William Overington

I have now found this wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_Character_Recognition_(Unicode_block) So maybe I need a second version of the OCR A keyboard that includes them. Also, I need to try to learn, maybe one of those characters is a sort of "relevant space indicating character" or might sometimes be used as one and an actual blank area produced as a space on a computer is skipped over as if blank paper tape. Oh the memories of paper tape, the change of mood when a new roll of a different colour was loaded and output began. William

Is your space bar a vegetable or an alien spacecraft out of Star Trek? Or a bit of both? William

Well, I wondered about whether OCR A messages actually include spaces. I tried to think of how I would have an OCR A space as a visible entity. Should it be no bigger than the bounding box of an OCR A character? Since producing the artwork I have found the following web page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCR-A I have been trying to think of how an OCR A keyboard could be used for some purpose. I am thinking of some way for a human to send a message to a computer system either through a window or over a video link or across a difference in electrical voltage. Perhaps by having the OCR keyboard printed onto art quality tracing paper and shining a light behind the character that one wishes to send. William

The original artwork is A3 landscape, produced using Affinity Designer. William

@Return Well, the issue was raised and I would like to know what @Aurea Ratio means by serious users and serious purposes. I am retired and my use of Affinity products is (thus far) only at a basic level, usually at just using Affinity Designer to produce PDF documents to put on the web or to use to get an A3 print, and jpg files so as to get what are called custom photo greetings cards using a jpg file containing an image that is not usually a photograph. Yet having Affinity products available to me so that I can do those things is very helpful to me, notwithstanding that what I produce is only of interest to me and a few others. William

Well, you wanted a discussion forum for for serious customers who use the software for serious purposes. Such a forum is not immediately available, but I started this thread in the hope that it would be as good as could be got at the present time. So here is your opportunity to state clearly and directly what you mean by serious customers and serious purposes. An opportunity that can be seized if you want to do that. If that post is made and then there is discussion then it might one day lead to the establishment of the forum that you want. Maybe, maybe not. Is it worth a try? William

So perhaps the way forward would be for one or two people at Affinity to try to start with a copy of the source code of Affinity Designer and try to produce a version - a sort of software maquette - that will do the localization effect on just three menu items, so that the idea can be seen in action. The resulting demonstration could be inspiring. Is that possible please? William

Well yes, but ideas are being sought and I have suggested one. If my idea could be got working there could be versions of Affinity programs in hundreds of languages. The incremental cost of each additional language being relatively low. William

Well, as I wrote before, I don't know whether Pledge 4 is significantly different from what happened previously or not. As far as I am aware, there is no information published to customers pursuant to Pledge 4 as to what is the situation over assessment of ideas and feedback about suggested ideas now that Affinity is owned by Canva. I am hoping that [edited] will explain what assessment process will be used. The purchase of Affinity by Canva is a big event, so maybe the situation will change, or maybe the idea is to keep everything as it was lest changing anything spoils what has been bought. William

Well, then substantial changes could be made to a copy of the source code to get what I have suggested to work, without in any way altering the basic versions at all. I have not suggested that it could all be done in half an hour. With innovation I have found that one needs to be willing to try something even if it might appear pointless to do, because it can often unexpectedly lead to something good. Many people try to extrapolate from the known into the unknown on an opinion without actually testing whether their assumptions are correct. Pledge 4 is a new beginning. It is not a good idea to grumble away that wonderful opportunity. Well, I don't know whether Pledge 4 is significantly different from what happened previously. I am hoping that [edited] will say how in the new Canva era ideas will be assessed and whether feedback will be provided by private email to those who have suggested ideas. It does not need to be the old no comment secretive assessment process from times gone by, Affinity could seize the great opportunity of Pledge 4 to go forward splendidly. I hope that the opportunity is not grumbled away. William

I am always wary when someone purports obvious reasons without stating what are any of those purportedly obvious reasons that are purported to exist. Pledge 4 has been issued as a result of discussions involving Canva, so it is a new era for Affinity as Canva were not, as far as I am aware, previously involved in the management of Affinity activity. William

Under the new ownership Pledge 4 has been made, so a new era may have different thinking. William

As regards the User Interface, whether my suggestion is suitable will depend upon how it is done. A paragraph of text over several lines can be divided into several single lines. Setting up of the localization file always has a human input, this is not a machine translation scenario. William

