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Difficulty starting the program (split)


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Photo and Designer downloaded from Apple Store. Both 1.7.3 and Both running on macOS Catalina 10.15.1

Seems to work, except one oddity:

1. Start program with double click (new or existing file etc.).

2. Exit program.

3. Try to start program again by double clicking icon in the bar in the bottom of the screen.

Point 3 will not work, until you've quit the program. Then the double click will work again.

Any solution to this "oddity" (not quite standard Apple UI ;-)

Added:

Same situation on macOS Mojave 10.14.6. I started once, none of the programs start again after normal exit (requires quit before a double click will work again).

This is not the case with any other application I use.

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How are you exiting the app, File > Close (closes open documents) or Affinity Photo > Exit? If you're using Close, this will only close the open documents and the UI, however the app remains open. The apps dock icon usually has a small indictor underneath, if this is the case double clicking the icon won't do anything, single click to make it the active app then on the menu use File > New or Open or to fully close Affinity Photo > Quit.

Screenshot 2019-11-27 at 14.39.38.png

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I close by clicking on the "red button":

1359933141_Skrmbillede2019-11-28kl_15_02_27.png.a26d26610553f28f5684124eccff4931.png

as is usual (for me) for any program.

Single or double clicking or right clicking the icon in the dock has only the effect (here single click):

1391687021_Skrmbillede2019-11-28kl_15_03_28.thumb.png.ed655a398de82bb3d6596c5712738ac6.png

and I'm offered only a choice of previous files ("Skjul" equals "Hide" and "Slut" is not what you think, but danish for "Quit" - we also have "Godselevator" in my language (meaning "Goods elevator"), and if it is active, you may even see a light in an indicator with the text "I fart" - meaning "running" ;-).

No "Open" etc. of anything. Double clicking is completely without any response. Nothing happens. In short: I'm offered the option to quit the "closed" program instead of "open(ing)" an instance. Not your ordinary behaviour.

Compare this to Pixelmator Pro - just to the right of Affinity Photo. Single or double clicking will open a Finder window, and right clicking will open a selection menu:

1582675201_Skrmbillede2019-11-28kl_15_08_57.png.14f7b256af932c3dd25e639165e081d8.png

Note the active "New..." option.

Only if I actually quit Photo by selecting quit:

96522854_Skrmbillede2019-11-28kl_15_12_39.png.2d369c6651dcf8b318ad459147fd4f57.png

will I be able to start the program from the dock, here with a right click ("Åbn" equals "Open"):

1418302561_Skrmbillede2019-11-28kl_15_13_42.thumb.png.b9196361847bc8fe9c0f0d9e49e77371.png

The behaviour is identical for Designer.

Hope this makes things easier to understand.

Regards

 

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<mac_stuff>

The "Red button" isn't an "Exit Program" button

If you have a document open, it will close that document, and the Affinity (Photo or Designer) user interface. But it will leave the program running and its menu items still accessible.

If you close a document using the File-Close menu, or the shortcut Cmd-W, the Affinity user interface will remain visible, like this:

664235188_Screenshot2019-11-28at15_38_52.thumb.png.f1a2d4410db388b85e09e4a0b201e570.png

But if you then click the Red button, or choose Close from the File menu, or type Cmd-W, the interface elements will be closed, leaving just the menu bar at the top of the screen. like this:

 

638515979_Screenshot2019-11-28at15_41_48.thumb.png.92e541c3add0ab34456985eaada02896.png

 If you click on the File menu at this point you can choose to Open another document:

2143374242_Screenshot2019-11-28at15_47_36.thumb.png.d9cdc864030e144530d631426604f8e2.png

 

But Affinity Photo continues to run until you Quit. Clicking on its icon in the Dock at the bottom of the screen will not restore its user interface, but it will bring up its menus.

There are two ways to restore the interface: one is to quit and restart, the other and quicker way is to open another document through the File menu, by double-clicking an Affinity document in the Finder, or by selecting a previously opened one from the Dock or Open Recent...

