Curve containing separated lines?

[YM77]

Till very recently I thought curve has to be a connected line (either two or zero end points). However, I have seen this (see attached screenshot and file) now: a single curve that has multiple, separated lines. Each has their own start and end lines. This is generated from matplotlib, a python plotting package popular among statistician. I saved figure as SVG in matplotlib and open with designer, and got this as part of the axis. I think I can achieve similar things with matlab. 

Note, this is not achieved by "grouping".

So my questions are:

1. What are they? Can I create them in designer myself, or it can only be created by other software?
2. How can I edit this? I realized I could move nodes around and create new ones inside one of the lines, but not creating new nodes outside it. 

untitled.afdesign

[thomaso]

Note in your Layers Panel that this layer is labeled as "(Curves)", plural.
You can draw additional curves to a layer when activating this "Add New Curves To..." button:

Quote

• Add new curve to selected curves object—when enabled, the mode creates additional curves on the same layer as the initial curve—this gives better management of a multitude of curve layers. For example, the character 'a' is made up of two curves that can be a single 'curve object'. From Layer>Geometry, choose Separate Curves to separate each curve into separate layers or Merge Curves to consolidate selected curves into one layer.

https://affinity.help/designer/English.lproj/pages/CurvesShapes/edit_linesAndShapes.html

[YM77]

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

Note in your Layers Panel that this layer is labeled as "(Curves)", plural.
You can draw additional curves to a layer when activating this "Add New Curves To..." button:

Oh Thanks a lot!

[Alfred]

As noted in the Help article from which @thomaso quoted, there’s a ‘Merge Curves’ command to bring curves together into a single layer. So you aren’t restricted to merely adding new curves to an existing Curves object.

[thomaso]

Thank's to @Alfred's hint I just noticed that the URL I linked above might not guide you to the page with the according content. I even can't manage to get the true link to the according chapter "Draw curves and shapes", which you alternatively can achieve by clicking on the blue link at the end of the page.

Is it just me – or is there a general issue with the "Copy link" option on this help page?

It appears to refuse to get me a link to "Draw curves and shapes":

https://affinity.help/designer/English.lproj/index.html?page=pages/CurvesShapes/edit_linesAndShapes.html?title=Edit vector curves and shapes

[Alfred]

4 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Is it just me – or is there a general issue with the "Copy link" option on this help page?

I don’t see a ‘Copy link’ icon in Safari on iPad. The links in the Contents tab seem to function correctly.

Draw curves and shapes

Edit vector curves and shapes

[Old Bruce]

14 hours ago, YM77 said:

How can I edit this? I realized I could move nodes around and create new ones inside one of the lines, but not creating new nodes outside it. 

 

Go to Layer > Geometry > Separate Curves. I did and the ticks/lines became 5 points wide so you'll have to change that to .25 more or less points.

 

[Pšenda]

11 hours ago, thomaso said:

the blue link at the end of the page.

The copied link is correct only when opening the page directly via the hamburger menu. If the page is displayed via a link from another page, the link is incorrect (it still links to the original page). This is a bug in Help.

[thomaso]

13 hours ago, Alfred said:

I don’t see a ‘Copy link’ icon in Safari on iPad. The links in the Contents tab seem to function correctly.

Draw curves and shapes

My problem was that I was not able to get (create) this your correct link at all but instead to the next chapter only ("Edit vector curves and shapes"). – One workaround appears to be as Pšenda says:

1 hour ago, Pšenda said:

The copied link is correct only when opening the page directly via the hamburger menu. If the page is displayed via a link from another page, the link is incorrect (it still links to the original page). This is a bug in Help.

I assume with hamburger menu you mean the chapter link list on the left? (I see a burger menu only in the offline help)
I see 3 possible versions for the content of the URL field in the browser - and I can't really see a rule about when which one occurs:

1. https://affinity.help/designer/English.lproj/
The basic/default appearance when coming via the start page. – Regardless what content I then select this URL doesn't change.

2. (...)affinity.help/designer/English.lproj/pages/CurvesShapes/draw_linesAndShapes.html

3. (...)affinity.help/designer/English.lproj/index.html?page=pages/CurvesShapes/draw_linesAndShapes.html?title=Draw curves and shapes

I had noticed before already that the current URL is not necessarily displayed correctly in the browser field. Til today I mistakenly expected that the "Copy Link" button would fix this problem, but it obviously doesn't – although it appears to work sometimes. Quite confusing.

