Kuttyjoe

The solution is like Adobe Illustrator.  A regular layer is like  a parent layer.  All the objects you draw will fall on that layer until you decide to make a new one.  You can tip the layer down and see all of the sub layers, one for each object.  After hours of work, I have maybe 3 or 5 layers.  No scrolling unless I decide to tip a layer and see all of the sub layers.  Having it expand constantly with no control over it must suit some kind of work flow that I don't know about.

I don't think it's a good comparison.  Adobe, Corel and others were innovating without the benefit of what came before them.  Essentially, not much came before them.  Affinity Designer comes along with the benefit of decades of software development that came before them, not to mention their own 30 year history in software development.  It would not be unreasonable to think that any vector software created today would have vector tracing in version 1.0.  We're not talking about the newest, latest, most amazing, stuff like Adobe's puppet warp, etc.  We're talking about a feature hat is decades old.  Adobe integrated vector tracing into Illustrator at version 9, but Adobe Streamline existed for many years before that.  I was using it in the late 90's.
Shapebuilder was a part of Macromedia's software which Adobe acquired.  So they merely integrated it into Illustrator, but it's still very old functionality.  The real question is regarding the intended scale and scope of Affinity Designer.  These features may never appear in Designer along with a lot of other stuff that people want, simply because it's not what Serif intends for their software.

I don't think it's a good comparison.  Adobe, Corel and others were innovating without the benefit of what came before them.  Essentially, not much came before them.  Affinity Designer comes along with the benefit of decades of software development that came before them, not to mention their own 30 year history in software development.  It would not be unreasonable to think that any vector software created today would have vector tracing in version 1.0.  We're not talking about the newest, latest, most amazing, stuff like Adobe's puppet warp, etc.  We're talking about a feature hat is decades old.  Adobe integrated vector tracing into Illustrator at version 9, but Adobe Streamline existed for many years before that.  I was using it in the late 90's.
Shapebuilder was a part of Macromedia's software which Adobe acquired.  So they merely integrated it into Illustrator, but it's still very old functionality.  The real question is regarding the intended scale and scope of Affinity Designer.  These features may never appear in Designer along with a lot of other stuff that people want, simply because it's not what Serif intends for their software.

I started with Serif DrawPlus in 2008.  The issues you're showing in this thread are at least as old as DrawPlus X3, but I guess these problems are much older since there were at least 7 or 8 versions before X3.

Then how about a toolbar that can be customized to hide the tools we don't need.  Serif DrawPlus could do that.  You could customize the whole UI and make a toolbar that had only the tools you needed.  I created a toolbar that made sense for working with just stylus on a small screen and maximized my workspace that way.  AD doesn't have any of that great functionality.

Keying in the desired value(s) in the already visible non-modal Transform panel means making a trip across the screen to wherever you keep that dialog open.  That trip represents an extra step.  Dismiss the dialog (press enter just like Illustrator), is another step.  Then make another trip back across the screen back to your object is another step. That's 5 steps in Designer, and 4 in Illustrator.  Plus two of Designer's steps are time consuming movements across the UI.  It's much faster to do it all right there on the spot.  It's not really a big deal for me personally because lots of things in every program require trips all over the UI to enter values, but where we can avoid those trips, we will save a little time.  In this case, Illustrator is doing it faster and also doing it with less steps.
I also do not believe that this is some kind of happy accident since Illustrator works this way with other dialogs including things like the character or text dialogs.  With a single key command, you can not only open a text palette which may currently may not even be visible, but simultaneously placing the cursor in the box, and highlighting the current font name, so you can simply type the name of the font you're looking for.  That's not likely a mere accident.  Coreldraw does similar things.  With key command you can pop up tiny dialog boxes right on top of your object to enter sizes, or change text characteristics, etc.  None of that is likely to have been done by accident.  But if it was, I'm not sure why it matters.
That's incorrect.  Rounded rectangles were indeed live effects in CS6 and the whole live effects system was very mature by CS6.  And because Adobe does tend to revisit and improve existing features, Illustrator currently has the best rounded corner implementation of any popular vector software, by far.  Any corner can be rounded at any time.  Even if you just take the pen tool and draw a path with 3 points.  If the one in the middle is a corner, you can grab it and round it, chamfer, fillet, or straight, directly on that point.  And there's a setting that determines how the rounded corner behaves when you scale the object.  It's thorough.

Illustrator's implementation has been excellent for years now.  One click and a few seconds worth of adjustments and I'm done.  Coreldraw 2020 now has a much improved tracing feature though still not quite as good as Illustrator's.

That was a very interesting video.

