Mr. Doodlezz

Wait, wait, wait.
Although I appreciate your alternative suggestions, you are taking the discussion in a completely different direction from what I originally intended to discuss with this topic! 😅
To be clear, my feedback/suggestion/question exclusively concerns contours with arrowheads and how transparency works on them – I'm not asking for solutions that are or include expanded strokes, converted shapes, or third party arrow shapes. I’m talking about Vanilla Affinity transparency for contours with arrowheads. 😉
I don't want a one-piece arrow shape, converted, constructed or otherwise – that's not my point.
I want a functioning transparency for regular contours with arrowheads, as shown in my demo.
Aka the contour with arrowheads a) has to remain a contour with arrowheads and b) has to work properly (like any other constructed shape) with transparency.
With »Thoughts?« I was trying to get thoughts on how other members of the community thought this should work.

I can't think of an occasion where I would want the current behaviour. I would always want the line + arrow to become translucent as a whole.
In the unusual case that I wanted the arrowhead and line to behave as separate objects, I would construct them that way manually.
So +1 for a change in the default behaviour.

As I initially mentioned. 😉

Wait, wait, wait.
Although I appreciate your alternative suggestions, you are taking the discussion in a completely different direction from what I originally intended to discuss with this topic! 😅
To be clear, my feedback/suggestion/question exclusively concerns contours with arrowheads and how transparency works on them – I'm not asking for solutions that are or include expanded strokes, converted shapes, or third party arrow shapes. I’m talking about Vanilla Affinity transparency for contours with arrowheads. 😉
I don't want a one-piece arrow shape, converted, constructed or otherwise – that's not my point.
I want a functioning transparency for regular contours with arrowheads, as shown in my demo.
Aka the contour with arrowheads a) has to remain a contour with arrowheads and b) has to work properly (like any other constructed shape) with transparency.
With »Thoughts?« I was trying to get thoughts on how other members of the community thought this should work.

It does not work in the way you want. 
 
You will spot more issues in the same area when
using curves with overlap themself curves with semi-transparent colors all behave in ways unwanted by many users.

For a short time I was tempted to purchase the upgrade from 1.x to 2.1. but having seen all those complaints about very very basic features being broken or still missing completely: nope, sorry.
I am not asking for AI-stuff but basics like variable fonts support or an option to set the color of every guide - perhaps even an algorithm that automatically finds a color that differs from all/most colors the guide crosses on the screen..?
Actually I am not asking for any new features but having the UI completely redesigned to meet state of the art usability requirements.
But as it seems, the Brits will prefer to add some more "nobody asked for"-filters.
sad story.

Expand the stroke (Layer-> Expand Stroke) on the selected curve layer and you will see more clearly that such a curve with an applied arrow head is basically constructed out of two objects (brush line + triangle shape curve)! - This way you can change the arrow head form appearance even afterwards as wanted due to the choosen stroke start/end settings.

I believe this can occur when the indicator/white arrow doesn't show next to the correct menu item/location but is a little hit and miss for when it occurs. However I've logged it with our developers to see if anything can be done to prevent it from happening.

Hi @Mr. Doodlezz,
Looks like a UI bug with the default blend modes on the Bevel / Emboss FX, this isn't present on Windows which correctly shows the blend modes as Screen/Multiply. I've now logged this with the developers, thanks for your report.

This appears to be isolated this to intel macs, I've logged this for the developers to look into.
Lee

I can replicate this issue on my intel mac. there are several icons, which surprisingly do not react on click-drag but especially the one where the wrong value changes...
Does this maybe have to do with undocked panels? In the past there were (and iirc still is) inconsistencies with the <tab> order when undocked, for example...
see video:

Bildschirmaufnahme 2023-06-01.mp4    

Hey @Dan C!
All right, thanks for confirming both issues. 😉

Hi @Mr. Doodlezz & all others here
I can confirm there are 2 bugs at play here:
Firstly, for 2.1 Windows (OS) the Studio shortcuts are correctly found under the 'Window' section of the Shortcuts Settings, as Psendas screenshot shows - following the menu convention found in the app.
For 2.1 macOS, these are incorrectly split between the 'Window' and 'Studio' sections of the Shortcut Settings, which is logged as a UI bug with our development team.
Secondly, for macOS Big Sur and onwards, there is a separate bug with duplicate Shortcuts being shown incorrectly in certain lists.
For example, the duplicate entries of 'Toggle Full Screen' in the 'Window' section, and duplicate entries of 'Emoji & Symbols' under the 'Edit' section.
This is the reason markw is not seeing the duplicates, as I believe they are running Catalina with Affinity V2 - this is also logged as a bug with our UI team.
 
I will be sure to 'bump' both reports with this thread now, I hope this helps!

Hi @Mr. Doodlezz,
This is clearly a bug, there are several other instances in the UI that demonstrate similar behaviours, i.e., where dragging a specific label changes the values for a completely different field, e.g., a similar thing happens in the Colour Chooser panel.
I'm unsure if this specific instance has already been logged but one of the moderation team will be able to confirm and if not it will be logged accordingly...

So the Mac version has two "Toggle Full Screen" menu items? - smart.

In Designer the entry to set a shortcut for the Paragraph panel should be found in the ‘Studio’ Shortcuts sub-menu.

Are there any updates on automatic font activation for font manager applications, both Mac and Windows?
There were at least two threads in the past that I could find, now archived, but there was never a real answer from Serif/Affinity as to if and when this feature would finally be integrated.
The latest news is that FontBase has tried to contact Serif on several occasions (according to a thread in their forum), but has not received any response.
I would love to be able to use this super handy feature of Fontbase, or by now almost any other font manager out there, together with Affinity Suite, but nothing seems to have happened in this area for years.

Would be awesome to get these results in AD/AP layer effects. Looks like PS gloss contour is missing to help this happen, also a Satin effect would be a great addition. Texture is a good one too.
 
 

Also Global light would be good.

Hi @Mr. Doodlezz,
Thanks for your report!
As the above link provided by Carl shows, this has been raised previously for Affinity Designer, though I'm not 100% certain of the expected behaviour in either app with a Layer Container when using Select > Deselect Layers in AFP or Select > Deselect in AFD and therefore I am logging this with our developers to request an official response from the dev team.
I will be sure to respond here, and in the linked thread, with any information provided to clear things up for our users.
I hope this helps

That's because it's a Layer Layer, notoriously hard to fully deselect without selecting another layer

I'm trying my hardest to deselect a layer, to not have anything selected when inserting a stock photo or making any sort of new curve/text/whatever.
After clicking outside the canvas and hitting escape repeatedly, the last used layer still has a dark blue highlight. How does one fully deselect, so any new element comes in on the "root level", not under that last used layer?
(Designer by the way)

I rephrased my point. It is possible to rename Compound Masks in general, but when you try to record it and try to rename it, you get an error.

Thanks for your response and checking, @MEB!