JGD
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Posts posted by JGD
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This is exactly why I hope they never port. I chose OS X for a reason and never want to go back to windows. Serif already has windows products with their own codebase and branding, keep them that way. If they want to reuse algorithms and low level stuff by all means (a smart business decision) but keep them separate.
Well, I personally don't get what this fuss with porting is all about… First of all, Windows ports are essential for Affinity so that it becomes the industry standard and Adobe CS/CC alternative it deserves to be, at least in the Design/Photography/DTP market.
Technically, a port, done right, can easily offer a great experience, as long as the UI conventions specific to the target OS are respected. If you look at the Studio UI, you'll see that most of it is made up of 100% native (albeit dark-tinted) OS X UI widgets but, if you think about it, Windows and OS X being both WIMP GUIs that took a lot of ideas from each other over the years, porting the Studio to Windows (especially Windows 10, which is as flat as the latest versions of OS X and, in fact, initiated that trend with Metro in the first place) wouldn't be *that* difficult.
Sure, some reshuffling would be in order (the obvious being moving the menu bar and window widgets to their default places in Windows, and that would be an easy task as I wouldn't see that stupid ribbon thing making any sense for a creative app anyway), but it would be mostly limited to cosmetic changes like button, widget (drop-down menus, disclosure triangles, lists…) and scroll bar shapes.
As for code optimization, well… Getting its performance up to snuff would be hard, but I distinctively remember reading here in the forums or maybe in Affinity Review that the engine was written mostly in C and was, thus, inherently portable. Add to that the experience Serif developers already have with Windows apps, and it suddenly looks quite feasible, actually.
The only problem would be keeping up the feature parity between both versions, especially with the betas… And as for the forums? Well, the user- and post-count would skyrocket (I mean, a lot of the professional creative market is already using Macs, but Affinity being as affordable as it is, it could attract a lot of honest but budget-constrained PC users who would otherwise pirate Adobe CC – coming from a crisis-sruck EU country I personally know a lot of them and would never help them pirate Serif apps as a matter of principle) and they would be twice as confusing. Would they be segregated by OS? Would there be feature-specific sub-forums encompassing both OSes? Or would everything be jumbled together, with the inherent and tacit requirement that all users specify their OS platform when reporting issues (much like they already do when it comes to the OS version)?
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AD is positioned as a professional app. Please don’t use the wrong quotation marks. “Farbverteilungen” is not the proper translation.
As a typography student, I can totally feel your pain. I always like to say, on a related subject, that a prime is not an apostrophe is not a single right quote, and these are the kinds of nits we like to pick. ;) Robert Bringhurst, which I clearly remember quoting (or at least suggesting as *the* best reference for all things typography, either here or on a private e-mail to Serif) some time in the past, will concur if asked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Typographic_Style
Since you did not specify it, and to save the devs/translators the trouble of researching that, for reference, the german (de, not de-ch) quotation marks are these: „…“
I know, they look weird as hell to the untrained, non-german eye, but that's just the way they are. By the way, you can type them by pressing Option+Shift+W and Option+[ (on a UK ISO keyboard, at least).
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Correct. I think per-colour is more flexible. You can use overprinting colours on some objects and non-overprinting on others.
This is actually a great idea… And if you manage to add some graphic marker to overprinting colour swatches, like the cut corner and the dotted cut corner (which, btw, would be a welcome addition to spot colours, too) used by Adobe, that would make it even more obvious…
That shouldn't, however, obviate the need for some sort of preflight panel, especially on Publisher, but would make it extremely easy to replace a specific colour with an overprinting one and vice-versa ine one fell swoop.
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I'm getting consistent crashes when activating fonts via FontExplorerX Pro. This started with the last 2 betas :unsure:
Also if I activate a font while AD is running, then go to Prefs and Reset Fonts, AD doesn't recognize the newly activated fonts... :(
Have the ways in which font loading is handled changed with El Cap?
Well… I'm also running FEX Pro and, and first, it didn't seem to be an issue here (I am not getting the crashes you speak of, at least). I get a spinning beach ball for a few seconds, but fonts appear and disappear from the drop-down menu, and render properly on the list (when deactivated, they will still appear on the topmost, “recents” section, albeit rendered temporarily in San Francisco, which is pretty much standard behaviour).
