JGD

I mean, this topic is named “discussion on outstanding features” and he's an expert on something that could become a feature in Affinity one day. While on the subject of keeping things strongly offtopic, I didn't even know Adobe had a HQ in Edinburgh, and I've already been there twice. And here I was thinking the only famous company that did was Rockstar North (F.K.A. DMA Design)…

Yeah, we could go there instead. In fact, those topics should be merged, or something, but I guess I'll just pick the one that's got more traction. As for your comment regarding SVG fonts, well… I totally get it. They are flashy and, compared with the arguably complex variable fonts, are low-hanging fruit, UX speaking (though Adobe did solve it, for the time being, with a single button and a floating dialog with simple sliders). They don't really entail any standard setting other than, you know, properly implementing the format. Sérgio is actually an expert on those, by the way, and did a presentation about that topic last year. Still, I'd say that variable fonts can be more useful, especially in Publisher, and all those formats aren't mutually exclusive. The only reason I periodically bring it up is the fact that Serif, for all their failings, did prioritise decent OpenType support early on. That's a major win in my book, and likely one of the main reasons that got me interested in Affinity in the first place.

Is my understanding that, since this thread was split, it won't be shut down correct? If so, can we now talk about other stuff, namely variable fonts? That's the feature I currently have more info to share on right now, including some very interesting insights from type systems and interpolation extraordinaire Peter Bilak. He raised a few of the same issues some of you did and, in fact, I had an interesting but as of then inconclusive one-on-one with him during Q&A. I may write a paper on that soon enough, in fact, and share it with him; if it's any good, I think it would be great to raise that issue with the powers that be (i.e. type designers, as well as type design and graphic design app developers; I already got Rainer covered, and maybe Rui Abreu, from Adobe – who, guess what, was also also there and always attends that conference –, or my future colleague Sérgio could also be a good entry point to that unavoidable behemoth). But, of course, I'd love to first hear from, you know, “regular” designers. I am one, too, but I'm obviously biased, as you may guess. As a teaser, that's me actually sharing my concerns and suggestions with Mr. Bilak.

@ErrkaPetti that is uncalled for, and untoward both to me and Serif. But since you ask, I don't expect special treatment. I just didn't like some of the treatment I, and others, got in the past, and defended myself way back when and once again now. It's no secret that I had my fair share of issues with @Patrick Connor, and still am not fully satisfied with our current status, but it would be completely unfair to say that it got worse or even stayed the same. As a matter of fact, kudos to him for distancing himself from your comments. Whenever I pull up my credentials, the only reason I do so is to shore up my credibility and the validity of my arguments. As for “special treatment”, if anything, *I* am the one giving it to Serif, both in the form of feedback, suggestions and potential networking deals, and “tough love”, where other users just would up and leave. It saddens me that those haven't had the effect I expected, which doesn't inspire me the least bit of confidence in the future, but hey, accepting or even acknowledging suggestions or not is their prerogative. As for you, other than speaking for Serif without having any contractual obligation towards them or checking with them first (do you see the absurdity of your situation? In order to be able to do the latter without coming across as an uncritical fanboy, you should also have the former… which, AFAIK, you don't) and attacking other users, what do you have to offer to either Serif or us? I did not address you directly, and if you're happy with Affinity, good on you. But being a “yes man”, while certainly great for their ego and motivation, doesn't make much of a material difference to the development process, now, does it? As I said to those who made the suggestion, I will open or bump a thread on variable fonts, specifically for us to discuss said feature (and, yes, a bump on typography threads will always be in order every now and then, as each year there are new developments to be discussed; for all it's “600-year-old-industry” status, its digital manifestations in the commercial arena are, IMHO, vastly underdeveloped when compared to the kind of experimental stuff some of us are doing in academia), because I firmly believe – and that belief is grounded in experience, hence me mentioning it in the first place – it will be useful, usable and finally reach critical mass, so if you have something useful to contribute with – even if it's on-topic criticism, yes –, you'll be more than welcome. But if not, please spare us that attitude. @Patrick Connor, for all I care, please lock it down, sure. We'll take this elsewhere and hopefully learn something useful in the process.

