Macros Disappearing

[wtwolf]

I'm unsure if this is a bug, but I'm using the latest production version of Affinity Photo (1.8.3) on an OS X Mojave platform.  I noticed that all previously imported macros had inexplicably disappeared.  Retracing the steps prior to this, I had inadvertently launched a previous version of Affinity Photo (1.7.3) -- the default macros remained, but all imported macros vanished.  After re-importing the macros, I quit and reopened Affinity Photo (1.8.3), and all remained in the library.  Then, I decided to quit 1.8.3 and open 1.7.3 to determine if that might be the cause.  I immediately shut down 1.7.3 and again launched 1.8.3.  The imported macros had in fact, disappeared.  I'm assuming this is a bug and it can easily be recreated by launching a back-level version.  Obviously, the workaround is not launching the back-level version of Affinity Photo, but from my perspective, this shouldn't behave in this manner.

[walt.farrell]

8 hours ago, wtwolf said:

 Obviously, the workaround is not launching the back-level version of Affinity Photo, but from my perspective, this shouldn't behave in this manner.

Production versions of each Affinity application share the same data files, such as macros.propcol, which holds all your installed macros. Thus, when you install 1.8 on top of 1.7, it uses whatever macros.propcol file existed from 1.7, and it knows how to read that data.

Now for some guesswork: It is possible that a 1.8 version of macros.propcol is not compatible with the 1.7 code. Most Affinity files are forward compatible (1.8 an read 1.7 files) but not backward compatible (1.7 cannot read 1.8 files). In that case, if there was some change in the 1.8 format of macros.propcol, then when you ran 1.7 it might have been unable to process the file, and might have automatically recreated a 1.7 version of it, with only the standard "built-in" macros.

If that is true, I would say it's not a bug, just the intended and necessary behavior.

[wtwolf]

3 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Production versions of each Affinity application share the same data files, such as macros.propcol, which holds all your installed macros. Thus, when you install 1.8 on top of 1.7, it uses whatever macros.propcol file existed from 1.7, and it knows how to read that data.

Now for some guesswork: It is possible that a 1.8 version of macros.propcol is not compatible with the 1.7 code. Most Affinity files are forward compatible (1.8 an read 1.7 files) but not backward compatible (1.7 cannot read 1.8 files). In that case, if there was some change in the 1.8 format of macros.propcol, then when you ran 1.7 it might have been unable to process the file, and might have automatically recreated a 1.7 version of it, with only the standard "built-in" macros.

If that is true, I would say it's not a bug, just the intended and necessary behavior.

Thanks for your reply.  Upon further investigation, based on your comment alluding to forward compatibility, prompted me to launch the back-level (1.7.3) version of Affinity Photo and import a collection of macros, primarily to ascertain if they were compatible (and would install) in 1.7.3.  Out of curiosity, I "quit" 1.7.3 and launched 1.8.3.  The macros carried forward to the current 'production' version without having to reinstall them.  Apparently, I had never installed them in the previous version and accidentally launching 1.7.3, seemingly regressed the imports in 1.8.3.

I'm still not sure whether this would be considered a bug, but at least I understand the <apparent> reason for the disappearance.