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That is officially the most absurd post I have read this week. And its barely Wednesday. But no way I will read something more ludicrous this week or month even Wait. I know! Lets buy a small island and we make our own country with "kooky mass Democracy" while we are at it. How? India of course. Considering your own ideas... yeah that seems to be safer choice. Even with hallucinations.

Also this isn't the 1990s or the 00s. IF these guys do mess with us by going subscription we could pitch in and MAKE OUR OWN. How? India. I've got friends who work with tech companies there. Think Fiverr prices but legit pros. Imagine thousands of VERY PO'd people willing to pitch in to develop a new suite software that does what Affinity (and Photoshop) does? Pool a bunch of $50, $100 notes for shares to get the work done... We'd make it a low profit company with rules not to be bought out and what we couldn't do. Mainly no subscription service. I'm FOR AI - look at how Corel Painter 2021 implemented those features (not image generation) and no complaints. But frankly you can use Affinity as it is to fix fingers and have the Ai Engine separate. As it is Affinity is NON-Ai, no data scraping (never got around to it) so that's an edge. We'd run the company as a kooky mass Democracy with a few (LIMITED %) major stakeholders having slight edge to tie break, maybe a CEO with 1 person (share % minimum but not too minimum) one vote? $ for advertising, improvement, what features? Again we have a computer base in the Gigabytes of memory, Gigaherts for speed and incredible graphics cards. And Ai isn't just making art and data snooping, lots of AIs (learning modules) could be used. We could put in our ELUA absolutely NO way they could be used to spy on customers and any data collected is anonymized so no way to trace to any party. But we have (by Xer standards / childhood memories) a CRAY supercomputer on our desktops in comparison to way back. Adobe had an edge of making its software work in the early Megahertz/Kilobyte era -that was like ATARI having people who could program ANYTHING on that system... Not as complex, time consuming and tons of people cranked out by colleges to then weep as the foreign countries cranked out more so our corporate pigs could cheat them... Furthermore (privacy paranoia) there are lots of places for a "Canary in the digital mine" if we hire international (India) programmers so any authority (USA/Europe) comes in with a gag order and "You will put spyware in" the alarm sounds and in the company charter its not a breach of trust but ring the bells, call the lawyer. This is versus a for maximum profit big corporation who goes "Uh, if you have some undeserved tax breaks there we'll welcome you in and keep it secret!" No need for a gag order even if they are a major VPN and the spyware the govern-NOT forces in is hacked in hours and sold as a backdoor on the darkweb... The need - a Photoshop alternative that can do and use features most need now and again - but most don't want to subscribe. --that costs $ to justify investment but isn't For me.... . I want "Auto-Trace" back. That was a Serif (Pre Affinity) feature they used to compete with (RIP thanks again to Adobe) Macromedia Flash and it's vectoring - that's why I keep my Draw Plus disk. I'd like it back and improved so it can both do what we wished but "Poster edges" never does and it did so much better - both for art style effects and legit vector creations for websites that take bytes to kilobytes vs megabytes. Company wants me and most of us to stay? No subscription or at worse always a "Perpetual" with sane upgrade prices - put in EULA Bring BACK auto-trace and improve it Keep AI art a "Subscription" option since the field is changing so rapidly it'd be obsolete in months.

There is one thing I'm not sure about. You mentioned "laminated screen". I know that there are foils on the market that you can put on your screen to prevent them from being scratched by the stylus. I don't know if that is what you meant with "laminated screen". But as far as I know these foils reduce the precision of drawing and painting, because of the tiny additional distance they produce between the stylus and the surface of the tablet. And the feel of friction will be different. Just what I heard, I'm not sure if it really is a problem and if that is what "laminated screen" means. My Wacom Cintiq 16 has an etched glass screen, that is very resistant against scratches, as Wacom promises. In fact I can't see any scratches on my Cintiq, since I have it. If the Cintiq 24 Pro comes with a laminated screen, I think it will be OK. But I'm personally not convinced by the foils you can apply to the screen afterwards. But I have to confess, that I'm not experienced with that. Concerning democratic votes: I think the actual situation is not as good as it should and could be, but that is more in the responsibility of the non-democratic influences. If you compare the situations in democratic countries with the situations in their past or in other, non-democratic countries, it is obvious, that democracy brings a lot more freedom, justice, peace and even wealth to the people that live in democratic countries. At the moment there are some very loud minorities that do the best they can to discredit democracy for their own benefit. And the Internet is a very good instrument for them to spread their lies all over the world.