You raised some interesting points, which we discussed ourselves already during said meeting. I won't rehash them here as yours is a great suggestion, so I'll either create a new thread or revive an old one if I find it (after I'm done with said abstract, of course ).

I accept your remark regarding the first feature request (which I will still defend on the grounds that, as per my stated MO, I'm trying to get as many team managers to realise just how serious the document model shortcomings are, but I respect your position so I will leave it at that), but not at all the one regarding variable fonts. It's completely misguided and unfair of you to lump a valid, exciting feature request with something that, I'll readily admit, is sad and stale of me to keep beating you over. Please do not throw the baby out with the bathwater. You see, I hadn't mentioned variable fonts in months (if not years, actually, as the last time I was with Rainer was two years ago), so some actual feedback, either public or private – again, I realise how you may not want to give away your plans, but heck, have me sign another specific NDA if you must –, on that matter and my generous offer – it can't be done in person anymore, as the event is pretty much over and Rainer is gone by now, but it's still fresh on his mind and I still have some workshops of my own which I'll have to ask him volume licences for –, would be much appreciated (anything else, IMHO, will be seen as nonchalance and dismissal of something that not only is related to my bread and butter, it seems to be all the rage in the type design community right now; much like the Bluetooth explosion with Apple Watch and the AirPods, third time seems to be the charm and the latest GX revival is what Multiple Master should've become if Adobe hadn't killed their own baby because it was “too confusing to use”). Oh, as would be a belated apology for the whole “baselinegate” thing, mind you. I got extremely mad at Serif because of your post but, once I realised it was you again, meh. You see, I actually forgot it was you, so I am very much willing to forgive (I always was; this was just further proof of that). By the way, for some context, I just spent the last couple of days talking with or otherwise listening to some of the finest minds in the world of type design. Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer's Glyphs.app is to FontLab what Affinity is to Adobe CC (actually, I'd say it's closer, but the power dynamics are the same, as Glyphs.app v. 2.0 forced FontLab Inc.'s hand and shaped FontLab VI and precipitated its release decisively, much like Adobe keeps lifting features from Affinity apps); Peter Bilak is the leading designer of font systems, and the closest we could get to a spiritual heir to the now sadly deceased Adrian Frutiger; our fellow countryman Dino dos Santos is one of the leading type designers for printed press and branding, having worked with multiple newspapers across the Atlantic and world-class clients such as FIFA, UEFA, multiple world exhibitions, etc.; besides being an awesome, inspiring designer, Fred Smeijers authored Counterpunch, a cult book that, being out of print, now costs more than €400 second hand; just to name a few… And, as I've been trying to make you realise for some years now, I'm not some random kid; my PhD plans are now out in the open and in full swing, as I'm about to submit an abstract to the Springer-backed, 11th International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics, I'll begin cooperating with Sérgio Martins, a University of Reading graduate who worked as a type design intern at Adobe, on an advanced type design workshop module and am currently lining up a panel of workshop hosts – the Spanish expert on modular geometric type systems and bespoke 3d-printed letterpress type, Roberto Gamonal Arroyo, being an example –, evaluators and interviewees – my first ones will actually be the KABK alumni and still the Hague-based Carvalho+Bernau couple/studio, who started it all 10 years ago when they gave us a workshop at our BFA – across Europe. This is actually becoming serious business, and I can assure you we're not some autistic types stuck alone in ivory towers; we're actually working in the field, cooperating amongst ourselves and with the software industry, and shaping the future of typography and graphic design as we speak. So, please show us – and when I say “us”, I really mean it in the sense of being the leading representative of the type design community in these forums, as I'm the only type design practitioner/researcher/educator I know of who advocated for Serif, but if there are any more of us out there please do chime in! – a wee bit more respect, Patrick.

