JGD

Hi again. This is a rehash of yet another feature request I made more than four years ago, which is still preventing me from working in Affinity Designer in a sensible fashion.
As you know, Ai implements drag operations in an '80s/'90s style “ghost” drag model (not unlike the Classic Mac OS window and icon drag model). The WYSIWYG part of the equation is the original position of the object, while the new position will be shown as a “ghost”, i.e. an outline, which you can snap to the original position of the object. This behaviour, while not being completely WYSIWYG or very elegant, is VERY useful, especially – but not limited to – when doing modular typography.
Affinity Designer, on the other hand, features a completely WYSIWYG drag mode, in which no “ghosts” exist. You just can't snap an object to its initial position, period. This is suboptimal, and forces the user to use impractical workarounds, such as duplicating objects instead, or to rely on complex grid arrangements, which may be overkill for simpler projects.
[For some context, InDesign features both Illustrator's drag model, when you perform a quick click+drag operation, and Affinity Designer's model, when you perform a longer, click+hold+drag operation.]
My suggestions (either a single one of them or a combination thereof) as to how this problem can be solved are the following:
• Add a toggle in preferences so a different drag model can be used instead of the current strictly WYSIWYG one;
• Allow users to perform a different drag model, perhaps like in InDesign, by holding the position after clicking and before dragging, but reversed (the preferred default model should still be a selectable option, as above);
• Allow users to use the Command+Drag operation to temporarily activate a ghost of the initial position (currently, this shortcut duplicates the object, which makes zero sense as the Option+Drag shortcut already does this and there's no need for two redundant shortcuts for the same operation).
As before, if you want me to make a little demonstration video of the intended behaviour, I'm more than happy to do so.

I have to agree with most of what JGD is saying. I've had Illustrator on my desktop for 20 years or more but I rarely used it because I found the interface confusing. And because I rarely used it I never got comfortable with the interface. Designer's interface is way more straight forward to me but once I began using it for larger projects I found the Layers panel a chore, for a number of reasons. It may be the one thing that I struggle with in the program.
Oddly enough, in the past week I've seen a YouTube video; had a colleague send me an Illustrator file; and seen this post here, all using Illustrator for tasks I would have used InDesign for. The example in this post could go either way though IMHO. People certainly expect to use Designer in the same way they've used Illustrator in the past.
While I think the Layers panel could use some rethinking I'm not sure if it's the earth-shattering deal breaker the poster believes it is or whether Publisher with a link to Designer would be the logical platform for this kind of work. In general I think Artboards should be more like pages with a separate panel and universal layer system and the Layers panel should more easily distinguish between groups, layers and masked items.
 