However, the text itself will not update properly, and “reset fonts” will not work, as you said. :\
By the way, now that you brought it up, I have to ask: can we expect FEX Pro plugins for Affinity apps in the future? And would those be provided by you or by Monotype? This is just ignorance on my part, I have no idea where they come from, I only know that they're available from the Plugins panel…
This would be an absolute must for going head to head with Adobe and Quark, IMHO…
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I love the fact that the Character/Paragraph panel bug that was causing crashes is gone in Affinity Photo at least, so I'm guessing that Designer should be in the clear, too… Great work from the team, and I can't thank Andrew Tang enough for his patience and dedication! :D
The only problem is… I've downloaded the AD Beta .dmg twice already, and I got that dreadful “damaged application; must trash it” warning from the Finder. Could this be some sort of issue with your AWS server? :\
Oh, by the way, the Finder doesn't detect any errors during the .dmg checking stage, which makes it even more weird. Certainly, if it was corrupted, it shouldn't pass that test at all, right?
[Edit: nevermind. I searched the fourms and found this thread: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/4866-cannot-download-beta-due-to-damaged-file/
I should've guessed that something could be amiss with Gatekeeper – maybe there's an issue with your certificate? – so, like the last poster, I turned it off for the first run and, lo and behold, it opens just fine now… And yes, the bug is gone! ;) ]
[Edit #2: Holy cr*p, what a pleasant surprise! Affinity now puts my floating panels on the secondary screen where they belong when my iMac wakes from sleep! Thanks guys, this wasn't even a critical bug, but talk about a quick turnaround… :D Also: Serif – 1, Adobe – 0 ^^ ]
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Well, I was so focused on the Character panel bug (which Andrew Tang has already pinpointed, yay!) that I totally forgot I've been itching to ask you this, which is totally apropos:
I know Dave has already stated this is currently unsupported, but is it even remotely possible that you may add monotone/duotone/etc. spot colour (Pantone) gradients that separate properly into their respective printing plates (instead of being converted to CMYK straight away like Adobe apps often did but, apparently, no longer do as long as you keep them in vector form) in Affinity v.1, along with all the whizbang features that are coming in the next beta?
That would be HUGE. And I just checked AI and was… I won't say “pleasantly”, because I want to steer away from it ASAP, but rather bittersweetly surprised to see that it actually does that properly. And since I've been using gradients a lot lately… It would be a bummer if I had to keep using AI just to output print jobs. Judging from the current trends in graphic design, I'm willing to bet I'm not alone in this wish. ;)
Also, I see that one of my requests, custom application and document palettes, was already implemented, which is great! My bad, it seems I spoke too soon…They are, however, still lacking all the other abilities I mentioned (having multiple floating palettes open concurrently, drag'n'drop swatch management, etc.), the swatch size is not customizable in either grid or list view (which would be really handy for people who have larger or secondary screens) and spot colour names are, rather unfortunately, lost when adding their swatches to a custom palette.
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We aren't seeing the same issues of here. Can you check the console app the next time you make this happen and let us know what it reports for Designer.
Hi Andrew,
I still haven't tried your suggestion, but I did try replicating the bug on my MacBook, on a fresh user account; I couldn't, so it definitely must be something common to both my Macs' main user accounts (some startup item/daemon/driver/setting, perhaps?). Also, both the crashes and crash loop are related to the Character and/or Paragraph tabs, so maybe there's a common cause there. Since those deal with font rendering, I am suspecting that FontExplorer X Pro might be the culprit… [Edit: It wasn't, and I can't seem to find it].
I will try messing around with my settings a bit on both accounts, to see if I can pinpoint what's causing the issues, and will send you my console logs anyway. [Edit: Nope, I have no idea what's wrong… If you'd be so kind to provide me with a support e-mail, I'll send you my crash logs right away].
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I can dock and undock Character and Paragraph palette without any problem.
Well, I can't do it without triggering a crash on two different Macs. It happened on the previous beta under Yosemite, and on the current one under El Capitan.
It could conceivably be caused by some third party software or something, so I'll try running the betas on a guest account or under Safe Mode.
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Loving the Pantone support! :D
By the way, will there be a way to load floating palettes à la AI, or having at least a “Custom” palette (empty or default, but on the sparse side) in the swatches panel? Also, dragging swatches around would be a very practical and intuitive way to manage your own custom document palette, instead of always having to press the “Add current fill to palette button”. That always forces you to create a new object or change the colour of an existing object in order to add a colour to a palette (I am using the “Greys” palette as a starting point, seeing it is the smallest), which is not very practical nor intuitive.
Also, while on the subject of panels, you still haven't corrected the crashing bugs on the Studio found in the last beta. Sometimes, dragging some tabs (can't remember which, sorry) to and from the docked panels will crash the app(s) (Photo is also affected), undocking specifically the Character and Paragraph tabs individually still crashes the app(s) 100% of the time, and having them opened and forcefully floating (by undocking their whole group and removing the remaining tabs) upon exit will also always send the app(s) into the crash loop I mentioned before.