If I could give you 10 votes/reacts for this request, I would. I'm attending, along with a student of mine, a Variable Font Workshop given by none other than Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer (one of Glyphs.app head developers), this Thursday in Porto, and will give at least one lecture/exercise on that subject to both my workshop classes at the Faculties of Fine Arts and Architecture (and, if I have the time, to some potential future classes at IPTomar and ESE-IPLisboa, two other schools where we may be giving our Calligraphy+Type Design Workshop as well*). It's a new format that is finally reaching critical mass, so it's about time that Serif started supporting it as well. Yes, it's a pretty advanced typography feature, but something tells me it's not as hard to implement as, say, a multi-line composer equivalent, especially if you get some external assistance (and who would be best suited for that than a small, indie developer not unlike Serif, who would also stand to gain from added support for said format?). As I've said time and time again, if anyone from the Serif team wants me to put them in direct contact with Rainer and the team at Glyphs.app, please PM me. We'll likely spend some time together afterwards during the conference that promotes the workshop ( https://10et.esad.pt/en ), just like we did in Faro two years ago, so now is your chance for me to put in a good word for you as well. * See? I did warn Serif that I was probably getting more classes soon and, in fact, shortly after said workshop and conference I'm also giving a lecture on vector-editing-app-to-font-editing-app workflows at IPCA-Barcelos where, once again, AD will be just a sad footnote and Ai the undisputed industry standard (yes, even for undergraduate students at a Polytechnic, where a prosumer package like Affinity could stand to gain more traction; it's not me who's calling the shots and the BFA coordinator who invited me only mentioned Ai, so… I didn't even bother creating .afdesign templates). I didn't want things to turn out this way but, alas, such is life.

Big kudos for the IDML import; I, like many others, did not expect it so soon or so functional from the get-go. That's a very nice addition which makes all the difference for a successful transition to Affinity apps. Now, please fix layers/artboards in both Affinity Designer and Publisher and we may get on the right foot again. So far, I'm indeed liking what I'm seeing (I just imported my latest CV into APub via IDML conversion, and I only got a small error, namely a text box whose contents did not line up with the correct baseline for some reason; still, that's mightily impressive for a very complex document with hundreds of text boxes and objects, as the last two pages of my CV are actually a chronological diagram on a continuous spread), but I won't have any use for either of them until I get universal layers, sorry. The opportunity costs of sinking any more time into this without any guarantee that it will be fixed – and yes, I stand by my choice of words, as I do consider AD to be especially broken and APub only a little less so – are just too great. By the way, only now did I realize, after happily checking that all my custom swatch names carried over and that it's indeed possible to display them as a list, that being able to manually reorder them is very useful. Currently, we're only able to either sort them alphabetically or by colour, but on a DTP project, I can assure you that being able to manually sort them makes things much easier (bonus points if you can extract and/or preserve that information from the IDML file, of course).

You may not, but for a sizeable group of people like myself – in my case, I've been personally working with Macs for 16 years –, I can assure you it does. May I ask, if that's not too personal, if you ever worked with Windows PCs and, if so, when did you do the switch? I did mine back in 2003, when I was still using an old Pentium III box running Windows 98 SE. Back then, even Windows was fairly consistent, but then Mac OS X was even more so. Then, Microsoft got completely out of control and started experimenting with their UI. It's true that Apple did, too, and these latest Marzipan apps and unified toolbars are yet another step in a tricky direction. And, yet, I'd still argue that macOS is still more internally consistent, and third-party Mac-only, Mac-first or “Mac user-loved” are waaaay more consisten with Apple's first-party apps, than Windows and its third- and first-party apps.

