[Windows on ARM]

1 hour ago, Patrick Connor said:

Not unless Microsoft change their mind/policy, (or we completely rewrite the Windows UI) sorry.

Looks like someone created a Github Issue: https://github.com/dotnet/wpf/issues/1817 and one of their contributors tagged that issue with a .NET 5 milestone (https://github.com/dotnet/wpf/milestone/5)

Maybe Serif can put some positive pressure on their product manager for WPF to get that out the door, if indeed Microsoft wants to increase adoption of Windows on ARM. Sadly, it probably is not a good use of time to port the UI to remove the WPF dependency. I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't prioritized this if they indeed want greater ARM adoption.

If Adobe apps are built with WPF, that would be good news for us too since it seems like there is some sort of partnership happening there.

[Windows on ARM]

8 hours ago, TonyB said:

The main problem is Affinity runs on a 64bit architecture but Windows on ARM doesn't support 64bit WPF  that we use for our UI.

We would need to rewrite the entire UI to target Windows on ARM.

 

I see, so this confirms that WoA cannot emulate Affinity Photo since it's targeting x64 architecture. I haven't delved into it that thoroughly, but this might be promising for recompiling with ARM64 as the target. Hopefully the ARM64 SDK implementation covers what Affinity Photo depends on from the x64 SDK.

From a previous BUILD conference (https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-finally-releases-an-arm64-sdk-supporting-uwp-and-win32-apps/)

Quote

Microsoft said that in most cases, it takes minimal effort to recompile an app for ARM64. It talked about OpenVPN and VLC, saying that neither company had to change a single line of code in its applications. Of course, if an app uses third-party libraries, it might take some work.

Quote

“To clarify, Microsoft is planning to release a preview of the Windows 10 ARM64 SDK for Store and desktop apps, allowing developers to recompile their Win32 desktop apps to ARM64 so they can run natively without emulation,” the Microsoft representative told me. “With the SDK, x64 apps and x86 apps will also be able to recompile to ARM64 and run natively. We will be sharing more details on the ARM64 SDK Preview at Build.” (https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/155961/clarifying-microsofts-plans-64-bit-apps-windows-10-arm)

Microsoft is trying to suggest it wouldn't be too much work to recompile for ARM64. Of course, I don't know how complex the Affinity codebase is, so probably an engineer can better assess if any extra work is required as TonyB suggested.

But I do have my fingers crossed

[Windows on ARM]

Are there plans to release executables for Photo, Designer, etc... on Windows that are natively compiled for ARM as opposed to just x86?

I'm sure you guys saw the new Surface Pro X

Would be great if we can run Affinity software on Windows/ARM without performance penalty of x86 emulation

[How to show red overlay when masking]

I recently am trying out AP over Photoshop and was trying to look for this specific functionality in displaying a layer mask as a red overlay. Is this still a feature request that the dev team hasn't yet accepted?