Dear Granddaddy, It's come to our attention that you're not paying attention to the times. The times, they are a-changin'. For instance, all tools are less better than them was befores. Nows we has more reasons to do less, slower, and do it worse, too. This is progress, man. Get with it! This has/is/was compensation for relative wages going down for 40 years. You're welcome! Also, populism, in democracy, is now absolute badness. The baddestnessest. Orange is no longer a colour or a fruit. It's an adjective for the devil in a skin suit fuelled by KFC™, Pepsi™ and recreational golf. It's not all bad. Men can now have babies. And maternity leave, man! Also, it's getting warmer, apparently. Which should be good, but isn't, because colder would be worster. Or something about hockey sticks and The Mann, according to Steyn. And that's before we get to semantic changes. Words really are changin', man. Nobody knows what a woman is, anymore. Safe and effective are words subject to only relativity determined by those using them for their own purposes. Objectivity is old, man. In with the new. Also, journalism died with Chesterton, but that's not yet been reported.

That's basically a correct statement, with the exception of does not provide any valid points. The company is owned by Serif, not any of the thousands of users of their products. They do not function as a democracy. They do not have to justify to you or any of us why they choose to use whatever model. Please see this post...

Ah by sorting by unread I can see how you could mistake my fast gathering of the community as spam because you just see multiple conversations as if they are one lol. That's a good point about democracy vs buisness, but having studied business, when seeking investment or fund prioritizing, market demand acts like democracy.

In a democratic society the normal way would be the "one man person one vote system" where every registered user of the software could state their top 3 requirements for the next version and once all the votes are in, a priority list would become evident But Serif is not a democracy, it is a business. Only they know what talent pool/resources they have, how difficult a particular function would be to implement, how long it would take, how much money they have coming in and going out each month, their ROI for a particular new feature, where all the various coffee machines are located in the building etc etc etc I am also a business and aware what some of my customers would like me to do/implement but realistically I can only so much for them so I have to pick and choose which ones and when. Fortunately, I only have one coffee machine and I know exactly where it is.

While I do actually agree that this would be useful, I can't help feeling that, playing "devil's advocate", it is worth pointing out that dozens (hundreds?) of people make requests for various additions, changes and "improvements" to all three apps. It really doesn't make much sense to assume that every time anyone (or even a group of people) request something, it should automatically be implemented within any particular time frame, if at all. Some requests are easier to implement than others, some actually contradict each other. (One person says "change this to A", someone else says "change this to B") Serif have to make decisions about what, when and how they implement improvements, changes etc to the apps; some, apparently simple changes, can cause problems elsewhere. I think it is generally accepted that there are some improvements that a large number of people would like to see, and I'm sure that Serif do take these requests on board, but, as has been said elsewhere, Serif is not a democracy, they can't be expected to simply comply with every request as soon it is made.

Serif does not comment on when or even if a feature will be added. The closest to that is through a beta release. Several years ago, they did provide a roadmap. They stopped doing so when members felt the roadmap was set in stone, something Serif must adhere to. Just because members request or suggest things does not mean they're even entertaining it. According to a Serif staff member from a post I read recently This is not a democracy. We are a private business.

I get to vote? I didn't know this was a democracy. Thanks again for your help with this, at least I know the nature of the problem. I was just telling my wife that while working as a Systems Engineer III I considered myself a "bug magnet".

