William Overington

Thank you. In fact the downloads from my account are all version 1.10.6, so the system has automatically supplied me with the latest versions. I don't think I had update to those versions on the now broken Lenovo computer. Ah, I need to update the footer on my posts regarding the computer I am using. I have now installed all three of the version 1 Affinity programs. There seems to be a bit of a problem. For example, if I use File New in Publisher, the panel seems to be clipped at the bottom of the page so that the Create button does not show. This new computer, a 14 inch HP laptop, arrived with Windows 11S, but I S-unlocked it so as to install Serif Affinity software and High-Logic FontCreator, Scanahand and ViewHex. The Windows 11 footer bar stays on screen while the Affinity programs are running. I do not remember whether that happened with Windows 10. Do you have any ideas on what is causing the clipping please? William

If one downloads version 1 Affinity programs from the Serif website to install on a new computer, does one get the release version for which one bought a licence or does one get the latest release version that was produced please? For the avoidance of doubt, I mean the various release versions of version 1, I am not suggesting that I get the recently released version 2 for free. William

Quite by chance I saw on a web page of a newspaper an advertisement for a prize draw where the prize is a house. The advertisement shows a picture. There is a picture on the wall. The picture reminded me of the style of Sophie Taeuber-Arp. I went to the website of the prize draw and found this image within a collection of images. I wonder what are those pictures, and by which artist. William

Are you perhaps thinking of being able to use sets of monochrome fonts that can be used in multiple layers, each layer monochrome in one colour, with the net effect looking as if a colour font has been used? Such as my Galileo Lettering fonts of many years ago? http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/mosaic3.PDF http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/fonts.htm The basic Galileo Lettering lowercase are based on a design for capital letters that I drew on a graph plotter attached to an Elliott 803 computer in 1969. In the early 2000s when I learned to make electronic fonts I tried to produce the same design in a TrueType font, and I succeeded. William

Thank you. There is no colour font support in version 1. We did have a go with a partial workaround that I found to be useful to test colour fonts and basically to play a bit, but that was all. The workaround being that, as a colour font will also display in monochrome, it is possible to produce a design in Affinity Designer and include use of a colour font in the design. The text displays as monochrome in Affinity Designer version 1, because Affinity Designer version 1 does not support colour fonts. The design is then exported from Affinity Designer as an SVG graphic without converting the text to curves. This means that the text is exported as character codes within the SVG file. Microsoft Edge supports colour fonts. Displaying the SVG file in Microsoft Edge means that the text that is in the design is displayed using the colour font display facility of Microsoft Edge. It is far from being a total workaround but I have found it useful for some purposes as I could then gather a Print Screen image and use that image to produce a png graphic file to include in a web page. I hope that Affinity software will soon support colour fonts. William

Does Affinity version 2 support colour fonts please? William

Thank you. I know I got it direct from Serif. I just do not remember the modalities of how I got it from Serif. William

I don't remember exactly what I did for my initial purchase. I think I first started with the beta test for Affinity Publisher. I then bought the Affinity Publisher licence at the reduced price that beta testers were offered. I had a free trial of Affinity Designer but I did not get round to using it, so it had gone. Later i bought an Affinity Designer licence at half price when it was on offer. I reasoned that I had previously got the free trial and not used it so buy the software and even if I did not use it straightaway it would be there for me when I wanted to use it. I also bought a licence at half price for Affinity Photo at the same time. After some months I started using Affinity Designer a lot once i found that I could get hardcopy prints of my artwork as one-off greetings cards from papier.com and frame them with frames from the supermarket. That is, cards marketed as photo greetings cards and frames marketed as photograph frames. Later I found that I could get A3 size prints of my artwork from Viking Virtual Print House. William

Thank you. I found finding how to get to the account from the forum non-obvious. I found I needed to click on the word Affinity that is in white on the black bar at the top of the web page, then that goes to another web page and one needs to click on the symbol, located in the upper right corner, that has three horizontal white lines. Then at the lower left of the new page is My Account and one needs to click on that and then a log on page becomes displayed. William

