William Overington

William

This seventh image was produced by starting with a copy of the source file of the fifth image. In fact, this image is made up of two complete white hexagons, and two black half hexagons, all upon a grey background. Grey, white, black, white, black. William

For completeness. William

In this image, the black hexagon is a copy of the original white hexagon that has had its height and width each multiplied by 0.7071, which is the square root of 2 divided by 2. So is the area of white that is displayed in the image the same as the area of black that is displayed in the image? William

Dw i eisiau hecsagon du a gwyn. The above sentence is in the Welsh language. The sentence translates into English as follows. I want a black and white hexagon. I am learning some Welsh. There is a free course. https://www.duolingo.com/enroll/cy/en/Learn-Welsh Anyway, the sentence arose in an exercise about colours. So, having finished the exercise, I wondered, how exactly would one have a black and white hexagon. Some readers may remember the image in the following post. https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/155334-art-inspired-by-the-art-of-sophie-taeuber-arp/page/2/#comment-876457 That image has a source file with square5.afdesign as its file name. So I made a copy as hexagon1.afdesign and then deleted the image, yet kept the background. So it is 1641 pixels square. So, start with a hexagon, produced using the Polygon Tool with the keyboard shift key depressed, with a zero-width stroke. Ah, the bounding box is square. The Transform panel has the excellent faciiity that one can have the X and Y coordinates of an image about any one of nine places and one can change that as one proceeds if one chooses to do so. So, with X and Y measured about the centre of the image, set (X, Y) = (820, 820) and the width and height of the bounding box both to 1000 pixels. Colour the hexagon white. Now, convert to curves. Please note that the size of the bounding box changes. Copy the hexagon, paste a copy, colour the copy black, and use the node tool to delete two nodes and save. Here is a png 547 pixels square. Yet there are many possible black and white hexagons. Here are a few more images that I have produced. Each of these images with the extra conditions that the area of black is the same as the area of white, and that the shapes of the black areas are the same as the shapes of the white areas. One or more of those conditions need not necessarily apply to all black and white hexagons, but both of those two conditions do apply to each of these four images. The technique that I used was to copy a shape, delete a node or nodes and then position the shape precisely by entering numbers into the Transform Panel, typically 820 for each of X and Y having chosen the option of from about which point to measure X and Y as seemed was needed for the particular shape positioning. William

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOTd78ZTDGE William

It is very useful for some projects to use the Transform panel to position each node precisely, especially if one sets the measurement units to be pixels. View Studio Transform Click to get a tick thus thereby showing it is on. If it is already ticked but the Transform panel is not showing, untick then use the sequence again to tick it on. The Transform panel can be dragged away from its default position amongst other items. On a separate aspect, if View Show Context Toolbar is ticked, then each node of the drawing produced using the Pen Tool can be set as one of several types. I tend to firstly draw shapes using straight lines, as if sides of a polygon, then use the Convert to Smooth mode (by clicking on the toolbar logo while in node mode with the node selected) facility to remove the sharp corners. This can be done, if so desired, one node at a time, so one can choose to smooth some corners yet not others. It is possible, if so desired, to convert every node of a drawing to become a smooth mode all at once by, in Node Mode, selecting one node then using Control A on the keyboard and then choosing Convert to Smooth. William

Does it need to be a plug? Could it be a socket with the plug holes? It is a very recognizable pattern. Then the shape of the edge of the plug would not be needed. Then that could fit inside a circle with the sun rays around it. Also, renewables is about more that solar power, so could there be wind turbines in the upper corners, and perhaps waves along the lower edge? William

Thank you. So something like add two new nodes to the flat horizontal part, move one down vertically several millimetres, and the one that is nearer the angled end of the original down and sideways and use the node tool to find the coordinates of the original line and work out the gradient so as to place the new node such that the angle of the added new piece is as close as possible to the angle of the original edge of the block of colour. Repeat for each colour. It may take a while but if it gets a good print that will be worth it. William

