LCamachoDesign

@LCamachoDesign Thank you for your report, I've logged it with our developers.

Can confirm in v2.6.3.
Also, this bug is not present in v2.4.2.

Hello!
This is one wild bug, with it I'm able to delete the main UI view and break the whole app.
Steps to reproduce are simple:
Start a new document without Artboards Use the menu Select > Select Object and pick one of the options below: Unfilled Objects Unstroked Objects Undashed Objects Opaque Objects Press Backspace or Delete, the main UI is gone! Notice this is not deleting an artboard since none was been created. Also, the undo command and History panel list this as Delete Spread. Which is odd since there's no spreads here? But you can make this bug worse:
Starting from point 3 above, zoom your document You can use the Zoom tool, or any mouse or keyboard command Notice the zoom level does not change at all Try to undo this spread deletion It will no longer undo it, and you cannot recover the UI anymore Notice the History panel now lists this deletion as simply "Delete", no spread mentioned It will show up as "Delete Spread" again if you redo, but you can't recover the UI The only way to revert this situation is to close the document and open it again From what I've tested, it seems you can still save the document and the contents will be safe By the way, this seems to be a variation of this bug I reported years ago and it's still unfixed: 
 
 
Lastly, I've attached a video to demonstrate this bug in action in a visual way.
Thanks!
delete UI bug.mov

Hi @LCamachoDesign,
This is an UI issue currently logged with the developers, I've bumped the issue with your report.

Hi @LCamachoDesign,
I've replicated and logged this issue with the developers, thanks for your report.

When vector cropping an Affinity Photo file placed inside an Affinity Designer document, with an opacity value different from 100%, the visual opacity will suddenly and unexpectedly drop, but the value on the layer remains unchanged.
Steps to reproduce:
Create an Affinity Photo file, even a simple file with just a circle will do Create a new Affinity Designer file Place the Affinity Photo in the Affinity Designer document Change the opacity of the placed Photo file, to 30% for example Select the Vector crop tool, and start copping the Photo file Notice the visual opacity of the placed document drops substantially Delete the vector mask, notice the opacity returns to the original I've also attached a short video demonstrating the issue, and sample files to test this situation.
This seems to only happen with Photo files, any other types of placed files work fine. It also only happens with vector masks, if you create a pixel mask, by using the Eraser too on the Pixel Persona for example, this will not happen. The vector mask does not need to be created by the Vector Crop tool, that is merely the easiest way to trigger this problem, but other vector masks will have the same problem.
Additionally, this is not just a visual bug. If you export the file, for example to a JPEG file, the image will have the incorrect bugged opacity rather than the correct value.
Thanks!
Vector crop bug.mp4 Test Photo File.afphoto Test Designer File.afdesign

That just speaks to exactly what I was saying. The field changes too fast for wasting any time doing custom solutions. When I posted, the only thing you could run locally was Stable Diffusion 1.5. While that works, the quality was pretty substandard, but you only needed a GPU with 4Gb VRAM. Yes, you could use custom checkpoints and LoRAs for waifus, but... that's not the scope here.
Jump forward to today, and now you can run SDXL locally. And the quality is much higher than 1.5, vanilla SDXL is ballpark MidJourney 4 I'd say. With ControlNet and LoRA / LyCORIS I'd say you get MidJourney 5 level of generation. But you also no longer can run with 4Gb VRAM, you need at minimum 8Gb, with 12Gb being the recommended value. Basically, you need a 3070 or 4070 and up. Yes, you can use quantization and other fiddly trickery to run below that. I can run SDXL locally on my M1 iPad Pro, but you're looking at 5 minutes per image, it's just not realistically usable.
But like you said, it doesn't actually change my initial point, it's still better to have a plugin to connect to these generators. Again, looking at back to when I first posted, Automatic1111 was the way to run SD locally. Fast forward to now, and ComfyUI is the way to do it. Even when A1111 tries to catch up, with the 1.6 release a few days ago, it still can't catch Comfy, it doesn't have support for Control LoRA, and that's a massive downside IMHO. If Serif were, back then, to try porting A1111 into the Affinity suite, that time would've been wasted, they'd need to scrap everything and start again with ComfyUI to be competitive.
So yeah, have a plugin system, and let others do that job. This is not speculation either. Just look at Krita, people spent time doing A1111 plugins for it last year... fast forward to today, and both top plugins have gone belly up. The development is now on the ComfyUI plugin hosted at CivitAI.

