William Overington

In 2009 I invented a concept that I call localizable sentences. In June 2016, faced with not having made progress with getting others interested in the invention, I decided to try to write a novel about a fictional research centre where people are working on research and development of the invention. Unlike the advised way to write a novel of writing it all first then try to find a publisher, I decided to self-publish in PDF format on the web, publishing each chapter soon after writing it. I know, I know, but maybe I would never have finished it otherwise. I used Serif PagePlus to produce the PDF documents. Yet I did finish it, in February 2019. Yet I missed writing the novel, so I started a sequel, my second novel. I gradually wrote over half of the novel. However, for a variety of reasons I had not written any more for a while. I found upon checking yesterday that I had not added any chapter since March 2022. So I decided to try to write some more, switching to using Affinity Publisher. The result is now in my webspace. http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/localizable_sentences_the_second_novel_chapter_048.pdf [Supplementary note of 21:27 British Summer Time Saturday 15 June 2024 The version on the web has been updated as a result of the discussion that follows this post. ] However, readers may like to start reading from Chapter 46 so as to follow this part of the story. http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/locse_novel2.htm Switching to Affinity Publisher was interesting. I needed to set the margins for the document differently from the default provided so as to be what were the default margins in PagePlus. Also, I used View Studio Fields so as to include my name, and the subject, taking care to use exactly the same format as in the previous PDF documents produced using PagePlus. Readers may notice the Venetian style font that I use for the text of the novel. It is Goudita SF and was bundled with some of the Plus range software. I like Venetian style fonts. William

But is it mostly YouTube users who also visit this website who get most of the Affinity Hey Hey adverts? William

I look at this website most days. Most days I play YouTube videos while eating my meals, I just put it on a playlist, maybe My Mix, maybe something else, and let it roll. Quite often, more and more often it seems, the Hey Hey Affinity advert gets included in the adverts. I have a licence for version 1 of each of all three programs. So all of the Hey Hey advertisement is rather superfluous as I know what is available. But why i am writing this post is because I wonder if most of what it costs Canva Affinity to advertise on YouTube is being spent on advertising to people who have already got the products rather than to people who have not. All this tracking of which web sites one is visiting resulting in advertisements for those products. Are other people who visit this website often getting lots of Affinity adverts? William

Well, my experience is that AI generated art can result in beautiful pictures and it can result in rubbish pictures and many in between those two extremes. I have chosen to buy prints of some of those, produced from text prompts that I have authored, that, in my opinion, are good, and frame them. I am not meaning any great art quality prints and framing, just what are marketed as custom one-off photo greetings cards, (but it is not actually a photo that is needed, it is a jpg file, which may contain the information of a photo or of some other image) and frames that the supermarket sells as photo frames. And the Ai generated writing can be fascinating. Poems, stories, song lyrics. An amazing sonnet. William

That is interesting. It has caused me to wonder if emotion in the text prompt can feed through into the generated image. William

Oh, I thought that the big problem is that nobody knows how AI works! That's the worry! William

In Affinity Designer, if one is writing a document and one wants to add another page, is the only way to do that to add a blank page, draw a text frame, then do that linking operation, every time? PagePlus had the facility (was it called Autoflow?) whereby when one got to the end of the page one could click on a button and a new page with the same size text frame was generated and the linking was automatic. Does Affinity Publisher have anything like that please? William

When writing I have been using four dots (that is, four full stop characters) to indicate a pause within a line of spoken text. I know that three dots might well be more usual, but I don't want to change. Affinity Publisher is altering .... to be an ellipsis character of three dots and an extra dot. How do I turn that off please? I have been looking but I have not found it. William

For the avoidance of doubt, it is a genuine, polite, request because I am complying with the rule that has been made, yet I opine that that rule is greatly restricting the discussion in this thread. William

Could you possibly consider lifting the ban just for this thread please? I would like to link to some lovely examples of what I and a few others have produced, and I think it would allow this discussion to proceed better. William

So not demonstrating that the saying Rubbish In Rubbish Out applies to Generative AI as it applies to all computer programs then? William

I remember that back in the 1950s and early 1960s one could buy, I think from railway station newsagents shops, badges of railway locomotives, most of which had wording saying which locomotive, which badges were, if I remember correctly, a bit more than an inch long and about a third of an inch high. They had a brooch fitting on the back, with a pin about an inch long. So boys and sometimes railway staff would wear one or more on their jacket lapel or their tie. Mostly badges of mainline express passenger locomotives, though some of historical locomotives suck as Rocket and Caledonian 123. How does someone wear one if there are just points like on "thumb tacks" (are they what we in England are known as drawing pins?)? Do you need to order quite a lot or is there a service where you can order just one? William

Welcome. Are these like Doll's House size art? One inch to the foot scale. William

What was the context of that please? Here is a thread that has a link to a thread that has a link to a thread that has an image generated by AI that includes an elephant, the link in this forum having been added before the ban on doing so was introduced. William

Carl's picture inspired me to produce this picture. William

I am not asking Canva Affinity to commit to not using AI. I am asking them to consider please pledging not to use it in the three existing Affinity products, but if they use AI to use it in separate products. Affinity programs can be linked if one wants to do so, so it seems to me that keeping AI facilities clearly separate would be a good approach. This post takes a view about AI. https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/201820-ai-discussion-split-from-canva-thread/page/5/#comment-1232792 I am thinking that in the future artists and designers may be faced with a client that says as follows. "I accept that you have not knowingly used any AI in the work you are doing for us, but how can you be sure that the software that you are using does not use some AI behind the scenes, notwithstanding if it has a button to purportedly turn the AI features off. Our legal advisers say we must have certainty on this issue to avoid possible future legal actions against us." It would be good if the future artists and designers could explain that they use Affinity programs and the ones they use have no AI in them and that Canva Affinity does produce programs that use AI but there are none of them installed on the computer that is used to produce artwork for the client. William

The Help feature link to a page, but I cannot find it. Is it under a different name or in a cascading menu somewhere please? I have not used Affinity Photo apart from a quick look once or twice, so I may have missed something basic. I saw Alfred's post and thought I would have a try. William

Is this in Version 1 of Affinity Photo, and if so, where please? William

It is intended to be a left hand, showing the back of the hand, William

Have they? A forever pledge? Or is it just not declaring doing it at the present time? Not intended as rhetorical questions, genuinely asking. William