KipV

I wasn't aware of there being different kinds of picas. The important thing to me is to have 12 points per pica. Whatever that is.

Who is saying we should get rid of the other units of measurement? We are talking about adding one not subtracting.

Sometimes not using a computer for part of a project makes sense. A computer is just one tool available to you. Analogies don't always work since they are approximations by definition.

@h_d It's not important that you understand all those different conversions on Wikipedia. Mainly you just need to know that 1 pica is 12 points.

How would I know?

Right, for a house a would use the larger unit of measurement and for a billboard I would use a larger unit of measurement. If I person is only casually in this field I wouldn't expect them to know details like this but if it's their profession it would be a good thing to learn.

Mike to go back to my dollar/cents example, you can use the dollar system for listing the price of a mansion or a pair of socks. The fact that one is of a vastly higher quantity doesn't mean that it can't be used. So yes, I could use picas for a letter piece of paper or poster or whatever large item you are designing on. But points (which Affinity currently supports) can become pretty high numbers when designing for a billboard. Yes douglasrthomson, while I have done large scale work (trade show displays) I haven't done it with piacs but I can image there would be a large enough size where that would be useful. It seems like I have done point type that is in the 500 ballpark.

A lot of the things I have mentioned here are taught in high school level graphic design programs. They are certainly taught in college 101 classes. I took typography/design classes in the early 2000s and just took them this year. They are still hammering this measurement as the one to use in this field.

But Serif does support points which is a subdivision of picas. It's absurd to just support half of a system. It's like doing all of your finances in cents and doing away with dollars. We still need dollars since buying expensive items would be too difficult if you had to buy your next house or car only using cents. We need both dollars and cents. We need both points and picas.

This is what I am trying to avoid:

In the same way that you get complex fractions when converting inches trying to fit mm or cm into a Picas give you these numbers with long uneven decimal points. Using points gives you a pretty even 12 points per pica.

cm and mm are not compatible with picas. Points are subdivisions of Picas so don't need to deal with the complexity of needing to convert to different systems.

Here is a good video showing several examples on how the units convert. You can see that points and sometimes Picas are nice even numbers where with inches you need to deal with fractions which makes things unnecessarily complex. Looks like points converts nicely to pixels too but I wonder if 72dpi is still relevant in the age of high res monitors?

It was actually a conversation from Twitter a week ago by whoever runs the Twitter account. I am not sure what it has to do with being American. It has a lot to do with being a designer though. We measure type in points which is a subdivision of picas so it is easier to measure large objects such as pages, posters, large type, etc. Why measure large objects with an entirely different system like inches, cm, or mm? If type is measured this way why not just carry it across to everything else? It would be possible to use a smaller measurement like points all the time but it starts to get hard the larger something gets. Instead of saying I am going to pay you 100 dollars I could say I will pay you 10,000 cents but nobody says 10,000 cents since we have a financial measurement system that works better for expensive items (dollars.) We still use BOTH dollars and cents because they are needed depending on what type of item you are buying. We also use dollars and cents in unison in the same way we use points and picas in union. Piacs allow us to not need to use outrageously large numbers while points give us a more exact measurement ($4.75, 9p4.)

Yes, it was said in a thread.

I am mostly concerned that Serif doesn't seem to understand the reasoning behind it given that they apparently are made up of people who work in the field. Still not sure if the company is really serious about thinking the measurement is out date or it's just a joke I am not getting?

Whether or not someone uses the measurement is separate from if it is the most efficient or best way to work. A lot of people shoot video vertically or use the word "literally" incorrectly but I am less concerned about the number of people who do these things then how sound their reasoning is for doing them.

Also this is something Quark does from the main interface (without needing to dig into the preferences) as it should be. I don't think even ID works this way (I'm still on CS6.) Publisher should work this way as well. Click on the ruler to change both the x and the y a the same time. Basic function done at least a gazillion times a day.

As it turns out according to Serif Picas were not included since it's and outdated measurement that no one uses anymore . Because math is the kind of thing that goes out of date. Remember when I wrote those threads arguing that even when Publisher would come out it wouldn't be even close to taking on the pro competition in this area? Yeah, stuff like this.

Not having the most common type of design measurement is a bit of a bug really.

I might not have worded that as well as I meant to. AP and AD can do quite a lot and I use them both for pro work. They even do a number of things better then the Adobe Counterparts. However with Publisher I mostly see Serif desperately trying to play catch up competition that has been working in this field for over thirty years. Layout tools are at a stage where they are more about fine tuning the existing product rather then introducing lots of flashy new features. The fact it is they are behind on features in a mature field and that justifies Publisher being a lower price then it's competition. The other two Affinity products can justify a higher price point today with all the major advancements they have made since version 1.0. In fact I would welcome that so they could build up their staff and marketing.

It's hard to tell how much influence my posts have. I made suggestions in the past that got implemented and sometimes they get brushed off. Like I said earlier today I applaud Serif for getting iPad versions out (and far ahead of when Adobe is supposedly scheduled to release their competitors) but I think they should have at least put out a minor feature update beta to AP/AD by this point.

The reason I am here is I feel that Designer had the potential to crush Illustrator but we haven't seen a feature update to that program on Mac or Windows in over a year. Instead they are putting the time into developing features that competitors are already doing well.

That is the other thing, it has been taking Serif so long to come out with this program. By the time 1.0 hits Quark and ID will already be half to their next major update.

Also I should point out that ID has adding some features that have been long standing Quark advantages until this year. By adding end notes the competition between these two market leaders becomes extra hard for Affinity compete against. I don't know how much Affinity's tight integration will matter to some people if that is a feature that Adobe already has.