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Font Manager in Designer?


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I saw that you added a resource manager to the latest beta, which makes a lot of sense to me. It would be very useful too if you could add a font manager like Publisher has too, though. It is hard to assess which fonts are missing from a designer document and know which ones I have to activate. I only get a small pop-up message when I open the document, but this not always complete if I use a lot of fonts, and I can not get it back when it disappears. I hope you could consider this?!

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More and more I come to the conclusion that only Publisher and Photo should remain of the three programs.
The publisher should absorb the Designer tools and the trouble will be out of your head.
As of today, the designer has few vector tools, and even fewer vector tools, so it's better to transfer them to Publisher and there are only two programs left for development.

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10 hours ago, GRAFKOM said:

designer has few vector tools, and even fewer vector tools

I suspect that isn’t quite what you intended to type!

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16 hours ago, GRAFKOM said:

More and more I come to the conclusion that only Publisher and Photo should remain of the three programs.

Not sure I agree. I never really use Photo, Designer and Publisher I use all the time. Designing vector illustrations and Assets is much easier with artboards than Pages, and certainly believe a full blown vector program should be part of the trilogy. What I find hard to work with sometimes, is that only for one specific feature you would need to switch to the other app, like a vector pencil tool that is missing in Photo, or the perspective and mesh transform tools that are in Photo but not Designer. The borders between the apps are sometimes arbitrary and might not be useful for all workflows. A more flexible system where I could pick and choose which modules and functions I really need to use together would really be my dream, just give me the toolbox with all the tools (when I have bought all the apps) and let me combine them in a modular way... I can dream, right??

Anyway, I think it would be useful to have some parts in all 3 programs, like resource and font management. Seems like a rather simple thing to implement as the code is there.

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On 10/28/2020 at 9:05 AM, postmadesign said:

...It is hard to assess which fonts are missing from a designer document and know which ones I have to activate. I only get a small pop-up message when I open the document, but this not always complete if I use a lot of fonts, and I can not get it back when it disappears. I hope you could consider this?!

Go to the Character Panel, switch the first dropdown on top left to Missing Fonts (it's located at the end of the list), then click the arrow on the next control on the right - it should display all missing fonts families.

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My point is that the publisher could take the tools from the Designer, such as Corner Tool, Contour Tool, Pencil Tool, Vector Brush Tool, creating symbols and creating Artboards.

And already. And we have a very nice show.
Of course, Photo as a separate program due to many other tools. Although Photo begs to add a few tools from the other two, eg Transparency Tool, and I can't understand why I can't create a bleed in Photo.

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5 hours ago, MEB said:

Go to the Character Panel, switch the first dropdown on top left to Missing Fonts (it's located at the end of the list), then click the arrow on the next control on the right - it should display all missing fonts families.

Did not know about this, at least thats something. Thanks!

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4 hours ago, GRAFKOM said:

My point is that the publisher could take the tools from the Designer, such as Corner Tool, Contour Tool, Pencil Tool, Vector Brush Tool, creating symbols and creating Artboards.

And already. And we have a very nice show.
Of course, Photo as a separate program due to many other tools. Although Photo begs to add a few tools from the other two, eg Transparency Tool, and I can't understand why I can't create a bleed in Photo.

This really is a workflow issue. I believe that illustration or graphics are a very different thing than layout and graphic design. I think Publisher really took an interesting approach with their personas, so that you can actually access the corner tool or the vector brush by going to the Designer persona. However I do not use this functionality as much as i could, and often prefer working on graphics, logos etc in designer only and doing the layouts in Publisher. Perhaps that is because I am so used to working this way coming from Adobe. Fusing Publisher and Designer completely would not be a good thing in my opinion. It would make the program much more complicated and bloated. As I said I just need some elements to be present in all apps for consistency.

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OKAY. Everyone knows everyone has their own workflow and habit.
I personally would prefer 2 Persons in Publisher:
1 Persona - Publisher with Designer Tools included
2 Persona - Photo

When working in Publisher, this would solve the continual transition from the Publisher persona to the Designer persona for the sole purpose of temporarily rounding corners or extending the outline.
I use Publisher almost 24 hours a day in my advertising company: we design logos, business cards, leaflets, advertising banners on cars, we cut them out of foil and use a laser plotter, etc.
So I spend a lot, a lot of time with Afiinity software, so that's why my observation is here.
Besides, Affinity still has a lot of bugs and shortcomings - but I would gladly give a lot more money to develop and refine the software.

Regarding Designer himself, of course, I agree that there is a lack of a font manager and a fix for a lot of unpatched bugs and shortcomings.

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15 hours ago, GRAFKOM said:

My point is that the publisher could take the tools from the Designer, such as Corner Tool, Contour Tool, Pencil Tool, Vector Brush Tool, creating symbols and creating Artboards.

Don't forget the raster tools from the pixel persona, the Appearance and Isometric panels, the export persona, and the fact that page-based documents created in Publisher cannot have artboards (even if opened in Designer) and that artboard-based documents created in Photo and Designer cannot have multiple pages unless first converted to page-based documents in Publisher.

That last one is particularly important: even if you added the artboard tools to Publisher you wouldn't be able to use them with any documents created in Publisher...

