jemhuntr
-
Posts
17 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by jemhuntr
-
-
Good day, and thanks for the Affinity Suite as always! Been a proud user from V1, and since then I've been jumping back and forth into different design programs depending on my use case as a web developer & designer.
Anyway--I would like to revisit a request that some people have requested in the past (pre-V1 in the archives), and that is native Google Fonts support inside the editor. I mean, being able to browse the latest repository of Google Fonts inside the app, and have the ability to use them natively without having to install them.
I understand that the SOP is to just install fonts locally and/or use font managers (like Fontbase, etc), but I think a native integration would be a massive help because of the following reasons:
- It doesn't pollute my local workspace with fonts I do not want to see. Some designs require a very specific one-time-use font that I will likely never use again. Having to install it locally means that this font will now show up on every single program I use outside Affinity (Word, Excel, native font selectors, etc), and eventually these one-offs will start to pollute my system over time. Uninstalling is an option, but that means reopening a project that uses this font will now break that design unless I reinstall. Font managers help by speeding up uninstall/reinstall, but I would still have to manually toggle these fonts each time I need them.
- It allows me to work on multiple devices without having to worry about fonts. I transfer files a lot between devices & share it with other people. Having to ask other people to download & install fonts just so they can edit text on the design is a big hurdle for some and is otherwise an organizational nightmare. Not only do I now have to manage fonts for 1 device, I would also now need Fontbase on all devices and have to manually activate/deactivate fonts for each of them.
- It enables faster experimentation between fonts directly inside my designs. Having the entire Google Fonts repository together with the on-hover font previews inside designs allows me to really quickly flip through a lot of options directly inside my design without having to download & try fonts one by one.
- Installing fonts locally is a bad habit for web development. As a web developer, it is typically bad practice to install fonts locally since it potentially conflicts with web font resolution in browsers. A website with a custom font may look fine on my end because I have that installed locally, but all my users would see system defaults and I might not even know that.
- It's becoming fairly common for modern design software to have Google Fonts integration built-in. Due to its open source & commercially viable nature, a lot of other creative software are adopting native Google Fonts integration. This just standardizes a good selection of fonts across the board for all people involved in product development, from Designers, Marketers, Developers, to Stakeholders. Today, apps like Figma, Penpot, Spline, and Rive all integrate Google Fonts directly, making it so much easier to transfer assets & designs in between these programs.
I understand if this is way too complex to implement across the entire suite (since this repository is an external source that needs to be updated, and the added complexity with font resolution may just not be possible outside a webapp), but I'm shooting my shot regardless! I wouldn't even mind having just a fixed selection like Canva, as long as it would include the most popular fonts on Google Fonts.
Thanks for reading and have a nice day!
-
Paired with great on-document manipulation UI, this would make a really sick feature for Affinity.
-
I have this problem on Beta
98 as well. Things jump around when I perform Align/Copy+Paste/etc on constraint-edited objects. Specifically when I copy an object from inside a constraint group and paste it on another constraint group.I attached a document where you can reproduce the off-canvas pasting behaviour. Since there's no cross-artboard pasting going on and the document is small, the effect is minimized (the pasted object is just right outside the artboard).
-
+1, this would be really helpful. Additionally, this should also be on context menus.
I believe these "Collapse All"/"Expand All" should be in the same places as Designer's 1.6 Beta 5 "Hide All"/"Show All".
- telemax and Lutz Pietschker
-
2
-
Note: The gray box is NOT skewed nor is it grouped with the text. I manually clicked around the text object, placing the bounds of the gray box where the text seems to stop being selected.
Basically, the gray boxes above are NOT clickable and are only accessible through the layers panel.
-
Hey everyone! I'm on Designer 1.6.0 at the moment and I'm not sure if this is a beta-only issue.
Selecting skewed text objects in Designer is pretty off at the moment. If you try to skew an Artistic Text box on both axes and perhaps rotate it, selecting around it puts the skewed object in focus. If the text object is above several objects, it makes selecting those beside it a hard task.
See attached images. If I click anywhere inside the gray box, the skewed text gets selected. See the pattern here?
