JGD
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Posts posted by JGD
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So yep, here we are again.
When discussing Power Duplication with another user, I tried recreating the effect I did on this old poster of mine, and ran into some limitations:
My attempted workflow went as follows (and looked like this right before I performed the last step):
• I created a circle;
• Snapped a square to it;
• Duplicated the square by pressing Command+J;
• Used the Point Transformation Tool to set the square's point atop the circle's centre point;
• Rotated the square x degrees;
• Finally pressed Command+J again, fully expecting Designer to create another duplicate, offset another x degrees centred on the same point.
This is what I expected:
This is what I got:
So… the new duplicate didn't budge, even though Command+J is very much still a valid shortcut when the Point Transformation Tool is active.
I guess the chain broke, and Designer can only make sense of either manual, mouse-driven drag operations, or transformations done by adding/subtracting X and/or Y coordinates or rotation values in the non-contextual state of the Transform panel, only when the Move Tool is selected.
And then I realised: Serif could very well emulate Adobe's “Transform again” and “Copy” functions on this Point Transformation Tool contextual state of the Transform panel (or, since this opens a bit of an UX can of worms for multiple transform operations at the same time, as it would be hard for the user to know exactly which actions would be repeated, create a modal dialog similar to this under Layer > Transform), as there's already a large, blank space on there already. Easy-peasy, mac-and-cheesy:
But I guess that for single, discrete actions, it might just work and be usable, as these buttons would only repeat the last action performed on the panel; let's see how it might behave:
• Press “Transform Again” before committing to that “30°” value by pressing Return or Tab or selecting another field with the mouse, and boom, Designer allows you to indefinitely rotate the thing by 30° increments without the value ever going away (obviously, if you commited to the value or selected a different field with the mouse, the chain should be broken for consistency and predictability);
• Press “Duplicate”, and boom, you get the same behaviour, except with a nice trail of objects behind it;
• Press “Command+J” with a value inserted into any of those fields and boom, you get the exact same behaviour as pressing “Duplicate”.
Simple enough? This is a suggestion in addition to fixing the Power Duplication feature, in its current “voodoo-like” implementation (that's the term I'm going for henceforth, deal with it
), when using the Point Transformation Tool. I'm just not filing the limitation I just described as a separate bug report, for basic economy of writing (uhh, what a concept! ), but if you'd rather have me do that, I can deliver.
You see, even in its current, functional state when used with the regular Move Tool, this feature is just not very discoverable. I know there are tutorials explaining how the feature works, but currently it feels more like a game cheat code than anything else.
And yes, I did try it, and even when it worked as advertised, I found it really cumbersome and finicky. If the aforementioned bug and lack of discoverability weren't damning enough, it's not very forgiving of mistakes, since if you switch tools midway during an operation, the automation chain will immediately break. Yes, it will break even if you don't do anything with the other tool and revert to the Move Tool, which means a single, inadvertent key press will force you to undo any transformations you did and the original duplication task, and you'll then have to start all over from the beginning. So perhaps a modal solution would be better suited for more complex, precision tasks like this one I've tried to demonstrate here.
It should be reasonable, then and IMHO, to expect at least a basic fix for Power Duplication feature when working with the Point Transformation Tool in v.1.7.x or 1.8, and the full-blown modal dialog thingy (perhaps even with “Preview” functionality like in Ai) by v.2 or later… leaving this non-modal, contextual and more limited incarnation I'm proposing right now for intermediate tasks as a v.1.9-ish thing. What are your thoughts on the matter?
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2 hours ago, JGD said:
Yeah, this does the trick, and though it's a tad less visual than Ai's Transform dialog (in the way that you can tweak the duplicate operation and see a preview on that one), but as long as you plan your transformation ahead,
it should allow one to do everything I've just shown, and should at least help with the striped patterns I demoed as well.Wrong, spoke too soon! I'm quoting myself because adding this comment to the earlier post would make it even more bloated, and also because this will be the starting point for a new bug reporting/feature suggestion thread (in fact, don't be surprised if I outright excise this entire post from this thread and cross-link them instead to keep things simpler). I tried doing radial transformations just like the ones in that “APNUG” poster, using Command+J, the Point Transform Tool to set the centre using a circle's centrepoint as a guide, and manually inputting the angle values, and guess what, somewhere along the chain Designer becomes amnesiac and the Power Duplication falls completely apart.
That's kinda sad, right now that I was half-excited about these nifty tools, but at least it's a start and hopefully the guys at Serif can fix this. Or, you know, they could [also?] add two little “Repeat” and “Duplicate” buttons to the Transform panel when the Point Transform tool is selected (the entire ∆X, ∆Y and ∆R fields already set a precedent for a modal and very intuitive and discoverable dialog on which those buttons would fit like a glove; it would be a “Power Power Duplicate tool for dummies”, if you will, and besides, the panel already has some blank space in that state).
Once again, choice and redundancy aren't inherently bad, if they're added with parsimony; the regular Power Duplicate feature would be just fine for quick and dirty tasks, done by hand (with ghosts or no ghosts, but I'm obviously biased towards them); and the Point Transform Tool and its modified Transform panel in tandem would be awesome for more advanced, fine-controlled operations. And yes, the latter option might even make the bug/limitation I just pointed to a complete non-issue (or even a good thing, as it was a rather convoluted workflow) if it were to remain unfixed/unaddressed.
Edit: it's up in a dedicated post now. If you wish to discuss that bug/feature, please do so there.
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On 7/25/2019 at 8:55 AM, CLC said:
Hi @JGD
In this mentioned case, using Transform Feature in Illustrator would do the same trick in seconds (with optional instant preview if you check the Preview tickbox). Image courtesy of webdesign.org.
As you can see below, the Power Duplicate feature in Designer can handle the trick as well, in matter of seconds, see following .gif (sorry, 5 mb), so maybe it's a workflow issue instead in this case?
Don't get me wrong, I get your point and agree that the Ghost Feature would be a very nice and attractive addition (as your hexagon example below clearly depicts).
Have a nice day.
Now, this is interesting.
It's nice that you mentioned Ai's Transform dialog; I'm well acquainted with that beast, and it works great for complex stuff. Indeed, I used it before in the branding I did for some medical events, at this… medical event company I worked for (all the events I worked on range from the “XXV Congresso Nacional de Coloproctologia” [26/27 Nov. 2015] and the “Curso Básico de Colposcopia” [07/08 Nov. 2014], though I didn't have much control over some of the ones with recurrent identities, as you might realise, as the company was extremely conservative and so were some of its clients).
This one was the second one I did, and mostly a scale job:
Here, I basically did an isometrically-aligned sample by hand (three or four rows, IIRC), which I then copied using this manual snapping workflow which, yes, is arguably a bit cumbersome. But then I proceeded to transform each object, row by row, from a centre, 100% referential (a row around the first third line), into ever smaller and ever bigger percentages.
Hah, back then I was young and stupid, and wasn't even wise enough to use symbols (resulting in *massive* files and my colleagues converting the vector background into a horrid, pixelated mess). :facepalm:
But after working there for almost a year, I came up with this:
Here, each of the background shapes is indeed a symbol, and I would never consider doing this transformation by hand. So I basically did a base ring via rotation and duplication, then made it into a symbol itself (can you say symbolception?
), and then duplicated it consecutively, except rotated by a fraction in every other operation so it would be staggered, and scaled up towards the outside and down towards the centre in every operation.
