to let the characters follow the curvature of the path be enabled across their width - consider a few options that can be set for text on a path, probably applied after any manual character transforms that might be applied (if and when implemented):
    Should the characters be rotated to follow the path? No rotation (all characters remain upright relative to the overall transform of the entire object) Rotate the entire character based on the normal of the path at the left edge, center or right edge of the individual character Rotate all characters to a set angle regardless of the flow of the path Rotate all characters based on distance from the center point of the text, ignoring the flow of the path (if the text is essentially horizontal, this would cause the character in the middle to be upright, with increased rotation when moving away from that in either direction) Apply "random" rotation to each character Should the characters be reshaped to follow the path? No reshaping Shear the character based on the overall slope of the path (if the text is essentially horizontal, this would apply a vertical shear so that if the bottom of the character is a straight line, the slope of that line matches the slope of a line connecting the points of the path which are at the left and right edges of the character's position on the path) Warp the character based on the slope of the path (if the text is essentially horizontal and the path underneath the character is curved, this would apply that curve throughout the height of the character, so that an "E" for example would have all three of its horizontal components matching the curvature of the path underneath it).  
    Presets for text-on-a-path would not be a horrible thing, but I would argue that these are best handled as assets in the Affinity world (drag out an asset which is set up the way you want it and modify the text from the asset), and that should be possible already.
  7. Like
    fde101 got a reaction from Chris B in Mac beta 1.8 needed...   
    From what I am seeing only one beta each for Designer and Photo were released on the Windoze side and it is mostly "little" stuff - important stuff like some bug fixes and the like, but not the big highlight items that will make the beta more generally worth jumping into early in its cycle (unless you are directly impacted by one of those things).
    When the next round of betas start coming out with some of the other capabilities we were already told to expect in 1.8 I'll be a bit more anxious for them to be the Mac releases.
  8. Like
    fde101 got a reaction from LEB in QR-Code   
    This strikes me as a great example of something that would hopefully be simple to provide with a plugin if an API/SDK is ever released...
  9. Like
    fde101 got a reaction from Mark Ingram in GUI Theme Support   
    Colorful interfaces are generally a very bad idea in design software.
    When there are colorful things surrounding your work area they tend to throw off your perception of the color of your work and can lead to unwanted surprises when you publish a final product.
    An interface with a neutral medium gray is generally optimal as it sits in the middle and is neither dark nor light and does not have significant amounts of color to throw off your perception of what you are working on.
     
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/27/12-fascinating-optical-illusions-show-how-color-can-trick-the-eye/
    http://mentalfloss.com/article/54448/5-color-illusions-and-why-they-work
  10. Like
    fde101 got a reaction from garrettm30 in Layers a little confusing   
    For the benefit of anyone newly joining this discussion, layers exclusively being at the document level is not going to happen.
    Document-wide "global" layers in some form will almost certainly be added eventually, but we don't know when yet.
    The three applications in the Affinity suite (Designer, Photo and Publisher) share a common file format, and prior to Publisher they did not support multi-page documents.
    The current layer concept is an extension of the layers that were already present in Designer and Photo before Publisher came about.  These layers are perfect for those applications and to disregard them would make those applications far less useful, so for compatibility reasons they will obviously remain present in Publisher.
    What I could see happening is an option in preferences that simply keeps the layers collapsed underneath the top level and does not automatically expand them to show layers as they are created or selected (I think this might actually be there already?)  and with global layers being introduced I would certainly hope that newly-added page-level layers would be organized underneath them consistently so this would mimic the way they currently behave in InDesign, for example, which also allows you to expand the document-level layers to see the individual objects on the page.
  11. Like
    fde101 got a reaction from mpowell in GUI Theme Support   
    Colorful interfaces are generally a very bad idea in design software.
    When there are colorful things surrounding your work area they tend to throw off your perception of the color of your work and can lead to unwanted surprises when you publish a final product.
    An interface with a neutral medium gray is generally optimal as it sits in the middle and is neither dark nor light and does not have significant amounts of color to throw off your perception of what you are working on.
     
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/27/12-fascinating-optical-illusions-show-how-color-can-trick-the-eye/
    http://mentalfloss.com/article/54448/5-color-illusions-and-why-they-work
  12. Sad
  13. Like
    fde101 got a reaction from SrPx in AutoTrace (convert raster image to vector)   
    They also said they are not happy with the results from that engine and that it will take a fair amount of effort.
    There are other things they can do in less time that will make at least as big an impact for a large number of users, so those things are getting priority right now.
    They did say that this feature was likely to be years away, and so far that has held true.
  14. Like
    fde101 got a reaction from Kal in text box defaults   
    Maybe via the "synchronize defaults" mechanism?  The default settings for a text box would be the current behavior, but select one and synchronize the defaults and newly created text boxes from that point on use the ones you selected - then "revert defaults" would drop back to the current behavior?
    I don't have it in front of me at the moment to see if that is how it works now - assuming not based on the existence of this thread - but I think it would be nice for it to work that way.  I think that would make sense logistically and offer the best of both worlds with minimal fuss...
     
