booleans

[retrograde]

Do boolean operations only work on/with closed paths? 

[Lescot]

Worked for me, but only when I did not change the position of the objects (moving was fine, but rotation of one object killed it ).

[MEB]

Yes. Unfortunately. I was thinking in requesting this too. Sometimes i need to "cut" a shape in half or trough a path, and always need to create a shape from it first to be able to use boolean operations - a waste of time.

 

This leads to another strange behaviour: If you try to subtract a line from a shape (the idea was again to cut it), Affinity always closes the line automatically and then perform the boolean operation leading to an unexpected result. If you try to select both a shape and a line and use the divide boolean operation it does the same. Closes the path (line) first and then performs the divide operation leading to an unexpected result (instead of just dividing the shape using the line).

[retrograde]

I agree MEB,  a big part of my workflow consists of a lot of complex shape building using simple shapes/paths overlapping each other, then usually the "divide" then "add" (unite in illustrator) to combine the objects to get the complex shape. The ability to allow a simple open line (path) as opposed to just closed paths would cut the amount of work down significantly.