To say that I know how to duplicate stuff procedurally and achieve decent effects in rigorous fashion is a bit of an understatement. I have the portfolio to prove it, and if and when I choose to do so manually is because I just figured that the shape or pattern I want to make is so basic that I don't even want to bother with thinking in numbers and pressing buttons. Sometimes I just wanna grab my tools, press some modifier keys and do it visually (or, dare I say it, WYSIWYG-y). Is that too much to ask? Can't I choose the way I'll use my brain and my hands to perform something I came up with in my head?
Anyway, maybe the Power Duplication feature achieves just that. Once I get a decent connection and can actually watch video tutorials, I'll be all over those, I promise.[Edit #1: It's a good thing that Serif's tutorial video player allows you to knock it down all the way to 560p and that all the tourists are probably in bed now.
]
Yeah, this does the trick, and though it's a tad less visual than Ai's Transform dialog (in the way that you can tweak the duplicate operation and see a preview on that one), but as long as you plan your transformation ahead,
it should allow one to do everything I've just shown, and should at least help with the striped patterns I demoed as well.[Edit #2: Not really; please check my next post for an explanation.]
However, I just tried it with these, and I realised that unless I'm missing something, I still need the ghosting and self-snapping feature to use the ghost to set the spacing to its own width without having to add extraneous objects that I then have to delete (I don't care that Serif's team feels that as an acceptable compromise; I don't, and I will stand my ground, as I do indeed use this all the time, yes), so… It's only a partial solution (that, arguably, does make things feel a bit easier, even considering the exponential feature of my technique, as you can just press and hold Command+J and let Designer do its thing; I also guess that if you were to combine both methods, Power Duplicate could become crazy fast, but then we'd be entering into pattern creation territory and would be better served with a dedicated tool for just that).
There is one thing I'm just not feeling with this tool: discoverability (or its lack thereof). It feels like some weird, power-user voodoo (I mean, I can do those, sure), whereas Adobe's, while more old-school and heavy, is at least completely “in-your-face” when you open those dialogs.
I know, I know, RTFM, and you can't fault Serif for not posting this on a video tutorial, and can indeed fault me for not having watched it before. But the truth of the matter remains that I found out about this on my own in Ai probably some years before doing those “SPA” and “APNUG” posters, whereas I wouldn't have found this Power Duplication feature [it even has “Power” in its name…!] in Designer in a long, long time (kind of like those cheat codes in Nintendo games; not only would it be hard to find, I might but at least many users would likely not understand the mechanics thereof on their own and be able to reproduce it).
And as for consistency/reliability…? Maybe I'm just tired, but I'd swear that I tried it once and it didn't work, and then I tried it again and it did. I'll have to test it further to check for bugs, definitely.
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On 7/25/2019 at 11:15 AM, Ben said:
Oh, and here's another using the Point Transform Tool....
No ghost, but that would maybe save 0.5 seconds.
Interesting. But there's a lot to unpack here.
Firstly: this does not solve my issue. The fact that you have to duplicate the object and then delete the original doesn't address my main complaint in any way, shape or form. That's where the biggest waste of time lies. And once you see other demos where selecting wasteful objects becomes more cumbersome, you'll see just how longer it takes. So I'd kindly suggest you don't waste your and my time either, looking for workarounds that won't solve my issue, regardless of how bad it might be.
Secondly, the Point Transform Tool betrays an expectation of coherence; you really have to copy Adobe's approach here when it comes to polygons…
So, you're meaning to tell me that the Node tool can't select the hexagon's nodes without first converting them to curves, but the Point Transform Tool can? Well, that's neat and all, in the sense that it's a neat workaround for another issue which I mentioned before and was about to address in a separate thread (and maybe I will, with… an extended version of your own demo, I guess?), but it introduces inconsistency where it really isn't desirable or even necessary.
See how Adobe solved it: all polygons' nodes are fully selectable and editable with the Direct Selection Tool (their equivalent to the node tool), but once you edit the number of sides in any way, poof, they go back to being regular. That's a very nice “having-your-cake-and-eating-it-too” approach to special shapes.
In Affinity Designer, I'm basically forced to use a different tool, with a different purpose, and with a more cumbersome modifier key combination, to achieve something that the Node Tool can do otherwise with any other kind of curve object (even though that “default” approach of sorts forces me to always press Command+A after switching my tool, whereas in Ai I can just be happily working with the Selection Tool – their equivalent to the Move tool – and temporarily press Command before selecting a node, because when the tool switches to Direct Selection, all nodes are selected by default; one less keyboard shortcut multiplied by several thousand times a day adds up very quickly).
You see, when I tell you that even that old dog Ai can really be more elegant (*gasp*!) and easier to use (*double gasp*!) than Designer in some use cases, I absolutely have the data and the prior experience to back that up. I'll be showing just that in a dedicated demo, in another post, later on when I get a decent connection.
Oh, I forgot to address this point in particular in my earlier post:
Quotehow often do you actually do these things????
All. The. Time. And I'm very quick at it, courtesy of Ai's “old” ways. Maybe there are more efficient ways of doing it in Designer (and even in Ai, and I've used them extensively in some projects, especially more complex stuff like radial transformations, as you'll soon see in my next post), and maybe they are contained in those videos I can't load. But if I'm unimpressed, yep, expect more demos. Heck, at this point, I think I should just record myself whenever I fire up Ai and make a supercut of all the relevant parts.
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On 7/25/2019 at 10:24 AM, Ben said:
@JGD ok - you failed to understand "concise", and I think you are underestimating our ability to understand things. Anyway....
I didn't fail to understand; I know full well what being concise is (and if you check some other posts you'll see that depending on the subject, I can be very much so). I just can't explain it any more concisely, threw in the towel and went about my merry business, sorry. Still trying my best, though.
And if you must, as I've said before you can just watch the videos and be done with it. It's probably quicker and less mentally taxing than reading stuff anyway.
On 7/25/2019 at 10:24 AM, Ben said:1) This is a completely pointless usage example - and exactly what I thought you were trying to describe anyway, and illustrates entirely the point I was making. Why would you ever need to move an object relative to itself in complete isolation? If there are no other reference points in your document, that you can also snap to, and you are not cloning, how will it ever matter where the object used to be? As I already said, I completely understand the mechanics of this, but totally disagree that there is ANY justification with this usage example alone.
Is it though? It's a way of working. And yes, maybe this was not the best example, but the one with the hexagon? Yes. There are practical applications for that, make no doubt about it. And I'm not just telling you that “you'll have to trust me on that”; once I find better use cases I will demo them as concisely as I can. I think that should be pretty much established by now.
Please don't dissmiss or second-guess your users so much. Maybe I'm not working with Designer in the most optimal way, but that doesn't make the use cases pointless per se. It's my (and potentially other users') work and workflows you're talking about, bear that in mind.
On 7/25/2019 at 10:24 AM, Ben said:2) Have you not seen our Point Transform Tool? Minus the ghost position, it does exactly the thing you are trying to do - transforms a object with snapping referenced from geometry points. Bingo - turns out we already thought of this one. Incidentally, it also does exactly the kind of snapping you are attempting in example 1 (with cloning, no ghost). I'm not making videos - we have enough tutorials and examples elsewhere.
Unfortunately, not yet. As I've said, I'm on vacation with my family, but still doing some unexpected office work at the same time (yay for “vacations”), so there's not much time or mental energy left for trying new stuff in Designer. Hey, I did use Designer to do a logo yesterday, and I identified some quirks in the snapping behaviour which I'll address elsewhere, so there's that.