I am reasonably sure the developers are very well aware of which features the largest numbers of users want most. But as the 'not a democracy' topic makes clear, there is much more to it than that.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/search/&q=democracy&author=Patrick Connor

I doubt about it. Affinity is not a democracy! Paolo

Well that was what my suggestion was going to be. I personally would vote (I know this isn't a democracy) against guides smart or dumb for off canvas use. With Designer's multiple Artboards it would be a matter of time until I started having problems with them.

like I said to you privately as well as on this forum. I think we all love how responsive Affinity is as well as how great it is that we have a place to discuss these things. The only objection here is the tactic of using another website to compel Affinity to listen to you and your perspective (you in the collective sense not you in the personal sense). We all love Affinity tools and we all want them to grow. But this isn't growth and investment by democracy. For all I know, Affinity is work on this feature. My guess would be that it isn't at the top of the list. But maybe it shows up in the next big version? I will conclude my perspective with the definition of the word petition: A solemn supplication or request, especially to a superior authority; an entreaty. A formal written document requesting a right or benefit from a person or group in authority. If we are using definition #1, I think we do that here everyday and am thankful that Affinity hosts and responds to the forums. If we are using definition #2, and using an external website to achieve that both violates the terms of service as well as pushes toward appealing for an entitled right to have what you want at the expense of other feature enhancements that come at the cost of social pressure and manipulation and implementing your feature over other features that might actually add more Affinity market share based on their research. I can completely relate to wanting features really badly. But when it comes to animating art - I am more than happy to use creative free tools like Blender or Black Magic Fusion one of many vector asset animation tools in the mean time. There are plenty of pixel and vector features I would love to see in Affinity Photo, including animation, and while Animation is on my list (I used it in Photoshop to show the animation of UX designs by animating layers) I can do that will a lot of other tools and it isn't so high up on my list that I want to campaign in a manner that creates bad press for Affinity.

