[Import CorelDRAW files]

Hmmm... what should I look at today?... it's a Friday after all...

 

Nah, I'll push this to another Friday, but it will get looked at :)

[Frame text in any shape]

I switched them off :)  I did this because when you were in the text tool you could see the text you were typing and it all had an outline around it which I thought looked very weird! I thought I'd just stopped it drawing in the text tool, but must've stopped it in all tools? :(

[[APu] Text wrapping]

Here's a preview for anyone interested... Incidentally, it's much quicker than this in real life - the screen recorder slows everything down!

 

flowing_text.mov

[[APu] Text wrapping]

It already works!... if you're using Affinity Publisher  :P

 

...and if I mark one of the objects as being avoided by text and save the file, I can open it in Designer and modify the object and all my text magically (and incredibly fluidly) flows around it.

 

Okay, I'll stop being a tease now...

[PDF export options]

All of this will appear soon :)

[Bezier point looks and behavior]

Sounds good to me! :)

[Bezier point looks and behavior]

Hi matthias :)

 

Thanks for your input!

 

I think suggestion 3 should work already. Suggestion 2 is definitely interesting - I'll give it some thought! Suggestion 1 is quite tricky because you've got the question of whether you meant to drag the off-curve handle out from before the current node, or after the current node - that's the only reason we haven't done it (although we've obviously talked about it!)

 

The size of nodes is always a sore point - I like them a little smaller, then other people can't see them properly so complain and I make them a little bigger again. We can definitely look at putting size options in if enough people are unhappy with them :)

 

See how you feel about the new look of the tool when you get the new beta (which will probably be on Tuesday again, as seems to be our schedule at the moment!) Incidentally, I changed it so that Smart nodes now just draw as slightly larger circles instead of drawing in orange and as squares. Again, see what you think when you try it!

 

Many thanks,

Matt

[Smart Guides]

Hi Damson,

 

The recent colour bar and rotation 'lollipop' (that's our internal word) are both really useful things that genuinely don't detract if you choose not to use them. The rotation lollipop acts not just as an obvious method to rotate the objects (which is particularly useful if you have a touch device) but it also serves to indicate the object's current rotation visually - I can easily see that something has been flipped vertically or rotated clockwise/anticlockwise by 90 degrees without even checking the transform page. I don't immediately see a need to remove them, or even have them as preferences options, to be honest? If MS Office has some good UI, then good on them! ;)

 

We obviously don't aim to be Illustrator, PhotoShop, Freehand or anyone else - we aim to be ourselves, but learning from what makes a good program 'good' and coming up with our own perspective on it :) Hopefully it's working, and hopefully we'll do enough to persuade you that we're worth sticking around for! :)

 

We're obviously not 100% there yet, but we are passionate about our product and I think we have a very good chance :)

 

Thanks,

Matt

[Intersect function]

Hello! :)

 

Interestingly, there are at least 4 ways you can achieve this effect in Affinity Designer and I think you've picked the only one that I can find an oversight with, sorry! :( I'll sort it out in a minute, but here are the other alternatives that all work (and are useful to know!)

 

Option 1 - Select the image and just use the Vector Crop Tool to modify the image's cropping area.

Option 2 - Open the layers control. Drag the thumbnail that shows your rectangle onto the thumbnail that shows your image and let go. This has cropped your image to the rectangle. You could use this technique to crop to an arbitrary shape, group of shapes, or even another image (with alpha or it will just act like a rectangle!)

Option 3 - Open the layers control. Drag the thumbnail that shows the image onto the text label of the row that shows the rectangle and let go. This has placed your image as a clipped child of the rectangle. It's different to the cropping case described above because your rectangle is still drawn too, so if it had a colour and your image had transparency you'd still be able to see the rectangle's colour through it. It also allows you to set a line style on the rectangle which will show as a neat border around your image. Again, you can add any object as a child of any other object in this way and expect it to clip to its outline which is very powerful.

Option 4 - The method you suggested: Select both objects and perform the intersect command on them. The reason I called the problem here an 'oversight' is that it's doing something consistent here, but unhelpful... Basically, it is producing an object from the intersection area and then setting in the fill from the object originally at the back (the image) - except the image didn't have a fill! We allow you to have a placed image and easily recolour it by just choosing a colour while the image is selected, and it is that fill that we were taking from the image when we created the intersected area. What we actually needed to do was to set in the (potentially recoloured) image from the source as the fill instead.

 

This is obviously very easy to resolve, it's just that I've never done it this way before - I've always done one of the other methods!  :rolleyes:

 

Thanks for the report and expect it to be sorted out soon :)

Matt

[Import CorelDRAW files]

I think Andy Somerfield is making our stance on file import quite clear here - if there's enough demand then we'll try our best - although one step at a time. Hopefully we're already quickly becoming one of the most compatible applications there is! :)

 

Thanks,

Matt

[View outlines]

Hi pjarnold!

 

At the moment, we don't have a wireframe view mode - although I do also really want one! I'll add one whenever I get a Friday afternoon free - so expect it hopefully soon! It has its own issues that need resolving, but it's fairly trivial in the scheme of things. Keep an eye out for it in future betas :)

 

Thanks,

Matt

[Duplicate objects, each ending up a specified distance from the original.]

Hi bodycode,

 

Really glad you're enjoying using the program so far!