I can't exactly pinpoint why Affinity would select the text when I click the area around it, following closely the axes of its bounding box. Anyone else having this issue?
-
+1, perhaps there should also be an option to color pick entire gradients and noise levels plus other parameters.
-
bump?? I need a way to make the artboard size down to fit all contents (or a selection)
-
Redesigning the new design showing the redesign redesigning the redesign. http://i.imgur.com/FZuhjzc.png
I planned to practice my skills on this and create the alternate dark and contrast modes (plus a plethora of other alternate UX options for some controls in AD). A lot of stuff are yet to be recreated (the buttons up top, the additional layer controls at the bottom, other tool windows, selection focus modifications, etc etc etc), but this seemed like a good WIP I can share.
PS: Liking the new light UI on AD. Thanks, devs!
-
Also, the transparency grid jumps around on zoom.
Note: The blue outline indicates the borders of the artboard. There's a single solid rectangle filling up the entire size of the artboard exactly, but the transparency grid is all over the place.
Another important note: I forgot to say, this only happens when I'm in pixel mode.
-
Is it just me or the text rendering is really bad on the light UI?
-
Based on observations, Text Styles are saved per-document by default, with the option of setting a set of styles as the "Global Default" with the "Set as Default" option.
Color Swatches can be saved on three levels: document level, application level, and system level. This is pretty handy, although may be a little overkill for my purposes.
The regular "Styles", however, are only saved globally, with no option of saving the set of styles for the document only. This makes it pretty hard to track, change, and scale a design with a lot of similar styles like border widths, colors, corner size, etc. Is there currently any way to achieve this? If not, is this planned or is this still a back-burner at the roadmap?
Lastly, are there any preferred or recommended way to organize documents using Symbols, Styles, Text Styles, and Swatches (plus whatever else AD feature there is that I do not know of)? My document setup feels a little too clunky to be manageable for bigger design projects. I have way too many palette colors that I can't even find the right color I need. Thanks!
-
Hi! I know this is far from being prioritized, but it would be great if there was a way to write math in Affinity Designer without having to manually draw lines for fractions, etc.
Perhaps implementing just a few typesetting features from LaTeX would greatly help in my scenario, which I will most likely still encounter a lot of times in the future.
Thanks!
-
Oh, I'm using an HP ENVY TouchSmart 15 and I'm not getting the realtime pan and zoom effects as I expected it. Also I'm pretty sure I'm on the latest beta since I just downloaded the Windows Beta a while ago.
I'll try singling out why it doesn't work on my system then.
Thanks :)
-
One of the few things preventing me from actually sticking with the Windows beta is that there is no way for me to precisely zoom how much I want.
This is easily solved in the Mac version as Macs have beautifully crafted trackpads that allow smooth navigation in 2 axes. On windows, however, this can only be achieved using touchscreen devices since as far as I know, there's no general way to get raw input from Windows trackpads.
It would be nice if smooth realtime pan + zoom&rotate could be implemented on the Windows version through touch devices.
Native Google Fonts Integration
in Feedback for the Affinity V2 Suite of Products
Posted
Thanks for the replies!
This sounds like a solid solution! I haven't seen any font manager that is able to do this either, but having one that can work with Affinity and allow instant font recognition/reload (without having to close & reopen documents) would provide a great workflow that defeats the purpose of having a native Google Fonts integration.
This is true unfortunately, but could be alleviated by caching all previously-queried fonts in a local directory. If the feature is implemented in Affinity core, I don't think it's necessary to embed them in documents (like in PDFs), but that could be a necessary feature if this was to go in some kind of an optional plugin.
I've thought about this as well--fonts tweak kerning & ligatures a lot so that could be a potential cause of change in documents. But isn't that already a problem even with manually installed fonts? How does Affinity handle changing fonts when you overwrite existing local fonts with new versions?
I haven't personally tried it, but my guess is that it only recomputes the cached version of a text node after you focus/edit it. Otherwise, it would probably appear as if you're still using the old version if you didn't touch anything after opening a document.