Geez. Okay, two things : Really, I did not cherry pick anything. Next time I'll record my screen or something. I went stopping in every staff member post since page one, and pasted EVERY post. Not quotes. I did not quote anyone. There is an icon that allows anyone to copy (the "share this post" icon) a post link. I just went patiently copying each of those links. I only avoided posts like "guys stop, fighting", or... ironies about the weather. As much as I like British humor (I'm from another culture, south of Spain... which is already totally different from the north of Spain, let alone if compared with the UK... but we tend to give a lot of value to good sense of humor...) I avoided pasting the links to those posts, as wouldn't add to the debate nothing other than a tangential debate about weather or sense of humor. The links are links, just that. I pasted all I found, following the chronological order. Then I jumped to other threads and did the same. So, you may not like the staff answers, but I believe there's a bunch of members answering, all pretty in the same line. I did not cherry pick anything. The second major thing I notice : What you seem to dislike is my comments that come before each link, or some of them . I did that mostly because the list of links was really long, and so to speak a lil about the content of each pasted link, but anyone clicking (and anyone REALLY interested in reading the staff answers, will have clicked, and will click). Of course, I have an opinion about all this. But I am NOT a protectionist (funny term, again... although I like it, as kind of is used for the people worried about the environment and the planet, and certainly I'm one of them) in the sense that I don't need any more features badly , and stability and performance will come just 'cause is the natural evolution in every app. But I believe many accusations thrown to the company are completely unfair. And I am terrible when trying to stay quiet if I hear, watch or read something unfair. But mainly because not everyone agrees with you.... MEB and others show this same level of gentle kindness with newcomers. They show the irony (much better than a direct ban from the forum) when it's users complaining about a company answer for... years. There are roles in the company. I don't know why, I sense you have also been at quite some companies (I've been in ten, but in a few I was quite some years). So you know how there's always the role of someone taking care of the public face of the company, or at least in certain media. I suspect that's the case of Patrick, and how it i snot just "an individual", but also "the company". In the sense of, like I had put above, much of what he says is in the agreed and established (from maybe higher spheres) the line of the company, and the word to spread. If you can't notice that, maybe you have been a worker staying more years in a kind of company with very "original" structure. And everything is possible, could be the case. The same as you can notice how MEB does a lot of the tech support around here. And how seems BEN and Mark, and others, are very key programmers. I tell you, if any of them would post something very against the company line, there could be told not to post more so, or be their answer "compensated" with an immediate post in the company line of thought. If it doesn't happen is surely as -like in most companies- it's all talked and agreed or determined/established (as yep, a company is not a FOSS group where every vote has the same weight. My bosses of past places would laugh about such idea) If you insist in seeing in patrick just some evil soul who hates the poor lil penguins, man, you'd be very wrong. It's all about assigned roles and duties. And you would be fooling yourself, not seeing the real scenario. But hey, to each his/her own. I've know -and been part of- for decades the FOSS groups and communities. And how difficult it is that people realize how different a company is compared to a group of developers doing an open source project. Why direct insults to the company is not antipathy as well ? And what anyone expects an individual or a company to reply to rude tone and insults? only with hugs and smiles ? That's not how the world works. BTW, sarcasm is not inherently bad. Sometimes is a way to induce to use the brain instead of the quick anger. And often is an alternative to directly ban a user and his/her IP from posting anymore in a forum. I know as I have been a forum and site administrator, and definitely that's the easy way, while irony (not so much sarcasm in their answers) is often a soft way to avoid the more drastic solutions. I disagree. My "" comments" (because the links were simply ALL and each one of the posts from staff, related to the matter, in the whole thread and several others... and hard work you did not appreciated sigh....) in that very aspect were totally in the line that Tony said that thing only as a random comment, like today I could say..."woah, tonight I dreamed with a flying unicorn". If anything, he was just mentioning a random number, as surely having strong doubts in being able to obtain significant profit in Linux, compared to rpoducing for Mac and Windows. So, a campaign could show at least there was interest to the point that people would indeed be eager to put money in software of this kind. Not that the particular quantity would allow to acquire Apple or something. And I am sure you understood this, from me, from tony, and from anyone else.... Despite they might enjoy irony as the only defense against rude insults, no, I don't think so. I believe is more a case that they just truly hate censorship, and also, are a bit pessimistic about the matter : They know the 20 or 30 (protectionists, campaigners, terribly alienated poor victims, or whatever the next term...when I was a heavily involved linux head, preferred to be called just..."penguin""...times change.... ) will keep popping threads like this like popcorn. Little they (certain new breed of linux users) know that this only helps to antagonize and make the linux option not sth "friendly" as to consider they idea, due to the behavior of the proponents. So.... Nope, I don't think is for entertainment (it adds moderation work, and moderators here are multi tasked people in the company, not just moderators or social media-only employees). And definitely neither as an "statistic data collection". As stated many times, a rather larger sample would be needed to even be considered....(and yet wouldn't address the money problem). This is just personal curiosity of mine... You seem to dislike a lot or all around here... yet you are posting here since at least 2016 ...Why ? I'd have for sure moved on long ago if I did hate so much the situation.... Is surely not even healthy. No animosity in this (neither anything in my post: I only try to use my logic in a debate) How can be that so ? "We don't have any plans at all to make a linux version" and "this is a private company, not a democracy". That seems plain English to me, and couldn't get more direct. Have they stated that they have changed their -many times- fixed position in the matter ? Nope, they haven't. Not in a single one case. Where is the doubt ? It is because a percentage of them definitely don't. Which in this case, is rude. As I explained with the cup of tea example... I was trying to be pedagogic, there. False. Reasons, data, and direct posts from staff, not cherry picked, but posted in chronological order through all the thread. Luckily I have a dictionary here for translation ! I don't want want to bring up anything. I am only pasting in order all of the staff posts in the thread. Those are my comments about the content in the link, but any one with citeria will read the staff statement in the link, and will judge. I am NOT making a point in that post. I am listing the staff answers. If disliking my comments, just don't read them, are totally unimportant. The key is what the staff says. Also, a company trusts and relies a lot in what their current paying users think and prefer. But is a very irrelevant aspect of it, in one way or the other. Go make a point of it if you find pleasure on it. They give more importance to the existing paying users, and you think they should stick to whatever may happen with the potential users in the linux community. I was not making a point here, just posting the next staff post in the thread, as per chronological order in the thread. But make a case of it, if it's fun. I think you don't need our (in case you really think I am one of them ) help. If no one . If noooone answered here, this thread would be bumped way less, and your case would be way more irrelevant. Anyway, nothing matters. The company will do what they wish to do, and that's it, no matter what you, or me, or the few other nerds (is not an insult, am one) post. Once again. I went, following a strict order, pasting all the links to all the answers from the staff, about the matter. Of course, if one was speaking about "is raining tomorrow" (even the staff members can get off topic) that one didn't make it into the list. But I believe you did know that. You probably wanted to introduce the doubt for the fast reader, as probably not many are going to check that it is not cherry picked, sadly. Not that I would take directions from you on how to post, lol, anyway. Yes, I had made super clear that this was already addressed. I posted it indeed so to not be accused of cherry picking, as indeed, I'm one of the few that knows since very early (when some protectionists? posted it as an issue) . I pasted the link as was the next in order, but my comment before it already clarifies that all of us are aware that that particularly would not be an issue. And I believe you ignored all that on purpose.... Well, there's a ton more issues regarding drivers, very specific libraries and particularities of each os. But feel free to think just using QT or the like would be all fine and dandy. (Overwhelming enthusiasm for the idea of a crowdfund ensues, and some volunteers step up to organize one) Which would only fund the salaries of maybe one or two years, to have a base port, surely full of the usual bunch of bugs. But not the other expenses involved in any development when it is not just an open source group, but a company. Totally non addressed how to sustain that, with SOLID data of income. (Repetitive pattern:) Call it so. Is their answer. I see more of a repetitive pattern in your denial of the situation, but hey. About the Wine possibility. I'd vote for that. I just don't know about the technical difficulties for it. Or if is there a company strategy issue with that. I really don't care... as I don't care about the OS.. if the suite was made in Linux from a start, I'd dual boot, I wouldn't hate it, which you seem to. I care about the task in hand, not the OS. I doubt it'd be a very strong data, unless would be of epic proportions... It's surprising that you posted this as an argument. It does not refer to your country or theirs not being a democracy, but the fact that a company is based on a hierarchy, investors, and mostly, income. It also surprises me as really accepting their statement, would avoid fully all of your effort in writing... Anyway, as I said, the Wine options seems to me the cleverest path, given the situation. Or... just freaking code an app of your very liking, which is indeed in the soul of the Linux philosophy, not depending on a commercial closed source company decisions. Is a bit of a betrayal to the foundational principles for which we all always loved, love, and will keep loving Linux.