Corel has been changing it's purchasing policies steadily ever since Adobe went subscription. They are quickly moving in the same direction.  First, they made the subscription merely optional.  Next, they changed the upgrade cycle from 2 years to 1 year for perpetual licensing.  That was a big change because at this point, the cost of subscribing was 1 dollar cheaper than perpetual licensing.  Next and critically, they have change the upgrade policy to where your software is only eligible for upgrade for 1 year.  If you miss 1 year/1 upgrade cycle, you will need to pay the full price for the software after that if you want to "upgrade".  So you can either subscribe and pay $200.00 a year, or upgrade every year and pay $200.00 a year.  This is how companies that criticized Adobe and used Adobe to create more sales of their own software are following in Adobe's footsteps.

Corel has been changing it's purchasing policies steadily ever since Adobe went subscription. They are quickly moving in the same direction.  First, they made the subscription merely optional.  Next, they changed the upgrade cycle from 2 years to 1 year for perpetual licensing.  That was a big change because at this point, the cost of subscribing was 1 dollar cheaper than perpetual licensing.  Next and critically, they have change the upgrade policy to where your software is only eligible for upgrade for 1 year.  If you miss 1 year/1 upgrade cycle, you will need to pay the full price for the software after that if you want to "upgrade".  So you can either subscribe and pay $200.00 a year, or upgrade every year and pay $200.00 a year.  This is how companies that criticized Adobe and used Adobe to create more sales of their own software are following in Adobe's footsteps.

Corel has been changing it's purchasing policies steadily ever since Adobe went subscription. They are quickly moving in the same direction.  First, they made the subscription merely optional.  Next, they changed the upgrade cycle from 2 years to 1 year for perpetual licensing.  That was a big change because at this point, the cost of subscribing was 1 dollar cheaper than perpetual licensing.  Next and critically, they have change the upgrade policy to where your software is only eligible for upgrade for 1 year.  If you miss 1 year/1 upgrade cycle, you will need to pay the full price for the software after that if you want to "upgrade".  So you can either subscribe and pay $200.00 a year, or upgrade every year and pay $200.00 a year.  This is how companies that criticized Adobe and used Adobe to create more sales of their own software are following in Adobe's footsteps.

I strongly agree with this.  Is a long time user, I have a set of primary panels open all the time.  And right next to it I have a set of secondary panels as thumbs.  I would not want to commit a lot of screen space to those panels, but I still want quick access to them and Adobe solved it very well with that system.  Especially since there are key commands that can open those panels, and optionally, they can auto-close when you click away. In some cases, a key command will not only open the panel, it will also simultaneously place the cursor in a dialog, high light it's content, and allow you to immediately type new data. For example, the text dialogs work that way so you can change a font, text, and most characteristics by tabbing through the boxes and changing their content, without ever touching the mouse.  It's makes for a supremely fast workflow.

Maybe you could just let Serif police their own forums and stop trying to tell other people what they can or can't say.  How about that?

Maybe you could just let Serif police their own forums and stop trying to tell other people what they can or can't say.  How about that?

Maybe you could just let Serif police their own forums and stop trying to tell other people what they can or can't say.  How about that?

That explains it perfectly.  According to that definition, we'd have a harder time proving that a piece of software is NOT pro than proving that one is pro.  The bar for being considered pro is pretty low.  If as a professional I pick up a stick and use in the pursuit of money, then this stick is the tool of a professional.  It's a pro tool.  It's pro.  That's why pro is useful as a marketing term.  People will use their imaginations to flesh it out.  Some will say that Photoshop is professional software, and it is according to this definition.  But if we're using freeware in exactly the same way, then the freeware must also be professional software since it is used by a professional in the pursuit of money.  Those are things that can be proven or disproved.  Everything else is in our imaginations and opinions.

That explains it perfectly.  According to that definition, we'd have a harder time proving that a piece of software is NOT pro than proving that one is pro.  The bar for being considered pro is pretty low.  If as a professional I pick up a stick and use in the pursuit of money, then this stick is the tool of a professional.  It's a pro tool.  It's pro.  That's why pro is useful as a marketing term.  People will use their imaginations to flesh it out.  Some will say that Photoshop is professional software, and it is according to this definition.  But if we're using freeware in exactly the same way, then the freeware must also be professional software since it is used by a professional in the pursuit of money.  Those are things that can be proven or disproved.  Everything else is in our imaginations and opinions.