 

To make a straight line you just go to the Pen Tool and click to add a start point, then click to add an end point. Job done. Alternatively, if you're more of a line-dragging person (rather than clicking), you can just choose the 'Line Mode' option from the Pen Tool's context toolbar and then simply just drag a line from start to end then release the mouse. Hopefully that's straightforward :) We don't have a specific Line Tool because it's just a mode of a Pen Tool, and if it can be achieved in a number of ways already, we don't want yet another if it offers nothing extra, if you see what I mean? We're trying to be logical and productive with no bloat.

 

With regards to a general purpose transform dialog, if I'm understanding you correctly, this has been mentioned already and we've also already had a play with implementing this idea, but it's not ready for the beta yet. So, hopefully we'll have the functionality you're looking for really soon :)

 

Thanks,

Matt

[Brush tools]

We don't automatically synchronise settings based on selection change like DrawPlus - this is for a couple of reasons, but the biggest single reason is that things in Affinity Designer get inserted into the document as you create them based on the current selection and the target mode you have chosen, so we can't have the selection interfering with your creation defaults now. This sounds like an odd choice but is actually extremely powerful - if I am inside an object with my current selection then I add another new object it will also be inside that object. However, we do update your defaults as you use the program - for example, make a circle, change it to red, make another circle and it is already red to help you. Also, you can click the button on the toolbar to set the creation defaults from the current selection's attributes at any time.

 

Cheers,

Matt

[Open/Import .AI files]

Hi Alex,

 

Welcome to the forums! :)  You're doing nothing at all wrong - Affinity Designer will be able to open your .ai files, but in this current beta it is not yet finished, so has not been included yet. In retrospect, perhaps it would've been better for us to pop up a dialog that tells you that the functionality is not ready yet when you attempt to open a .ai or .pdf file, for which I apologise. This feature will be coming soon, so please hang in there :)

 

Thanks,

Matt

[Selecting objects]

Yes, your comment about the line box vs the wireframe box makes a lot of sense - I'll have a think... :)

[Bezier point looks and behavior]

:)

 

Like I said, I'm always open to a sensible suggestion, so if it bothers you again in time then we'll revisit it! :)

[Selecting objects]

Alt key is used though - if you started your drag over another object, you would normally just select and move that object, rather than performing a marquee selection. Instead, if you hold down Alt it will not select the object you were over at the start of the drag.

[Bezier point looks and behavior]

Hi Tony,

 

This is what I was trying to describe - that I didn't see the point in converting them to cusp and them staying with the same geometry (i.e. appearing to be smooth still). It's less useful than it still actually being a smooth type, and if you actually wanted to make them disjointed you just need to hold down Alt while you move the off-curve handles and it will automatically become Cusp as you do the operation... So I just don't see why it's a good thing?

 

Genuinely confused, not trying to be awkward or unreceptive :)

Matt

[Bezier point looks and behavior]

In which case, I think we already do what you want! :)  Just select the node(s) you're interested in and on the context toolbar for the Node tool choose the 'Smooth' option from the 'Convert' button group. Is that what you're looking for? :)

[Deselecting a selection]

Hi Matthias,

 

If you hit the Escape key, that should do what you're looking for already :) It's even pretty close to the Tab key, so not much muscle-memory retraining required! ;)

 

Cheers,

Matt

[Bezier point looks and behavior]

Hi,

 

I'm still not absolutely certain it's necessary at the moment? I'll explain my logic: If you have a smooth node selected and hold down the Alt key and try to move either of its off-curve handles it will automatically become a cusp node type - so I didn't need to click a button to convert it to the cusp type first. Alternatively, a cusp node which just appears to be smooth is not very useful until you use it as a cusp - at which time you would've just held down Alt to make it into a cusp automatically if it was a smooth to start with...

 

Hope that makes sense? I'm still open to suggestions, but I'm fairly happy with the way it is now, so I'll take a little more convincing this time ;)

Matt

[AI multiple strokes and fills]

We currently don't have this, but our architecture supports it. It's more of a question of a neat and consistent UI, which we think we now have an idea for. Expect this to happen in the future :)

[Is it interface inconsistency? (objects vs text transformations)]

Hello! :)

 

You can expect the next beta version to always lock aspect-ratio if you drag a corner handle, unless you override it with the Shift modifier. I've tried it out for a little while now and I'm just about managing to cope with it and am still able to draw things! ;)

 

Let me know how you get on with it in the next beta!

 

Cheers,

Matt

[exporting objects]

Hi Franco,

 

We've got a whole Export mode that lets you do exactly what you want. Just look at the different Personas available at the top left of the main window (Draw, Pixel and Export) and choose Export. Now select your object and change the export options available in the panel and you'll create an exportable object automatically. Click the export button either on the context toolbar or next to the object in the 'Slices' page and it will ask you where to save it. Note that you could also choose to export a retina version very easily with this method too.

 

Having said all this, I do think we probably need to add a 'Selected object(s)' checkbox to the File->Export dialog so that you can just easily export a selection :)

 

Cheers,

Matt

[AI Live Paint]

Hi Petar,

 

I think that this thread is essentially asking the same question. Basically, the only way I'd be interested in writing this feature is the proper way which is how AI implements it - and that is actually a large unit of work that I don't have time for before the launch. I'd expect this to happen one day, but not any time soon :)

 

Cheers,

Matt