Some newer Apple apps (eg the most recent versions of Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Preview etc) are intended to quit when you click the red button. (They don't always...). Affinity apps never do this: they stay open, as do most other apps written for MacOS, until the user quits.

</mac_stuff>

(OT: I once drove through Denmark and nearly had a fit when I saw a speed check sign saying "DIN FART")

 

 

Affinity Photo 2.0.3,  Affinity Designer 2.0.3, Affinity Publisher 2.0.3, Mac OSX 13, 2018 MacBook Pro 15" Intel.

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Yes, I know, that (as long as the dot below the icon is present) the program is active in memory. It's simple as that...

But, many, most, if not nearly all, programs except yours give the user an option to open a new instance, via the icon in the dock - right click - or give you a similar, sometimes extended,  option by clicking (or double clicking) the icon in the dock. Affinity Photo (or Design) does not offer an "Open" (new instance) option, as the only program, I have in use (30 permanent in my dock and many, many more periodically in the "flexible part" of the dock).

It's as if "Affinity" is getting "religious" on this issue too (just like the rather longish period with more or less destroyed pen and palm rejection functionality prior to 1.7.x on the iPad, where someone had gotten the weird (? ;-) idea, that palm rejection was not a required feature, when drawing or masking or.... ;-).

Regards and a big smile

 

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@kfriis, for all apps the standard Mac OS behavior for single-clicking on an app icon in the Dock is to make it the frontmost app, launching it if is not currently running. The standard behavior to pop up a Dock menu is either to click & hold on the app icon (where the menu pops up after a brief delay); or to control-click or right-click on it, which pops up the menu immediately. (Double-clicking is effectively the same thing as single-clicking because the first click makes the app frontmost & the second one just does the same thing.)

Making an app frontmost by any method always switches the menu bar to that of the app, with its name displayed as the second menu item so you know it is running & frontmost, & its app-specific menus to the right of that. It also can bring any windows already open in the app to the front, thus the "frontmost" terminology.

This is what happens in the Affinity apps, but it is considerably more complicated than that because the Affinity apps have several different window display modes. One is the 'unified' single window mode with all studio panels & panel groups, the Tools panel, & the main & context toolbars attached (docked) to the main workspace window. As @h_d mentioned, in this mode if you close that window, there is no open window when the app is brought to the front, but the change in the menu bar should let you know that something has happened & the app is now frontmost.

However, in this window mode, studio panels, panel groups, & the Tools panel can optionally be detached (undocked) so they 'float' over the workspace & any other open windows. So if you leave these floating windows open when you close the workspace window, they remain open & will become visible when you make the app frontmost again. In addition to that, there is also a "Separated Mode" available in the Windows menu which as the name suggests floats everything in separate windows on the display.

Of course, there are also the standard Mac OS options like full screen mode, hiding vs. minimizing, the App Switcher, & the option to reopen closed document windows(s) when reopening the app to consider, each of which affects what happens when you click on an app Dock icon or otherwise make an app frontmost.

Because there are so many different window options it can get confusing, but the important thing to keep in mind is that in the Affinity (& in many other) apps 'close' means different things in different contexts. As long as you are aware of what you are closing, you should be fine.

BTW, this is also true for Pixelmator Pro, but because it does not have any options to float anything outside its workspace windows or the equivalent of the separated windows mode, there are fewer behaviors to consider. 

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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If I understand correctly, what @kfriis would like is the ability to create new files from a secondary click in the Dock while Affinity Photo is running, and whatever the state of its user interface. Pixelmator (even my cheapo non-pro version) does this:

1618361163_Screenshot2019-11-29at12_51_14.png.95c8b2c331aceb40c5daf3ad337665cf.png

 as do Mail and Safari. But the Affinity apps (and quite a lot of others) don't.

If I'm right, it might be worth posting a request in the Feature Requests and Suggestions area of the Forum.

Affinity Photo 2.0.3,  Affinity Designer 2.0.3, Affinity Publisher 2.0.3, Mac OSX 13, 2018 MacBook Pro 15" Intel.