Adobe does however also have a much larger portfolio of apps and if they port one they would probably need to port their entire portfolios to make it more enticing. Considering adobe is already the market standard it's easy for me to see how they've grown content with their position and don't do anything too crazy except add features here and there that are up to date with the newest tech. Also the fact that adobe apps kind of work on linux means that, unless there's a real competitor on linux, adobe most likely feels like they win linux by default by having the apps kind of work on linux and there not being any strong competitor on there. If I was at serif I wouldn't totally ignore this potential future avenue now, because it'll create a lot of animosity later. And who knows, maybe they'll work on a port soon, maybe they won't, but completely ignoring an avenue like this when you need every user you can get would put them in a bad standing, PR speaking. As they've said before, this is not a democracy, serif is a company and they have to make decisions that make sense for them. For you and me it might make sense, like duh, its an empty market with a growing userbase due to the increase in mindfulness over privacy and data usage of Windows and the closed ecosystem of apple devices. Also making a linux compatible base would be better now than later, when they have a larger portfolio, but we don't know their financial standing, their developers' workloads, etc. There is a lot of stuff that goes behind the scenes at a company that can affect decisions like porting to a different platform, and Serif has shown that they're not ones to take risks. Unfortunately, I think when linux is big enough for them to consider it worth it adobe will throw a huge wad of cash at their developers and release a port of their suite before adobe, and then affinity will still be the alternative, instead of *the* primary choice for a lot of users, requiring them to convince adobe users to switch on the linux side as well, when they could release something now and have people think the opposite: "Do I want to try out adobe now when this is working perfectly for me and it's blazing fast?".