Except I didn't spend just 40-50 bucks for this program several years ago. As I've said here before, I did that, and spent countless hours here and by myself testing the product, and put my own professional credibility on the line when ranting and raving about Serif in the early days.
This is all about correcting course and saving face. As a matter of fact, I might even be more proactive and exhort my students and colleagues to download the AD trial, see for themselves what its limitations are, and then come to these forums to further reinforce the point that it is cumbersome and incontrovertibly prove my warnings to Serif in a way that they would see for themselves; except it's not up to me to make that choice, and I will warn them of the potential waste of time that process may entail in the long run. I'd be speaking from personal experience…
Now, @ErrkaPetti, if you want to accept anything Serif, a company whose bosses and employees, IMHO, until recently lived up to the great customer interaction they pride themselves on, drops on you with nary a suggestion or criticism from your part, that's on you. You're as free to do so as I am to do what I'm doing. We're both paying customers, after all. But, then again, after reading what @Jowday just said, it makes me want to turn the tables around and ask just what are you, in fact, doing here (not on the forums, of course, but on this particular thread)? Maybe Facebook or Twitter, two shorter-form, faster-firing platforms would be more a more appropriate venue for heaping praise on Serif, no? And if you don't care about an entire thread disappearing, well… you could try articulating just why isn't that a big deal for you, and if you can't for any reason, there's a forum out there made up of other still accessible posts, to which you may contribute in a constructive fashion.
And by the way, and speaking of constructiveness, I should say that this thread right here can never really produce very constructive comments (other than… either ignoring the issue altogether or telling Serif that they should reinstate that content ASAP, as a matter of principle, and them responding in kind – or, sadly, also ignoring it like they seem keen on doing) even if we tried, because its very main topic is… destruction itself. On an EPIC scale. Do you have any idea how many forum pages 11 months' worth of posts equate to? How many hours we've spent here were just erased from history? So it devolved – rightfully so, if I may add – into a meta-discussion about Serif as a company and its Customer Relations, I'll give you that much. Seeing how you're not a moderator, it really isn't your place to decide about how appropriate that is, and if you feel offended in any way, shape or form by any of what I or other people have said here, by all means take it directly to the moderators. No, really, it's not a big deal, as that's how forums should work. It's not “ratting out” or something; in forum-land it's pretty much healthy and normal practice.
Look, almost nothing of what I say here is personal in the least, anyway. Other than that tiny window I opened into my intimacy (don't expect any more of that, by the way; it's not that I'm not comfortable with talking about that kind of stuff, but it's just way too off-topic and improper in this particular context… If you guys want and Serif allows you to open a “mental health/emotions/whatever in artistic professions” [can you say “How to be a Graphic Designer without losing your soul”?  ] thread on a general discussion sub-forum – do we even have one of those here? –, be my guest and I'll be more than happy to contribute with my input there), the only personal thing I mentioned were my hurt feelings over something which I considered – and always will – an insult, even if it was accidental. I've said as much before; I write long posts, and perhaps @Patrick Connor missed that crucial part where users might only have access to that tool via what would later become known as StudioLink. Still, wouldn't you agree that moderators and other Serif employees should, by default, be held up to a higher standard than any of us here, and be extra cautious with customers?
Do you know what this nonchalant attitude makes me think, as an end-user? It makes me think that now that Serif has millions of users, they [think they] can afford to treat any individual one as disposable, regardless of their relative worth, but even then I don't think it's any less wrong to dismiss a user who isn't a frequent poster, or doesn't integrate a big teacher network, or whatever. Just the other day, this fellow poster mentioned on the “Baselinegate” thread that he had used, on some .afdesign document, that infamous baseline grid feature that was added by accident, and Serif's Customer Service response was to offer to remove baseline grids from his document (i.e. further crippling it), instead of owning up to their mistake and, I dunno, perhaps compensating the user with a free Publisher license, or at least giving him a heavy discount, or something? That's what I would do if I was running a business. You sometimes have to take a loss, and when in a lose-lose situation, you should always take the path that “injures” the customer's feelings and loyalty the least. And I don't have a degree in psychology, marketing or business management but, to me, this seems clear as water. Injustices towards other users make me as sad and disappointed as those against myself. This is most definitely not just “all about me” or my inherent value as a user, I can assure you of that. It's an image of Serif I've been reconstructing in my head over months, from all the pieces of data that I've been gathering, and that definitely includes stuff that happens to others. But since I'm not petty, that's not the kind of stuff I'd be posting about on the Mac App Store, as you may guess; I just alluded to it when speaking about a general “loss of confidence” and focused on the more galling examples, like those 5-year+ waiting times for basic features.
As for the nitty-gritty of UX knowledge, I've said before that I'm not a normal user, and I'll stand by it, regardless of what people may think of me because of that statement; I never studied computer science, or formally learnt UX in any advanced capacity, but I'm probably one of the biggest computer geeks/nerds you may ever come across on a graphic designer's world/forum. It's not me who says it, but my colleagues and friends, and… well, it is an undeniable fact. I'm not inherently “better”, nor “worse” than other users; just out of the ordinary. I was an IT manager for two years, and I spent most of my free time reading ArsTechnica posts, one after another, about OSes, checking old GUI galleries from the 1970s onwards, watching countless YouTube videos with old app demos, etc. Ask me how the Sun Star worked; I will be able to describe it. Ask me the difference between Douglas Engelbart's famous mouse demo and the pointing devices that came afterwards; I do recall. Ask me the differences between AmigaOS, Digital Research's GEM and [classic] Mac OS; I also know them. Skip into the world of graphic design, and I have mostly the same degree of trivia knowledge from phototypesetting systems all the way to the latest beta of Publisher, even though I was born in 1985, when many of that older stuff was already about to become obsolete. I have an MA in typographic & editorial practices, for crying out loud; that's why I'm interested in stuff which predates, well… me, all the way back to around 1440 AD and even earlier still (does 3000 BC sound far enough?), because… alphabets. And general geekiness, of course.
But here's what I'm getting at: it is indeed not normal that I, even with all that admittedly amateurish, ancillary knowledge of computer science, should have a better intuition than a multidisciplinary team that includes professional programmers and designers alike. And, yet, my gut feeling consistently tells me I absolutely do, in fact, have it, at least as far as the kind of work I and a lot of people I know do, because I get confirmation whenever I try to test this thing for any real work and stumble onto dumbfounding limitations, while immediately coming up with my own constructive proposals not always equal to what Adobe, Macromedia or Corel came up with before. It's a very troubling and frustrating feeling to have, let me tell you. I'm not at all happy about probably “knowing” more than some people at Serif, and while I may sound like that, I'm not gloating about it just for the sake of it. In fact, I feel that Serif should have at least one advisor/tester a bit like me working for them (not necessarily me, because I'm sure I'd be a pain to work with in such an already stressful environment, but you get my point; also, I know I'm out-of-the-ordinary but I'd never go as far as thinking I'm unique), and that would be great, because I then could go on my merry business and not even bother with any of this anymore; but I do feel they haven't one, because otherwise some of the weird stuff that came out of their labs would have been caught in QC and internal focus group testing, even before it first reached the public beta stage more than five years ago. That's how I am certain that Serif is lacking a certain je ne sais quoi on their staff, and I just won't forgive myself for not having been more attentive and assertive about the importance of the document model before them freezing this – IMHO – botched multiple artboard/container/layer implementation they foisted upon us. Hindsight 20/20, I guess…
When I remind them of where I'm coming from, it's mostly as a warning; other than maybe one day getting my hands on a cheap tool that I'd love to use (that's my endgame, at least), I personally gain absolutely nothing from peddling my knowledge here, as I do have increasing credibility among my peers, and between fighting Impostor Syndrome – of which I was, for the longest time, a big victim of – and trying to avoid the Dunning-Kruger effect – of which I'm highly suspicious a few, if not several people in Serif's team suffer – and Peter principle – of which I also believe Serif may increasingly become a victim of, on account of the earlier effect and if it ever gets too big as an organisation –, I think I'm holding my own rather nicely and making myself a comfortable niche for a honest career thanks to that. I don't need any ego boosts here, and this wastes, as you've all said, a lot of my time. So if I keep warning Serif about that kind of stuff is because I do care and some of the attitudes I've been seeing lately from them reek of hubris, sorry.
You see, these three “effects”/biases are all stuff that seriously plague academia, and which we are basically trained to spot, everywhere where they may arise (including politics, but I won't even go there as a matter of principle, as I don't think it's wise to mix professional work too much with those unless strictly on-topic, like discussing budgets and client–provider relations [again, discussing Adrian Shaughnessy's accumulated wisdom on the subject in a sub-forum could be highly beneficial for many young, aspiring creatives, and having Serif be a force for good on that regard as well would be super nice, but I digress]). For all my incessant “gloating”, I'm way more humble in reality and in practice than you may think. The entire point of academia is, basically, doubting oneself, your sources, the works, and check and double-check, compare and analyse everything you come across as objectively as possible to reach truthful conclusions. I've found my fair share of contradictions in other people's work, and if anyone does the same with my own, great! The sooner, the better, so I may correct it and others may not be misled, as that would be the worst.
So, in a nutshell, I'm sad and absolutely wish I didn't know more than the guys at Serif about some of those subjects; I wish that my suggestions would, then, be quickly and seamlessly processed and translated by some experts in the company into some usable form, instead of me having to spend yet more of my time here doing demo videos (also, them being addressed at all would also be nice, even if it's to tell me that they are useless or completely off the mark, or something; as I said before, I actually like to know when I'm wrong about something, and why, so I may learn in the process). But doing demo videos I will, when I find the time and mental wherewithal for that, because that's the right thing to do, at least until Designer is finally true to its marketing and branding (then, I'll probably GTFO, use the app for regular work and pop here occasionally to point out the odd bug and check on development, as was my plan all along and as I do with other pieces of software I use – and sometimes even beta-test –, like Glpyhs.app or macOS itself). Because, at the end of the day, I really want to recommend this thing to everyone, as these apps have a solid base and are marketed under a very fair – maybe even too fair – business model. But I just can't bring myself to do it in its current state, as that just entails too much risk to my personal reputation as a tech/design adviser and potential damage to others involved; their time, at the fast-paced beginning of their careers, is even more precious than mine.