On that same note, Affinity apps should, now that they have unified toolbars, adhere to Apple's latest standard for full-screen apps. This is the Finder, and the behaviour I'm hinting at: Finder.mov And this is iTunes, an old and, indeed, soon to be retired app: iTunes.mov And this is Affinity Publisher, which, as you can see, is not using the latest UI/UX standards, even though the very first version was presented when sliding unified toolbars in fullscreen mode were already a thing (also, if you notice, there's a visual bug in the titlebar gradient): Publisher.mov The advantage of using a model akin to that of the Finder should be obvious and self-explanatory, but I'll point it out anyway; even in fullscreen mode, users can make use of Fitt's Law and throw their mouse pointer at the screen edge and still be able to click any of the toolbar's buttons. Conversely, with iTunes' outdated model, Fitt's Law can only be used deliberately for accessing menu items and will, in fact, become a hindrance when trying to hit those small button targets, which are now closer to a trigger point that will obscure them. This is a big usability no-no and while we could give it a pass in iTunes, whose button controls are basically huge and duplicated in our very keyboards, in Affinity apps, not so much. Those are tiny and even closer to the edge than they were before.

And speaking of which, as it warrants a separate post: Separated mode is still broken, as new windows still go behind the toolbars when maximised. Yes, I know this is a longstanding request which I've been hammering Serif about, but I decided that for each new Beta and GM release, I will point out any and all unnecessary inconsistencies with the HIG or otherwise expected and useful behaviour. That is, until they are either fixed or Serif explains us why they are not doing so. You see, these aren't “bugs” that might reasonably slip through; these are wrong decisions that shouldn't have been made in the first place.

What I said has absolutely zero relation with screen size. Said asterisk could and should be displayed in document tabs, just like in Adobe apps, but on that “status” thingy (which, mind you, is a weird name for that non-complaint UI element, with the weird background and without the clickable proxy icon and disclosure triangle for renaming, as “Status” in WIMP-based operating systems is usually the name given to a dynamic info widget displayed near the lower border of each window), it makes zero sense as the dot on the close button is even more visible. In fact, it's easier to find and see, as it will probably be always in the left-hand corner; unless, that is, if you use either Separated Mode (and I don't see why anyone would, cumbersome as it is; and yes, I've just checked it out in this latest beta and it still doesn't work properly) or full-screen mode (which would force you to drag your mouse to display the menu and phantom titlebar).

Oh, and the Index panel is still broken in the Beta, just like it is in the current stable version.

I guess I was a bit too emotional back then, just… because, I guess. Let's just say “for personal reasons” and leave it at that. Now, I'm still emotional because I'm even more fed up, even though I'm in a much happier place overall right now. My relationship with Serif is a bit like “OK boomer”; they want to keep their model that way? Ok, sure, but count me out, and wake me up when it's fixed. It's utterly frustrating having students to recommend this thing to, and… just not being able to bring myself up to do it, as that would be a professional liability (I will mention AD, but just in case someone is using it already, not as an endorsement; in fact, I now actively add caveats if someone answers affirmatively). That's how inadequate I think AD is for real-life graphic design work (not digital illustration; plain vanilla design) right now. What I said before, about my position on this, wasn't an empty threat but a statement of fact, but for those who didn't read it, I'll recap it here. I have, first and foremost, the best interests of my students (and, it should go without saying, my own and my career) at heart, not Serif's. I will never, ever spread false information, and I do want them to succeed, but I don't think it will be in my rather large niche (or at least not yet) and, accordingly, I'm not risking my credibility.

I tried. It's utter crap. New slices don't snap neatly to my pseudo-artboards, and you can't have automatic bleeds+printers' marks with those (only the printers' marks without the bleeds; if you want both, you'll have to do them manually, which is especially damning if your document has spot colours on it). As for adding artboards after the fact, it's even crappier because, guess what, when doing so the entire document will be cropped, so to export a multi-page document I'll have to create an artboard, export, undo, create another one, export with a different name, rinse and repeat. As I've said, both the default working model and the workarounds are so shambolic and cumbersome that I'd rather deal with Adobe instead.

In Adobe apps, all layers are inherently “universal”. They are affected and contain objects document-wide, regardless of which page or artboard you're working on. And artboards in Ai are just “glorified slices” which can drag objects along with them. It seems basic, but there's nothing inherently wrong with that.