Possibly. I simply asked a question. I remember that years ago on a forum about a particular brand of fontmaking software, where I sometimes provided advice, someone, not staff, posted a thread about seeking advice. A long time later I realized it had been a copy and paste from some other site, but I did not know that at the time. The post referred to 'we" as in something like ~> Before posting a question we expect you to ... and then there was this list of things that purportedly we required doing, looking through lists of things and so on. I posted a reply to the thread along the following lines. Please know that in the above post that the "we" does not include me. If I am online, have time to spare and know the answer I will try to provide a helpful reply without any precondition whatsoever being placed upon the person asking the question. After some et cetera et cetera behind the scenes the moderator deleted the whole thread. I opine that it would be most unfortunate if a culture of conditions needing to be satisfied before asking a question were to become established in this forum. I had a situation where a student who was stuck said he did not like to ask a question as he thought it might be thought to be a silly question. So i made two big lineprinter printed banners in the way people did years ago, there was a program that did it when one inserted text into it, and blutacked the banners on the wall of the computing laboratory. If you need to know the answer ... ... then it's not a silly question! There was a significant increase in the number of students asking questions and that helped them in their education. William

Ah, I think that I have found out how to do it, but is rather obscure to get there in my opinion, various logos and symbols needed trying. William

I need to get a new computer as the one with Affinity products on it is poosibly/probably broken. The computer on which I am writing this email is just a small laptop so not suitable for the task. Can someone inform me how, once I have got the computer, how I add onto it copies of the version 1 Affinity products for which I have previously bought licences please? It is possible that I once knew how to do this but if so, I have forgotten. This would need to be by getting them from Serif in some way. I seem to remember something that it is alright to do this within the terms of the licence. William

Yes, and in a world of the money tree that can be the only criterion. William

Oh, thank you for reminding me of that thread, I had forgotten about it. I had been using the computer fine with the workaround of using the NOVO button facility to get it started. I produced output from it. https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/176267-a-winter-poem This is now another problem as the hinge seems to have come apart. https://punster.me/serif/viewtopic.php?id=351 William

I probably need to buy a new computer as I want to continue to use Affinity software. The Lenovo computer running Windows 10, upon which the Affinity software here is installed has big problems, and is probably irreparable unless sent away to be repaired. I am writing this on another computer, a smaller computer running Windows 10S that I do not want to unlock to Windows 10, and I don't think there would be enough memory anyway. I am looking for a fairly basic computer as long as it can do the job. I have no need for a computer than can run fast video games and the like. A 14 inch screen is fine for me. My question is this please. How much RAM is needed to run Affinity software please? Is 4 Gigabytes enough? A lot of the lower priced computers seem to have 4 Gigabytes of RAM. Also, how much storage memory do Affinity programs themselves need please, quite apart from the storage for files produced by users of Affinity products as a result of using Affinity products. William

I got my copies direct from Serif. William

Yes, well backing up the .exe files is a very good idea. Alas, (I know, I know 😀 ) I have a problem with the computer upon which Affinity software is loaded. A thread about my computer problem in Alfred's Serif Users' Forum It may well result in a new computer being needing to be purchased, yet not on Boxing Day or until businesses settle after the start of the New Year and depending on the weather too in practice. Off-topic link to a different thread in Alfred's Serif Users' forum for anyone who wants to have a look William

It can sometimes happen that, due to a computer breakdown, a customer of Serif needs to load a new copy of one or more Affinity version 1 programs, for which the customer has bought a licence some time ago, onto a new computer. For how long will Serif support downloading of version 1 Affinity software please? William

If it can't be done then it can't be done. I put forward an idea, nobody has expressed any interest, so, c'est la vie, it won't happen. William

There would be no monitoring of the number of prints by Serif, nor any enforcement. My thinking is that people post things in the Share your work forum and it would be possible for someone to make a copy of that artwork and use that copy to produce a print and frame it and display it. But I would not do that as I would regard it as improper for me to do that without permission. Yet if the artist could (also) make it available in the Serif store and I could pay £1 and thus permission from the artist to print a copy, or to get a copy printed by a printing service, then fine, I could get the print honourably and the artist would recive a small reward. So, maybe the artist gets 50p, maybe as a credit for purchases from Serif store for amounts up to some level, but as money above that. So if lots of people bought such a licence to print some particular artwork the artist would benefit, not only from the monetary reward but by recognition of his or her art as it would be displayed in many homes and offices. I cannot guarantee what else might happen, but if an artist has his or her art noticed, then que sera sera! Well, it could be restricted to PDF documents produced using Affinity products. Maybe a condition being that the item is also available in the clear in the Share your work forum. But over the years I have had various ideas - I don't mean just in relation to Serif - some make progress, some don't. From posts other than from me in this thread, it looks like this one won't get off the ground, yet it could have soared in splendour as an opportunity creating infrastructure for people who produce art using Serif Affinity products. Alas, mais c'est la vie. This idea could work if people want it to work. If they don't, then it won't. William