That is of course true. But still. He did not insult your mother. He did not tell lies about you. Just... let it pass. And let him talk about the products and use cases. We are here to share inputs that improve the products according to our needs - and others needs. I think he does have valid points. Serif can now chew on his words. If they are even more sure about their priorities now, fine. If they agree with him after some thinking... fine.

You argue like a kid or someone with hurt feelings. You don't have to defend Serif - you could do so, but you chose to cite irrelevant marketing material FROM SERIF instead of a solid use case from your own serious line of work and without other arguments as such. You point at someone else and say: "If he can use it, it must be professional". If you want to point at civil rights, respect them and use arguments and facts. But you don't. It is simply just words and feelings. And it is funny (and childish) to react to one members semantics and reactions BUT when it comes to your rants you refer to civil rights because of course YOU are allowed to do the same.
Serif is a company that opened this particular forum. Here people can voice their concerns and report bugs and say thank you. I guess you as a civil right defender approve of that. What Serif decides to do is indeed their ball game. But without input and reports from happy or angry users, how would they understand their users. It is feedback, knowledge. Sometimes it is served beautifully, sometimes not, but inside there is a core message. Serif needs it to prioritize and to make their business moves. But all this didn't cross your mind, did it? The bigger picture. You act like a moral judge on a very weak foundation. A true swede. But this is not Folkhemmet.
And the childish "if you don't like it, don't use it" is simply so single minded. Serif do whatever they want? You like civil rights (when you can use them to continue yelling) but you do not understand how debate, compromise, heated debates, politics, society works. The heart of it. It is NOT centered about you yelling out loud about your rights. It is to listen and understand as well as pushing an agenda.
In fact your philosophy should be "I am satisfied. I like it. I will leave the discussion to people who are not. Let them make the product better for their use cases." But no. 
Look around in the forum. So many voice concerns about the priorities made by Serif. For Serif to do what "they want" (lets just act like adults and call it "make an informed decision") they should listen. Here fx. Your role is not to filter inputs from users.

Ahahaha. Thanks for getting all philosophical and meta, man. No, really, I'm not being ironic here, because people don't talk about those issues nearly as much as they should, just because they are taboo or something (and then, guess what, people go without help and die). Indeed, I'm not all too happy with all the stuff that's been happening around me, like losing one teacher, from that group I keep harking back to, to suicide, my mom's best friend to cancer, my ex from my life (she's still around… somewhere) because of depression and career choices on opposite sides of pond, and whatnot. But hey, I'm getting help for all of that, and then some. Thank you for caring, so I should also tell you that, between professionals and friends, I'm pretty much already covered.
As for being out and about in Lisbon, and drunk at that, interestingly enough, I'm far from it (aha, I know, I know, it's Saturday… fair enough; but while I'm no stranger to the occasional night of mild-to-heavy drinking, the last thing I'd do in one of those occasions would be to come here to bash on Serif, as I do tend to drink only in good company, and almost never alone; also, as you may guess, I wouldn't be this articulate – especially in English –, either  ). As a matter of fact, I've been staying at home these last few days working on two posters/abstracts. Wanna see? They are peeking behind us right there, in Word, the entire ensemble awash in full, nighttime “f.luxed” glory.