I am aware that this is a beta and not at all intended for production work, but panels (especially those two) and panel customization (including having floating panels in smaller computers like the extremely popular 13'' MacBook) are extremely important for a big number of designers. Having them work properly would enable us to acually work with the betas for the time being without risking too much…
Can you provide an ETA for a fix (not necessarily on a definite timescale, but the target version)? Maybe on the next beta, I'm hoping? It is a rather egregious and catastrophic bug, after all… Without true workspace/Studio export/import support (calling it Studio instead of workspace would be a wise branding choice), it's a real bummer forgetting to close those two floating panels before exiting and having to reset and customize the whole Studio all over again. :\
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Hi JGD,
Just close the application then click to run it up again and immediately hold down Ctrl - this brings up a dialog that allows you to reset everything. Select all and reset and it should be fixed. I don't know why you've encountered these problems though, so we need to figure it out.... sorry :(
Matt
Ooooh… so *that's* the hard-reset shortcut. Okay, I'll be sure to try that out and I'll let you know how it went! :)
Edit: Yes, it works like a charm. I like this way better than Adobe's “scorched earth” reset… Having fine-grain control over exactly which preferences are reset is a big plus, IMHO.
As for the floating Character and Paragraph panel crash loop, it's definitely there, and is always reproducible (both on Designer and Photo). Until the next Beta, I'll be sure to toggle them on a need-to basis, and not to forget about closing them before quitting the Betas… I guess that's the price of staying on the bleeding edge, right? ;)
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Update #3: After erasing both Library containers (the Beta one and the MAS release one), restoring the Beta to v1.3.5.2 and rebooting, the Preferences were responsive again. Full of confidence, I decided to, once again, rearrange the panels to my liking. Upon restarting, to check whether the preferences stuck or not, I got v1.3.5.2 (not the most recent one) trapped in that loop as well, with the exact same look as in the screenshot.
Guys, this is a terrible user experience, even for Beta testers. You absolutely MUST implement a Preferences/Studio hard-reset of some sort to fix this kind of mess (yes, do take a page from Adobe's playbook if you have to; even if they do use an obscure and convoluted key combination, the fact is that it saved me and my colleagues a lot of trouble many times in the past). I'm going crazy here!!
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Update #2: I've restored the Library container from the 20h snapshot, way before even installing the new beta, and I've got AD Beta stuck in that loop again (yes, with the pallettes in the same position as in that screenshot). Since Time Machine doesn't actually do time travel, and I don't expect it to be meddling with older backups, either, it couldn't have retroactively pushed the latest changes to that particular snapshot.
Therefore, Troubleshooting 101 tells me that the pallette position must be stored elsewhere in my system and is probably what's wreaking havoc. Could you give me some pointers as to where it is, so I can reset it and sort out this mess?
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Ok, guys, HELP!!!
AD Beta is now utterly stuck when it comes to preferences. They produce no immediate effect (Gamma UI and Background Grey Level, for instance), and they don't stick (both the main preferences and the panel positions). Changing UI language doesn't work either.
The only thing I did was trash the com.seriflabs.affinitydesigner.beta container in ~/Library/Containers. I mean, that should be the new method of resetting MAS apps' preferences, right?
I am so confused right now. I thought this should be as easy as trashing .plists. So much for being a savvy Mac user… :angry:
Anyway, I'll try and restore the preferences from the last beta via Time Machine and will keep you posted.
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Ouch. You have some massive Studio bugs to iron out.
When docking some of the panels, like Brushes, the app crashes. It did so, I believe, on the last beta as well.Now, when undocking the Character panel separator, the app also crashes (this one, unlike the other, I could reproduce 100% of the time). So, what did I come up with? Instead of undocking it individually, I undocked its containing group altogether (that actually worked) and undocked the remaining separators until I only had the Character panel floating (which was my intent).
Guess what, now I got AD stuck in a loop; all my heretofore docked panels now appear floating a bit to the left of the center of the screen when opening AD (check the enclosed screenshot:
), and it crashes a few seconds afterwards. Great, off I go about resetting its preferences… :\
(I should add that I am testing the pt-BR localisation, and that the Character and Paragraph panels do seem to be untranslated yet, by the way…) -
Add me to the list of people who noticed it.
As I mentioned in the main thread on the beta, the custom centre appears to snap, but once you let go of the mouse, it will fall on wherever the cursor was.
