Save Workspace feature.

[mattspace]

Hi,

Feature request which would also be a workaround for a bug / issue - On a triple-display mac, occasionally one display will momentarily lose connection during the wake from sleep process. This causes all the palettes on that display to relocate onto the main display (in Affinity Photo at least - Publisher doesn't seem to suffer it), requiring manually moving / repositioning etc.

A workspace-saving feature that records the positions of all the palettes would solve this problem.

 

Cheers,

[walt.farrell]

The new Studio Presets feature (currently in testing as part of the 1.9 beta) may help with that. (Note: it is only in selected Affinity applications at the moment, and its operation may be in flux based on user comments.)

[wonderings]

Great idea, had not really thought about it but it is something I use with Adobe when setting up on a new machine. So many little things get adjusted based on the users preferences. Would nice to not have to do that with a new install or in the case of the OP's issue. 

[mattspace]

11 hours ago, wonderings said:

Great idea, had not really thought about it but it is something I use with Adobe when setting up on a new machine. So many little things get adjusted based on the users preferences. Would nice to not have to do that with a new install or in the case of the OP's issue. 

yeah, I was thinking about it from Adobe apps, also Capture One. I was actually a little surprised not to find it in the Affinity suite, since it's a decades-old feature in the Adobe world, you kind of take it as a given, like copy & paste or layering.

[wonderings]

On 9/19/2020 at 1:42 AM, mattspace said:

yeah, I was thinking about it from Adobe apps, also Capture One. I was actually a little surprised not to find it in the Affinity suite, since it's a decades-old feature in the Adobe world, you kind of take it as a given, like copy & paste or layering.

Well I think it is probably because Affinity does not seem to have any real cloud functionality like Adobe does in this regard. Would love to see them go away from reg keys and things like that and opt to do it all themselves in the cloud and all you need to do is simply log in with your Affinity account email and password to activate the software. 

[mattspace]

48 minutes ago, wonderings said:

Well I think it is probably because Affinity does not seem to have any real cloud functionality like Adobe does in this regard. Would love to see them go away from reg keys and things like that and opt to do it all themselves in the cloud and all you need to do is simply log in with your Affinity account email and password to activate the software. 

Saveable workspace setups (as I'm describing them) isn't really connected to Cloud-based accounts (it predates it by decades) - the main reason I used to use it back in the day, was when I had a laptop that I also used part of the time with a second external display. Save different palette layouts etc depending on display configuration, or task.

[wonderings]

1 hour ago, mattspace said:

Saveable workspace setups (as I'm describing them) isn't really connected to Cloud-based accounts (it predates it by decades) - the main reason I used to use it back in the day, was when I had a laptop that I also used part of the time with a second external display. Save different palette layouts etc depending on display configuration, or task.

I think now it is used that way though at least for workspace layout. Everything is tied to your account and makes setting up a new machine a breeze when it just pulls your preferences from the cloud. I have never tried saving workspaces across dual monitor setups, gave up 2 screens years ago thanks to Mac OS spaces. Not the same but for me it works great having each app in its own space.

 

[mattspace]

so just to bump this, cause it happened again...

This is my workspace - what happens if I temporarily lose the left monitor during screen wake - everything on it shifts to the centre screen - that pages palette, because it's longer than the centre screen is high, doesn't resize to fit - it keeps its full size and simply overlaps, above the top and below the bottom of the middle screen, so there's no grabbable part to move it.

The only solution was to set the rotation of the middle screen sideways, then awkwardly try to use the mouse offset 90 degrees to move the palette back, then try to navigate the screen rotation again.

Really need saveable workspace setups.

[walt.farrell]

4 hours ago, mattspace said:

Really need saveable workspace setups.

They are coming in 1.9, and are currently available (though probably their implementation will change) in Affinity Photo 1.9 beta via the View > Studio Presets menu. They will appear in the 1.9 betas for Designer and Publisher later, and eventually in the 1.9 retail release.

[mattspace]

3 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

They are coming in 1.9, and are currently available (though probably their implementation will change) in Affinity Photo 1.9 beta via the View > Studio Presets menu. They will appear in the 1.9 betas for Designer and Publisher later, and eventually in the 1.9 retail release.

Do you think the way they're implemented will solve my particular problem? I'm actually thinking of filing a bug report about it, because I can drag that pages palette onto the middle screen, and the drag action can carry it under the menubar, at which point after releasing, it's no longer able to be grabbed to drag back out - it really should alto-set itself to have an upper limit of the menubar.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, mattspace said:

I'm actually thinking of filing a bug report about it, because I can drag that pages palette onto the middle screen, and the drag action can carry it under the menubar, at which point after releasing, it's no longer able to be grabbed to drag back out - it really should alto-set itself to have an upper limit of the menubar.

I think that's a totally different issue than the one of saving workspace layouts.

If you want to know, though, how it will work, just download and install the beta and play with it.

[mattspace]

8 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

I think that's a totally different issue than the one of saving workspace layouts.

If you want to know, though, how it will work, just download and install the beta and play with it.

Oh yeah, but a savable workspace layout would theoretically be the solution to that problem, assuming it works the way everyone else who built the feature works - place your palettes where you want them, save the workspace, and then no matter where you move them, switch back to the saved layout and they return to the locations they were during the save.

ill look at the beta when I get a moment.

 

*edit*

Just tried the Photo 1.9 beta, and the way presets are implemented doesn't solve the problem, because every palette move in a preset is destructive. You configure all your palettes, save a preset, and then if your palettes get moved about those movements are auto-saved as part of the preset, which defeats the purpose.

The point of palette presets, everywhere else they're implemented is that you can reset a palette layout back to a pre-configured setup.