I am, indeed, procrastinating by venting here with you people, that much is true. That's kind of what I do when I get stressed out about deadlines. But you do worry too much. I really am sticking to a program here, there's a method to the “madness”, and I've been in this game since waaaaay before all that stuff – and even the triggers for most of the really screwed up stuff that's been happening in the world at large – went down. And speaking of worrying about stuff, I would rather worry about Serif for the time being, than with all the other stuff you've just mentioned (besides, how can you be so sure I don't do so already, during other times of the day and the week? Walking and chewing gum, man, and that's what my family and friends are there for…  ).
The thing with Serif is that it makes me rather sad and personally hurt (especially the thing with Patrick; no, really, it is that personal, even though I never spoke with the guy face to face, because I do care for these guys and was pretty much dismissed as a useless idiot who supposedly didn't understand business models… I may be a royal pain in the butt, but… seriously? I've been kicking myself ever since 2004 because I wasn't gutsy enough, nor had much money in the bank, to buy Apple stock, as I basically predicted the “iPod halo effect”, their meteoric rise, etc.). Serif was an exciting company, and trying their products (updates, betas, what you have it) was a bit like getting new toys for Christmas. Except they were supposed to be useful “toys”, put bread on the table and be worthy of an unreserved recommendation from myself towards others (because that's what I'm constantly asked for, about a plethora of stuff). For context, you have to understand that I was pissed mad at Adobe with their CC-only business model stunt, back in… I don't even recall, 2012? 2013?… to the point that kept creating anti-Adobe artwork on many Facebook pages for a while (you won't see me do such a thing right now with Serif, as I'm mostly just… disappointed, really), and promptly fired up a heartfelt e-mail at Serif, actively pledging for a Mac-compatible CC alternative way before anyone else had even read or probably even uttered the words “Affinity [whatever]” (even though it was already in early Alpha stage, if I'm not mistaken… But do you see a pattern there? It seems that I also predicted/guessed Serif's entire business model several years in advance, just by doing a cursory search of design software company websites), and did end up forging a closer relationship with them when it comes to the nitty-gritty of it than the majority of people here in the forums (AFAIK, since I haven't discussed this with my lawyer and won't risk it, I am not legally allowed to discuss the details, so let's just leave it at that; it's just a general factoid that does add further injury to insult).
As you can see, I did have bit of an emotional investment put into this, to put it mildly. I saw these guys, these genius and gutsy underdogs, as a bit of a lifeline from yet another evil empire that wanted to extract yet another rent out of me. Kind of late 1970s Apple against IBM, or early 2000s Apple against… everyone else, all over again and in my niche of business. It is political, and it is related with the economical shenanigans you've mentioned in more ways than you may think. I'm actually a very politically outspoken person (if you go to The Guardian's page on Facebook, you'll see me there on occasion, also wasting bits of my “precious” time for anyone who will hear it), and these things really mess with me, whether they are “pure” politics or otherwise (if anything, everything is politics, as I often say).
So, yeah. When it comes to my tools, on which I literally depend, I now feel a bit abandoned. Orphaned, even, if you will, because there are no better alternatives, as I'll explain further down. And I can't help but feel that Serif, for all its insane sales figures, is really suffering from a special brand of hubris, not quite unlike the one Adobe suffers from (albeit on a smaller scale, but definitely on the same spectrum), which may hurt us all deeply in the long run. Heck, it's hurting me so much right now I don't even feel like using one of their apps anymore, and will actually steer people who trust me away from it. I'm absolutely, positively not overreacting over this, man; I had months, if not years, to try the app and mull over it, and I also gave Serif quite a long time to concoct some kind of response to me grievances here in the forums. To be insulted in a heated moment is one thing; to be ignored for weeks on end, well… that's just further icing on the cake. And, on top of all that, to not even be able to make use of the very thing that prompted all that strife in the first place, maybe for many years to come, well… that's just the cherry on top, and the proverbial last straw. As a matter of fact, and in hindsight, seeing how these issues have been dragging on for so long, are yet to be resolved and may even only be addressed in v.2.x, I should've been doing just that since the very beginning, and treating Affinity Designer v.1.x as one of those “commercial betas” Apple and Google are so fond of doing (hey, I'm a first-gen, Apple Watch Sport [retroactively called “Series 0”] owner, so I really know what I'm talking about; I do put my money where my mouth is and love to “test” that kind of stuff, while being fully aware of the risks, so it's really nothing new to me, but I also warn other people of them and usually tell them to “wait until version 2 or 3”… Guess I was too optimistic about Serif way back when, whoopsie-daisy).
As for my issues with Affinity Designer, just how serious the lack of alternatives is, and the way I feel about the entire thing, here's another, even better analogy: my brother is a musician; he treats and babies his instruments like… the most prized possessions that they really are. If he loses them at the airport, or if they break, he's completely and utterly screwed… And he must constantly carve and bind new reeds, because they wear out and their design makes a big difference on the quality of the sound. I – also a former music student, mind you – feel very much the same way about my professional tools, and even though software shouldn't require as much maintenance, if at all, it absolutely should allow you some creative freedom as to its very mode of operation, too (that's Petr van Blokand's entire schtick: “build your own tools”, he says… I wouldn't go so far as designing my own vector drawing app, but couldn't Serif, at the very least, relax things a little bit? Pretty please?). I depend on them, and they better be functional, elegant and flexible, otherwise my work will feel like – and become – a terrible chore, instead of the unencumbered form of personal expression it damned well should be. I don't want to – nay, I can't – design vector-related stuff while boxed into a first-and-foremost illustration-bound application, and Serif's marketing and branding is absolutely deceiving in that regard.
Also, being someone with a keen eye for UX, not only do these issues and unnegotiable choices sadden me, as they prevent me from using the app for anything but the most basic stuff, they irk me in more ways than one. Because not only am I not able to make good use of these tools in their current state, they could be 10x better – and actually useful, if not perfect or complete – with so, so little investment. With the right kind of investment. Or with the right[ful] business model, in Adobe's case, but when it comes to those guys I'm really not holding my breath anymore (can you believe that I did think, for the first few years, that they might reverse course? How naïve and optimistic can one be… right?). As for Open Source, while it's the model that pleases me the most when it comes to politics and economics, it suffers from an entirely different set of issues kind of by default (mostly UX-related, especially in the insufferable Scribus, but the licensing issues when it comes to commercial standards – like, say, colour books – that we, unfortunately and for the time being, must adhere to, are also a sticking point), which steered me away from it many years ago. Then, there's Corel, but it's so alien (even though I did take my first steps there), and so expensive, that there's no point in even considering it. And the same goes, in a nice, parallel line (as I did start my DTP training on it, too), for QuarkXPress. And, yeah, FreeHand's dead, regardless of what the “FreeHand forever” crowd will keep telling themselves, in a state of collective delusion and insularity that makes my long rants or even using Scribus (*gasp*) seem sensible by comparison, ha.
So Serif it is, then. Except it isn't. Yet.
Finally, as a cute little addendum: I do sometimes muse about switching from my very cumbersome Word+Mendeley > Classic DTP (InDesign/Quark/Publisher) academic workflow over to a strictly LaTeX workflow for my thesis and for papers. I have no idea how I would even go about it, and what the advantages might be, as… you know, that crowd is weird, even by F/OSS standards, and even though I am a die-hard fan of Don Knuth, and probably read a lot more on the subject than most designers I know, I really don't know what to think of it yet. Maybe it is, indeed, a more elegant and flexible way to typeset academic books, if a bit too “left-brainy” for our poor, WYSIWIG-formatted minds, but it's still too early to tell. [Edit: I just checked, and yes, it is too cumbersome. TeX and LaTeX were created so non-designers would be able to create beautifully – if a bit too simple by our standards – typeset documents; the thing is, I'm a professional designer, and I'd rather work with a WYSIWIG editor even during the writing phase, as I know my way around Word styles, footnotes and cross-references, so if I can convert those straight away into a DTP app, I'm all set.]