But I'll check it out next week, rest assured, and if I find it's better for *this* particular use case (translations and rotations with duplication, something which I did in Ai before, so I know the drill), I may use it instead; that doesn't change the fact that it may still be quicker and mentally easier to just clone the damn things by hand. It's kind of comparing AutoCAD with vector programs; yes, it can be more efficient for certain tasks, but only after the economies of scale and the extra complexity kick in (if, say, the distance between objects wasn't the same as their width, or half their width, or something, sure, I'd probably use a dedicated tool).
On 7/25/2019 at 10:24 AM, Ben said:I also know what a ghost is - but we put processing power into showing you the immediate effect of your changes, rather than the 1980's way of AI doing a delayed update (which I'd assume most non-elite users would find the AI way not so useful).
This particular bit caught my eye. You, of course, assumed absolutely right (though “elite” is a bit of a stretch; come on, man, it's more of a multitude of particular niches – mostly related to geometry and otherwise rigorous drawing – which can make use of that behaviour). And I, of course, have been saying as much for YEARS (also on this very thread, incidentally), and criticising you for that choice (or, rather, for your choice of not giving us one). And yes, I know it's a conscious one, and it has its own advantages.
But, as I've said, you can have your cake and eat it too (and I personally would very much would like to have both, as I've always said I don't have anything against WYSIWYG-only approaches in general, only when they hinder me; I don't want you to get rid of it, nor do I wish, for the umpteenth time, that Designer behaved 100% like Ai).
On 7/25/2019 at 10:24 AM, Ben said:If I implemented any sort of "ghost" it'd only be to show where the object was, and only for purposes of snapping to its original position - as a visual cue to show what snapped.
This also caught my eye, big time. That's what I've been suggesting all along. Yes, and no* (oh, I'd be totally happy of having it for this use case of snapping stuff, but I'll sure love to have it on hand for others I could try and demonstrate, yet are maybe too hard to really articulate; that won't stop me from trying, though). Also, that's what I was about to show in a video mock-up, in point #4.
Except, you see, right now I'm in this Southern-Atlantic internet backwater/hellhole that is the Algarve; nothing really works during Summer, so I can't even see your video demos (which I'm very much curious about, by the way). And upload speeds are even worse, so you can forget about those until, as I've said, next week (also, I'm working on a MacBook and I feel constrained enough as it is for regular work; the demos would likely be crappier than my – and your? – standards call for).
Anyway, spoiler alert: I proposed and, thus, will mock-up something like more of a “literal ghost”, i.e. a translucent rendition of the object in its original position, which may have visible outlines in a special non-preview mode à la InDesign. Not only but, yes, especially for snapping objects. That was the entire point of this thread, regardless of the practical application of that functionality (but more on that later, and you did address that and I will, too, as we'll see).
On 7/25/2019 at 10:24 AM, Ben said:Again, I'm still unconvinced of the need to compromise the general use of these tools to fit these use cases. It's also been shown that what you are demonstrating can already be achieved with other work flows. You are insisting that these workflows are so much slower - but how often do you actually do these things???? Enough to justify compromising the majority use cases? I am not convinced. So, I spend time catering for the use case that in reality will only get used 0.01% of the time?? I asked you to prove to me that this use case is as "CRITICAL" (your word) as you are claiming.
Fair enough. If I do indeed fail to convince you right now, rest assured that I'll keep coming back to this thread with examples until you are.
Again, not to prove some some grand point or come out on top of a discussion or whatever, but because I really miss this functionality and am dead sure that there are more than “0.01% of the time” use cases for it, and also that everybody wins when there's more choice even if it caters to, say, “5%” use case users (I'd say in such a vast application as a vector editor, that threshold is actually rather high; 1% should be enough). I would bet one of my kidneys on it if that sort of thing was legal.
So, yes, for me, personally but also as a designer and teacher who knows a thing or two about the visual creative process, it's absolutely “CRITICAL”, in all-caps and all (not as much as the universal layers and advanced selection tools, I'll give you that, and the fact that you'll be addressing those is great news). Please respect that, even if I didn't fully make my point across yet.
On 7/25/2019 at 10:24 AM, Ben said:I think you could have saved yourself a few hours there with one video of what you were asking for. Turns out we already have the tools.
Absolutely, point taken. That's why I'll be mostly doing those from now on; the accompanying text will be there mostly for clarification purposes if something isn't obvious enough. Still; I can't vouch for those until I try them, and even if they do solve that particular use case, if they are more cumbersome in any way or if there are still others unaddressed, well… as I said, expect more demos.
On 7/25/2019 at 10:24 AM, Ben said:I think a lot of what you consider the "correct way that Illustrator does things" is mostly a throwback to the fact that they only update the document when you release the mouse button. The fact they snap to the original position is probably less a UI/UX choice as a long standing legacy side effect of the limitation of their software. Because the actual object is still where it was unit the end of the drag. Not at all WYSIWYG, and not great in a lot of situations.
Incidentally, your video example 1 is absolutely NOT WYSIWYG. It is the complete opposite!!! You are not "seeing what you will be getting" - you are seeing an outline which later resolves to being "what you get". What Affinity does is WYSIWYG - you see live updates that show what the result will be as you edit.
Ok, this is a big, BIG one. And very important at a deep, philosophical and structural level. Which I've also addressed since long ago in this thread. It is a throwback to that era, because there really was no other way of doing things. But it IS “What You See Is What You HAD (with a hint of what You'll Get)”, and it does allow the user some degree of before/after comparison, on the fly, which they can't have otherwise.
You can't argue against that, as it's just an incontrovertible fact, and while you may very well dispute its real usefulness (because, at the end of the day, you have a big app to manage and every man-hour is precious), I'll stand my ground and claim, point-blank and also for the umpteenth time, that having something as generic and universal as “immediate before/after WYSIWYG-ish” behaviour – even if one of the instances is crippled, in its outlined state, by a throwback to a bygone era, a convention which I never said Designer should stick to – is useful in more than, to quote you, “0.01%” of use cases. (*) Even in cases other than the one that irks the most (the entire snapping to itself thing), hence my “no” above.
I believe you're way off-base there, and maybe not many other users will agree with me because they are either illustrators who work in strictly additive workflows (as opposed to other workflows with lots of tweaking and comparing layouts, object arrangements and whatnot), or are used to the new model and can't even begin appreciate the old one (there's nothing wrong with that, but that doesn't make them right, either). Again, that's why I'm here for: to provide demos. I'm not going anywhere anytime soon.
Yes, I'm all for “structurally WYSIWYG” (or, rather, functionally skeuomorphic) UX models, like a realistic Layer+Artboard model where the former behaved like universal planes and the latter behaved a bit more like paper sheets instead of containers, as I've said many times before. But sometimes our analytical designer minds do need more busy, dirty, information-rich working environments (more than the final output will look like), and stuff like Outline mode doesn't cut it as it's a bit too over the top.
Is that against your apparent “our app and the documents it renders must be squeaky-clean [and WYSIWYG] at all times” ethos? Well, maybe it is. But I'm telling you: this limitation goes hand in hand with others I've mentioned. Most of it revolves around UX and deep philosophical constructs around how a design application should operate. I'm posting here in a more constructive and respectful fashion than I was before, but these latests posts from you didn't get me any less worried than I was two days ago. These are serious issues which require more discussion and less dismissal. No matter how many coding hours they “waste”. I consider that discussion more of an investment, really, as I still stand by my earlier assessment of Designer's limitations, and this omission is yet another nail on its current metaphorical “coffin” (speaking of undead stuff, like ghosts, let's think of it more of like a vampire, as I do believe it'll leave it again sooner rather than later, but still
).
