DavidMac

It is eight years since I first posted this. Nothing has changed and no response ever, that I can see, from a member of the Affinity team. It seems to be a classic case of don’t hold your breath while waiting. What a shame …………. ☹️

Thanks Dan. No apologies needed. I know the last two years have been very difficult for you all. This is not let's face it a serious bug, which is why I hadn't pursued it for so long. It's easy enough to import my palette when I start. It's just one of those minor irritations one would prefer not to have. Hopefully next version. 🙂

AP on Mac OS Mojave This something I first reported years back in the very, very early days with first release of AP. Nothing has changed since then so I am tempted to believe that I may be failing to understand something rather than there being a fault in the app. I find having to keep switching greyscale and colour swatches rather tedious. So I created a swatch of my own that contains both greyscale and colour in a single swatch palette. It is set as an application palette. I saved this and on startup can select it in the palette drop down just above the swatches. So far so good. However the swatches menu has an option "Save as default", followed by the colour modes for which you would like it to be default. I set my new palette to be default but AP ignores this and always defaults to the grey scale palette. Now maybe I am misunderstanding but, to my simple mind, a default palette is the one that loads on startup. However I cannot get any palette, including the AP native palettes to load as default in any colour mode. I have tried every combination I can think of but AP resolutely insists on always starting up with the greyscale swatches. I cannot believe, after such a long time, that this can be broken. If that were the case then plenty more users than I would surely have reported it right from the early days just as I did, so I have to presume that somewhere I am missing something - I am often rather good at that.🤔 So what am I missing to get this feature working or am I misinterpreting entirely the meaning of "default".

Thanks Patrick. The last months have been topsy turvy for all of us, no matter where. Affinity forums are some of the most responsive on the web, particularly where the developers responding themselves is concerned. No apologies needed. I'll try what you suggest. Thanks.

Thank you. That admirably clarifies my confusion. Since I am basically a photo compositor ( http://www.cambiguities.com ) as opposed to designer my forays into AD territory are pretty scarce. In the end I have learned that this is one button I can safely ignore without feeling I am missing something critical.

I had sort of come to the conclusion that it was one those tools I probably could live without .............

Yes. Senior moment. I'm getting better at them with advancing years! 😆

Walt, R C-R, my apologies. I didn't state clearly that I am in AP. My fault entirely. Sorry to waste your time. 🙁

OK half way there. Thanks Walt. I don't use Artboards so that's cleared up. But I am not clear what you mean by tagged as Layer? I can't recall ever seeing this tag. (Image, Pixel, Text, Shape names, but Layer?) I hope I am not being forehead slappingly stupid.

This is a very old post but I am having exactly the same puzzlement as to the use of the button. I have set up a multi layered document. No matter which layer is active and no matter the setting of this button I can still select any and all of the other layers singly or multiply in the canvas by clicking on them or by marquee selection. I am unable to make this this button change selection behaviour in any manner whatsoever. Sorry to be so dense but, in really simple terms please, what am I missing here?

As plenty of users have pointed out you can do this in Photo with the perspective tool. You can do the exact equivalent of holding down the command key (Mac) in photoshop when free transforming. You can freely drag any corner in any direction. You can do this destructively using the Perspective tool on the tools menu or by applying the non destructive Perspective filter. It's a little hidden but once you have found it it's just as easy as in Photoshop.

Given that my query has gone unattended for five weeks I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for a response. Affinity team are normally very responsive and helpful, one of the best for that, but they are overloaded at present. Looks like workarounds for now. 🤔

What a terrible shame. 🤔 Thanks for swift reply.

Can anybody please confirm for me whether I am correct in thinking that there is still no way of assigning a keyboard shortcut to a macro?

I am a relative beginner in that I have learned Publisher from scratch and never used DTP apps before. Fingers crossed I am doing fine. I have been building a project for about a year now and am delighted with results. I think this is an amazing app. But obviously I do misunderstand new stuff sometimes so I am guessing that I am missing something I need to be doing here. I am having problems with the Index panel. I have just started adding an index to the end of a large document. I have set some index markers in the text and created a page with a text frame for the index. The Index panel shows the marked items in a list below it and clicking the Insert Index button creates an index in my selected text frame. It works perfectly! Except ....... if I modify the marker list by adding and/or removing markers then select the index text frame and click the Update button in the Index panel, nothing happens. I have tried everything I can think of but I cannot get my index to update. I have a workaround, which is to select everything in the existing index and delete it, then click Insert Index and it creates a new index with all the changes. Obviously this less than ideal, but I haven't been able to find any way of getting the Update button to work. Suggestions anyone please?

Bearing in mind I posted this in 2016 and nothing has happened since, despite other people expressing the same view, I think we must assume the Affinity team don't agree with us and feel that their implementation is correct and useful. A pity in my personal view .........

