William Overington

Is the ban on posting anything generated using AI in either the Share your Work forum or this thread due to concern for the future of livelihoods for artists and designers? William

Yes, Serif has already been acquired, yet changes do not all happen on the day of acquisition. Yes, we are in a new era. If management want to keep things as the are, then there we are. If management does not even want to consider my idea to change to openness then that is management's right. I have put forward a suggestion for openness, in my view it could lead to great things, but if people are not interested in even thinking about the possibility of doing it and how good it could be, then que sera sera. William

That reply and my post are not incompatible. Some of the Directors have changed, so que sera sera. https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/202817-if-serif-moves-to-subscription-based-biz-model-can-they-cripple-use-of-existing-apps-with-an-update/&do=findComment&comment=1207238 Pledge 4 has been issued and it states COMMUNITY LED. Can development be COMMUNITY LED if the community are not informed and are kept in the dark? https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/201423-canva/page/20/#comment-1193400 William

That page is interesting as it also lists some new appointments from 20 March 2024 and some unaltered from before, William

For me, the issue is that I only use Affinity products from time to time, there have been times when I have not used Affinity Designer for several months. Having paid a one-off fee for a licence, that is not a problem. I can go back to Affinity Designer when I choose and even a year or more later pick up a .afdesign file that I had generated and develop an enhanced later version. Having a subscription would probably mean that I would have to keep paying or my previous files would not be available for me to adapt later. So the cost level of the subscription is not the main issue for me, I take the view that if the software is on my computer then it needs to be there for me to use indefinitely at no extra cost. William

Affinity has been bought by Canva. Pledge 4 has the title COMMUNITY LED. So it may be that Canva will decide that notwithstanding the present policy that a new policy will be instituted whereby after each meeting that considers ideas put forward by members of the community that due to Pledge 4 there will be published a document listing each suggestion that was considered at the meeting and what was decided about it, maybe to implement, to reject, to defer to a later meeting and in the meantime tests are to be done. For example, for my suggestion, a report such as the following might be what is published in such a report. The idea was discussed. A decision is deferred to the next meeting. In the meantime two programmers are to spend no more than the equivalent of two days each on testing whether implementing the idea is feasible and if so how much time would be needed to do so. This clearly would be a change from the present policy, yet Canva buying Affinity is a big change too, and Canva might change the way things are done. Bearing in mind that Pledge 4 has COMMUNITY LED the above suggestion would seem entirely reasonable and helpful. Tradition can be good, but tradition should not stop progress. William

You might perhaps like to have a look at this slide show that I produced using Serif PagePlus X7 in 2019. There was a good possibility that it was to be presented in a talk at the Plenary conference of ISO/TC 37 in June 2020 by a member of the UK delegation. Alas, due to the Covid pandemic the conference did not take place. Nevertheless the slide show document is with ISO/TC 37. You might particularly like the fact that a word of the Czech language is included in the document. I wanted a word that included a letter with a caron accent so as to give a central European ambience to part of the story. http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/slide_show_about_localizable_sentences.pdf William

Thank you for replying. I don't know. We were chatting on the telephone and I was telling him how I use Affinity Designer and how good it is and he is interested. I didn't think to ask about which version of windows at the time, but he was saying that he uses Word on a windows computer. William

Someone I know is interested in the possibility of buying a licence for Affinity Designer. I had told him how good it is. I see the web page https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/designer/#buy I think he would want to run it on a Windows PC. I have version 1 and I got it direct from Serif before I became aware of the issue of Windows S versions and unlocking. So I unlocked this Windows 11 machine so as to be able to install it. I never actually tried to install it on a Windows 10S machine but I understand that that it would not have been possible. In any case there was not enough memory left available, but that is another matter. Anyway, does the gentleman, with version 2, need to buy it from Microsoft store to avoid the S issue? I don't know whether his computer is S locked. Or has that won't run on a Windows S system situation if bought direct from Affinity now gone with version 2, or what? Why I am asking here is that the web page referenced above offers the bundle for £159.99 and that is not all on one operating system. So, what is the position on this, because I don't want him to get stuck/ William

@Alfred Thank you. I have found that archiving in webmail is very effective. I have entitled the email as aflist.dat example so a search should pick it up. William

I was not aware of that. Thank you for informing me. William

Yes. Thank you for posting it for me. I have now saved it on my computer and I intend to post it to webmail so that I can recover it if the computer breaks down. William

I accept that you may be right, but I have always thought that a Point of Order is a question to the person chairing a meeting. Certainly, I have seen some, shall we say, ingenious, ways of turning a statement, even a speech, into a question in the televised Points of Order in the proceedings of the House of Commons on BBC Parliament, but nevertheless. Not direct quotes, but the following sorts of thing. quite often used, as a way of getting something done, "Mr Speaker, The local council in my constituency of Wherever is behaving appallingly towards one of my constituents, etc details etc etc etc Is it possible for my concerns to be printed in the official report of proceedings in this chamber please?" "The concerns that the Honourable Gentleman has with a Council is not a matter for the Chair. The Honourable Gentleman has however ensured that his concerns will be printed in the official report and his concerns will have been heard on the Treasury Bench." William

Not necessarily. It may well be that the policy of not commenting will remain as it was, but not necessarily. Canva has bought Affinity, Canva may decide to do things differently. Que sera sera. William

A point of order is a question. It is not a matter of it being overruled. A reply has been received. I pointed out that I had not demanded anything, which was, in my opinion, a reasonable thing to do, as I had asked politely. not in any way demanded. William