To recap and to deconstruct a loaded expression which you've also used: there's no universally “correct” way of doing things. There's a correct way of doing them for each specific project. Some projects call for a strictly WYSIWYG behaviour (per your definition, not even an outlined object preview – like in Ai – or a ghost of the soon-to-be-former position of it – like I proposed and you've just acknowledged as at least viable –, but a live rendition of its final position once you let go of the mouse, and that's both a fine model and a good example of WYSIWYG), and some do call for an alternative (again, you never heard me saying that I wished for the alternative to be fully WYSIWYG; I've always said quite the opposite, and it couldn't be any other way by definition).
Maybe it's not a 50-50 split, but I'd wager the latter's percentage is potentially so high that it would justify being added to an entire dedicated Persona. A “technical drawing” Persona of some sort, if you will. Or a “structural view mode” (not the dumb, 1980s-ish “outline mode”, which we're all very much used to but also has its own limitations, such as making the selection process of filled objects a total pain, but something more in between), as opposed to the one-size-fits-all, totally WYSIWYG “preview view mode” (you call it “Vector”, but that's what it really is as of now, a “Vector [Print] Preview”). Sure, bring it on in v.2 or v.3 or even v.4 of the suite, but at least give it some proper consideration.
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On 7/20/2019 at 5:26 PM, Alfred said:
An interesting looking app, but with only three very mixed reviews.
I haven't used it in a while, and yes, it hasn't been as promoted or as spruced up as it should've been for its age. If you knew the guy personally, you'd probably understand why.
I almost feel bad for inviting him to be my PhD co-supervisor, as he already has so much on his plate right now… He and I think in very similar ways; we almost always put others in front of our own interests. He's barely older than me, and only now is he seriously worrying about his health and slowing down a bit. Yeah, the entire “having one of his best friends offing himself” thing probably took a big toll on him, too (I had to give a class with him the day after, and it was probably one of the weirdest, hardest things I've ever done on a mixed personal/professional level, especially considering I also knew and really admired that other guy, so I wasn't exactly in the best shape either but was in that socially-awkward situation of not wanting to upstage anyone in my own grief and having to keep my cool…), but I'd say the academic life in general is still the biggest burden, bar none. I sometimes think I must be out of my damn mind for even thinking that getting into that is a good idea for myself, and yet… I don't know, man, we're just like these crazy Lemmings, always walking towards the academic abyss of not having a life just to make sure others do.
But hey, if you ever try it out and have some suggestions you want to fast-track straight to the source, drop me a hint. Hopefully he'll get around to giving it some TLC soon, and I'm guessing the entire iPadOS thing may be a great pretext for that (I know I'll be asking him about it in September regardless, as we're giving another workshop then).
And judging from what I know, behind the scenes (*wink-wink*; there are no NDAs here, because there's a preexisting relationship of trust which renders them unnecessary, but let's just pretend for the sake of argument there are), we can and should expect great things from that app in the future. The only question now is, well, when.
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On 7/18/2019 at 4:51 PM, Kuttyjoe said:
Coreldraw also doesn't have it. It has a Find and replace that is extremely complex and time consuming to use. There are a couple 3rd party macros that attempt to plug this gaping hole but they're never as elegant as a built-in solution.
It doesn't? Wow. I'm itching to fire up a trial here and check out just how botched it is, then.
If it's as bad as you described it, it's yet further motivation for Serif to come up with the “spiritual successor” to FreeHand's selection dialog boxes at some point.
It would trounce the competition, no doubt about it.
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On 7/19/2019 at 5:37 PM, SrPx said:
I deleted (used the hide feature) a thread that could have been revealing in quite some aspects... It was too long and melodramatic, so I got rid of it some minutes after posting it.
In hindsight, I probably should've had the same level of respect, so yeah. I'll take that lesson from you.
On 7/19/2019 at 5:37 PM, SrPx said:But will only rescue one of the thoughts I had in that kind of post-book chapter. More than "paying customers", we are users who bought a product "as is" (as it was), as we are not paying for a sustained service(neither really for the updates, as was/is the traditional model) , is not a service, but a product, how it was, at an exact moment in time (ie, you don't buy a coffee pack and expect it to replicate itself and keep providing you with more coffee beyond the grams it had at purchase time), which had a trial version for you to test. Already that, was a super bargain, for 50 miserable bucks…
I cut your quote short there, because you did repeat yourself a bit. The only reason I'm not criticising you for doing the same that I do, is… well, because I do it, too.
(No, really, I'm not criticising, I'm just acknowledging it). But it does work well with me (reinforcing a point until it's, well… pretty much covered). Still, I should just say that… Serif did create an expectation of free and quick updates.
So… we were probably as shocked with the Publisher delay, and just how hard 1.7 was to get out of the door also, as Apple customers were when Leopard was delayed because of the iPhone. Again, in hindsight, my past knowledge of how internal management can seem to apparently have gone awry from an outside perspective and, yet, still be fully under control from an internal one, should've made me know better.
On 7/19/2019 at 5:37 PM, SrPx said:So it embarrases me to crazy levels to read that we deserve more as "paying customers".... Sorry, but is how I see it. It's embarrassing as heck. Even if is not me saying it...
Ah. Except I'm not just a “paying customer”. Sorry to interject and turn your argument on its head, but… the NDA I signed makes me feel more like an “unpaid tester”. An “unpaid tester” who failed on his duties for a while, but who fully wished to make due on his promises, and who was duly and promptly ignored when dishing out harsh, belated warnings. Maybe I got an overly inflated sense of self, and indeed I readjusted my expectations upon learning, when watching the Keynote, that there were thousands of us (though I'd still argue that in a sea of millions, we're still Serif's “1%ers”, and being a teacher in training, that does add some colour to that sentiment, but I digress). Anyway, I'm sorry if I'm not always nice, but I'm usually honest. When I say I'm not recommending Designer to students, well… I'm not. The least I could give Serif is the explanation I owe them for that and other decisions.
I feel embarrassed by the way I write long, inscrutable texts, and how I let – nay, actively contributed to make – an otherwise civil discussion devolve into something a bit less so. But I'm most definitely not embarrassed of speaking the truth. Only the form was mostly wrong, and not most of the substance. Look, I might've been wrong and naïve in feeling overly pumped up about Designer, but I've said time and time again that I was far from the only person I know of who was and got disappointed. Facts are facts, regardless of how they may make other people feel. Could I have been more sensible about the way I put it? Absolutely. Would that have contributed towards a better relationship with Serif? Also likely. Would the information I would eventually give have been materially different? Unfortunately, no, because the source material (i.e. my experience with the product and the feedback from third parties) would still be the same.