On a different note, there's some general blurriness going on in my non-Retina display (this time it's the StudioLink and the context toolbar buttons), as is sometimes common in Affinity apps. Please fix.

I, too, have a few thoughts on the matter. I'm curious about the thought process at Serif behind using a text input field for something which, well, is most definitely not a text input field. Again, guys, quit fiddling with stuff which is very much settled down in Apple's HIG or otherwise firmly entrenched in common practice. Please. I honestly don't want to be proven right when I say you are extremely cavalier as to Apple's UI and UX conventions, but you keep doing so time and time again. I know this is just a beta, but… seriously? How did this pass through QA? macOS already has a method for displaying and editing file names on the title bar, black on light in light mode or white on dark in dark mode, with no extra roundrect backgrounds whatsoever, with the little drop-down arrow to the side; using the equivalent to a search field or Safari's combo bar is definitely not the right way to go about it. The same goes for the convention of putting a dot on the Close button for modified and unsaved files, which goes as far back as Mac OS 10.0. If you want to put an asterisk on each document's tab, fine, but on that field? It's just redundant and, once again, non-standard, IMHO. Thankfully, that title field is removable, as not only is it the wrong design, it also precludes me from displaying as many buttons as before on my 13'' MacBook Pro… If it wasn't, I'd be asking you to make it so.

Forget it. This is a complete shambles. I finally get it. Serif devs' mental model is utterly simplistic and misguided when it comes to UX, modality, etc. Basically, the Designer document model/engine is just a bunch of nested clipping masks. I never took the time to really figure out how it worked, but now that I played around with it a bit, it hit me. It's just boxes within boxes within boxes, with no real regard for current or future usability either on the editing window or the ancillary Layers panel. What saddens me the most is that this state of affairs doesn't come down to any shortcomings in their layering engine per se; it's just due to shambolic UX. While using clipping masks in Ai may be a bit of chore, Adobe absolutely got it right. For real. Even if in-painting – i.e. a different kind of automatic, simplified clipping mask – absolutely had to be a feature, the least Serif could do would be to implement a decent isolation mode for all of those (maybe by double-clicking the actual object and not the corresponding instance in the Layers panel? In a drilling down, “Layer > Group > Object” hierarchy just like in Ai? Or “Artboard > Object” if you were so inclined to isolate an artboard which contained stuff? Basically when double-clicking anything that has nested elements, isolate from there and unclip its contents?) and for artboards as well, not to mention universal layers. They could outright lift the UX from Adobe and no one would bat an eye. Also, the supposedly reduced complexity for creating clipping masks actually makes it much harder to use the Layers panel; you basically have to take an intensive course just to understand where objects will go (under an object, inside an object, as a clipping mask…). And while creating clipping masks is indeed easy, the other targets are way too small and the indentation between nested elements should be at least the same width as each object/layer/artboard's square. It's so frustrating to use that it would always feel inelegant even after years of practice. In closing, why the heck are said objects-turned-into-clipping-masks nested under the objects they clip instead of nesting them? It's completely non-sensical from a hierarchical standpoint… That makes sense for in-painted objects, but completely bass-ackwards for clipping masks and even inconsistent with, love it or hate it, the nesting “Artboard container” model itself, and would prevent a sensible, workable isolation mode. Here's the thing: the Layers panel even lacks internal consistency, let alone consistency with established and sensible standards. The more I play with it, the more convinced I get that Affinity's UX is FUBARed by design and its much needed reset would (will?) anger and confuse a lot of people. That's quite the nasty corner Serif [in-]painted themselves into, and if the ultimate course of action is not doing anything, you'll lose me for good. I'd much rather deal with a monthly subscription and Adobe's crufty codebase than with this. You absolutely need a Steve Jobs-, a Brent Simmons- or a John Gruber-like character to tell you the plain truth about your software, and to communicate with your users and own up to its shortcomings in a no-BS, non-defensive manner. I know I pale in comparison, but I and others try our best here in the forums. I also know you invested a lot of time, money, blood, sweat and tears in getting tools to work and your engine to render stuff right, and your effort is absolutely commendable; but your UX, which should be the heart and soul of any app… ooooh boy. It's so sad that I wish I could laugh instead, except I can't, because I've invested a lot of time in this and a lot of people are eager for you to keep this thing current and relevant. It's sad to think that you could be the next Adobe/Macromedia, and you'll end up instead being the next Corel, i.e. the butt of all professional designer jokes (and, no less, in a world where there is still a Corel, whose software is, incidentally, more usable and well-structured by comparison and even as optimised on the Mac at this point… ).

