DavidMac

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?   

After all these years I am really embarrassed asking this - but are there any keyboard shortcuts for scrolling through layer blend modes or shortcuts for choosing specific modes?
I haven't managed to find any. But I can't believe that they aren't there somewhere ............

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. 🙂

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?   

Well now that is odd. I am a Mac user (El Capitan) and scroll bars appear in the brush palette and stay there permanently the minute the brushes contained exceed its height . I am using a Wacom tablet but I don't have any kind of scroll feature enabled. The bars are permanently there and I can simply scroll them with my pen.
I don't know if AP controls this itself or whether it follows the settings of the OS. But here is something you might try if you haven't already. In my Mac OS System Preferences > General I have Show Scroll Bars set to Always. Might be worth checking and trying to see if it makes any difference?
Good luck ...........
 

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

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

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.
 

This may seem like an odd question but is there any way to crop 'destructively'? That is to say to make a crop physically erase permanently everything outside its bounds. 
 
I won't bother you with the reasons but there are times I would like to be able to completely remove all the excess material that extends beyond the image border.

As I said in my earlier post PS Shear/Skew is reached via a modifier and therefore not comparable, but PS rotate is found by moving the cursor in the region of the selection handles until the rotate arrows appear. It is completely comparable and it works with a massive agree of flexibility and distance relative to the selection point. I don't think I am asking for something unusual or extreme. 

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

 

Patrick your post just crossed with mine. I just discovered this for myself. Sorry to have bothered you.

While I have you 'on the line' so to speak. It really would be much easier of Studio recognised our personal screen layouts for Photo and Designer. They must be accessible to Studio. 

My bad .......... Apologies to all ...............
Hadn't realised that Publisher had a new release version. Just installed it and all working perfectly. It's great. Although I would be much happier if Studio used my screen layouts for Photo and Designer. 
Now I have to learn publisher. I can see some happy hours ahead ............ 

My bad .......... Apologies to all ...............
Hadn't realised that Publisher had a new release version. Just installed it and all working perfectly. It's great. Although I would be much happier if Studio used my screen layouts for Photo and Designer. 
Now I have to learn publisher. I can see some happy hours ahead ............ 

Thanks Leigh. That's clear(ish).
I'd sort of guessed the Pressure which is why I was asking about Efficiency.
Efficiency sounds like one of those figures of more significance to developers than users. Probably useful if I ever have to come here trying to troubleshoot a memory problem. 

Actually Alfred not really your bad. You were almost there!

Here is what looks to be the best method:
Draw an ellipse (or other) shape with the Shape Tool.
Click Convert to Curves on context toolbar top right.
Select Pen Tool.
Click Selection in context toolbar top left.
The curve will be converted to a selection.
This method has a couple of advantages over Cmd clicking the thumbnail. Cmd clicking a thumbnail doesn't work at all on a wireframe shape with no fill or stroke and selects both inside and outside if only a stroke is present. Neither is desirable.
This method always creates a single selection to the outermost bound of the shape regardless of presence or no presence of stroke, regardless of thickness of stroke if present, regardless of filled or unfilled. So it works in all cases. For best precision and visibility you can draw a wireframe shape with no fill or stroke and a selection will still be created.
Lastly this method automatically deletes the now unneeded shape leaving just the selection.
I would love to claim credit for this method but it is in fact the official AP method outlined in the help files. Contents > Selections > Creating Pixel Selections > From Shapes
BTW the new Selection from Layer and Delete doesn't do the above. It behaves exactly the same as Cmd clicking the thumbnail. 

Thanks Alfred. That's neat and simple and solves all our problems.

AP has got better and better, especially in it's latest incarnation. More time seems to being spent on making what's there work better rather than adding more and more 'features'. It's getting quicker and more instinctive to use ............
............. but I still feel 'The bumper book of AP Workarounds" might be a best seller. 

Thanks Alfred. That's neat and simple and solves all our problems.

