Feedback on new "Select Same" & "Select Object" tools

[big smile]

Feedback 1: Add "all text" option

The next "select object" tools are awesome. However, under "select object" there is an option of:

• Art text
• Frame Text
• Path text

It would be good if there was an option for "all text". The reason is that imported Ai documents often have text rendered as both art text and frame text. So trying to select them all at the same time can be fiddly.

Having an "all text" option would make things more straight forward.

Feedback 2: Add Options to Publisher

Please could you add the "Select Same" & "Select Object" to Publisher (and maybe even Photo as well).  It would be very handy especially when using automation software (such as Keyboard Maestro) to work on large documents. I recently had a project where I needed to select all the text on a page (but not the images) on a 160 page document, so something like this would have been perfect.

The Adobe apps allow for scripting, which Affinity does not, so anything that makes Affinity more accessible to automation software would be great (especially as Automation software is more user friendly than scripting)

I know studio link can be used to access this functionality, but it would be so much more easier if it was in Publisher natively. 

[DomD]

On 10/19/2020 at 6:41 AM, big smile said:

Feedback 1: Add "all text" option

The next "select object" tools are awesome. However, under "select object" there is an option of:

• Art text
• Frame Text
• Path text

It would be good if there was an option for "all text". The reason is that imported Ai documents often have text rendered as both art text and frame text. So trying to select them all at the same time can be fiddly.

Having an "all text" option would make things more straight forward.

Feedback 2: Add Options to Publisher

Please could you add the "Select Same" & "Select Object" to Publisher (and maybe even Photo as well).  It would be very handy especially when using automation software (such as Keyboard Maestro) to work on large documents. I recently had a project where I needed to select all the text on a page (but not the images) on a 160 page document, so something like this would have been perfect.

The Adobe apps allow for scripting, which Affinity does not, so anything that makes Affinity more accessible to automation software would be great (especially as Automation software is more user friendly than scripting)

I know studio link can be used to access this functionality, but it would be so much more easier if it was in Publisher natively. 

Hi,

I totally agree with you.

By the way you can definitely use the Designer Persona but in this case it only works on the current page. And this doesn't make any sense.

Dom

[fde101]

10 hours ago, DomD said:

this doesn't make any sense.

Publisher doesn't have any concept of maintaining a selection across multiple spreads.  Even if the "select same" features found things across multiple spreads, they could only be selected on one at a time.

To change this would require changing a fundamental aspect of how Publisher currently works.

Not saying that it is necessarily a bad thing to do, but I wouldn't expect that to happen without it being acknowledged in the feature list by Serif, and I suspect they would need to think through that change a bit more carefully than to support it only on behalf of this particular feature.

[walt.farrell]

10 hours ago, DomD said:

And this doesn't make any sense.

It can make sense in some situations:

• You have many similar objets on a single page; or
• You have an embedded or linked .afdesign document that contains multiple artboards, with different artboards displayed on different pages. Then when you edit the embedded/linked document, and switch to the Designer Persona, you can select across all the artboards.

[big smile]

On 2/1/2021 at 12:01 AM, fde101 said:

Publisher doesn't have any concept of maintaining a selection across multiple spreads.  Even if the "select same" features found things across multiple spreads, they could only be selected on one at a time.

That's fine if using automation software (such as Keyboard Maestro) as if "select same" is available, you could just set up an automation that flips to the next page and then runs the "select same" command. 

[fde101]

16 minutes ago, big smile said:

That's fine if using automation software (such as Keyboard Maestro) as if "select same" is available, you could just set up an automation that flips to the next page and then runs the "select same" command. 

And each time it flips the page the selection on the previous page will be lost.

What is the point of selecting everything on the page only to flip the page and in the process deselect it?

 

Now if you can also have the automation software do whatever action needs to be done on the selection before it flips the page, then you are on to something...  and that should work already in the Designer persona, which your macro could also switch to before doing whatever it is trying to do.

[big smile]

1 minute ago, fde101 said:

And each time it flips the page the selection on the previous page will be lost.

What is the point of selecting everything on the page only to flip the page and in the process deselect it?

 

Now if you can also have the automation software do whatever action needs to be done on the selection before it flips the page, then you are on to something...

With automation software, you can manipulate the selection once it's been selected before you flip to the next page. Keyboard Maestro allows manipulation via Keyboard shorts and the mouse, so there's a lot you can do. 

Example: I once had a project where there were hundreds of graphics in a single Affinity Designer document. And each one of these graphics had to be placed in a different corner of each page of a 180 page Publisher document (so each corner would have a different graphic). Keyboard Maestro was able to go into the Designer document, select one of the graphics, go back to publisher, put it in the corner of the publisher page (and resize it so it fitted neatly into the corner), flip to the next Publisher page, go back into Designer and then restart the whole process and do it 108 times. (This is just an example to show how flexible automation software is, I know the example doesn't relate to the current thread topic of "select same"). 

[fde101]

4 minutes ago, big smile said:

Keyboard Maestro allows manipulation via Keyboard shorts and the mouse, so there's a lot you can do. 

I'm aware, I use it myself.

My point is that some people might be interpreting this request as a means by which to have items selected across the entire document - multiple pages - simultaneously, as has been discussed on other threads about this, and that won't happen right now.

In light of that, if you are planning on doing this from automation software anyway, it is only one extra step to have the automation software switch to the Designer persona before doing whatever it is you want it to do (and maybe one more to switch back at the end), so unless and until Serif changes the way selections work to permit selections to exist across pages, there is not much gained from this.

[big smile]

2 minutes ago, fde101 said:

My point is that some people might be interpreting this request as a means by which to have items selected across the entire document - multiple pages - simultaneously, as has been discussed on other threads about this, and that won't happen right now.

Oh, yeah, it's not a request for that. That's a valid point and sorry for not being clear!

 

3 minutes ago, fde101 said:

In light of that, if you are planning on doing this from automation software anyway, it is only one extra step to have the automation software switch to the Designer persona before doing whatever it is you want it to do (and maybe one more to switch back at the end), so unless and until Serif changes the way selections work to permit selections to exist across pages, there is not much gained from this

I disagree. While switching to Designer persona indeed make this possible, it adds an extra step which when doing hundreds of pages lengthens the process. Plus, I've found switching to personas not always to be straight forward. Sometimes they switch instantly. Other times it takes several seconds for the switch to occur. And that adds a random factor which makes writing automation processes harder and more error prone.