On 7/19/2019 at 5:37 PM, SrPx said:With all respects, I can't agree. Your suggestions and videos are very good, the one of the metro map (not saying I agree with the main point), I carefully watched it from start to end, you explain your points clearly, and very well, probably due to the teaching experience. It'd be great if it was all just about that (videos for a suggested change of workflow/structure, succinct suggestions without complaining, bugs hunting, screenshots of a problem, etc). I'm positive that they've surely watched it too (surely not only one staff member), because they are over everything, despite their small staff numbers, and would do with any next one (although the tone of a request, depending on if it's a polite and succinct video to help, or if, otherwise, becomes a lengthy complaint, sets the ones in charge of reviewing all that (or to view it at all) in a particular mood and motivation. We are all humans. They'll be professionals, but if desiring your stuff to be considered... all have its influence). But all those things surely enter in debate in internal meetings, it's probably studied what things can be integrated, what not, or leave them for when, etc. But I have the urge to post at least something when I see some statements really off ( and highly unfair to one of the best and most generous developers out there).
Duly noted, and thank you for that recognition. On that subject, it does seem that I am better at public speaking than at writing, which is kind of ridiculous because the former calls for a lot more improv and the latter should allow me to take more time and be more sensitive with other people. It boggles the mind, really, and if I ever crack the code, I'll be sure to try to be – and hopefully succeed at being – nicer “in writing” as well (I would venture a guess and say, though, that maybe the physical disconnect when hammering at a keyboard and not seeing other people's faces or even listening to one's own voice has something to do with it). People have been making the same suggestion you just made, and I seriously took it into consideration. Since I can't seem to help myself with my musings, I'll probably record videos and still add further commentary to them, as some sort of “public notes/thought process”, but at least the former should be self-explanatory enough and materially contribute to the advancement of the Affinity range, and if the developers wish to skip the fluff if and when they don't have the time, they'll at least still get something usable out of my efforts.
As for me having been unfair, I fully own up to it. I will, however, not change my general stance, as I do believe criticism is the best drive for progress. It may not always seem so, and my hissy fits may paint the picture of a deranged, selfish mind, but rest assured that I would never do anything which I believed to be really destructive or against Serif's interests. If I had a truly twisted, grandiose, narcissistic mind, I'd take my videos asking for new features and criticising Affinity in direct comparison with Adobe CC apps and post them straight to a YouTube channel of my own (kind of like the otherwise venerable Louis Rossman and his endless, anti-Apple rants that, for all their merits, are stale and bothersome by now, even considering the existential threat their substance poses to his own business; the same could be said of the threat Adobe CC costing what it does and Affinity not yet being a workable alternative poses to my own, and you don't see me going his overly public, self-serving, holier-than-thou route), instead of here, in the farthest recesses of Serif's own forums, where moderators may delete them right away if they so wish (in fact, if the Serif team asked me to send them my feedback videos directly, far from the prying eyes of the other users and the competition alike, I'd gladly do so, as I oh-so-often volunteered to do). I could probably even make good money from it if I went a different route. Except I won't, because I still have a conscience, and wouldn't feel at all happy being in the business of dissing others for personal gain (obviously with all due respect to all critics, whatever their personal niche may be; I can only deal with a hands-on, private-ish critical approach – Academia as a whole being a bit of a gray area, because it's very much public but still full of all these different, small niches –, and perhaps that's also why I'd like to become a teacher). Also, even though I like to pull the subject to myself more often than not, I do focus on Serif as a company, on Affinity as a product, and especially on its end-users (mostly from my perspective, yes, because that's the one I know best, but I always acknowledge there are workflows different than mine – some of which I personally know up-close, by the way – and that they should be catered for as well).
And Serif, for me, is indeed something other than just another big, faceless company. Technically it's not perfect, in strictly practical terms it's way behind, and some of the culture could probably use some fine tuning, but it's still about the best in its camp, so… And I know for a fact that even the big ones are filled with decent, hardworking people (I personally know a lot of them); I usually only lash out in any material way at truly evil companies (some certain social network companies come to mind), and specifically at their executives, so there's that. Those are the real psychopaths (more often than not, literally, as statistics prove it time and time again), and the ones who we should all be seriously concerned about.
I will, however, dish out a temporary 1/2/3-star review “in Serif's best interest” for an application otherwise rated as a 5-star product, if I really believe it's best to keep über-pro CC users at bay for a little while until things are more stabilised. Sure, it's twisted, but I believe in it and will stand by that decision for as long as I personally deem it necessary. At the end of the day, I truly believe in ethics, and those sometimes entail doing some really weird, counterintuitive stuff. That whole “borderline-conflict” indeed bothered me some but, at the end of the day, I sleep perfectly at night, and when I don't, it ain't over what transpired here in these forums, that's for sure.
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Another aside: I'm only now realising that for self-snapping to fully work when duplicating (as in, to be as useful as selecting with the node tool and the Command+A workaround already is, and the “ghosting” feature will be), we must be able to duplicate via dragging and pressing Command/Option (whatever you pick, or both). Currently they are unused, and I see no reason why they shouldn't work.
Actually, this would be doubly useful; what would, then, stop you from besides duplicating the entire thing(s) if all nodes are selected, as I'm proposing, also duplicating only certain selected sections/paths of [a] certain curve(s)? That would make Designer way more powerful than even Ai currently is for regular vector and especially geometric work (if you select a few nodes in Ai and duplicate via dragging, it will duplicate the entire object(s), not just the selected nodes/paths, and since Serif hasn't implemented that behaviour yet, there's no set user expectation to be broken… which is just golden, for a change).
I will be sure to add that as a separate feature request, with its own included visual demos. Once you see it, you'll realise it can actually be predictable and intuitive.
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And before you people tell me I'm not fair (yes, I may commit mistakes and jump to conclusions, but I am fair, will own up to them and correct them), here's the optimised version of the earlier demo:
3-A, part II. – A complex, real world scenario (in Designer, except fixed this time):
So, as you can see, this task takes around 1m40s total in Designer in a near-best-case-scenario, as opposed to a little under 50s in Illustrator.
Still: it requires considerable more precision and feels way more cumbersome, requiring a ridiculous amount of extra clicks. And while this example isn't as terrible as I made it out to be, once we get into polygon territory and have to deal with other objects also on the selection level, all hell breaks loose.
Also, the “All Layers” setting does introduce some – necessary – noise, whereas in Ai, snapping to nodes is usually more “sticky” than other Smart Guide candidates. Perhaps Designer should follow its lead and increase the “hit box” on nearby nodes over other farther candidates?
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On 7/20/2019 at 10:36 PM, Jowday said:
Summer 2019 post:
I suppose 10 u is… Norwegian for 10 hours? So… if you took this screenshot this summer, it can't be older than a month, am I right?
Hm. So that makes it 3/4 years from now? As in, 3x18 months for 1.8, 1.9 and 2.0 to be ready? That makes it absurdly affordable, even more so than I thought.
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57 minutes ago, Jowday said:
Millions of people of today can't digest long messages. Then Trump came along and there was much rejoicing. With no end in sight.
I have no problem with avalanches of text - but video examples do work better here and there.
Yeah, I feel your pain. Yay (“yeeeeei”?) for the Holy Grail reference, too.
But sometimes I wonder how I ever could digest the torrent of information and, err… “information” coming from both sides of the pond and write that goshdarned MA dissertation thing without going into a mental breakdown.
You see, it's not like “shorter” means “better”; it's death by a thousand cuts, really, and that's also why I think people can't digest long form anymore (me included, except by my standards; I can still read long stuff, but it does take me longer and I need bigger breaks in between). Much like video killed the radio star, YouTube and Twitter killed most people's attention spans.
Oh, you thought I didn't do (and consume) short form? Think again. I've logged in waaay more YouTube hours than I'm proud to admit, and if you saw me on some Facebook meme groups I'm on you'd see I'm no stranger to really short, one-liner quips. Yeah, maybe that's why I then dish out my repressed long form impulses here [where they might be more useful to society], hah.