Hah. You saved that nugget of history, thanks. As for your own comment, I added emphasis. THIS. A MILLION TIMES THIS. I've said this so many times here in the forums. The guys at Serif just don't get it, and what I find even weirder is how the designers they work with still haven't pointed this out to them. It boggles the mind. And all of this comes down to these stupid artboards. I get it, they crop stuff that's inside them so that if you have two side by side, the objects won't bleed into the adjacent one. Sure, if people want to work like that, let them. But if they want to work with universal layers, for Pete's sake let them as well. And if they want to drag an artboard along with universal layer content… well, let them select both the artboard and the objects. THINK, people, THINK. There are better, more sensible ways of working with objects and with a layers list. Presently, Affinity's model isn't the right way. I just figured out another fundamental issue: when you click on a layer on Affinity apps, you're not selecting that layer in a “modal” way, but only selecting its contents. The Affinity Layers palette is basically dumber than a sack of bricks, a simple “shortcut” for selecting stuff, and not modal in any way. It does not in any way influence your workflow, because when you create new objects they will just go to the nearest place in the stack (atop the selected layer if you're working on the pasteboard, or into… some artboard – I didn't even understand the logic or reason behind which if you straddle more than one – when you touch one), but always outside any layer structure you might've created. Basically, in Affinity, layers outside of artboards are indeed glorified groups you create after the fact, not stuff you create beforehand and work inside of. That is indeed their behaviour when you create them inside artboards, but WHY on Earth should't their behaviour be consistent when created outside of artboards? This doesn't feel like a feature, and if Serif developers think it is, they should be ashamed of it. Hey, you know what, screw Designer's broken artboards and layers! I'll start creating an artboard the size of the entire pasteboard and use rectangles as fake artboards – in a fake, “Artboards” layer, no less – and guides for slices instead. Boom, problem solved. Insta-powdered-Affinity-Illustrator-in-a-can: you only have to add some water and stir. The only thing you lose, really, is having a discernible document preview thumbnail/icon and QuickLook view regardless of actual document size… No biggie, as long as you use a sensible naming scheme for your files, and it's not like Affinity's QuickLook plugin respects macOS's multi-page thumbnail icon and QuickLook conventions when opening multi-artboard .afdesign files anyway (instead of presenting you with the first page and selector arrows, it just lumps everything together, which, again, just goes to show the level of respect – or lack thereof – Serif has for Apple's HIG). Oh, and you lose artboard-specific ruler origins, too, but I guess zeroing them every now and then is probably less of a burden than all the crazy shenanigans all the other workarounds entail. I guess I'll even create some template documents so I don't have to do it all by hand every time I need one. As a matter of fact, the easiest way will be to make a single document with all the relevant format sizes, one for paper sizes and another one for screen sizes, and just drag and duplicate the ones I need, à la Apple Lisa with its document-oriented stationery pads (yes, I know my stuff when it comes to UX history). Heh, who said designers weren't resourceful? That's what I call thinking outside the box.