That explains it perfectly.  According to that definition, we'd have a harder time proving that a piece of software is NOT pro than proving that one is pro.  The bar for being considered pro is pretty low.  If as a professional I pick up a stick and use in the pursuit of money, then this stick is the tool of a professional.  It's a pro tool.  It's pro.  That's why pro is useful as a marketing term.  People will use their imaginations to flesh it out.  Some will say that Photoshop is professional software, and it is according to this definition.  But if we're using freeware in exactly the same way, then the freeware must also be professional software since it is used by a professional in the pursuit of money.  Those are things that can be proven or disproved.  Everything else is in our imaginations and opinions.

MacOS desktop has the same problems.  The contrast is so low that you can't tell which window is in focus.  There's a lot of pointless transparency being used but thank god it's not the way it was a decade ago.  I've been noticing this change in UI design for the past 20 years or so.  Form and function used to be joined at the hip.  Now, they are disconnected and competing with each other.  Form is winning.

At this point, Serif is no longer selling DrawPlus which had this feature.  As I've stated before, it didn't work very well, which is true, but it's not useless.  It's actually possible to get decent results with an image that is not too resolution.  If you can acquire an old copy of it, you can access this feature and several other highly requested features that may or may not ever make it to Affinity Designer.  In the meantime, you can get a copy online for for about $15.00 right now.  I just bought a couple additional licenses because DrawPlus remains a critical tool for me that I can not replace with Affinity Designer or anything else.
Anyway, DrawPlus had vector tracing, a Live Paint Bucket tool, a blob brush, Shape Builder, a True vector eraser, a knife tool, and the brush tools have a much faster workflow than AD.  It would be cool if some other company could take over this software and continue to develop it, but I expect it will suffer the same fate as Freehand.

No denying that.  Well, on the bright side, if you're young enough you might actually see some of these critical features before you retire.  Maybe.

It is more like Postscript is the premier vector language, SVG supports only a subset...
Designer omissions are many, personally I am irked by its tendency to fall back to full pixel graphic export if there are any pixel effects applied. For example if you use noise fill that element is exported as pixel element, instead of proper vector shape with bitmap enclosed. And that sucks. (As you started about raster abilities..)

I strongly agree with this.  Is a long time user, I have a set of primary panels open all the time.  And right next to it I have a set of secondary panels as thumbs.  I would not want to commit a lot of screen space to those panels, but I still want quick access to them and Adobe solved it very well with that system.  Especially since there are key commands that can open those panels, and optionally, they can auto-close when you click away. In some cases, a key command will not only open the panel, it will also simultaneously place the cursor in a dialog, high light it's content, and allow you to immediately type new data. For example, the text dialogs work that way so you can change a font, text, and most characteristics by tabbing through the boxes and changing their content, without ever touching the mouse.  It's makes for a supremely fast workflow.

I strongly agree with this.  Is a long time user, I have a set of primary panels open all the time.  And right next to it I have a set of secondary panels as thumbs.  I would not want to commit a lot of screen space to those panels, but I still want quick access to them and Adobe solved it very well with that system.  Especially since there are key commands that can open those panels, and optionally, they can auto-close when you click away. In some cases, a key command will not only open the panel, it will also simultaneously place the cursor in a dialog, high light it's content, and allow you to immediately type new data. For example, the text dialogs work that way so you can change a font, text, and most characteristics by tabbing through the boxes and changing their content, without ever touching the mouse.  It's makes for a supremely fast workflow.

I don't think so.  I would have to guess that the reason that these things didn't make it into Affinity Designer was because the quality of those features was so poor that they didn't want to use them until they were made better.  I can tell you for sure that the true vector brushes in DrawPlus were quite buggy.  All of the brushes had some particular problems.  Drawing slowly would create a line with a zillion jaggy anchor points.  Movements such as "sketching" quickly, is almost certain to cause a serious glitch with a brush stroke which will freeze the whole program.  And the true vector brush in particular had an additional problem where if you created a simple line, then zoomed in or out to some random level, the stroke would visually appear as if it's filled with a color.  For example, if you drew a half circle, just the brush stroke, no fill, then zoom in/out, suddenly, you'd be seeing a fill in that shape. So these were very terrible quality tools.  Additionally, DrawPlus had a very terrible vector tracing feature.  None of the controls yielded any kind of predictable or repeatable result where as in something like Illustrator, you can pretty much get a good result with no tweaking at all sometimes.  And lastly, the envelope warp tool was also just not good enough.  For example, you can't constrain the movement of points directly vertical or horizontal therefore you can't really make a perfectly symmetrical envelope.  I was really inadequate.  I'm very familiar with these things because I actually still use DrawPlus all the time because even though those things are woefully broken or inadequate, there are still some redeeming quality about that program.  The brush system is still better than that in Affinity Designer.