At least that's a tool, which even requires a proper icon and shortcut key, and it was put there, so we know they intend on tackling it probably still during v.1.x.
The “select by same stroke/fill/appearance” feature, by comparison, is downright basic even by ex-FreeHand users' standards (they don't care how hard it is to code; from an end-user standpoint, it feels basic and essential, especially in its current Adobe Illustrator's incarnation as but a couple of options on a submenu, which is the bare and expected minimum, so it's understandable that users just assumed it would come sooner rather than later and will be flabbergasted if it indeed only comes in a later, v.2.x paid upgrade), and has been an extremely popular request also for 5 years straight, spanning an entire 12-page thread. And yeah, as you can see, it's not there, not even a blip on the radar.
Quoting you, once again: “not trying to be rude, but wow” x10. Somehow, this doesn't feel like the kind of feature that should require a gigantic amount of coding and testing, like a multi-line composer, or an auto-tracer, or something like that, and if Serif's excuse is that “their document model isn't ready for that kind of search forum” (I'm not entirely sure, but IIRC there were some comments to that effect, but please correct me if I'm wrong), then clearly some serious mistakes were made when developing said model at the early conception stages of the entire Affinity suite. Such a lack of foresight is severely disturbing, and doesn't match the expectations that a using a core document format, a portable engine written in C, etc., raised.
Again, all of this seems to confirm my assertion that Serif developers are great, genius coders, but severely lacking in the creative relations department. They should take a page or two from Apple's playbook when doing the Mac Pro and Display Pro line reboot, and either actively ask users, in private, what exactly do they need, or at least look attentively at their own forums and, while I'm at it, treating them with a wee bit more respect (instead of, say, nuking the entire threads like they just did). These threads are by no means scientific surveys, but they are certainly better than nothing, and definitely better than anything other competitors like, say, Adobe could hope for. And I dare say, more useful than the insane sales figures and rave reviews on the App Store Serif keeps bandying about. Please stop behaving like a mini-Apple (of yore, that is; ever noticed how Tim Cook recently stopped bombarding us with sales figures? That's right, they now have so much new stuff to discuss every year, they do not even have to use figures as filler…), and forget about 5-star reviews and moolah; you should be always, always focusing on criticism, not praise. That's the only way you can grow as a person, as a professional or as a company.

Nope. I won't. Do you know why? Because I paid for this thing. And, to top it off – or, better yet, this is the real crux of the matter, because ~€40 isn't that much to lose, really –, I also invested countless hours of my precious time in this by giving suggestion after suggestion, feedback post after feedback post, bug report after bug report. I'm not as active here as other users, but I'm certainly way more active than many of those millions of customers who are happy (but really; are they all? Are they really frequent and valuable users, like, say, design teachers like I already am? Or have some of them paid for the app – even after, sure, using up the free trial –, tried it further for a bit, figured out that it wasn't good enough for their needs and just chucked it into the proverbial digital drawer?). And what did I, and others, get in return? I, for one, even got personally insulted by a Serif employee here in the forums. And, you know what, considering how things turned out, isn't this thread's entire purpose right now whining about a decision by Serif, anyway? It started out with a very valid, very serious question, which has gone unaddressed for two weeks!
Look, I know I sound entitled, and that I sometimes behave like a little brat. But a), as a paying customer (of the entire suite, no less), I kind of am entitled, by default, and b) this entire UX SNAFU is a hill I'm absolutely willing to die on, even if I have to do a damn postgraduate course in UX if I must to better back up my assertions with proper, structured knowledge and verbiage (and, in fact, my Faculty offers one such course, given by some former colleagues from my first MA in Communication Design and New Media, and I may very well do just that after I'm done with my PhD, as that's what the commercial market is really asking for now, big time; if I do so, expect to see me here in the forums even more, not less, even if it happens only five years from know when Affinity hits, oh, I don't know, v.2.5.x, and maybe then we'll have advanced selection tools and a knife tool, but still no universal layers or a sensible document model…?  ).
Anyway, don't worry about getting warning points from moderators. I've probably done and said much worse stuff here than, AFAIK, you ever did, and I haven't gotten any warnings yet, so… nah. If anyone here is getting them first, that would be me. And if I did get them, I would probably vacate the premises, STAT, instead of wasting any more of my time here.

