Anchor point selector

[Johann Seidel]

I would like to find out what does the white anchor point (top-left) means? I understand that the bigger square indicates which anchor point of an object is selected but the fact that 2 anchor points is "highlighted" (one white and one bigger) confuses me. I am used to Indesign CS6 where only one point is highlighted.

 

[MEB]

Hi Johann Seidel,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
When you rotate an object on canvas, the rotation will also be reflected in the anchor's "grid" in the Transform panel so you need to have the white square as a reference for the top-left corner of the object.

[thomaso]

22 minutes ago, MEB said:

When you rotate an object on canvas, the rotation will also be reflected in the anchor's "grid" in the Transform panel so you need to have the white square as a reference for the top-left corner of the object.

While it shows up this way only for a rotation via the Transform Panel:

Whereas for a rotation with Move Tool (mouse) ...

... it needs to activate the "Enable Transform Origin" button first ...

... and then is not shown accordingly in the panels "grid":

[MEB]

I didn't meant to explicitly rotate the object using the object's handles - these will always use object 's center as the origin for the rotation. If you are using Tranform Origin nothing of this apply since it doesn't use any notable point from the object and thus is not displayed in the grid. The point was to explain what the second reference mean when it's there.

[thomaso]

11 minutes ago, MEB said:

The point was to explain what the second reference mean when it's there.

Yes, I did not mean to correct you but rather add a supplement. I rather tried to avoid confusion, which obviously did not work, sorry.

[Old Bruce]

2 hours ago, Johann Seidel said:

I would like to find out what does the white anchor point (top-left) means? I understand that the bigger square indicates which anchor point of an object is selected but the fact that 2 anchor points is "highlighted" (one white and one bigger) confuses me. I am used to Indesign CS6 where only one point is highlighted.

 

I assumed the white square simply shows Affinity's default location for the anchor is the top left corner. Then as time goes on and the object is rotated I can always find the top left corner by looking at the highlight. In my screen shot it is blue.

[Johann Seidel]

Thanks for the quick responses, so if I understand correctly the white point would be the reference point for only the rotate and shear in the Transform panel whereas the bigger square would  be the reference point for the x, y, w and h values?

If so I still thing it would have been be better to have one reference point and that one can change the reference point for shear and rotate as well.

[Old Bruce]

In my screenshot the little blue square is merely a convenient way of seeing the original top left of the object. The big square is where the action is.

[Johann Seidel]

Thanks, this now makes sense as I do not belief the selector rotates in Indesign. I could find no explanation in Affinity Publisher's help system.

[thomaso]

With this anchor point you also can define in which direction a scale value works.
And also like in ID, it shows the according, different coordinates for the position of a selected object (and/or its selected nodes, too).