Yes this fix is part of a larger code change and will be included in 2.6.0 but not 2.5.5, sorry

That is correct. 2.6 codebase may have a significant reworking of pages and spreads and as such is having a much longer internal testing phase to decide if that change can go into 2.6.0 customer beta. In the meantime some of the more urgent but safer fixes are going to appear in a 2.5.5 beta/release 

Thanks for your report @LCamachoDesign & the further information provided above from other users here - this is certainly helpful!
I can confirm I've been able to replicate this issue and I'm getting it logged with our developers now.
I hope this helps

There's so many things wrong it's just easier to see the attached video, screenshot, and sample file.
I've noticed that:
Hyphenation value does not display correctly Numeric values seem to be randomly (?) displayed with other unrelated values or even units I've seen point values show up as completely different point values, like the font size I've seen units display different altogether, like paragraph stops in mm showing in px The actual values that appear in the design are correct though. For example, setting a font to 12 pt in the Text Style Editor will result on a text with 12 pt size, even if the Style settings text in the dialog box says 37.5 pt.
Also happens in Designer, and likely in Photo too.
Thanks!

Gravação 2024-07-11 153625.mp4 Publisher Sample 2.afpub

I'm not sure what you mean there: I can drag the pointer from left to right and doing so selects the end of paragraph marker, but I also had some weird experiences regarding the return character selection and line count, described in this topic:
+++++++++++++++++
 
I add a video recorded on Publisher v.2.5.3 with macOS Monterey, illustrating the same problem described above:

Enregistrement de l’écran 2024-07-11 à 18.22.35.m4v  

It's interesting that it works at all on Windows. On macOS, drag select in Affinity never selects the end of paragraph marker. It should because that's the Mac standard, but Affinity for macOS doesn't work that way. Perhaps Serif could address both the Windows and Mac issues.

This appears to be specific to Windows, I can't duplicate any of this on macOS.

Thanks @LCamachoDesign
I can reproduce that, I'll pass it along to the devs. 

Apps: All
Platforms: macOS and Windows
As has been requested numerous times we have now converted the typography dialog from a pop-up dialog into a panel so you can now easily dock it / keep it available should you wish. 
This is available both fro the Window menu (note: this is currently at the bottom of the panel listing, but will be changed to be a sub menu from the Text panel options next week), and also from the typography button in the context toolbar  when you have text selected.
 

Apps: All
Platforms: macOS, Windows and iPad
A new QR Code tool is now available from the shapes flyout in the toolbar, making it easy to add a QR code to your documents. 
After creating or selecting a QR Code object you will find a 'Payload' option in the context toolbar. Here you can type whatever URL you want the QR code to link to when it is scanned.


You can insert line breaks in your payload by using the CMD/CTRL + Click on canvas dialog

In addition to URLs you can use other syntax as detailed below to have the QR code trigger other functions when scanned by a device:
SMS
Payload structure: SMSTO:number:text message
Eg. SMSTO:07513123456:Hello mate!
GEO location
Payload structure: GEO:lat:lon:height
Eg. GEO:40.71872,-73.98905,100
WIFI credentials
Payload structure: WIFI:S:ssid;T:type;P:password;;
Eg. WIFI:S:MyWiFiSSID;T:WPA;P:MyPassW0rd;;
 

Apps: Designer
Platforms: macOS, Windows and iPad
Affinity Designer now includes a new width tool which is available by default alongside the pencil tool in your toolbar:

The Line Width Tool gives you an on-document way of editing the pressure profile of any curve. For example the curve below has 3 pressure points (5 including the start and end pressure). While in the Line Width tool the position of those points are shown along the curve, and you have the ability to drag to change the width and position of them. 
You can also click to add a new pressure point, or double click to remove any pressure point on a curve.