Was the Knife tool seriously placed on the roadmap 5 years ago and still nothing? That's quite astounding. Not trying to be rude, but wow.

Well, from a creative and practical standpoint, once projects reach a certain level – or, better yet, a specific kind or combination thereof – of complexity, it's absolutely, positively atrocious and cumbersome. Maybe you just haven't bumped into those scenarios yet, but believe me, if you keep using the app for any extended period of time and with different kinds of projects, you absolutely will. Please take the time to peruse this thread; there are examples with screenshots, even, and… I mean, surely you can appreciate how impractical one's workflow can become on those occasions, am I right?
This is a feature that is nice to have. But terrible to be forced to use constantly. That's what we're getting at here. I don't have anything against clipping per se, as it can be very useful in many scenarios so, in a sense, you are also absolutely right in saying that it is, indeed, “awesome”. In fact, when doing those operations I described earlier, it's also essential to alternate between a clipped and unclipped state, to both see and be able to work with all your stuff unencumbered and also get a preview of how it will end up looking in a final, physical, WYSIWYG state. Thus, that's what the clipping function should be called: PREVIEW. A Preview mode, in addition to a “working” mode that, yes, would look messier, but give you more freedom to think about and experiment with your own artwork.
I rest my case, and I absolutely invite the higher echelons and UX/creativity experts from Serif to try and contradict me on my assertions here in a more rational, “QED” fashion.

Precisely. I'd say there are some other lingering issues with Serif right now which are completely off-topic (and which people who've seen the other threads I'm active in already know about), but this has got to be the real kicker.
I know some of them would require a deep rethought of the codebase and UX model (like the way Artboards are top-most containers instead of bottom-most “slices” of sorts, a dead horse that I basically ground into such a fine paste here in the forums it's not even funny anymore), or at least some months of testing entirely new features (just check the infamous, 5-year-old and 12-page-long “selection…” thread I mentioned), but many of these irksome limitations could actually be fixed right now by adding a checkbox/menu item or two here and there. This clipping mess being one.
Users keep demonstrating, with screenshots and whatnot, just how broken this model can become, with objects becoming invisible altogether and, thus, exceedingly hard to select – other than directly from the Layers panel or by switching to outlines view, that is –, but Serif devs just refuse to listen or admit the model is flawed in too many instances to be acceptable as the default, let alone as the only choice.
Please, PLEASE, PLEASE: make clipping in Designer behave like InDesign's “preview” mode. You know, the one that you can trigger by pressing “W”, which automatically clips the pasteboard and hides the guidelines? That is the only sensible way to approach this feature (well, maybe not by also hiding guidelines in Designer, but you get my point).
When in the middle of a job, especially one that involves stuff that extends beyond the limits of the page, artboards should be abstractions, not full-blown clipping masks. That's what clipping masks were invented for, duh. If you take a moment to consider the concept of an artboard, and of clipping stuff to its limits, Serif's “sacred” model falls completely flat on its face. It's actually downright user-hostile and stifling in its “fundamentalist WYSIWYG-ness”!
Maybe it works great on an iPad, but on a large-screen Mac/PC it's completely absurd. If you're adjusting stuff to see how it will be clipped, you want – nay, absolutely need – to see what's about to be cut off as well. It really boggles the mind just how little practical sense and understanding of the creative process Serif devs had when planning/coding/selling this. Experimenting with complete control and knowledge of what you're doing and of your source material is just… Creativity 101. That's why when you move an image inside a frame in InDesign, you actually get a semi-transparent preview of the areas which will be clipped, something which Designer doesn't even bother doing, as it just clips objects straight away even during drag operations.
This limitation goes hand-in-hand with an old one by myself, the lack of “ghost” objects (and nodes!) when dragging, whether they are of the final position (like in Illustrator), or of the initial position (like I proposed as a sensible compromise). For a long time I thought that Serif devs just had too much on their plate to be able to address those, but I'm getting more and more convinced that they have severe UX knowledge handicaps. Their decisions are all over the place, as they are either too WYSIWYG-y, or too little (as in the weird, database- and file-system-tree-like artboard-as-container model). I can't always quite put my finger on what's wrong, specifically, or call stuff by their proper names (what is it? Affordances? Forgiving UX? … err, general “intuitiveness” and “user-friendliness”), but I know Affinity is seriously borked “by design” in many, many ways. And the devs just won't listen to us when we do articulate just how and why.
That, or Designer was designed and decreed to forever be used mostly for digital illustration, and on small laptops and iPads, no less. Which is just sad and limiting for no good reason, considering the lofty goals Serif bandied about on their website, social media, this very forum, keynotes, etc.

Keep fighting for your needs as a designer, my fellow user (I would've given you a “thank you” react, but I've already spent mine for the day, by the way).
Serif's stance on the sacredness of their current document model is untenable, and people will keep finding the lack of this basic and obvious option dumbfounding, but the only way the developers will cave in is if enough users do ask for it, and do so persistently and vehemently enough.