AP has got better and better, especially in it's latest incarnation. More time seems to being spent on making what's there work better rather than adding more and more 'features'. It's getting quicker and more instinctive to use ............
............. but I still feel 'The bumper book of AP Workarounds" might be a best seller. 

I am a bit baffled.
The attached screen shot is from AP help in beta 1.7.0.110.

I cannot find a Place Image Tool in AP - only in AD. 

Is this an item that has got into AP help by mistake? Or is it planned for AP and included in help but not yet implemented?
Or, or ............... ?? 

Hello,
 
Something I think would be really useful and save a lot of time is to move the "Studio" item from "View" to its own parent item. It would make toggling things like Characters, Assets and Symbols much quicker for those that don't have them open all the time.
 
I don't know about other people but I always felt it was not intuitive where it is.
 
Thanks,
Tim

Looks terrific. Thanks!  :)  :)

Yes. For additive compounds that is quicker. Thank you. For more complex I'll still have go the old route but that is much less common.
 
As you point out, however, I will still have to ungroup afterwards which in the case of discontiguous layers will change layer order which will then need restoring. Still pretty painful. I am amazed there appears to be no simple route for something so basic. 
 
A gentleman using Affinity
Thought selections should have addability.
But the harder he tried
The more it denied
Him this simple and basic facility.
 

I can't quite agree with the force of Orphyidian's complaint ........ but I can agree with the principle.

For whatever reason I do find AP's interface harder to read than PS. I am using CS6 and I think it has an exemplary interface. I find the CC interface rather primitive and less comprehensible by comparison. There is no doubt in my mind that AP's interface is, by far, the most subtle and attractive but sadly, for me, it is too subtle. It lacks clarity and contrast for my less than perfect vision. It is one of the reasons that, despite my longing to love it, I find AP more tiring to use than PS. For example the simple difference between selected and unselected tools could be much clearer. Such things should not be subtle they should be instantly and effortlessly evident! Good interface should not be about subtle and beautiful - it should be, first and foremost about legibility. There has been a lot of of brouhaha about the new light interface solving this for critics such as I. I am sorry, I don't subscribe to this! I don't want a light interface, I want a clearly legible dark one!
 
Its wonderful that AP is so stylish looking, but the interface is a key element in usability and I am tempted to suggest that the design of AP's interface is one of form over function instead of form deriving from function. It gives me the impression that it was developed by designers sitting in semi darkened rooms specifically adapted for long hours in front of the screen. User life isn't like that! We have to be ready to use your app in a wide variety of less than ideal circumstances. A 'good' interface should be ready to cope with that, even if it means sacrificing elegance for brutal functionality.

The examples posted by Orphydian are pretty brutal and dry - but they are instantly and clearly readable in a way that I would find very hard to ascribe to AP's interface.

Somewhere between the two there surely must be a proper compromise ............ ?
 
I fully appreciate that we are discussing probably the single most completely subjective aspect of AP here. So my opinion is little less than that - completely subjective. But I have sincerely tried to be objective in my comments and I do genuinely believe that Serif might better serve their customers by prioritising clarity before style.

I find I definitely go through personality change when I speak French or English. I am English by birth but worked a lot in France and have for the last fourteen years lived in Brussels, Belgium. Like you I learned by ear. When speaking English I use body language less and vocabulary more - in French the reverse. This to some degree reflects the physical structure of the languages. French has less vocabulary and more intonation whereas English relies much more on play of words. But language is a mirror of the culture that created it and so I find my actual mindset changes according to which I am speaking. I have two perfectly bi-lingual French/English sons and they switch back and forth from one sentence to the next with no discernible reason or logic other than some things can be better expressed in one and some in the other. The switch however, they tell me, is completely unconscious and instinctive. Often they don't even realise they are doing it. Brussels, as the capital of Europe, established in a country that itself speaks two languages, has a multi national population representing just about every European language. It is common at a dinner part of as few as half a dozen people to have several languages batting back and forth across the table at the same time and we all take it completely for granted. I think language is the best gift we can give our children .........

How's that for off topic .......... ?