William Overington

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

Readers who are interested in what can be produced using AI may like to have a look at the many threads about this in Alfred's forum. There is new content yesterday and today. https://punster.me/serif/viewforum.php?id=11 William

And yes I know that one person putting forward a suggestion is not the whole community. 😁 William

And I had not dictated to anybody at all. I provided information that I opined would help in the assessment process and that by providing the information that I did that that might increase the possibility of the idea being tried for a practical evaluation of my suggestion. It is a new era with Canva. The pledges have been published. Yet a ruling is made "No need for another thread on this.". So is the new era going to be locked into what happened previously when things were different, or will the opportunity to go forward into the new era be seized? Pledge 4 does use the word "LED". William

It had not occurred to me that my detailed post to try to show a good way to implement my idea would be deleted. Affinity had sought ideas. William

Some people post a Haha response to some of my posts, yet usually they do not post about why they post that reaction. Some readers may be surprised by and delight in the following article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha-ha William

Many years ago I produced some documents about using the Paint program. http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/pai04000.htm http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/pai04100.htm http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/pai04200.htm http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/pai20000.htm http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/pai04300.htm William

Correct. For the avoidance of doubt, I have not demanded anything, I do not demand things. I asked politely. Asking politely is not at all demanding. Here is a transcript of my asking. William

There is a new era since Canva bought Affinity. Four Pledges have been published. Pledge 4 is about ideas. I put forward an idea and a way to do it. https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/202719-on-a-point-of-order-regarding-removing-my-post-that-suggested-a-specific-technique/#comment-1205970 William

I notice that some of my posts have been removed from a thread. 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/&do=findComment&comment=1205842 A post in which I suggested a specific technique appears to have been removed. Alas, I have not got a copy of that post, the one with the test aflist.dat file with the code numbers. Have you saved a copy for staff to consider when my suggestion is considered? If so, could you email me a copy please? I know that the post stating the pruning and locking states that the feature has been requested before. A ruling is made "No need for another thread on this.". Yet Pledge 4 has been made in this new era. So I posted the idea, hoping that the idea may be of benefit. So has my suggestion made in that thread now been rejected or is it still under consideration please? William

Would anyone try to eat the gnomon of a sundial? 😁 William

I opine that it is always better to have a definitive statement that something that could have content in it is, in fact, in this particular case empty, rather than no comment at all. Otherwise one cannot be congruently certain of what is the situation. William