If that was their main reason, they have no *insert the expletive of your choice* idea of how to run a public forum, because they just threw the baby out with the bathwater for no good reason (unless they were actively trying to piss users off and curtail certain discussions, in which case, well, they certainly succeeded).
They already had a habit, by design, of editing the main, pinned post, which was weird enough and not very appropriate for this application, and even led me and others to beat the long dead Trac horse into a pulp, but leaving that post stripped of an actual roadmap and populated instead with an explanation as to their reasoning would've been totally fine by the standards of 99,99% of forum users.

So, you're sticking by this decision, regardless of the undeniable fact that Serif tried to herd users by pissing them off instead of providing them with workable alternatives and treating them – and behaving – like adults, by communicating their intentions…? That's what their “forcing users to follow instructions” stunt, as you've worded it, really amounted to in reality. Is it really “following instructions” when not only did we not have a choice in the matter or even got nothing in the way of an advance warning, we also saw a very tangible, personal investment into our engagement with Serif and our fellow users vanish into thin air? Oh boy, where do I even begin… 
Changing forum dynamics while respecting users aren't mutually exclusive goals, you know? Taking a v.1.8 branch, or an entirely new v.2 suite, or whatever, as an opportunity for a fresh start would've been great and understandable, and people could very well be “forced” into a new model and accept it sooner rather than later. Yes, even by locking the threads right away. Heck, by your logic of forcing people to behave, but still giving them some freedom to comment, Serif mods could even meet them halfway and apply a very assertive, almost Reddit-like style of moderation by deleting spurious posts as they came in – and users might even be fine with it, as long as the rules were explicit, consistent and enforced only after a set date –, but retroactively deleting an entire old thread, including whole back-and-forths between people and historically relevant information?
That's uncalled for, virtually unheard of from any self-respecting and respectful forum admin/moderator, and obviously preposterous! Please trust me on that one: I'm on a lot of forums, about subjects that range from skyscraper projects all the way to Apple-related stuff, and things have to get very political and heated up, like turning into an off-topic “separatist vs. unionist” grade-A flustercuck, with personal insults flying left and right and whatnot, before a thread is even locked, let alone outright deleted, as good mods will always try to judiciously delete individual offending posts and block or even ban its respective authors before throwing in the towel and going nuclear.
I can only pinpoint one such occurrence, that led to an entire thread being wiped out of existence as collective punishment and a warning for the future (hey, it worked; the new thread that replaced it, which I still peruse to this day and multiple times a week, works great and is very welcoming to all, which is nothing short of a moderation miracle considering that the underlying political strife that led to its predecessor's demise is now coming to a head, so clearly the mods did and are still doing their jobs right!), and other than entire forums perishing, a sad but sometimes inevitable occurrence, this is the only time in TWENTY years (yes, I've been online since 1999!) that I ever heard of a thread being deleted just… because.
Considering just how very civil and constructive this crowd is by comparison with some of the shenanigans I've seen online before, this move just feels amateurish and petty, sorry. Have some self-respect, people, and demand more respect in kind. As I've said, I'm on many strictly amateur, labour-of-love-ish forums that are managed more professionally and respectfully than this one (at least when it comes to this sensitive topic of data integrity), out of all things from a burgeoning company whose wares are aimed squarely at professionals. It's shameful for everyone involved, really.

Haha, yeah I skipped a hell of a lot to get here.
+1 for   Find & Replace
I wouldn’t even mind if global colours didn’t come to iPad for a good while - providing this suggested feature at least makes it to desktop first.

So, you're sticking by this decision, regardless of the undeniable fact that Serif tried to herd users by pissing them off instead of providing them with workable alternatives and treating them – and behaving – like adults, by communicating their intentions…? That's what their “forcing users to follow instructions” stunt, as you've worded it, really amounted to in reality. Is it really “following instructions” when not only did we not have a choice in the matter or even got nothing in the way of an advance warning, we also saw a very tangible, personal investment into our engagement with Serif and our fellow users vanish into thin air? Oh boy, where do I even begin… 
Changing forum dynamics while respecting users aren't mutually exclusive goals, you know? Taking a v.1.8 branch, or an entirely new v.2 suite, or whatever, as an opportunity for a fresh start would've been great and understandable, and people could very well be “forced” into a new model and accept it sooner rather than later. Yes, even by locking the threads right away. Heck, by your logic of forcing people to behave, but still giving them some freedom to comment, Serif mods could even meet them halfway and apply a very assertive, almost Reddit-like style of moderation by deleting spurious posts as they came in – and users might even be fine with it, as long as the rules were explicit, consistent and enforced only after a set date –, but retroactively deleting an entire old thread, including whole back-and-forths between people and historically relevant information?
That's uncalled for, virtually unheard of from any self-respecting and respectful forum admin/moderator, and obviously preposterous! Please trust me on that one: I'm on a lot of forums, about subjects that range from skyscraper projects all the way to Apple-related stuff, and things have to get very political and heated up, like turning into an off-topic “separatist vs. unionist” grade-A flustercuck, with personal insults flying left and right and whatnot, before a thread is even locked, let alone outright deleted, as good mods will always try to judiciously delete individual offending posts and block or even ban its respective authors before throwing in the towel and going nuclear.
I can only pinpoint one such occurrence, that led to an entire thread being wiped out of existence as collective punishment and a warning for the future (hey, it worked; the new thread that replaced it, which I still peruse to this day and multiple times a week, works great and is very welcoming to all, which is nothing short of a moderation miracle considering that the underlying political strife that led to its predecessor's demise is now coming to a head, so clearly the mods did and are still doing their jobs right!), and other than entire forums perishing, a sad but sometimes inevitable occurrence, this is the only time in TWENTY years (yes, I've been online since 1999!) that I ever heard of a thread being deleted just… because.
Considering just how very civil and constructive this crowd is by comparison with some of the shenanigans I've seen online before, this move just feels amateurish and petty, sorry. Have some self-respect, people, and demand more respect in kind. As I've said, I'm on many strictly amateur, labour-of-love-ish forums that are managed more professionally and respectfully than this one (at least when it comes to this sensitive topic of data integrity), out of all things from a burgeoning company whose wares are aimed squarely at professionals. It's shameful for everyone involved, really.