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The snapping currently only snaps to other objects. Just need to wire it up to snap to itself - won't take a few minutes so don't panic :)
I noticed that too but hadn't yet gotten around to mentioning it here, thanks for addressing it. :)
By the way, if you add guidelines, the custom rotation centre will apparently snap to them, but will actually be off by a few pixels once you let go of the mouse (i.e. it will snap to where mouse pointer actually is when you let go of it).
By the way, since we're talking about snapping, do you reckon it could be possible, as I suggested many months ago, to snap an object to itself (meaning, to a ghost of itself on its original position or vice-versa – as in Adobe programs, only with reduced opacity fill and maybe opaque outlines in both cases instead of those horrible, aliased outlines they still use – with a toggle on preferences) when dragging or duplicate-dragging by option-clicking?
Having drag operations be a WYSIWYG thing may be great for artistic stuff, but that would be an absolute timesaver when doing geometric stuff, such as patterns or typography, without having to be constrained to specific grids. Actually, I'd venture to say that even for composition purposes, being able to do before/after comparisons mid-drag instead of having to constantly Undo/Redo is actually very useful.
Also, since you mentioned snapping the centre to the object itself, for the centre to be easily resettable, the best way would be to always have a default centre point for all objects/selections visible, which still seems to be missing and would be very useful for snapping purposes as well; the fact that there's already a custom centre point should make that also easily implementable, I'm guessing.
While I'm at it, can you comment on the feasibility of an algorithm to calculate and display an actual centroid instead of the strictly orthogonal and, therefore, sometimes useless bounding box centre (again, displaying one or the other could be selectable, preferably on a more prominent place on the UI like the contextual toolbar)?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centroid
This would *really* give Affinity a leg up over the competition, especially as a possible default centre point for rotation operations or snapping of both individual objects and groups, IMHO. Just imagine how much cooler and easier working with polygons and isometric grids would be with such a feature…
I know this isn't the proper thread for feature requests and I'll probably make them again in the appropriate channel, but I just couldn't resist mentioning them as they seemed so apropos.
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Hi!
I had the exact same question… I decided to install El Capitan Beta 6 on an external drive, just to test stuff.
That includes, obviously, Affinity apps, both the MAS and the Beta versions. So I figured that I could just go to the preferences folder, but I couldn't seem to find them…
Well, after some searching around, I did. They are housed in ~/Library/Containers. I just copied the four folders pertaining to Affinity apps, and voilá! Everything works fine with my previous settings… Though an export/import function, maybe like the Workspace functionality offered by Adobe, and/or even preference-syncing through iCloud would be welcome additions. ;)
Btw, does this strange new location have anything to do with MAS app sandboxing? I found it interesting that said “containers” contained full replicas, in the form of aliases, of the Library folder…
I would, however, advise you against mucking around that folder… Doesn't Affinity have its own shortcut, à lá Shift+Ctrl+Alt+Opt+click, to reset app preferences on app launch?
Anyway, good luck to FCB and thanks in advance to the devs for that info, it can come in handy!
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I am loving the character and paragraph palettes!
But I have a few issues to point out…
the kerning function behaves strangely on the new Character panel. Instead of changing the kerning between the two glyphs the cursor is set between, changing the value changes the whole word … kerning behaves like tracking, so to say … :unsure:
First up, I can absolutely reproduce this one. Interestingly, using the Opt+arrow shortcuts will adjust kerning correctly without affecting the adjacent characters…
Secondly: both palettes are a bit less compact than Adobe's, though I can certainly live with that. And I can appreciate how convenient and obvious the selectively collapsible subcategories are, compared with the random and unintuitive “two/three/n stages” method of revealing information by clicking on that cryptic, microscopic double-arrow tab button used by Adobe. It may not be the most space-saving layout, but it's certainly more elegant, so good call, I say! It kind of reminds me of Macromedia's palettes, actually. ;)
As for the “list” view, or list box for Tab Stops… Well, that may be a bit too much on the compact side. I will certainly miss Adobe's floating tab panel (though I always had to edit them manually anyway, as I didn't have much freedom when picking values by clicking the ruler). If you do keep this interface, there are two or three things you should definitely add, plus a bugfix:
A way to see which kind of tab each one is, directly from the list;
A way to fully edit each tab (instead of just allowing you to change its value)… Maybe by, upon double-clicking the tab on the list, allowing you to edit all parameters and change the “add new tab stop” button into a “commit changes” button?;
Some kind of visible feedback, right in the text frame itself by means of a “ghost guideline” (not unlike Adobe's apps already do), when adding/editing each tab (though having a full-fledged, dedicated tab panel would be the best choice anyway);
And, finally, a fix for a bug I found in this current tab list box. At present it isn't scrollable at all with mouse gestures (nope, I tried, and nothing happens, I don't even get a scroll bar). If you click and drag on the list items themselves you can actually scroll below/above the fold (and you also can, then, grab the corresponding scroll bar – which is, by default and just like all of its peers, invisible to multi-touch pointing device users until they trigger a scroll operation, as you know), but that is rather unintuitive.