Well Garrett, thanks almost entirely to your help, I seem to be out of the woods ............. ............. mostly ............ sort of .............😕 Publisher creates any document with the non existent en_BE dictionary as default. I have to override this manually by imposing UK dictionary based character styles upon everything. I had to completely re-build my document. First I set up a whole series of personal styles all tied to the proper UK English dictionary. Then I tried to re-build the document by re-formatting the master pages. This didn't work as they are often overridden by local changes. I was still left with a document pack full of anomalies. In the end I had to go through 85 pages and check every single text box, header, and footer manually and apply one of my 'British' styles to them. This was incredibly tedious. But it worked! So far so good. But it's not ideal ............ It means I have to be very disciplined about applying my styles to any new item and keep checking document integrity as I work. It's irritating but I can live with that. More difficult is that, from time to time, suddenly dictionary errors pop up seemingly out of nowhere. I have discovered that this happens when Publisher performs certain automated tasks. For example creating (or updating) an index or table of contents from page headings throws up a whole slew of errors as every single Index or Contents entry is created by Publisher using the non existent default dictionary regardless of the text box style into which it is being inserted. I have to then find these and assign a new character style locally. It's another irritation - but one I can cope with. One thing I have learned from this is to keep the pre-flight palette available. Using this I can track any unexpected occurrence of the imaginary en-BE dictionary as it automatically identifies them and can take me directly to them for correction. So the next few weeks will see how good I get at automatically applying the checks and disciplines need to create problem free new material. At least I am now up and running with a viable document. So thank you for setting me on the right road Garrett. Now one new mystery has popped up. Since I have you, on the line, so speak I will ask first before I create another post. From time to time I get missing character errors in pre-flight. These are apparently characters missing from the font set. Now looking at the above screenshot it is possible to believe that the accented É in APÉRITIFS might cause problems with certain fonts. But the font in question is Lucida Grande. A very common font with a full character set. Also, looking at the same list lower down, how on earth could the words like WEST and EUROPE contain missing glyphs? Another bug? Or am I misinterpreting or missing something here? Very odd ............... David Mac

Thanks Garrett. It's getting late ('ish) here so I will try this tomorrow morning. Sounds good. I looked for this earlier but I find help files can be elusive. What you want is in there somewhere, but trying to find the same search term as the writer is not always easy ......... G'night.

Yes. I agree. One of the rare forums where the developers are a listening and contributing presence. One thing I forgot in my last reply. Could I ask you to expand on the last line? How do I save a default for new text? That would be really useful. I was playing with the idea earlier but didn't find a way.

HI Garrett First off thank you for your patience. Although I have used AP and to some degree AD from their inception the closest I had ever been to desktop publishing is PDF's from Pages!! I only started on AP in late March when our lockdown started here and I wanted something full time to keep me occupied. After a week of tutorials and trials I started on a recipe book (text and lots of photos) which my sons have been begging me to do for years. It took another week before I could relax and really start to make headway but necessity has been a great teacher. I think it will be a one year project. Anyway all I am trying to say is that I am Publisher naive and have only so far learned just enough for my specific needs which means when something comes along like this I am easily left floundering. So your help has already been useful. You have underlined my instinct that it is best to try and solve this without messing withe OS more than necessary and to try and solve things within Publisher itself. From, admittedly, a position of sublime ignorance, I am nonetheless tempted to feel that there is something bug like here. But then Publisher is still a work in progress and when you consider the incredibly short time scale it would be miraculous if there weren't still problems to iron out. Frankly I think it's an astonishing achievement, and the Serif forums have always been some of the best around. Already done. One of the first things I tried. Doesn't make any difference. Thanks. I'll look at that. So now it's time to get to work: plan some personal styles with English(United Kingdom) dictionary included that make good everyday sense, and then try applying them to my existing document. Going to be an interesting time................. Hopefully you won't hear from me again except to report positive progress. It will probably be a day or two. Thanks again Garrett for the help and suggestions. Just invaluable! David Mac

Hi again, again Garrett Since my last post I have been doing some experimenting and tests. I have looked into your mention that language can be part of a style and done a couple of trials and this looks very interesting. I see two possible ways around my problem. 1) Take my little tongue in cheek BREXIT joke slightly more seriously and set up a pseudo UK operating system while still being able to function in the Belgian context. 2) Leave my OS as is with Publisher treating the false en_BE dictionary as default and override it in text styles. OPTION 1 With option one I set the region of my OS as United Kingdom. This causes Publisher to use the correct dictionaries as defined in my OS and not the non existent en_BE dictionary. In the OS in advanced region settings I can define my UK region as metric, €, and reverse the comma and point separators in numbers and currency so it functions in the Belgian manner. Time zone stays set for Brussels. The advantage of this method is that Publisher will behave exactly as it should without any further action on my part. The disadvantage is that I have no idea if I may be courting disaster for other apps like iTunes, AppStore, etc, which can impose regional restrictions. OPTION 2 In option 2 I leave my OS Belgian as it is with no hidden pitfalls for region sensitive apps. I allow Publisher to treat the non existent en_BE dictionary as default and override this by making sure that every word of my document has an assigned style within which I have defined English(United Kingdom)as the spellcheck dictionary. The advantage of this method is that I don't mess with the OS. I set up in advance a set of my most commonly used styles and assign the UK dictionary to them. The disadvantage is that every time I draw a text box I have to remember to immediately assign a style which contains the correct dictionary. Obviously I can help minimise the work involved by intelligent planning of master pages. In all cases however this leaves my present document (85 pages) in a rather woeful state. But I am presuming that I can go through my existing document and make sure that I edit all of it's existing styles to assign the English(United Kingdom) dictionary to all of them and create styles for the parts which don't presently carry a specified style. I wondered if those more expert had any comment before I decide. Ho hum ...........