Now, the TL;DR version for Serif devs and management (pardon my bluntness, but that is indeed what you asked me for not too long ago): 1. For me and my students, AD does and will suck until proper universal layer support is implemented. 2. I got fed up of waiting for it. 3. I haven't seen any students of mine using Affinity products this year, which is a bad sign and seems to confirm my earlier suspicions. [Edit: 4. All my considerations about artboards pulling objects into them notwithstanding, I figured a way to avoid that, by disabling “Edit All Layers”; the thing is, it's good for moving already created objects but doesn't work in a real-world setting, either, as AD doesn't respect the OBVIOUS convention of adding new objects to the currently selected layer, even in that segregated, single-layer editing mode – which would make it doubly obvious, especially how it now disables said behaviour, thus forcing one to drag. every. single. new. object. into. the. desired. layer. It boggles the mind how not even this works in a sensible, predictable manner. Why, Serif, WHY? I was actually happy with Designer for once but, once again, I was sorely disappointed soon after. This layer model is completely shambolic. It didn't make sense before, and it makes even less sense now. Fix this thing, please! I feel… offended by it, really. It insults my intelligence.] Here's to me not having to post the exact same thing 12 months from now!

Just a quick edit (to those who reacted, I am sorry for adulterating the content of this post, and to Serif I am doubly sorry for not having checked, you know, the actual functionality): this entire post was originally a big bag of unfairness [Edit: nope, still valid], so I erased it [Edit: maybe I shouldn't have, but I didn't keep a backup] (my comments on universal layers and their philosophical implications are available elsewhere on the forums, anyway [Edit: well, I wasn't wrong about this bit]), but I'm leaving the original post you responded to. In my defence, my criticism was not unfair back when it was still valid [Edit: it's still valid, and still fair]; it didn't work not just as I wished, but as I and many designers actively needed it to in order to be able to work with it at all. Apparently, Serif fixed that, which was one of my biggest gripes with Designer, and in version 1.7.3, no less. [Edit: nooooope] There are likely still some rough edges, as my list of pet peeves was rather long, but I'll refrain from even comment on those before further testing. In closing, I'll tell you what: maybe I could've been nicer about the way I put my criticism to Serif, but I also like to believe that it helped steer them in the right direction [Edit: sadly, it didn't, or at least not yet]. If you're content with the app as is, by all means don't refrain from praising them, but please take a moment to appreciate how criticism by others may also benefit you without you even knowing. One day you may need universal layers, and you never know how soon that day may come.

One would hope that fixing the utterly broken document/pasteboard/layer/artboard/group/object model – from the viewpoint of someone coming from Adobe apps and used to do complex, single-document projects with universal layers, that is – would be one of your priorities for 1.8, which would also explain the outright lack of forward file compatibility (i.e. kind of like older versions of Photoshop can open files created with newer versions as long as they don't make use of feature x), but judging from past experience here in the forums and with beta upon beta and GM upon GM of AD, I'm not holding my breath…

Don't hold your breath on it. Serif's MO fits very well with the overall “Apple-ification” of newcomer Mac devs (you'd never, ever get this kind of attitude from, say, The Omni Group, Panic, Brent Simmons, John Gruber or other longtime Macheads), but without the Snow Leopards and the Mountain Lions and the High Sierras (i.e. not very feature-rich releases meant to sand off the rough edges) to go with it. But, by all means, keep bumping this thread. It's the only way of making Serif know we are unhappy, it seems.

This is way too complicated to describe in detail, and you know I have a penchant to write 300-page essays on simple stuff, so… please just watch the video and tell me what you think. index bugs.mov Basically the Index panel is all over the place, and when it reaches the final state, when the “Options” section disappears altogether, it becomes unusable. And this is completely reproducible, by the way. The only way to restore it is by force-quitting Publisher Beta, and I haven't even tried quitting and restarting it properly out of fear that the Index panel might become corrupted for good and force me to trash Publisher's preferences. I will try making a backup of those and see if a soft relaunch does the trick, though. Edit: I just did, and it seems a soft relaunch does indeed do the trick. Still, while it's good that the release version doesn't suffer from this bug and this is a beta, it's very broken and may preclude those users who might want to use it to avoid those print and export bugs from doing so if they need this feature.