In another thread I produced some artwork with some text in an A3 document. https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/163212-art-and-a-poem-using-language-independent-glyphs/&do=findComment&comment=933597 Later, I produced a slightly different version with CMYK colour and 3 mm bleed areas all around. I uploaded it to an online virtual print house and I have received some prints on 350 gsm paper, the colours going right to the edges. I am now trying to produce an A5 version. To do this I made a copy of the .afdesign file and, still at A3 size, in the copy I gradually increased the text size from 11 point to 24 point, by a combination of increasing the point size of the text, decreasing the inter-line spacing and moving the text box a bit up and a bit left. This done so that with an A5 version that the text will be large ebough to read. I then saved that A3 large lettering file. I then made a copy of that .afdesign file and then, using File Document Setup... scaled the copy to A5. Yes, the text and the language-independent symbols go to 12 point. However, it seems that the scaling is about the point (0, 0) so the black now only goes to -1.5 mm rather than -3 mm. That seems perfectly logical, but it does mean that the A5 PDF document only has black across half of the bleed area. Ah, I am wondering if I can add black rectangles into the bleed area. That might be straightforward down the left side, but along the upper edge and lower edge there are angles and at the lower edge several colours. So, I might be able to fix it that way. But is there a simpler method please? William

I got an email notification of a post to this thread, timed at 10:15 today, commenting on my post, but the post is not appearing in the thread. Does anyone know why please? William

Well, some time ago I read about indian languages in part of The Unicode Standard. It is very interesting but i know that I do not know enough about it to be able to carry put a test nor, even if i could carry out a test, enough to know if the test has worked. One woukd need an appropriate OpenType font. So I have put forward an idea. If someone who knows how to encode some test text as Unicode characters and could judge whether the output from Microsoft Edge is what is wanted, and someone (who may but need not be the same person) can reference a free font, I would be happy to participate in producing the svg file and run the test if requested. But someone might be able to do the test themself and it might be that it needs a proprietary font that I do not have. I have just put forward the idea as a possibilty that may or may not work. If it works, it might be of practical usefulness in some circumstances. William

If some readers want to try it we may be able to work out the typesetting as a group effort, people contributing the bits they know about. William

Some readers may remember that a while ago we managed to get some designs produced using Affinity Designer with colour fonts, even though Affinity does not at present support colour fonts. This was by exporting a graphic design that included text typeset in a colour font as an svg file, without converting the text to curves, then displaying the svg graphic using Microsoft Edge, then gathering a Print Screen image. I am just wondering if that would work, monochrome, for Indian language support. I don't know enough about Indian language support to try it myself. Is it worth a try? It might work, it might not. It would depend on how well the Browser supports OpenType and having a suitable font. If it works, it might have some uses, probably not for a novel, but might be good for a birthday card. Whether it woud be good for a one page print of a poem amongst artwork might be borderline. If the technique works at all. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. Is it worth trying? William

So it is four rectangles, each with no stroke, filled with colour to place them correctly using the Transform Panel, then filled white, then everything grouped, copy and paste into the 22 page Affinity Publisher A5 document. Produce the PDF document. Upload it to the Viking Virtual Print House website and configure it as a Paperback Book, printed in colour, with the front cover and back cover in the file. Then have a look at the preview. Only a faux book at present to get the layout correct, placeholder text in a few pages and the one picture, but I seem to be getting there. William

Well, if I have drawn a closed freehand vector shape, for example, the green one selected in the picture. Since posting I have now realized what I want to do. It is not clear to me from the description if the vector crop tool will do it. But I am not an expert in using Affinity software. Using measurement in pixels (I like using pixel measurements) The upper left corner of the canvas is at (0, 0). The lower right corner of the canvas is at (1571, 2171) or maybe (1570, 2170) but the difference is not important here. What I want to do is draw on top of the original artwork an unfilled rectangle (or filled if that helps) with its upper left corner at (36, 36) and its width 1500 and its height 2100. I can do that using the Rectangle Tool and then get the precise position and size by entering numbers in the Transform panel. In fact, I have just done that a few minutes ago. Now I want to extract a vector image 1500 wide by 2100 high from within that rectangle. But I don't know how to do it. I had the rectangle highlighted and it wiped, at least from display, everything that was outside the canvas, but I tried copying and pasting to a new document, A5 in size, but I just got the empty rectangle. Going back to what I wrote earlier in this post. Well, if I have drawn a closed freehand vector shape, for example, the green one selected in the picture. Now that shape has nodes and none of them are where the outline of the shape crosses the crop line, so I am wondering if Affinity Designer by some internal process produces a new vector shape that follows the original curve within the rectangle and also puts a flat edge where the original green shape intersects with the rectangle, such that the new shape has no part of it outside the rectangle. Is it possible to do a crop using a precisely located shape or is it only hand drawn selection areas please? William

