Lorox

Yeah, definitely. Adding these useful "pro" features to AP would be awesome! I wonder, though, if the guys at Serif are really serious about targeting those professional users (too), who would really need it on a daily basis and appreciate it accordingly...

Pity… definitely! I've been waiting for that feature (especially on vector basis for Designer) for years now... It's such a common need for me to now and then escape the smoothness of "sterile" vector paths for that little bit of "roughening" or "analog look and feel"! Back in the day I used to be able to do this with no problems whatsoever in Illustrator (using a filter or(!) that special tool from the toolbar) and now – years later – AD still hasn't caught up (as it hasn't neither in respect to tracing bitmaps...). Too bad really, as I really DO embrace the Affinnity apps on a general basis!

I'm not sure if I understand this topic correctly – do you miss the functionality that corresponds to repeatedly tapping the "F" key in Photoshop which eventually lets you view the current canvas/image just against a black background (on a Mac at least)? Although I didn't use it too frequently back in the day it used to be nice to have nevertheless. So an equivalent would actually be nice in Affinity Photo as well.

…it might get somewhat esoteric eventually, right? ID is just some legacy files for me, anyway. Experience shows I very rarely have the need to update them and keep them ID. Meanwhile I will open those old ID files in Publisher via IDML most of the time to really make the transition complete. So knowing where and how that "stubborn" leading settings CAN be changed after all in Publisher will suffice for the foreseeable future...

I'm attaching an IDML with a couple of lines. Checking here with Publisher 2 gave the results formerly described: there is some Leading Override assigned to all of the lines and it's basically unclear where it comes from as in ID just the regular leading had been applied. However, in ID this is – as you pointed out – indeed an item of the Character panel. Maybe that's the reason Publisher "thinks" this formatting item corresponds to its own leading/line-height related item in its own (Publisher) Character panel, which is actually "Leading Override"... If I remember correctly, ID always applies the highest value of leading (applied to one or more characters(!)) to the entire line this/these character(s) happen to be in. To me – come to think about it – this actually feels somewhat similar to Publisher's way of using "Leading Override". Anyway, it's not really a big deal with most jobs, I think. You just have to remember that in the Affinity apps there is this more or less "hidden" or "additional" control. Especially when you're coming from an ID background where it just didn't exist as such. some-lines-of-text-from-IDCS5.idml

@thomaso Thanks a lot – that makes it clear. Although it seems to me the actual cases of use maybe somewhat rare for most users. Another question is: why did my copied lines of text from the IDML document have that Leading Override in the first place? As far as I remember, InDesign (CS5 that's where my IDML file was from) didn't have something like Leading Override which might have clung to the copied text as a formatting. Or did it, after all – without me ever noticing? I definitely hadn't specifically assigned Leading Overide myself after opening that IDML document.

You're absolutely right! Although I've been using Publisher for quite some time now, I actually stumbled over the very same problem you've described: I had copied some lines of text from an old IDML-document (which I had opened in Publisher) and – while everything else proved to be easily editable – just couldn't find a way to change the leading... Seems like I, too, didn't remember that little "Leading Override“ setting which is (quite successfully, I'd say) hidden in the "Positioning and Transform" section of the "Character" palette... That being said I'm still not sure what "Leading Override" is supposed to mean or do differently than a Baseline shift on the Character level? Can someone possibly give an example (preferably a visual one) illuminating the difference, e.g. when I should use a simple Baseline shift (which we all know of for ages) and when a Leading Override (which I never encountered anywhere except in the Affinity apps)?

I totally agree. Back in the day with Illustrator I really enjoyed some of the "off standard" options for design brought into the game by interesting scripts and plugins. Not having any of these in the Affinity apps has had me looking back more often than I really wanted... So lets see what will be coming of this!

Exactly so! It’s definitely very regrettable and I, too, cannot fathom by any means what this "stubborn“ adhering to some weird counter-intuitive "workflow" (if you can actually call it that...) is about from Serif's resp. the developers’ point of view. They can't really mean that this manifestation of unnecessary weirdness helps winning over users from industry standard apps like Photoshop (or even keep their own eventually), can they?

@walt.farrell & @LondonSquirrel: Yeah, you're right this is actually one of the reasons I didn't update yet to Catalina or even newer macOS versions. But on my Mac there are only two 32 bit apps which I have used only occasionally and which I could possibly do without. What bothers me more, however, is that so far my 12(!) year old Canon A3 format printer and EPSON scanner have – astonishingly – still been working perfectly with this Mac and Mojave (which I wouldn't have thought beforehand). I'm more than a bit worried that one or even both of them cannot be used anymore with Catalina or newer... Dropping a rarely used app is one thing but being forced to buy a new printer and scanner – especially as the current ones are in excellent shape and working order – is quite another...

Ah... thanks a lot! I'll have to first upgrade my macOs, though – unfortunately, it seems, Mojave is no longer supported... (even though it's a perfectly running system here – so I wouldn't have wanted to change it otherwise).

I initially missed that handy InDesign preview feature in Publisher, too, but I just found: at least here on Mac you can go to „Window > Toggle Full Screen ([control]+[cmd]+F)“ to hide the regular Mac menu bar and then use the Tab key to hide everything else of the Affinity UI (you might also have to switch off the rulers [cmd+R] separately if you had these active). Doing all this I get just the document on the background (grey, black whatever) I've chosen in the Publisher Prefs. No need to mess with that Mac standard green dot in the window's upper left corner – you can do it all with just those keyboard shortcuts. To get back to normal view just do these steps in reversed order. Hope it helps!

Good you mention it: in my case I was actually referring to the Mac-version. Anybody knows if it's true for Mac as well?

Is this a statement actually and officially verified by Affinity/Serif? It would be quite a disaster for me if I installed V2 overwriting V1 in the process and then get problems which I (finally) hadn't using V1... I got to admit it took me some time with V1 to have everything correctly in place and under control to get production ready "safe“ PDFs which I can confidently send to my printing providers these days...

In the videos and on the Affinity website I haven't found anything so far regarding this useful feature, which I would like to be at hand in Designer, too. It has been possible to do these things in Illustrator for ages and I have to admit now that I was expecting so much more from V2 than what it actually offers... Shape Builder and Envelope Distortion are certainly cool, but these, too, have been present in competitor apps for so long that they should have also been in Designer already years ago...