GarryP

Closing a straight line seems a bit strange to me, I wonder if that’s the correct and expected behaviour. Maybe it’s useful for something that I haven’t come across. Now I’m wondering: Should the “Close” button be disabled for a closed curve? That sounds reasonable to me. Anyway, attached are another two icons to throw into the mix. Neither is fantastic but they may give people some better ideas.

I think the Assets panel will probably do what you want from the standpoint of building up you own standard sets of ‘things’ to put in your documents. (Everyone will have their own ideas about what ‘things’ they need.) As for including a set of ready-made clip-art with the Affinity products, I don’t think that’s something which is needed these days. (E.g. Just do a web search for ‘clip-art tree’ and you will get more vector trees than you can shake the proverbial stick at.) The “Resources” section of this forum also gives people plenty of ideas for places to get quality stuff from. (Edit: haakoo just got in there before me.)

I think the “Break” button should be disabled when an ‘end node’ of an open curve is selected because there’s nothing to break, as it’s already the end of the curve. I also think that the “Close” button should be disabled when you have a straight line with only two nodes as there’s nothing to ‘close’ in a straight line.

How about something simple like this? (I won't say which is which as it should be fairly obvious.)

Designer shows you what you are drawing with the Pencil – in real-time – while you are drawing it. I don’t understand how also having an overlaid path partially- or fully-obscuring what you are drawing would be useful. I don’t see any useful information coming from where the mouse pointer has been while I am drawing something with a Pencil. I can’t do anything with the path while I am drawing so I can’t see any point in being able to see it while I am drawing. Isn’t it better to see what you are drawing rather than having something over the top of it? I just don’t see how this would be ‘better’. As per the attached image, I would prefer to see what’s on the left while I am drawing rather than the other two.

I think it might be useful if a moderator pinned a note about this to the top of the forum. It could help to stop this issue from being posted repeatedly, or as much. It doesn’t need to say much more than: “Variable fonts – such as Bahnschrift – aren’t supported yet.”, maybe with a list of well-used fonts that people can search for to get to the post itself.

I think you might be comparing two different things, which could be why you are seeing different behaviours. As I understand the situation, the Pen and Pencil are for different ways of drawing. As per Serif documentation: “The Pen Tool is used to precisely draw curves and shapes.” “With the Pencil Tool you can create a hand-drawn look by drawing freehand, variable width, lines as if you were drawing on paper.” Therefore, when you’re drawing with the Pen you normally want to see how the curve has been constructed as you draw so you can get everything exactly as you want it. On the other hand, when you draw with the Pencil, it’s like you are drawing with a real pencil/brush on real paper and in that case you will not normally want to have ‘construction artefacts’ getting in the way of the work being done. As I’ve said before, I believe the Pencil tool is exhibiting the correct and expected behaviour for what it has been designed to do.

I don’t see any reason for any kind of temporary “shadow/dotted” curve or anything like that. If the user wants to see the curve when they draw it they should make sure it has a stroke colour, and if they don’t want to see the curve when they draw it they can remove the stroke colour before they start drawing. Max N said that they couldn’t see the curve after they had deliberately told Designer that it should – in essence – not be seen. That’s not a software problem, it’s a workflow problem. If you want to see the curve make sure it has a colour, if you don’t want to see the curve - for whatever reason(s) - remove the colour. That sounds quite simple to me. Designer does – or should do – what you tell it. If you tell it not to use a colour for the stroke of a curve then, when you draw that curve, you will not see it and I don’t think anyone should be surprised by that.

Without putting a lot of thought into it, I cannot come up with a situation where I would not want to be able to see what I was drawing either. It does sound like a strange thing to want to do, but I’m no expert. However, I do think that Designer should accept what the user tells it to do, and if that means drawing something ‘invisibly’ then that’s probably what it should do. I don’t use the Pencil tool myself much so there might be some good reasons why the current behaviour is actually useful in certain cases.

This sort of thing has already been requested a few times: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/13970-ade-dimension-tool

I believe Designer is working as I would expect it to in this case. You have told it that you don't want to see the curve - you have deliberately removed the STROKE colour - so it's not showing you the curve when you are drawing it. If you want to see the curve while you're drawing it, set a stroke colour before you start drawing. You can always remove the stroke colour afterwards - it's the same amount of user interaction, just the other way round. I believe this is correct behaviour. If you want to see the FILL of the stroke while using this tool you can check the "Use Fill" checkbox on the context toolbar.

Nice catch Alfred. Actually: * the original logo says "Jason Building" (without the "s"); * the email address on the posters is also missing the "s"; * the @JasonDesign on the web mock-up doesn't have the "s"; * the name of the company on the web mock-up doesn't have the "s"; * but the website address on the billboard has the "s"; * the new logo has the "s" everywhere; * while the website address on the web mock-up doesn't have the "s"; ...so this all needs to be properly checked/changed where necessary. I would also change the SomeOne @SomeOne (and @SoneOne) on the web mock-up. And, to be extra picky - again - "Refesh" (missing an 'r') and "Viewall" (missing a space) under "Who to follow" on the web mock-up need to be changed too. Mostly minor stuff but getting it right helps give others more confidence.