    EDIT: actually, maybe it does work that way already: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/98513-default-text-box/
  15. Like
    fde101 got a reaction from Kal in Remove De/Select objects from Undo History   
    Interesting...
    I could see modifications to the pixel selection (in Photo for example) being logged in undo history, but selecting and deselecting layers is as well - that definitely shouldn't be, I agree.
    At least it does consolidate down to just one if you change it several times in a row.
  16. Like
    fde101 reacted to Dave Harris in Drop cap   
    This will be in 1.8, and the next beta.
    Petar, can you give an example? If a line begins
    "The,
    I think it would look weird if the opening quote was not the same size as the T.
  17. Like
    fde101 got a reaction from tbaucells in Export persona in Publisher   
    The export persona as it exists in Photo and Designer have a number of quite useful features which are not available in the export dialog: the ability to export cropped portions of a document without actually cropping the document, continuous exporting, etc.
    There may be a few corner cases where some of that would be useful for Publisher, but very little of it would be relevant often enough to make it worthwhile in its current form, in my opinion.
    Much more useful would be a few other related features that don't currently exist in any of the Affinity products, but which would lend themselves to an export/output-focused persona, and most if not all of these have been discussed in other threads on the forum - in particular:
    Preflight checks (color space usage, ink coverage checking, font types and availability, overflowing text frames, etc.) Color separations Preview with the simulated color space of a known output device (what will it look like when printed on printer X...) - this one is currently possible using an adjustment layer but having it in a dedicated export persona would be a helpful alternative The ability to maintain multiple export presets for a given document. Each should allow the selection of pages and/or sections to be exported together as a unit.  Similar to slices in the export persona of the other apps, but instead of cropping a section of a page, you would be able to specify that specific sections of a document should be included in a particular pre-defined export so that multiple partial documents could be produced out of one master document. These could also have independent settings for things like bleed, color separations, output format (PDF / quality settings /etc.), imposition type and options, and so on.  This would allow setting up an export for print, another for a PDF to be distributed over the web, etc... There should also be an ability to do a batch export by selecting more than one preset in a list and clicking one button to export all of them in one step. For settings which are designed for print, it should also be possible to print directly from one of these presets.
  18. Like
    fde101 reacted to Neil W in New Liquify Brush   
    I'm a big fan of the liquify persona, one thing I would like is to have a rectangular or bar brush.  When moving a far or body having a circular brush is not easy to operate on most things.  It would work much better if a bar that can be rotated as needed was used to push the pixels rather than the round brush.
  19. Like
    fde101 reacted to Petar Petrenko in Drop cap   
    It would be nice too, to have possibility to omit the first character if it is an interpunction symbol.
  20. Like
    fde101 reacted to walt.farrell in Bullets and Numbering functionality   
    It's easy to make your own additional levels. Just model them after the kind of changes made for levels 1 through 3. The changes are, mainly, setting a "next level" in level 3, and for level 4 increasing the left-indent, and changing the kind of numbering or bullet.
  21. Like
    fde101 got a reaction from debiant in Scripting   
    https://www.simplicity.be/article/indesign-server-alternative-open-source/
    http://www.viva.de/en/solutions/developer-and-it-service-companies
    http://www.quark.com/Solutions/Content-Automation/Content-Automation-Software.aspx
  22. Like
    fde101 got a reaction from walt.farrell in Bullets and Numbering functionality   
    Oddly enough this one is actually control+shift+(bracket) on the Mac also.
  23. Like
    fde101 reacted to Patrick Connor in Merge 2 Publisher documents?   
    @microjez
    Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums
    To all readers of this thread,
    The ability to insert a number of pages of one publisher document into another publisher document is being worked on actively at the moment, and will appear in a beta when it is ready for customer beta appraisal. It requires quite a lot of programming to achieve what would be desired with respect to text styles, master pages, index links, text flow etc, as you have seen from the participants of this and other threads.
     
  24. Like
    fde101 reacted to Pšenda in Use % in grid unit   
  25. Like
    fde101 got a reaction from SrPx in Affinity Animator   
    SynFig studio, DAZ Studio, ..., ...
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