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1 hour ago, h_d said:

If I understand correctly, what @kfriis would like is the ability to create new files from a secondary click in the Dock while Affinity Photo is running, and whatever the state of its user interface. Pixelmator (even my cheapo non-pro version) does this:

1618361163_Screenshot2019-11-29at12_51_14.png.95c8b2c331aceb40c5daf3ad337665cf.png

 as do Mail and Safari. But the Affinity apps (and quite a lot of others) don't.

If I'm right, it might be worth posting a request in the Feature Requests and Suggestions area of the Forum.

You're absolutely right. Thank you!

I only have programs in daily use, that either exit completely, when closing (click on red button), or allow me to start a new (or second) instance.

Affinity Photo and Designer are the odd ones out in this respect.

That it may be complicated to implement is not really an excuse, unless the program is designed to be single user, single tasking only - and then it's a basic design problem in a modern multitasking environment. In my view. I haven't had time to test the behaviour on Windows and ipadOS yet, but...

I'm also getting a bit weary about the state, after closing. As I read Affinity support's explanation, the instance is actually active (but invisible), but then I do not understand the problem, since this dialog box:

1186748856_Skrmbillede2019-11-29kl_15_21_53.png.409d5cb48d0bb15a278f28dccbd873df.png

is presented, if I press the "red button", and the "document" has been modified, and not saved.

Whether I select "Don't Save" or "Save" the instance is stable after closing (not quitting via the menu), and it should pose no real problem in real life to either quitting the instance completely (although restarting from scratch each time may be time consuming) or allowing the initiation of a new instance from scratch, from clipboard or a previously used "document" read from disk or network.

It would be nice, though, if I could work on two (or more), different "documents" at the same time. I often work on "somewhat" related projects, images etc. with a basic core, or which only vary by basic core (i.e. one or a few, identical sized images in the layer stack), and the remainder is equal. Whatever... It would be nice to be able to "copy/paste" from one instance into another, separate instance. You're not alone in restricting concurrent work instances/environments, but its would still be nice to have (and the way modern OS'es behave, it should be relatively easy (ahem) to implement in the real world).

Compared to when Windows 3.0 was king of the hill. I even go back to before MS-DOS 1.x and using Hollerith cards for solving some of my daily tasks. You don't know the meaning of the term "complicated" until you've dropped a 6-foot heavy, metal box filled with cards, needing to resort...ahem...  after treating the wound on your shinbone (just because you pulled the card drawer with around 6.000 or more cards all the way out of a huge, wall covering cabinet. Gives a whole new meaning to the term "data dump" ;-)

Regards 

 

 

 

 

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29 minutes ago, h_d said:

If I understand correctly, what @kfriis would like is the ability to create new files from a secondary click in the Dock while Affinity Photo is running, and whatever the state of its user interface.

You are probably right about that, but as you mentioned a lot of apps (including quite a few Apple ones) also do not offer that Dock menu option, so it is not really a standard Mac app feature.

Anyway, all I really wanted to do was to add a bit more detail about the different close options to what you mentioned ... but I kind of got carried away thinking about all the various things that can influence that. :$

My only excuse is my thinking is more scattered & fuzzy than usual this morning because I overindulged at a marathon Thanksgiving celebration yesterday. Sorry about that.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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12 minutes ago, kfriis said:

I'm also getting a bit weary about the state, after closing. As I read Affinity support's explanation, the instance is actually active (but invisible) ...

I am not sure what you mean by that. If you close a document you have the option to save it or not, but either way it is not active after it is closed. If saved, it may appear on the "Open Recent" menu or in the Dock popup list, but it is no longer active in any other sense than that.

There is only one instance of the app. It is either running or not. If it is running then it can have zero or more document windows or tabs open & zero or more UI elements like Studio panels open at the same time. If it is not running it has now windows of any kind.

If the app is running you can work on any number of document instances you want, including in separate workspace windows, in the same tabbed workspace window, or a combination of both, depending on which window mode you are using. You can also copy & paste between & within documents, whether they have been saved or not.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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