Anyway, it's going to be videos and GIFs only from now on, worry not.
Not of kittehs or memes, but still. And if you want to skip the written comments, for the most part you can, yet you'll still capture the essence.
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So yeah, that's all for today. I'm going off to beautiful, sunny Algarve, to meet my family and finally go to the beach, so I'll have to gtho, pack my stuff and have a good night's sleep, like any sane person would.
That was fun, though.
Stay tuned for episode 3B, where we'll meet our teapot friend again (oh, it will have an important role, I can guarantee you that) and other fun geometric shapes, as I make yet another… hopefully strong case for this feature (if you thought that a 600% inefficiency factor was bad enough, wait until we get, as I warned before, into a different order of magnitude).
Byeeeeeee!
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3-A (as in “exhibit A”; there will be more coming), part I. A complex, real world scenario (in Illustrator):
3-A, part II. – A complex, real world scenario (in Designer):
I won't even comment further on either video as far as the implementation details are concerned, as the work proper, my narration and especially the video duration speak for themselves.
The Designer demo is 6x longer (!!!), and while I've made a lot of mistakes on that one, the fact of the matter is that the AD workflow would still be 4x slower in the best case scenario and the Illustrator workflow wouldn't even allow for those mistakes to happen in the first place, so… “ghosting” – and the self-snapping behaviour it enables – is a useful feature, as it makes certain tasks around at least 4x faster. Quod erat demonstrandum. [does a little victory, ghost dance
]
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
As for the differently coloured nodes* (because I won't beat the dead – nay, decomposed –, “ghosting” horse any more today), well… I just confirmed that, yes, I did indeed run into that issue before, and someone (maybe even @Ben himself?) instructed me back then to chose “All Layers” from the Candidates drop-down menu in the Snapping manager. You see, I did remember about “snapping candidates”, so there's that.
PEBCAK, you might think? Well, yes, and no. You see, when I mentioned on some other thread (or was it this one?) that Designer could have a “Like Illustrator” kind of “workspace”/default settings pack kind of thing, this is what I was talking about. The whole having testers with cameras pointed at them might help in this camp, too.
While some people may feel that it's the best invention ever since sliced bread, and while I also fully admit that I may one day get to rein it in and put it to good use, I personally feel that Designer's Snapping Manager is a bit… well, over-engineered. It feels overkill, and its default settings are insanely complex and unpredictable when compared with the (maybe arguably also cumbersome) “everything snaps onto everything” behaviour of Ai (well, I might even go one step further and say that even for its intended use, I fail to understand the advantage of having a snapping candidate cap; is that yet another digital illustration thing that I'm missing?). And yes, this coming from someone who keeps asking for “MOAR CHOICE!!!!1!!1one!”, hah; the irony isn't completely lost on me.
So, the best course of action would be for maybe “All Layers” to be the default setting (confusing as it might be for certain documents)? And once the user got used to the application, they might take out the training wheels and start playing with the more advanced features of Snapping Manager? The default setting (if it is “Candidate List”) doesn't seem to be very intuitive for a crowd which will, in their majority, come from the CC camp. Just my €0,02, as I keep coming back to Designer (as if I was effectively a “newbie” of sorts) and forgetting to set it “correctly” for my tastes.
____________________________
[(*) Also, if that wasn't bad enough and as a bit of an aside/extra which you can ignore if you don't have the time, as I'll get back to it later on – and that's why I'm writing it in smaller text as a note, to which I'll link later on, as if this was an academic paper proper, with cross-references and all –, it's extremely jarring for type designers, already used to the “blue vs. red, unlocked vs. locked guideline” convention used in FontLab Studio and Glyphs.app alike. That's more of a personal thing, but still; it's something to consider, and since you guys aren't yet giving users advanced layer customisation choices like layer label colour (and the corresponding selection outline colour), that could even be a more useful convention for locked objects in the future – maybe you could leave the outline colours to the universal layers, like in Ai, and still have those default node colours, instead of colouring everything the same, nodes and outlines alike, according to the layer label like in Ai? Yeah, I'll be posting screenshots and mock-ups of that on the Universal Layers thread or on a dedicated new one, that's for sure.]
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2. [Really] cumbersome workaround in Designer:
I wasn't even trying to demonstrate flaws in the snapping (or lack thereof) of polygon nodes and, yet, I did just that by accident. And yes, I had “snap to key points” and “snap to object geometry” activated, that was most definitely not an oversight on my part, and the latter snapping operations prove just that.
Still, you can see how the duplication step would have to happen even for the most basic of shapes, like rectangles. For stuff like, say, striped patterns, that can really become a massive burden.
Also, by mistake, I called the Node Tool by the name Adobe calls it, “Direct Selection Tool”; they work somewhat differently, yet are conceptually similar enough for that to be a honest mistake and you to understand what I was referring to, but I thought that I should point that out.
I've fought here in the forums, for months/years, for Designer to expose the nodes a bit more even without having to use that tool or having to press multi-key shortcuts (for precisely this kind of scenario), and likely still will (Ai's Command shortcut to expose and select all nodes at once while on the Selection/Move tool is an absolute boon), yet I'm satisfied enough with this current “select objects > switch to node tool > press Command+A” workaround for that not to be a complete deal-breaker (though it does suffer from some additional and serious flaws, and I'll go into a little bit of detail about them in the next Designer demo and corresponding post).
For “ghosts”, however, there's no workable substitute, as you'll also soon see.
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1. Basic stuff. Snapping a hexagon onto itself, without duplication.
So, an explanation of naming: the WYSIWYG part is the original position, hence the thick, black outline. The non-WYSYIWG part is the blue, mid-drag outline. Effectively what I've been calling the “ghost”.
Notice how the “ghost” snaps to the original position's nodes. Yeah, that's what I've been getting at. Does it seem that exotic and weird now?
Also, I deliberately rotated the thing ever so slightly, so that smart guides and constraints would be useless/unnecessary. It's not common, but sometimes it does happen in the real world.
That's the gist of it; snapping to points should be something extremely easy (however, Designer won't do it with polygons unless they are converted into shapes, whereas Ai does it straight away, but I digress; except me to plop that up in a separate thread as yet another feature request), and snapping to “ghosts” (or whatever you call them) is useful and works (as I'll eventually show).
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Ok, screw the white paper thing. I'll show it as I go, in separate posts, but it will make complete sense in the end. This is how it will go:
1. I'll show off the feature in Ai, in its most basic manifestation.
2. I'll demonstrate how cumbersome – or even useless, as they don't work in all scenarios – the proposed workarounds for Designer are.
3. I'll show off the feature, once again in Ai (and also the workarounds in Designer), in complex, real-world scenarios, that should lay to rest the entire debate around its usefulness, once and for all.
4. Finally, because I'm a positive, constructive, well-intentioned and selfless guy, I'll show off possible implementations of the feature in Designer, in a way that stays true to the current UX and actually improves upon Ai's implementation, instead of just aping the latter wholesale (that stage will take longer, as it entails producing UX mockups, even animated ones; the other three stages will have to serve as teasers for the time being, muhahaha
).
Easy enough?
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Yeah, whatever.
@Ben, I'll post it when it's done, it'll likely be more than 100 words long (I mean… two tweets long? Come on…) but hopefully shorter than 500 (abstract-sized; just right and standard). Per individual post, sorry. Regardless, I'm confident that you'll love it, thank me, implement the feature, and everyone will win in the end.