Please find below the current feature roadmap for Affinity Designer. The list is a selection of features from our own internal roadmap we would like to share with our users. If a feature you would like isn't on the list then feel free to create a new post so everyone can discuss it. We read all the feature suggestions and consider each one very carefully.
The idea is the list will never get longer. As we complete and release features then we will replace those features with new ones.
Pro Printing
-Phase II transparency flattener
-Bleed area guides
Illustration & Design
-Mesh fill tool
-Mesh warp/distort tool
-Knife tool
-Calligraphic line styles
-Arrow head line styles
-Export slices previews with actual export data 
-Pages
-Text features including Bullets and Numbering
-Knockout groups
-Multiple Effects/Fills/Strokes per shape
-Convert Pixel selection to Vector shape
Usability
Replicate/Blend
Please feel free to ask questions about the features on the list but don't post new feature requests in this thread, just create a new thread.

Steering away people from that model is not only reasonable, but desirable. We were ourselves actively asking Serif to put that gargantuan thread out of its misery and replace it with something more functional. But implying that the fact no one here would want to read through those dozens of pages makes them inherently useless is a total fallacy in the digital world. Yes, who even reads through near-infinite amounts of stuff linearly anymore? But… that's what hypertext (i.e. links, and linking to other posts is a thing this web forum app is very good at, in fact) and search were invented for. To deal with and make sense of vast amounts of information, obviously.
What the hell, people. Wake up! Wiping information from the face of the Earth for no good reason – and, I mean, let's also be fair to ourselves: nobody ever really incurred, that I've seen, in hate speech or other illegal forms of harassment in these forums that would justify deleting individual posts, let alone an entire thread, and I don't think Serif employees accidentally posted corporate secrets over there, either – is downright Orwellian. Surely some British guys should be able to appreciate the implications of that, especially the way it rubs off on people, better than anyone else, am I right?
No. I won't stand for it. This is just taking an extremely heavy-handed and, at the same time, sloppy approach to managing what was, I thought, a very welcoming forum. And right now I'm having my doubts about that, too. Something is indeed rotten somewhere, and it ain't in the state of Denmark.

If that was their main reason, they have no *insert the expletive of your choice* idea of how to run a public forum, because they just threw the baby out with the bathwater for no good reason (unless they were actively trying to piss users off and curtail certain discussions, in which case, well, they certainly succeeded).
They already had a habit, by design, of editing the main, pinned post, which was weird enough and not very appropriate for this application, and even led me and others to beat the long dead Trac horse into a pulp, but leaving that post stripped of an actual roadmap and populated instead with an explanation as to their reasoning would've been totally fine by the standards of 99,99% of forum users.

I mean, you know I'm already outspoken, but I will no longer mince words here: this is a total shambles. I've been away for less than two weeks, to get my bearings, and… I was checking some notifications relating to that thread and now what, Serif is deleting history here? Big, big no-no in forum land.
Whoever made this decision should, if possible, immediately reverse it and, at the very least, keep the old thread visible, but locked. This isn't moderation, it's… “fixing” something that was arguably broken, yes, but with a neutron bomb instead of with a hammer. Get real, guys! All of you. The Serif team, and you softies, for even thinking of making apologies for such an inexcusable move. Clearly some of you haven't been using public forums for long enough, or in the right places, to know what is and isn't acceptable by community standards and netiquette in general. Or from the angle of digital archivism of publicly-available information… If Serif wasn't willing to archive it themselves, at least they could've dropped a hint at the guys from archive.org to do it for them.
The thing with old threads is that other people can read them, link to them, etc. There was a treasure trove of information there, which is now gone. Man-months, if not years, of actual investment from users.
And yes, since I've mentioned it, I did check archive.org. The last snapshot from that thread was taken in August 19, 2018. As for everything else, off-topic or otherwise, we've posted for the better part of 11 months…? It's all gone, boom! To say that I am mad at the Serif team right now is a bit of an understatement. Are you guys out of your damned minds? This is an outrage!

It would be nice if they showed edit dates, but the first post in that topic was the current roadmap, up to the time that 1.7 was released.
Implemented items (prior to 1.7) had been deleted, as stated there, and new items had been added that Serif was willing to commit to.

Why did Serif delete the entire roadmap thread?? 
Why not just rename and lock it?
EDIT: all roadmaps were deleted!
 
 

Suddenly removing such a thread with hundreds of suggestions and input from customers  rather than adjusting it... 
That INDEED sounds like they are ‘adjusting’ it.
 

You still don't suddenly delete a thread like that. Erase memory.
They deleted all roadmaps btw.

Closing and archiving the original Topic with Roadmap in the Old feature requests section, when the new Roadmap arrived, would have been the most convenient course of action.
Best regards!