Robert Cailliau

I have a related question: an SVG drawing opened in Designer sits on a chequered background. This is presumably to show where there are no objects. However, this chequered background does not appear in non-SVG drawings. It does not seem to appear behind "holes" in Affinity Photo layers. There is a similar background behind holes in PhotoShop layers, but not in Illustrator drawings. To edit SVG drawings this chequered background is annoying (to me at least). Is there a way to choose the colours of the little squares, similar to choosing the colours of the major and minor grid lines? Then I could simply set them to the same colour and the chequered pattern would disappear. Robert.

I have done so, and it works. However, it seems to me a little too generous from the Affinity people. In this setup I can go around and put the software on all machines of my family and friends and whatever. They can then run it until they need to reinstall or update for some reason, at which point they need me again. While I definitely hugely dislike periodic subscription fees, there is a middle way too: for example, I would be very happy if the licence covered say 5 machines (as much AppStore items do). That would allow me and my wife to use it for our purposes (which are purely non-commercial), plus an extra machine or so (as in my case) but not an unlimited number. After all, the developers have to pay the rent, even after the peak of initial purchases is over. Then there is the question of upgrades: I don't mind to pay for upgrades once in a while if the changes are significant. E.g. not from, say, version n.x.y to n.x.y+1, but it would be OK from n.x to (n+1).x What I do object to is a monthly fee and a constant activation-check over the network. With Affinity at least I can sleep well at night: the product will continue to work even if I go to Tasmania for a 6-month quiet creative work period, without an internet connection(*). :-) (*) should you not know: Tasmania is very well connected to the net, they had the first high school with its own website

Great! And the Mac App Store knows about that I suppose.

Hi, Fine, but I have a Macbook Air and a Macbook Pro. Do I need two purchases or only one?

Yes, this is true but there is a small snag, unless I have not understood something. I used this process to make tick marks of a clock face. Hence I needed an angle of 360/60=6 degrees. However, 59 duplicates did not close the circle. I struggled with this until I decided to type 6.0000 into the angle field of the transform panel after setting the first rotation. Here is the object (a simple line segment), with its rotation centre moved to the left: Now we start duplicate rotation by first dragging it by the rotation handle, to 6 degrees: But when I then make duplicates, they are not correctly positioned. The 61st will not coincide with the original: However, if I type 6.0000 into the transform box, just after the first rotation drag and before typing further CMD-Js: then the 61st copy will be correct: You can also verify this by clicking one of the duplicates and looking at the angle in the transform box. I consider this a bug. It has to do with the way Designer calculates internally and should be fixed. Making technical drawings (my main usage) is tedious until these issues are fixed. Note also that typing into the transform box rotates the object around the position of the default rotation centre, not the one you have set. That too is a bug. Robert.

In Affinity Photo, when I export the file extension jpeg is refused, I'm obliged to use the three letter abbreviation "jpg": Please change this, as I always use jpeg and browsers also recognise jpeg. (the 3 letter extension is a relic from the old Windows days).

Thanks RC-R for the details on actual size. The thanks were because Adobe Illustrator does not allow me to get true size on screen. I need to set the scale to 184% to see drawings as they will appear in print. As to the type sizes: I knew there were conflicting standards. However, when I set Designer to give me mm for type sizes, I also want the menu to list round mm numbers, not things like 4.2mm, and that was the reason for my request.

Hello, Is there an option to have y-coordinates go up in the up direction? Computer graphics, for historic reasons, works the other way around as mathematics: the y axis points down. But in the mainly technical drawings I make, I want the y axis to point up. In Illustrator this can be set (admittedly by a command-line preference). So when I move an object in y by +10mm I want it to move "up", not down. The rotation is fine: it increases counter-clockwise, as desired. BTW, thanks for allowing expressions in the numeric fields, that is really good. Also thanks for having "acual size" take into account the screen's pixel density(*), so I do indeed get the actual size, unlike Illustrator where 100% has no meaning as it does not use the real screen pixel sizes. And yet another thanks for keeping drawings as objects, especially complex ones such as cogs, stars etc., but even for simple things like rectangles it is extremely useful to be able to set the rotation back to 0 for example. But be sure to store the data in the desired units, not convert them to points or pixels! When saving a drawing in svg, I get everything converted to pixels, which then leads to rounding errors when reading it in again. SVG is perfectly capable of working in mm! It would be a boon if I could make, say, a rectangle, just by clicking on the canvas and then typing in the sizes rather than having to drag a rectangle first. When units is set to mm, I still get a drop-down list of character sizes in weird values: 1.8mm, 2.1mm, … I want 1mm, 2mm, … Sorry for mixing several things in one post, and sorry if this should have gone to a different topic. Robert. (*)"pixel density" is a convoluted way of saying "resolution", which should mean pixels/mm but resolution has been changed to mean "number of pixels". I mean pixels per mm of course.

Well… If the .ai file is not pdf compatible then all I get inside AD is that Illustrator error panel telling me there is no pdf content. If there is pdf content too, then AD imports it as pdf, and the size is not right. It is scaled with this horrible 2.87… factor (coming from these archaic "point" measures). So the question remains: how do I convert my .ai files to AD without losing scale and without having to pass them all through Illustrator to give them pdf content?

MEB, sorry, I tried to find a topic about text size units but nothing came up. So I put my question to you: Is there a way to specify text sizes in mm instead of points?

Hi MEB: Same problem here: I want all tool strips and panels to have a white or very light background. Black is OK for those who work in dark places, which I don't. So yes, please, at the very least a choice between dark and light. :-(