I'd rather be blunt like this and save your collective time. It's not like you people are being super nice to me anyway (you reap what you sow, I guess), and it does seem time is the most important commodity here. Modern times, indeed.
Also, as @Mithferion said, yay for videos! Video screen caps and still screenshots for everyone.
P.S.: Sorry for the revisionism, guys (and for replying to someone above their post, with an edit). It was either that, or another big-a$$, whiny post, and a pointless, shorter one below it.
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7 hours ago, Ben said:
Just to be clear - our bounds are not just rectangles. If you have investigated our advance grids system, you'll see that bounds are the limits of an object with respect to the axes of the current grid. We only present a rectangle for ease of common transformations. You'll notice that can become a parallelogram when transformed or selecting an object with shear. Snapping during translation always conforms to the current grid axes, and not the visible selection box.
As far as your WYSIWYG issues go - I think I'm loosing your actual point in the avalanche of too many words. How about some concise and short examples of what you mean? I also don't understand your objection to being able to see the immediate effect of tools. This to me is far better than outlined changes with delayed real updates. Too much visual clutter beyond what is needed is often a fine balancing act. It also depends heavily on what discipline you are in when using the tools. For technical drawing, lots of information might be useful. For free illustration, not so much.
Believe it or not, some of us on the development team here also have some qualifications and experience, and from a wide range of disciplines. I think cumulatively it will be running well into centuries. Opinions on usability are affected by user experience and knowledge. We have to make our tools to accommodate all levels of expertise - not just those who consider themselves elite in the field. Our choices aren't driven by coding considerations first - but limitations of interface and hardware are always going to have to be a consideration.
I'm also afraid that after explaining everything, that silver bullet real world example of what you are asking for is the only thing that is going to motivate us to put work into this. I think I've shown that there is only one specific use case that we are not covering, but I am not convinced of the weight of need for this use case without real evidence. You claimed it is "critical", so you must require it frequently enough that a real example should be easy enough to find?? Beyond this, all the very verbose philosophising is really leading nowhere. This applies to all requests - give an actual example with use case, and we can make some sense of it. And keep it concise - all the excessive noise, personal claims and soap-boxing in these threads is distracting from any relevant point that might be hidden in there.
Ok, Ben, I'd love to go through your answer, but I must run because I'm finally having some really “free” time (as in… mentally free, or more specifically as in having actual vacations after four years
) and feel like, you know, not touching “work” for the time being. The quality of my feedback would be sub-par if I were to take on this right now, and you deserve better than that. Besides, this isn't the most urgent of Designer's limitations, though it is a little pet peeve of mine and would really make a world of difference in my future work.
Anyway, you did raise some very interesting questions, which I'll address later on, point by point, in a structured post, maybe even with some comparison screenshots/mockups, so we can all get on the same page. Call it a “white paper”, if you will. I will also try and do my best in some short, concise demos (be they silver, gold, copper, tin bullets, whatever)… Maybe over the weekend, or in late July/early August. Stay tuned.
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10 hours ago, A_B_C said:
By the way, do you have a link for the post from the mod which you've mentioned? I obviously trust you, but would love to see it in context. If you can't find it, I can obviously do a search in the forums for it myself later on if I have the time, so if it's too much work don't bother.
Miguel (MEB) also confirmed that global layers are coming:
So maybe it is just a matter of a little patience indeed.
Yeah, indeed. This one would be a big, big one. I mean, with this feature, Designer would finally earn a proper recommendation (with some serious caveats, of course; the whole lack of selection tools being the other biggie), and getting it ready for 1.x would be a real token of goodwill towards current customers.
But if it's only coming in v.2, at this point I really don't mind much and feel that it wouldn't hurt their bottom line either. I mean, there are at most only two point updates to go before it (unless Serif goes the Mac OS X/OS X/macOS route and drops a v.1.10 on us, but it's been so long since v.1.0 that I seriously doubt it… With the elapsed time between major versions as it is now, I'm starting to feel that even with all their limitations, Affinity apps are a bit too affordable, really, and maybe the only reason why they're taking so long to get to v.2 was the staggered releases of the three components, which will become synced and maybe even yearly from then on).
In fact, pre-announcing it, complete with a public feature set, and Osborning themselves a bit (or retroactively offering discounts for people who bought v.1 x months before the v.2 launch) might even earn them some extra goodwill points towards new users.
Whatever they choose to do, getting this thing out of the door is what really matters. Bring it on, I say!
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20 hours ago, Frozen Death Knight said:
Just a "fun" trivia based on the discussion about forum moderation on the internet. A forum I've spent quite a lot of time on called MMO-Champion, you would get infracted or banned for an X amount of days as well as potentially get your post/topic locked or deleted if you criticized forum moderation rules or its moderators like JGD just did. Not saying that you JGD deserve to be punished like that or that Serif should do the same as that forum, though.
We should just consider ourselves lucky that these forums are pretty chill. Let's try to make sure we don't squash that opportunity to have that freedom. ^^
It is an interesting insight, and if I was on one of those, and got banned for x time, I surely would learn my lesson and adapt my behaviour, as one does.
There's a reason why I never even got into that rabbit hole, however; as I've said, I've never seen mods acting in a way that made me feel personally wronged (or feel other users were) in the slightest, hence… I never questioned them in the first place. [Well, there was this one time I made a joke on some Apple forum about the “PowerBook G5”, in gargantuan body size, and had my post deleted and got a warning, which obviously didn't make me very happy but was fair game, because I knew full well people had enough of that joke and that I was, in essence, being a bit of a troll. I was young, and mistakes were made. ]
I believe the crucial difference here, though, is that none of us are here just for the love of a game or other generic topic. I mean, if there are commercial activities involved, some people may indeed have skin in the game, but we're comparing apples and oranges here. We are, after all, end users of a commercial software, i.e. paying customers. So, not that dissimilar from clients, and the devs' and mods' clients, at that.
And if you ever dealt with those, and I'm sure you did, you'll know it's a bit of an art form, and that you should only “fire” them if and when there are net gains to be had. Adrian Shaughnessy (and common business sense) dixit.
Anyway, yay for freedom! Yes, we should cherish in and treat it like the fragile thing it unfortunately is. For all the mods' possible failings, real or perceived, I still feel this is a great community, and I wouldn't dare for a second deny them the credit (maybe even invisible) they deserve in that. These things never happen by accident, I think.
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@SrPx I would also give you a thank you react, but as I've said before, I'm all out of them.
I would say I agree with almost everything you've said here. Yes, perhaps I've been extremely lucky, and I'll readily admit that I've not been to as many creative-bound forums as you were (I didn't know about CG Society, and by just looking at it, it looks cool). I had a DA account, and a Tumblr one, and never really used them much, so there's that.
But I do indeed frequent very varied forums. And if you consider that two of them, MacRumors and AppleInsider, focus on one of the most attacked and defended companies in the world, you can already guess how I've seen also my fair share of conflict and ensuing soft-to-hard-handed moderation throughout the years (the former has a strict policy of restricting commenting to users over a certain threshold of posts for inherently political threads, and the latter even has a few perennially controversial habitués that hang out over there pretty much daily). The other one I hang out frequently, which I've mentioned before, is skyscrapercity, which can get much more political and heated up than you may imagine. People really are very particular about their towers and urban developments.