I haven’t “received” your message, I’ve simply seen it ad nauseam by viewing the Unread Content list. That aside, my earlier point still stands: @Patrick Connor has made it perfectly clear that Serif is a business, not a democracy.

Feature requests need pro and con discussion and clear behavior description. Someone says "Please add a Live Paint Bucket Tool!" because the only other drawing program they're familiar with is Adobe Illustrator and they seem to think "Live Paint Bucket" is some kind of universally understood generic industry standard 'feature in a box' that a development team can just pick off a shelf somewhere and plug it in, when it's just Adobe's proprietary name for its own particular implementation of what is generically known as a flood-fill feature. So would the voting 'ballot' list four (or more) 'party' candidates?: Live Paint Bucket Tool, identical to Illustrator's Fill Bounded Areas Tool, identical to Inkscape's Smart Fill Tool, identical to CorelDRAW's Smart Vector Fill Tool, identical to Canvas's 'Voting' features in an open public discussion forum are as silly as the user-created 'Poll' feature in a motorcycling forum I frequent. There's nothing scientific about them. Are we going to register to vote? What stops me from having a dozen login accounts so I can vote 12 times? What if 60% of the most experienced users are introverts who are simply disinclined to participate in such 'elections'? What if the majority actually making a living using the software are just too busy, or are not allowed to participate by their employers? What if the vast majority of users have never touched a 'Blob Brush Tool' because they can't afford Captive Customer fees and therefore they all vote "No"? What if the majority of the users have only ever used Adobe Illustrator and don't understand that things can be better than that? You really want the priorities of an application's development to be driven by mob rule? Building an innovative product that wins in the marketplace is not driven by simple democracy. Systematic development requires discernment about which functions comprise the most fruitful foundations upon which later higher-level features will depend. The best features are those which are cleanly integrated with each other so that the combined functionality is more elegantly powerful than just a collection of standalone functions. The feature that ends up truly 'putting an application on the map' and empowering its users the most may be something no one has ever dreamed of before. The 'voting' mechanism is already there: You can click the reaction buttons. Yeah, they could be re-named with terms less ambiguous. But the 'mob' can't even follow the most common-sense procedures: Search for an existing feature discussion topic before starting yet another one. You're very unlikely to be the first person to ask for a 'Shape Builder Tool.' Don't post 'personalized' lists of your pet features. If the topics don't already exist, start individual topics, so they can be sensibly discussed. No one is doing a search for a topic called "Joe Blow's wishlist" just because Joe Blow thinks he's someone special. No one is going to tediously dissect individual features from Joe Blow's wishlist post and move them to their appropriate subject threads. Joe Blow may have the most valuable contribution that no one else has ever thought of on a topic, but it will be forever lost because it's merits are stirred and shaken somewhere inside an unnavigable grab bag. JET

I agree with @BrianHermelijn I think of it as being considerate not to proliferate the Share your work forum with lots of single posts when a single post with multiple works will suffice. As for share original work that is entirely up to the artist, the art you create has a value. I whole-heartedly support Brians choice to decide when he wants to share and I would not think any less of him if he never did share. A single post with multiple works shows the artists progress over time and the subtle style changes as the artists life experiences affect them, you also get to see how their skills improve and how they apply new techniques they've found or learned. It's as visible as any post be it a single image post or a multiple image post. Some artists post several images showing the development of a piece of work and will also show wireframe images if the image is vector. Some artists produce more art than others, so a single post with multiple images is a space saver and a good way to organise shared work. Freedom of choice is more important than democracy. Democracy is not freedom, it is majority over minority.

OMG. The internet. It doesn't have to render it correctly. But I should be able to open the file after a warning that not all properties are supported. The result may be weird and not perfect - but also often almost OK. I will be able to retrieve something. This is a solution often used. Modern software simply allows people to open and save files in file formats not perfect - with plenty of warnings - but they can, because sometimes you have to. It is not perfect - but neither is democracy. It is just the least bad solution in several cases. Blocking access to good data is a no go. Entirely blocking customers from accessing the file (data) whatsoever is a solution from a century we left decades ago. But if you want to see the world in black or white - be my guest. A file with 200 design layers with classic content and then one insignificant layer with a contour = you can't open this file in 1.8 is simply ridiculous. Designing a clever file format can be done from the very beginning af development of even a new suite of programs. Was so decades and decades ago.