Oh, and by the way, said listbox is not very visible. The only giveaway for me was OS X's default striped pattern for list backgrounds, but I'm not really sure if that is enough… Maybe there should be at least a line separating the list from the right side of the panel? Or maybe the striped pattern should have a bit more contrast?
Anyway, bring on multiple artboards, and I will be a much happier camper! I may soon start transitioning to AD as a first choice for most of my jobs, instead of just the off gradient stuff I've been using it for until now. :)
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Just bought it! :D
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I was joking, of course! I thought that was clear.
Oh… did you mean a *special* discount for beta testers? ;)
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I seem to recall something a while back that implied there may be a discount for the beta testers ;) (or perhaps the recollection is a combination of wishful thinking and age-related behaviour).
I am pretty sure that, much like what happened with the Designer launch, there will be a discount for everyone – not just beta testers! – for a few days… A week, 10, 15 days?
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The latest ones are a marked improvement over the first three versions (original, new without gradients and new with the simpler gradients).
Using two-tone/hue gradients (and not just between two shades of the same hue), from the original logos and splash screens, no less, make them more enticing logos to look at, more recognizable in relation to the older versions (you just have to look at it right next to the Designer's [MAS version] logo on the dock, the resemblence is definitely there) and a piece of advertising to Serif's superb gradient engine. It actually makes the interim version's gradients look amateurish by comparison.
As for readability and iconography: I think you nailed it. The interim Designer logo was too abstract, IMHO. It did look a bit too much like two mountains… The pencil tip is one of those cool “ah-ha, clever!” features that will probably go unnoticed on daily use, but will definitely stand out on your marketing materials, website and MAS page. And it is also a nod, as has been suggested here already, to your novel corner tool.
Overall a nice identity… I am still not digging the weird shape on the back (which, as I've said earlier on Twitter, is probably more of a function of brand equity management than anything else), but it is more subdued and colourful at the same time (two apparently opposing goals, but hey, if it works, great). Alas, I also miss the möbius strip… Maybe you can go for a cleaner look still on V.2 and resurrect that element, too? I give it a solid 8/10 for the two icons you've shown as of now.
As for Publisher: may I suggest something a bit more recognizable and iconic, like the classic folded corner on pages? I mean, since you are using an isometric grid, why not make the most of it and make an isometric projection? It wouldn't look too bad, and it could certainly silence the “way too abstract” camp. ;)
On the other hand, you could easily draw the inner corner of a folded booklet, loosely based on the new Affinity Designer icon, and giving further significance to the diagonal line that shoots out of the logo, by equating it to a spine… Also, it would be a nod to the möbius strip theme, too. Check out my quick and dirty rendering:… or why not even a combination of both ideas, by folding the upper vertex of the booklet, which would play nicely along the equilateral triangles theme? By keeping the top triangle, you are already implying that Publisher not only works with typography, but is best suited for multiple page layouts… Like so:
Aaaaand… while you're at it, and since Photo already has a big gaping hole in the middle of the icon, why not chop off a triangle from Publisher's icon as well and reinforce the booklet's proportions, while further reinforcing the möbius strip theme?
Food for thought… :)
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Hi guys!
I just noticed, after all these months, that the Arrange pane toolbar button is lacking a feature that visually distinguishes it further from its simpler counterparts than just by its blue colouring; maybe a down-facing arrow, like the one at the right of the snapping button (except maybe smaller and closer to the icon itself, seeing that it would be integrated into the button) could do the trick?
Digital Asset Manager - a.s.a.p.
in Feedback for the V1 Affinity Suite of Products
Posted
You know what, I don't really agree with you… If you consider my earlier post, going the “as native as possible” route is the way to go to keep it simple development-wise.
If devs focus mainly on features and always use the native UI toolbox offered by the target OS SDK instead of doing those crappy “UI branding” shenanigans Microsoft and Adobe enjoy so much, sure, the learning curve will be a bit steeper for OS switchers (be they temporary or permanent) but the apps will always look as native as possible, regardless of which OS you're running them in (and regardless of specific OS versions; don't forget those stupid “pseudo-native” widgets both Microsoft and Adobe – and even Apple, in the ever-egregious iTunes – also use, which stand out against more recent or even older versions of the OS).
And that's a win for everybody, IMHO.