I will, again, stand by what I've said. If no harm was done, and a thread was allowed to carry out indefinitely with no warnings that people were running afoul of rules and something was afoot, dropping the hammer on it out of the blue seems heavy-handed. Yes, I had never seen anything like it, I hope I never will ever again, and I also hope that it's reinstated in locked form. There are probably links to it which are now dead. I am very particular about digital archivism, and no amount of justification from Serif (other than, say, something really, really serious, like criminal activity or there having been leaks of company secrets on that thread or something) will change my mind on that, sorry. It is a black stain on their book, regardless of how nice we suddenly become to one another here. But I'm repeating myself here for the umpteenth time and made my point, so… moving on.
Regarding victimisation, which is an interesting point indeed: I will readily admit that I'm painting myself as a bit of a victim here. But, indeed, I am. I spent my money on an app and got my expectations high up, and upon realising it didn't work for me I felt doubly duped and now am stuck with no alternatives. But I will still argue that the biggest “victim” here may end up being Serif in the long run. I've seen hubris destroy many companies from the inside out for the last 20 years. No company has a magical sauce against that, I'm afraid; that kind of stuff requires constant external and internal vigilance. And what I've said were not empty threats; I'm literally keeping mum on Designer, and if anyone asks me about it, I will dish out the same assessment I've been giving here to Serif devs; I just felt I should warn them about it. And I know other people who are taking the exact same approach as me, so it's safe to extrapolate from there. Serif has no hard data for those cases (I mean, if someone stops talking about an app or searching for it on Google because they became fed up with waiting for feature X or Y or some other reason, there's no way of Serif knowing that), and I'm giving it out to them instead of just keeping it to myself and going about my merry business.
I am, indeed, less than happy about my dealings with them lately, for reasons I've explained in [too] extensive detail, but I may have been unfair when it comes to their internal resources and management thereof… Yes, they are extremely hard-working and, for the most part, polite and patient people (and even when they're not, it's fair to say they don't act completely unprovoked). Perhaps even more than I give them credit for, and if you are indeed right in your assessment, we should all be thankful for having you post it here.
But they did lose much of their lustre in my eyes and, again, not even reconsidering my stance will really change it overall or overnight, only tone it down a notch, and this thread right here seemed to be probably the most “on-topic” one to express that sentiment.
In conclusion, regarding forum management in particular: all the approaches you've mentioned (blocking, banning, locking, deleting, etc.) are legally and maybe even ethically valid, but they all carry consequences. Serif's forums can still remain more open and welcoming than those from the competition for many years to come (and I do believe they will, it's part of the company ethos, I think), but if the experience they offer “degrades” in less than graceful fashion in any way, that will always leave a mark on the users one way or another. This could've been handled way better, and it only would've taken them 5-10 minutes to update the pinned post with an explanation, even if their choice was still to nuke the rest of the thread out of existence, so the time efficiency argument, as far as the thread deletion goes (not dealing with me and other nagging users, ha!), doesn't really hold for this particular case. That's what I've been getting at from the very beginning, and I still feel I do have a point. I know Serif devs and mods are very busy and all, but it would've been an act of basic respect towards the users and the combined man-months they spent posting stuff there over the years.
And that's about a wrap, and the last time you'll read me repeating any of this here. Peace!
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On 9/4/2018 at 8:53 PM, Cineman said:
InDesign isn't any less confusing, it just confuses in a different way. It's "global" in what it tracks but then doesn't present a UI that is consistent with a global layer list.
By default, if you set up a new document and begin adding dozens of objects to the document (regardless of which page), and then go back later you will see the entire document has 1 layer. In effect, instead of giving each new object you place onto or drag across the canvas its own layer ID, it makes them all sub-layers of the default — Layer 1. You have to explicily go into the Layers panel and create a new layer and then with that active the next object you add (and the next) goes into that layer. But then the same thing continues to happen. If you don't add new layers, every page will list Page "X, 2 Layers" (in this example), regardless of what is placed on any given page.
It you explicitly set up 1 layer at the start of each new page, and then jump around, the layers panel will show you only the contents of the active page's layers, but also show all the other layers as empty even when they're not (which is a little weird / not a good UI practice IMO). In terms of visual layer management, at the panel level I prefer Affinity's method because it's more intuitive in the sense that it doesn't show me all the other layers that are not applicable to the active page.
The only thing that might be nice is a search field, but that requires you to name each layer in a memorable way as you go along. But yeah. I don't think InDesign's layer implementation is anything special. Kind of reminds me of Illustrator's layers which I find to be overly complicated and counterintuitive, depending on what you're trying to do. Spoiled by years of using Photoshop's layers I guess.
But you see, if you have a complex document, where universal layers are absolutely needed, the tables are turned and the end-user won't really care if a certain layer doesn't have a single object in a certain page. They are an abstraction, and they act upon a book or manual as a an entire system, not as a collection of pages or an individual page.
I find it weird that DTP typesetters would ever be bothered by this, really. Books are thought-out more like an “application” than like artwork. They are systems, mere vehicles for content. Semantics are usually more important than visuals, as styles are set beforehand so that they can be tweakable at any time during the publishing process, or even afterwards for a reedition. And universal layers also factor into that thinking and designing process.
I know this sounds overly boring, because it is. But you must understand that the publishing world is not made up of just the glamorous/gritty niche of self-publishing and zines. Most of it is made up of really, reaaaaally booooring stuff that requires interaction models which, I'll give you that, you'll personally find boring and unintuitive but which are, for their use cases, absolutely spot on.
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On 9/5/2018 at 12:11 PM, musiberti said:
@Cineman an all others, who don't know what gobal layers are: Please look at this thread. There is a good example (Video). It's such an easy thing, but you can't actually do this in Affinity. If you need alternative Content (language versioning etc.) you have to set up an new document in Publisher. In InDesign you can deactivate the layer with the text und make a new layer for another language. Just two Mouseclicks - FOR EVERY SITE OF THE WHOLE DOCUMENT!
If you try to do this in the same Publisher document you have to do this for every site, again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again ......
Impossible for documents with a large amount of sites, catalogs etc.
Precisely. And the same goes for Designer. That's what we've been complaining about… Layers as containers? It was a good option for digital illustration documents made up of three or four artboards. For design work, as in stationery, maps, signage, etc., that may very well share conceptually equivalent layers across 10 or more different artboards, it's completely bonkers.
), when using the Point Transformation Tool. I'm just not filing the limitation I just described as a separate bug report, for basic economy of writing (uhh, what a concept! 
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), and then duplicated it consecutively, except rotated by a fraction in every other operation so it would be staggered, and scaled up towards the outside and down towards the centre in every operation.
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Find & Replace Tool for Affinity Designer
in Feedback for Affinity Designer V1 on Desktop
Posted
What @fde101 said. I'm what you could call a “long form” poster (you could even say my reputation precedes me
), and even I had trouble parsing your post (hint: shorter paragraphs and phrases help a lot, and I've been trying those lately myself 
), but I immediately realised you are veering dangerously into DTP territory.
Anything longer than 4 pages should be done in a DTP app. Anything with more than a few paragraphs should be done in a DTP app. Anything with more than 5 or 6 images, word-wrapped or otherwise interspersed between text (preferably in anchored form, so they flow along with it), should be done in a DTP app.
Patens, like those you described (and I've read a few myself), fill all those three requirements. Doing them in anything other than a DTP app or, heck, even a run-of-the-mill word processor is, with all due respect, a bit crazy. Buy yourself a copy of Publisher and you'll thank us later.