A thread on how various languages express that is snowing. https://punster.me/serif/viewtopic.php?id=314 William

Can I also suggest to never lose your initial style of working. A lot of businesses start small, then expand, then have people running them who have come in and not had that initial struggle to get going, then it all gets corporate-ized and the business no longer had the spirit that it once had. Things take longer, things "can't be done, no no no!", and the structure creaks. What I mean by that is, for example, suppose an artist typically sells A3 prints. When starting up, if a customer wants an A2 print, the artist may well do the custom job. When it gets corporate-ized it can become "we don't do A2, never have, waah!" or "we'll have to ask the artist" but then they don't bother asking the artist, just regard the potential customer as a troublemaker who wants special treatment! Also, I suggest to never say you will do a job as "a favour" or "to oblige". It is a business transacation, paid for, complete in itself with no strings, real or pretend. You might find the following thread of interest. https://punster.me/serif/viewtopic.php?id=311 William

I am learning some Welsh using the free course at duolingo.com and so I decided to try using Google translate to translate from the English text of the poem to Welsh. I have only been using the present tense thus far in the course, yet as the poem is all in the present tense, that seems not to be an issue. Here is the result from Google Translate, followed by some notes from me. If anyone reading this post knows Welsh then comments would be welcome please. Mae'n aeaf. Mae'n bwrw eira. Mae'r lliw yn wyn. Mae'n bwrw eira. Mae'r lliw yn wyrdd. Mae'r lliw yn wyn. Mae'n bwrw eira. Mae'r lliw yn llwyd. Mae'r lliw yn wyn. Mae'n bwrw eira. Mae'r lliw yn frown. Mae'r lliw yn felyn. Mae'r lliw yn oren. Mae'r lliw yn wyn. Mae'n bwrw eira. Mae'r lliw yn wyn. Three interesting thing about Welsh in the following sentence are the word order, the use of 'yn' and what I think is called weak soft mutation. Mae'r lliw yn wyn. The literal word for word translation to English seems to be Is the colour (doing) white except that in English that would be a question, but in Welsh it is a statement, as Welsh word order is not the same as English word order. Unlike English, where a question can be made from a statement by changing the word order, in Welsh the word order is not changed, but the word is changed. The Welsh for the 'the' is interesting as it can have one of three forms. If the previous word ends in a vowel then 'r is added to the previous word, else If the next word starts with a vowel then yr is used as a stand-alone word, else y is used as a stand-alone word. The basic word for white is gwyn but the leading g is dropped by the mutation. Yet dropping the first letter seems to only be if the first letter is a 'g', otherwise the mutation is by changing the first letter to a different letter. I think, but not certain, that it is called weak soft mutation because 'll' does not change to 'l' in weak soft mutation. The basic words for the colours used in the poem are gwyn, gwyrdd, llwyd, brown, melyn, oren. The sentence Mae'n bwrw eira. for It is snowing. is interesting. It is interesting to compare English, French, Esperanto and Welsh as regards the "it". English has It is snowing. French has Il neige. Yet what exactly is "It". Esperanto has a word for "It" that is used for things such as It is a car. and It is a dog. where the "It" is something specific, but translates It is snowing. as Is snowing. Yet whereas in English, French, and Esperanto, the falling of snow is represented as an action, the Welsh Mae'n bwrw eira. where the 'n is yn abbreviated to 'n because it follows a vowel, appears to be literally Is (doing) casting snow. So the action is casting, I think of this as like someone casting seed upon a field. I hope readers enjoy the poem in the various languages. I find the contrast of Welsh, a natural language derived from the ancient language of Britain, with its complexities, and irregularities, with Esperanto a constructed language with its highly regular structure, fascinating. William

For the avoidance of doubt I was not thinking in terms of selling licences to print my work, I was thinking in terms of me wanting to be able to buy licences to print copies of work by others, not to sell, just to arrange to have printed, lawfully by me and with fair dealing by me, printed by an online virtual print house, two to five copies and for me to then frame one or two for my personal art collection. There is lots of art in the Share your work forum that would look good as hardcopy prints. William

If the poem were displayed, a person who knew the meanings of each of the symbols localized into English could read the poem as follows. It is winter. It is snowing. The colour is white. It is snowing. The colour is green. The colour is white. It is snowing. The colour is grey. The colour is white. It is snowing. The colour is brown. The colour is yellow. The colour is orange. The colour is white. It is snowing. The colour is white. William