There are various modifiers available which you can see in the status bar:
Shift + Drag - allows you to modify the width at any point without adjusting it's position
Cmd (Mac) / Ctrl (Win) + Click - manually enter the width required at the chosen point
Ctrl (Mac) / Ctrl (Win) + Drag - move the point position without adjusting the width
Double click - remove pressure point
Additionally you will find some other options in the context toolbar when using this tool:

Adjust Line Weight - if this is turned on then should you drag the width of any point to be greater than the current line width (i.e. greater than 100% pressure) the line width will be increased to allow you to drag the width unrestricted. If it is turned off then the maximum width you can drag to is 100% of the set line width.
Allow point reordering - This option allows to you to specify whether you want to allow the tool to drag one point past another along the curve, effectively swapping their order, or not.
Snap to curve nodes - This will show any nodes on the curve as small white dots and will snap any pressure points to those nodes
Snap to widths on same curve - this will snap the width at any pressure point on a curve to other widths which already exist on that curve. This only applies when holding shift (i.e. you are adjusting the width without altering the point position).
Snap to curve geometry - this will snap the width to the geometry of any selected curves (again if you are holding shift). 

Variable fonts
Apps: Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo, Affinity Publisher
Platforms: All
You're now able to use variable fonts in all Affinity apps, providing a plethora of new typographic design possibilities.
As well as providing predefined font styles, such as light, bold and condensed, variable fonts give you fine control of specific design aspects known as axes of variation, or just axes for short.
To try out variable fonts in Affinity, apply one to some text and then:
- On desktop, click the Font Variations button on the context toolbar (or on the Character Panel).
- On iPad, tap the arrow to the right of Bold/Italic/Underline/Strikethrough on the Text Panel and then tap Variations.
Variation settings on desktop.

 
 
Variation settings on iPad.

 
You'll see settings for each axis that the font designer has made individually adjustable.

Axis' slider being dragged.
Many variable fonts allow you to adjust their width and weight axes, and possibly italic, optical size and slant. These five axes are common enough that they're defined by the OpenType specification.
All manner of other axes may also be adjustable, such as:
- the height of ascenders and depth of descenders to better fit your chosen line spacing.
- the stem terminals, to choose between straight and swelling.
- the width of counters, which are enclosed and partially enclosed spaces within glyphs.
For examples of other possible axes, check out the axis definitions that are available for variable fonts at Google Fonts.
You may see fewer axes in Affinity than are mentioned by a font provider's marketing. For example, Google Fonts lists 13 axes for Roboto Flex and Affinity exposes five of them. This is because we respect font designers' ability to specify that an axis should be hidden. This is part of the OpenType specification and means that software isn't meant to provide an interface for such axes.
Why would a designer do this? Well, a variable font might adjust an axis internally based on your choices for other axes that you can directly adjust. For example, observe how counter widths change when the weight axis is adjusted in the animation above.

Variable fonts and PDFs
PDF doesn't support variable fonts. So, when you export a PDF of an Affinity document that uses a variable font, we create a static instance of the font with fixed settings.
We've taken steps to ensure static instances of fonts are well named. You should find this minimises the need to identify the original variable fonts if you later import or place the resulting PDFs.

Yeah, this is pretty much my take. And we've seen mergers and acquisition on the design/software enough times to know this will likely end badly. I mean, just look at Gravit Designer -> Corel Vector after the acquisition, or even more recently Vectornator -> Linearity Curve after VC poured in. This is why we can't have nice things.  

Yeah, this is pretty much my take. And we've seen mergers and acquisition on the design/software enough times to know this will likely end badly. I mean, just look at Gravit Designer -> Corel Vector after the acquisition, or even more recently Vectornator -> Linearity Curve after VC poured in. This is why we can't have nice things.  