HI again Garrett Well it looks like I am staring into a whole can of worms ........... Here is the story so far. I didn't mention in my original post that I use a machine with a hybrid setup. I didn't think it necessary because I didn't realise that AP uses system language for spell checking. So here we go. I live in Belgium where I work on a Belgian Mac with an AZERTY keyboard. This is essential for typing in French. However my origins are British and I think and work for the most part in English. So although the keyboard is configured for Belgian French the system language is set to UK English first choice and French as second. I cannot see that the keyboard layout can be of any significance but the language choices obviously are. Reading through the iclaudius post you pointed me at I found an entry from walt.farrell: "It's strange, though, that your system thinks it's English, but mine says it's a variant of English that I've neer seen, en-ES. I would understand if it were en-US, or en-GB, or en-CA, or one of several others. But en-ES (which my Publisher claims you're using) would seem to be English as written in Spain, which doesn't make any sense to me." Bingo! My Publisher is trying to use an unknown dictionary called en-BE. English as she is spoken in Belgium! Whilst, as the home of the European Parliament and European Commission, Brussels is probably the most multilingual city in Europe and English is heard everywhere I do not believe that Belgian English has any official status. 😄😄 The culprit appears to be this. I am obliged to keep Belgium as region because French Belgium formats numbers differently (as you can see in the screen shot) using the " . " as a thousands separator and the " , " as the decimal point. If I set my region to UK things like online banking become impossible to use because of incorrect number formatting. As an experiment I tried changing Region to UK and re-starting. When I created a new Publisher document, English (United Kingdom) shows in the Language Palette as the spell check language and all works perfectly. English spellings are accepted. So it seems that one solution to my problem is to assume that I am using the Affinity Publisher BREXIT edition and to remove all traces of foreign naughtiness from my system so to be accepted as a 'real' British writer.😉 😃😉 Hardly a very practical solution. However the problem does not stop there. Using the completely UK setup just described above, I then loaded the document I have been working on for the last two months. Publisher immediately reverts to trying to find the unknown en-BE dictionary and it shows once again in the Language Palette as the default. In other words it appears that the spell check dictionary is not just derived from the system but is somehow coded into the document's own setup as well. My last experiment with the misbehaving document, under this British setup, was the obvious one of simply changing language in the character drop down. If I place the cursor on a rogue spelling and select English(United Kingdom) in the Character Palette then it becomes no longer rogue and the red line disappears from beneath it. But the minute I click anywhere else on the page the spell checker instantly reverts to en-BE again. So, sorry to be so verbose, but this is very confusing. I feel I have quite possibly identified the cause of my woes but I have absolutely no idea what to do about it .................. Suggestions welcome please! 😀 David Mac

OK I need to look into this. Despite your extremely comprehensive and articulate explanation it is not immediately obvious without going hands on. To best of my knowledge the OS is set to British English but I shall go and check that too. Thanks Garrett for such a detailed answer. Now let's see if I can wrap my mind around it. Have to wait 'till tomorrow now but I will come back to you with progress.

I have recently started a project using Publisher. I had to learn from scratch. I think it is absolutely marvellous! I am delighted and my project is well underway. However I have run into an incredibly irritating problem. In preferences I have the dictionary set to English (United Kingdom) but, sadly this dictionary does not contain the English spellings that, as an Englishman, I had drummed into my formative years. For example realise and specialise are rejected for realize and specialize. Same goes for other similar words. Flavour is rejected for flavor. Aluminium for aluminum. But it gets weirder - for example colour is fine but colours is rejected for colors. Tyre is fine but tyres is rejected for tires. I have stuck to the obvious words we all know. Nonetheless all the UK spellings I have given above are confirmed as UK english by the Oxford Dictionary and all the AP dictionary corrections given above by AP's English (United Kingdom) dictionary are confirmed by the Oxford Dictionary as American English. Not only is this an irritation while typing, but every single time I ignore AP's American correction and leave a word typed in UK English preflight throws them up as spelling errors when I come to export. Now I know that modern English usage is blurring some of the borders and that American spelling is becoming more universal but surely a UK English dictionary (which is what AP tells me I am using) should accept UK spellings? I notice that, in AP's preferences, English (United Kingdom) is the only English dictionary on offer. There is no American English dictionary offered at all. So is this English (United Kingdom) some kind of mid Atlantic hybrid or are the dictionaries still a work in progress? I would love to get to the bottom of this because in every other respect Publisher is proving to be everything I had hoped for.

Do these forums have a listing of functional PS plugins for AP anywhere? There used to be one but I cant find it. This is still AP's achilles heel and it would save a lot of trial and frustrating error if I could find an up to date listing. Thanks for any help.