[Alfred]

6 hours ago, thomaso said:

My problem was that I was not able to get (create) this your correct link at all

You should see a ‘Copy’ option on the context menu that pops up when you right-click (or Mac equivalent, if you have a single-button mouse).

6 hours ago, thomaso said:

1. https://affinity.help/designer/English.lproj/
The basic/default appearance when coming via the start page. – Regardless what content I then select this URL doesn't change.

The content is displayed in a ‘frameset’ with a list of links on the left — as a German speaker you would expect links to be on the left, wouldn’t you! — and the articles on the right. In such a scenario it’s normal for the URL in the address bar to either have a ‘#’ sign appended or remain completely unchanged when you click on an internal link (i.e. one that keeps you on the page and changes the content of one of the frames within the set).

[thomaso]

3 hours ago, Alfred said:

You should see a ‘Copy’ option on the context menu that pops up when you right-click (or Mac equivalent, if you have a single-button mouse).

That way I would copy the wrong URL. My problem is that I don't see/know the URL which belongs to the current content.

As pointed out by Pšenda the URL and the shown page content aren't necessarily congruent. With the 'frameset' hint you deliver a technical reason. That made me try a right-click on the frame to get detailed frame info but unfortunately even the Frame-Info, though it knows the correct content title ("Draw curves..."), still names the wrong URL:

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

That made me try a right-click on the frame to get detailed frame info but unfortunately even the Frame-Info, though it knows the correct content title ("Draw curves..."), still names the wrong URL

Try right-clicking on the link in the frame on the left.

[thomaso]

> right-clicking on the link in the frame on the left.

Most often I don't use this sidebar navigation but rather

• a search (of this site or via internet search engine) or
• one of the bottom links below an article

Both ways do not show the sidebar navigation structure – and disable me this way to use the according entry for a right-click. This way I can end at a point where sidebar, URL field and page content give 3 different info.

For instance: How can I get here the correct URL for the "Rulers" chapter, without the need to detect it anywhere in the sidebar (obviously not in "User Interface")?

[R C-R]

12 hours ago, thomaso said:

My problem is that I don't see/know the URL which belongs to the current content.

I do not know how it works with other Mac browsers but in Safari if I right click on the help topic content or its title in the sidebar, among the pop-up menu choices are either Open Frame in New Tab/Window or Open Link in New Tab/Window, respectively. Doing that opens a new tab or window that looks identical to the current one, except that the URL field is always the direct link to the help page, not to the index URL.

But usually, all I have to do is click on the Copy Link to Clipboard icon at the bottom of the sidebar to copy the direct link to the help topic to the clipboard:

This works fine if I have clicked on a topic on the sidebar to open it directly, either from the contents or from search results tab. It does not work as might be expected if I opened the current help topic from one of the "See Also" links or from my saved favorites. Instead, that copies the link to whatever the last topic was I opened from the sidebar.

I suspect it works differently for different browsers, which is probably why pasted links sometimes do not point to the desired help topic.

[Pšenda]

8 hours ago, R C-R said:

This works fine if I have clicked on a topic on the sidebar to open it directly, either from the contents or from search results tab. It does not work as might be expected if I opened the current help topic from one of the "See Also" links or from my saved favorites. Instead, that copies the link to whatever the last topic was I opened from the sidebar.

 

On 7/23/2020 at 11:07 PM, Pšenda said:

The copied link is correct only when opening the page directly via the hamburger menu. If the page is displayed via a link from another page, the link is incorrect (it still links to the original page). This is a bug in Help.

 

[R C-R]

@Pšenda, I am not sure what you mean by the hamburger menu. Is this something you see in the online version of the Help? If not, how does it relate to copying a help page URL so it can be pasted in a reply in the forums?

[lepr]

2 minutes ago, R C-R said:

@Pšenda, I am not sure what you mean by the hamburger menu. Is this something you see in the online version of the Help? If not, how does it relate to copying a help page URL so it can be pasted in a reply in the forums?

Modern web pages are designed to be responsive to the width of the browser. Reduce the width of the browser to see the index sidebar become a hamburger menu.

[Pšenda]

56 minutes ago, R C-R said:

@Pšenda, I am not sure what you mean by the hamburger menu.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburger_button