All voting does is allow Serif to gauge customer interest in particular features. It doesn't dictate anything. I find the quote "This is not a democracy, it's a private business. Customer views are interesting but not a deciding factor." quite disappointing, to be honest. The software is made for the customers - the private business does not exist without them. Everything should be guided by the needs of the current or potential users, but statements like this really give the impression that Serif isn't all that interested.

It's not about money, forget that. While it might be related to the fact that Linux works better and uses less resources compared to Windows and it's free to use, mainly it's about freedom. Under Windows, my computer intensively scanned the disks, apparently for no reason. The CPU and RAM were bloated by Windows metering routines and services I don't ever use. Once I had a meeting compromised by the XBox recording service that started to do its job, with a red area over my presentation. Just out of the blue. Hours of updates in the middle of the day on all the company computers, witnessed twice. Everybody's taken prisoner. Drivers pushed over user's choice, making the network to stop, for example. Lately, on Windows, after the latest bunch of updates, Explorer closes unexpectedly. The updates coming and pushing restarts when I'd rather need to work, breaking my session based on the fact I wasn't at the computer at that time. And so many more. This is waste of time. a BIG waste. Don't get it wrong, Windows is not bad as OS, the policies are - to push updates, to forcibly add all that blotware, to do the metering without user's need, after you pay for it. Apple is keeping the users bound to their hardware of choice. This is not desirable, even though the selection is of high quality. And, despite being Unix, it's pretty limited to their choices and paradigms. Not bad, but there are cases when those impede the users. Three platforms? Android or iOS apps are always limited by comparison to the desktop versions, probably based on the fact that the hardware is less capable on these devices. Linux comes with a true democracy regarding the users needs. It's a development philosophy. From all te points of view. Everybody can have an opinion and openly express it, the developers will consider it seriously. There are very rare cases when a good and clear expressed feature request is not implemented. You can run what you need, you can have a simple selection of software, you can choose the DE configuration. Why would I prefer something else? If you say Linux is a waste of time, then you haven't tried it. Try a live version or install it on a 150GB partition and see.

It certainly shouldn't be a democracy, but there are quite a few UI failings based on objective parameters. If you are providing functionality in software you have to decide how to expose that functionality to the user. You have to know how they employ functionality and provide access to meet their needs. In the case of the preferences window it seems inarguable that going back and forth between screens is less efficient than other methods, such as a tabbed interface or a dual-pane approach (with a list of categories to flip through on the left, the parameters on the right). Another consideration is whether some of these preferences might be things users would change frequently, in which case they should be part of the main interface instead of a "preference". The developers may not always have the experience in production to know what users are doing with the software, so the feedback is necessary. I recall the early days of graphic software where setting the measurement units might be a "preference", until developers realised that people were changing units constantly from job-to-job or whilst working on a single job; thus interfaces were added to allow quick switching of measurements, mixed-measurement systems and field-based entry of values in any desired unit. Not only that, but we've now had many decades of UI design history, and there are examples of efficient solutions readily available - and if the developers aren't aware of those then the users may well be. If you make a tool you'll never know exactly how it might be used. When you get feedback you can improve that tool to better serve those purposes not envisaged. You get happier customers, you get more customers. As far as functionality goes, I'm very happy with what Affinity provides as it stands - I'd rather see development work on making the UI more consistent and efficient than adding fancy tricks.

How many times did I click on a new post in a topic of interest to see a '+1' that IMHO does not add anything to the discussion Also, I do not favour a voting system. This would give people the impression that they have some kind of right to demand features and causes even more complaints in the long run. Serif have made clear that they have their internal ways of planning the roadmap and I think we, the users, can trust that they have good reasons to do what they do. After all they want to develop a good software package. (To be clear if that matters at all: in political things I strongly believe in democracy). d.