Oh, I didn't realize that is why the range of software programs is called Affinity. Ah! William

Some time ago I produced some original vector artwork using Affinity Designer. This is 1571 pixels wide by 2171 pixels high, 300 pixels per inch. Intended as 5 inches by 7 inches with a 3 mm bleed area on each edge. The purpose, which worked fine, was to export a jpg file to upload to the Papier website and use the file to produce what is marketed as a custom photo greetings card, send it to myself, and frame it in a frame (marketed as a photo frame) that had been delivered with my grocery order. I am now wanting to produce an A5 PDF document that includes an illustration showing the image on the card, yet using vector artwork in the PDF document, not a bitmap illustration. The PDF document being produced using Affinity Publisher as I am hoping to add, on a separate page of the PDF document, some descriptive text about the image. Here is a part of a Print Screen image of the original artwork. Please note that the shapes and watercolour brush marks all go outside the canvas. So what I want is the area 1500 pixels by 2100 pixels extracted from the centre of the image as vector artwork. ---- I have thought that I could add four large white rectangles to cover the parts of the artwork that I do not want displayed, then group it, copy and then paste into the Affinity Publisher document. I have already tried doing a copy and paste on the artwork as drawn without any such additions and that part works fine. But that seems a bit, well, not a good approach. ---- I have found there is a vector crop tool but I have not used it yet. ---- So two questions please. What is the best way to get the illustration as on the greetings card but in vector format into Affinity Publisher? Does the vector crop result in the same image when cropping through something like a frehand-drawn filled vector shape and through watercolour vector brush strokes? William

What a lovely quaint way to put it.

I like a Venetian font, with its sloping straight line on a lowercase letter e. Alas there are not many about. I consider that that upward slope can give a text an optimistic ambience. Fortunately a rather nice Venetian font, Goudita SF, was bundled with some of the old Serif Plus software programs, though alas it did not have a large character set, though it did include accented characters for some of the languages of Western Europe. So does anyone know of a free Venetian font with a wide range of accented characters please? William

Are you sending as a PDF document? If so, I recommend that you choose to embed a subset of the font in the PDF document. As Arial is widely available, some people choose not to embed it in a PDF. However that is then relying on the printshop having EXACTLY the same font available. Best not to risk that the EXACT same font may not be available at the printshop. William

How do non-fungible tokens work please? From what bits i have read, though I am unclear on this, it seems something like as follows. If I were to generate some original artwork in Affinity Designer and then export a png file of the artwork, then because it can be copied, it cannot be exclusively owned by someone in the same manner as if I got a physical canvas and painted a picture using paint and brushes and someone can own that exclusively. But someone could own exclusively a non-fungible token declaring that exclusive ownership. Is that correct? So is the non-fungible token then something like owning the copyright in the image that is in the png file? Or what? William

This is really two questions. In order to have Affinity Publisher DISPLAY those characters, two questions need to be answered as "Yes". Question 1. Will Affinity Publisher accept those characters, in the sense that the character codes are recognized and can be saved in a document? Answer. Yes. Question 2. Will Affinity Publisher display those characters correctly,and not as some shape such as a black rectangle or some similar? Answer. It will but if and only if the text is formatted using a font that contains the correct glyph (that is , the correct image) for each of those characters. I have carried out a test by copying the ten characters from your forum post and pasting them into a text frame in an Affinity Publisher document. They displayed in the Arial font. I formatted to 72 point and they look good. I then changed the font to Times New Roman, the version bundled with Windows 10 on my home computer, and it works. Coverage of accented characters in fonts has improved greatly over the years. Is the document from which you are importing an old document from around twenty years or so ago? Back then some companies charged a more money for fonts that contained glyphs for characters only used in languages from central Europe. William

Here is a link to the finished poster. https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/163212-art-and-a-poem-using-language-independent-glyphs/&do=findComment&comment=933597 I seemed to have a problem getting the bleed area coloured black where I wanted it black, but I think I got it to work. Alas, I should have written notes decribing how I did it at the time, and now I am not sure quite what I did. William

I don't understand the question. Could you ask it in another way please? William