The aflist.dat file could be encrypted such that it would not load if the encryption of a passcode were not correct. So Affinity could have provenance that only an official Affinity aflist.dat file would work. What Serif may have said in the past is gone. Canva are the new owners with Affinity now having more money to invest in moving forward and if they made this idea work they could perhaps get good publicity for Affinity products as being go ahead and futuristic. Look to the future, not be shackled by the past. William

@R C-R The purpose is so that versions of Affinity software programs could become available with menus in any one of many languages. Once the localizable version is set up, producing a version in another language would be by getting a copy of the English version aflist.dat file translated and localized into that other language. So there could be a version of each Affinity program in each of hundreds of languages. With a default menu item in English if a translation for a particular menu term is not available. William

I have followed your advice. https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/202458-a-localizable-version-of-each-of-the-affinity-programs-such-that-the-localization-of-the-menus-is-using-an-external-localization-file/ William

A suggestion for there being a localizable version of each of the Affinity programs such that the localization of the menus is using an external localization file. This would be a substantial task to implement, but could potentially have substantial benefits. In an Affinity program there are menus, for example with words in English. My suggestion is that each string literal, such as File is replaced in the localizable version of that Affinity program by an element of a string variable array. It is important that the string array can handle Unicode characters so as to provide for the greatest possible number of localized versions being possible, please ensure that 8-bit characters are NOT used. Please do NOT use UTF-8, please use UTF-16. Bearing in mind that I have not programmed for many years, this may not be expressed in the source code of the programming language that is being used for Affinity programs, but hopefully my meaning will get through to your programmers. Suppose that the string literal "File" is replaced by an element of a string array, say, afmenu[1] and that afmenu[1] has a default value of "File". At start up the program looks for a UTF-16 text file aflist.dat and, if it finds such a file, populates the afmenu array as much as it can from the aflist.dat file. Thus the afmenu array has text in each of its elements, none, some, or all of the afmenu items having text in English and the rest of the afmenu items having the text in the language of the particular aflist.dat file that was used. So for example, there could be an aflist.dat file in Estonian, an aflist.dat file in Welsh, and so on, and the end user could choose which aflist.dat file to use. There are commercial translation facilities that could translate and localize a copy of the English aflist.dat file into another language. The aflist.dat file could use the same format as the sentence.dat file specified in a document available from my webspace. http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/localizable_sentences_research.htm The file is as follows. http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/The_Format_of_the_sentence_dot_dat_files_for_use_in_Research_on_Communication_through_the_Language_Barrier_using_encoded_Localizable_Sentences.pdf There are issues that a font with glyphs for the characters used in the language into which localization is made will be needed and there will be issues for the rendering of some languages. This would be a quite large project to implement but the potential benefits of implementation could also be large too. William J. G. Overington Tuesday 16 April 2024

Oh I don't need it as my language is English. But I would love to see it done. William

I answered your invitation to pick a new feature. William

I was challenged as to why I was asking, so I clarified my situation for the avoidance of doubt. William

Alright, a localizable version of each of the Affinity programs such that the localization of the menus is using an external localization file. William

I am retired, at home, just participating in a discussion. After posting this I am going to try to do my daily learning of Welsh on Duolingo.com to try to get some more quests towards the 50 needed to get this month's badge. Then perhaps have a look at the following thread. Chicken sculptures (Page 1) — Art & Literature — Alfred's Serif Users' Forums (punster.me) William

Because I am wondering what are those roles and what features would appeal to them. William

As I understand the situation, due to lots of funding becoming available, Affinity can now become developed further and more rapidly than before. Are there roles where people currently do not use Affinity products because Affinity products do not do what those people need and who might start to use Affinity products if Affinity products were to add some particular facility to what they do? For example, unless things have changed recently, Affinity products do not have built-in colour font capability. What employment roles need colour font capability? Would adding colour font capability to Affinity products increase sales to an extent to make the cost of adding colour font capability worth spending? Or is adding colour font capability something that will be added anyway because not having it looks unfortunate? That is just one example. No. I am retired, I am not connected to Canva, my only connection to Serif and Affinity is as a customer. William

No need to remove it. This thread has a range of views and opinions, short posts, long posts. William