Lovely stuff as usual. You've created a very versatile 'theme' - I don't know the proper marketing/advertising word for it - which can be used in lots of places in different ways. One teeny-weeny issue I have is with the wording on the billboard; you have a capital letter after the comma. Also, if I'm being very picky, on the first image, does the word "manufacturer" sit right with "construction" and "design"? 'Manufacture' (without the "r") sounds a bit better to me. At the moment it has a 'what we DO / what we DO / what we ARE' tempo (whatever I mean by "tempo") which feels a bit wrong to me, but I could be alone in that. And, again, very minor, but on the bottom social media post, I think you're missing the 's' at the end of dreams. Otherwise it doesn't sound right. Oh, and while I'm being incredibly petty, on the top social media post, July doesn't have a 33d day (that I know of). Anyway, those are very tiny issues which shouldn't detract from the rest of the great work. Looking forward to seeing more.

It might just be a language thing but it sounds like djockim is applying a style to the letter at the start of the paragraph which they want Drop Capped. (This might not be true but it's kind of how it sounds to me.) I think it's worth noting that the Drop Cap formatting should be applied to a paragraph and not just the character at the start of the paragraph. This means that the letter which is Drop Capped can change when then first letter of the paragraph changes. In other words, you don't have to re-apply the formatting if the first letter changes. This may, or may not, give some idea of what's going wrong in this case.

Oh well, just something to live with then. Thanks.

Aammppaa, thanks for mentioning that. Not something that I've noticed myself but worth keeping in mind. (Also, ScreenToGIF - as mentioned in your sig - looks very interesting.) >|<, thanks for the explanation. That certainly sounds like what is happening. As the thing I'm working on is for an icon/logo I don't have much control over how it will be displayed so it doesn't sound like there's much I can do about it, but I do have control over the colours so that's something I can try experimenting with. Maybe I can tweak things so the line isn't as noticeable. Is this something that digital art professionals simply have to accept or is there a way of stopping it? (A way that doesn't require very expensive hardware that is professionally calibrated and maintained.) I'm just curious as to what experts do about this, if anything.

I tried rotating the page by 180 degrees and the dirty line has moved sides - see attached. When I rotate my head as far as it will go the line is still where it was. When I rotate the object, the top and right sides - as seen from a static viewpoint - always seem to have the line whereas the left and bottom don't. Neither the amount of rotation nor the dimensioning of the object seem to make any difference. It's also the same on both my laptop display and external monitor. Changing to a different graphics card makes no difference either. I wear glasses but the whole screen is a blur without them so I can't tell if the line is there or not. P.S. I seem to have gotten myself into some kind of infinite file recovery loop where Designer keeps recovering a previous document and won't let me close without saving. If I do save the file, Designer recovers it again and the circle restarts. If I don't save I have to use Task Manager to end the application. But that's a different problem.

Windows 10 Home 1809, Designer 1.7.0.284. In a Designer document I have a pink shape over a blue background and there is a dirty green/brown line around some of it at all zoom levels (that I have tried), see attached image. I've also attached the document. The shape has no outline. Does anyone know: * what the effect is called? * why it happens sometimes but not others? * how I can get rid of it, if possible? extra-outline.afdesign

Have you tried using a one-cell table?

The way it works now seems pretty intuitive to me. The border selector icons are used to select which borders are formatted with the changes you make. Having an icon for every possible scenario - e.g. inside and bottom, inside and top, left, right and top but not bottom, etc. etc. - would make the panel very large and unwieldy. However, it may be improved if the user was shown a 'picture' of the 'cell grid' - as per LibreOffice etc. see attached image - where the user could select exactly which borders were to be formatted, rather than being limited to only some presets.

Oh, hang on, I've just tried this with another document and Preview Mode comes off as soon as I start dragging a guide from a ruler. This is different from both what I remember seeing earlier and what's on your video. It seems like this behaviour isn't entirely consistent. This may need a bit more experimentation. (Note: I think Preview Mode should come off as soon as you start dragging the guide.)

I think that's normal and expected behaviour. The first time you drag the guide out you're in Preview Mode where guides are not shown. Once you drop the guide, Preview Mode automatically comes off so you can see the new guide (along with whatever else was hidden).

You're welcome. One way of thinking about this is that the Transform panel always relates to the layer which is selected in the Layers panel (unless you're using the Node tool) while the other panels relate to the formatting and/or contents of that layer.

Addendum: The same issue presents itself in documents which have facing pages and documents that don't have facing pages.

I can confirm what MickRose said about the guide 'stubs' only being shown in the vertical ruler on the first page in Windows 10 too. I've also noticed that, when I drag a guide from the top ruler onto a page with a number greater than 1, the Y value of that guide in the Guides manager shows the correct value but the Y value tip shown when the guide is dragged shows a very different and negative value. The same thing happens when I add a guide via the Guides manager.