That just speaks to exactly what I was saying. The field changes too fast for wasting any time doing custom solutions. When I posted, the only thing you could run locally was Stable Diffusion 1.5. While that works, the quality was pretty substandard, but you only needed a GPU with 4Gb VRAM. Yes, you could use custom checkpoints and LoRAs for waifus, but... that's not the scope here.
Jump forward to today, and now you can run SDXL locally. And the quality is much higher than 1.5, vanilla SDXL is ballpark MidJourney 4 I'd say. With ControlNet and LoRA / LyCORIS I'd say you get MidJourney 5 level of generation. But you also no longer can run with 4Gb VRAM, you need at minimum 8Gb, with 12Gb being the recommended value. Basically, you need a 3070 or 4070 and up. Yes, you can use quantization and other fiddly trickery to run below that. I can run SDXL locally on my M1 iPad Pro, but you're looking at 5 minutes per image, it's just not realistically usable.
But like you said, it doesn't actually change my initial point, it's still better to have a plugin to connect to these generators. Again, looking at back to when I first posted, Automatic1111 was the way to run SD locally. Fast forward to now, and ComfyUI is the way to do it. Even when A1111 tries to catch up, with the 1.6 release a few days ago, it still can't catch Comfy, it doesn't have support for Control LoRA, and that's a massive downside IMHO. If Serif were, back then, to try porting A1111 into the Affinity suite, that time would've been wasted, they'd need to scrap everything and start again with ComfyUI to be competitive.
So yeah, have a plugin system, and let others do that job. This is not speculation either. Just look at Krita, people spent time doing A1111 plugins for it last year... fast forward to today, and both top plugins have gone belly up. The development is now on the ComfyUI plugin hosted at CivitAI.

No need to. There is nothing wrong with the context toolbar in the move tool. 
In fact aligment buttons listed in that toolbar act like simplified version of what you have and can do in the alignment panel.  They allow a quick align to the selection bounds or key object. It's simple and intuitive. No need to think or remember that "first selected" is required to honor key object like it is in the main alignent panel.
The way to go:
Add a new "Key Object" category in the drop-down menu for the "Align To" option. Then it won't be so hidden anymore. Bring back the old behavior. Allow the user to select the "Align To" option before performing the alignment operation.
This option affects how the alignment operation is performed and should not be grayed out or unavailable before the alignment is performed. Move the "Size / Rotate to the same" buttons to the transform panel.
After selecting several objects, these buttons would become active in the transform panel and you could adjust the size and rotation. More sense for the user. Describe in detail in the documentation that: spacing now considers key object, set selection box considers key object,geometry Subtract will subtract any overlapping geometry from the key object, Size / Rotate to same will use key object as the source if nominated. @Ash make changes as in the points above and we users will have intuitive, simple solutions and you will have more satisfied users.

Yes it is true that Key Object is a relatively hidden feature / one you need to know about. We should probably at least add a tooltip in move tool when you have a multiple selection to call it out.
We do have a number of things which support key object within a multiple selection. Initially the main thing requested was for alignment (and yes understand the comments on needing first selected checked in the alignment drop down, but also the default behaviour of align - what you get from the Layer -> Alignment menu as well as the alignment options which become exposed in the context toolbar when you have a multiple selection - uses key object if you have one nominated). 
Additionally:
- Spacing now considers key object as per this new addition
- Set selection box considers key object to allow multiple opjects to adopt the same selection box as your key object (again added in this beta)
- Geometry Subtract will subtract any overlapping geometry from the key object if you have one selected, rather than just the object at the bottom of the selection which is the default behaviour
- Size / Rotate to same as added in this beta will use key object as the source if nominated (or the first object selected if key object isn't nominated).
- If you choose rename layer with a multiple selection this will rename the key object if you have one nominated too.
There are some other functions which would be useful to take account of a key object nomination which we plan to add over time...