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17 hours ago, GRAFKOM said:

OKAY. Everyone knows everyone has their own workflow and habit.
I personally would prefer 2 Persons in Publisher:
1 Persona - Publisher with Designer Tools included
2 Persona - Photo

When working in Publisher, this would solve the continual transition from the Publisher persona to the Designer persona for the sole purpose of temporarily rounding corners or extending the outline.
I use Publisher almost 24 hours a day in my advertising company: we design logos, business cards, leaflets, advertising banners on cars, we cut them out of foil and use a laser plotter, etc.
So I spend a lot, a lot of time with Afiinity software, so that's why my observation is here.
Besides, Affinity still has a lot of bugs and shortcomings - but I would gladly give a lot more money to develop and refine the software.

Regarding Designer himself, of course, I agree that there is a lack of a font manager and a fix for a lot of unpatched bugs and shortcomings.

So do we. However one thing that bugs with Serif is their lack interest (for better word) for RTL languages support. This should have been there from the beginning. Now V2 will be around the corner and I don't know how they are going to retrofit this (If they ever going to do it)....😣

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Affinity Designer is a bitmap painting program with a few vector basic accessories more than the opposite. @GRAFKOM

Until a vector miracle happens in Nottingham it is not much more than that.

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1 hour ago, Jowday said:

Affinity Designer is a bitmap painting program with a few vector basic accessories more than the opposite. @GRAFKOM

Until a vector miracle happens in Nottingham it is not much more than that.

I don't agree with this assesment. I think it is very nice vector program that is fast and intuitive, but lacks some of more advanced features Illustrator has. With regards to vector brushes you are correct, and I do wish Serif would add more options in this regard into v2. I have worked with with Illustrator for several years, but always found it very cumbersome to work with. It has great features, but I never likes the basic path manipulation. I like this a lot better in AD. I guess it all comes down to personal preference, but I personally think Designer is the most original program of the three, as it is something between Illustrator and Photoshop. I find it very nice to work on designs, create iterations on multiple artboards, look reference images in one big space. Though Illustrator could potentially do this, it is just too sluggish for me. Publisher is great to have because I want to have an alternative to indesign as I need it for my job, but it is more like a light and quick version of indesign in many regards. As for Photo: I never really use Photo that much for my job, as I do hardly any photo work, and for the more lightweight tasks, I just use Designer...

PS I am happy about some discussion, but can we get back to the original topic, this whole thread is starting is gone quite off rails. Thanks.

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8 hours ago, postmadesign said:

I think it is very nice vector program that is fast and intuitive, but lacks some of more advanced features Illustrator has. With regards to vector brushes you are correct, and I do wish Serif would add more options in this regard into v2. I have worked with with Illustrator for several years, but always found it very cumbersome to work with. It has great features, but I never likes the basic path manipulation. I like this a lot better in AD.

Exactly. Designer is much more fun and appealing to work with (and this counts for a creative that wants to be creative) - you just meet the wall immediately if you have more advanced needs - or use the divide operator or a year ago expand stroke. The amount of manual work or workarounds is depressing. Working in Illustrator never was as fun but it has amazingly helpful features and results are equally amazing. CorelDRAW has the features too (CorelDRAW is for some reason rarely mentioned in here). I used it a lot as well because I liked working in it better and it too has amazing tools. Designer: zip zero nothing.

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PS I am happy about some discussion, but can we get back to the original topic, this whole thread is starting is gone quite off rails. Thanks.

Agreed. Lack of font manager!

The concept of shared (and supported) code in the three apps but actual separation of the features into one of the apps is not a great design. Although perhaps not world class usability I would like to see features pop up in Designer if I have purchased Publisher as well. Opening the same file in different apps to get features doesn't appeal to me. It would be great if a font manager at least was available to customers who also own Publisher.

But really - yes, the font manager should just included in Designer too. But that is also what baffles me: what is Designer meant to be? As I see it from Serifs own marketing ... a tool for artists. Not illustrators.

  • "The user interface is supposed to work for me - I am not supposed to work for the user interface."
  • Computer-, operating system- and software agnostic; I am a result oriented professional. Look for a fanboy somewhere else.
  • “When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.” ― Confucius
  • Not an Affinity user og forum user anymore. The software continued to disappoint and not deliver.
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On 10/30/2020 at 5:05 PM, postmadesign said:

lacks some of more advanced features Illustrator has.

I would say vector basics - vector distortions are not an advanced feature, but I will agree that Designer is a great user experience and I can do around 30% of my work using it without having to open Illustrator CS5 which feels horrible to use but is essential for plugging the gaps.

On 10/30/2020 at 8:19 AM, fde101 said:

My point is that the publisher could take the tools from the Designer, such as Corner Tool, Contour Tool, Pencil Tool, Vector Brush Tool, creating symbols and creating Artboards.

I don't understand - I've totally embraced Studiolink - so 99% of the time I just have publisher open with 99% of all three apps tools available without switching - isn't that the point?

So for me Designer (via studiolink) does have a font manager which works seamlessly  

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3 hours ago, Dazmondo77 said:

I just have publisher open with 99% of all three apps tools available without switching

Not quite.

Studiolink in Publisher is only offering the primary persona from each of the other apps - no Liquify/Split Tone/Develop features from Photo, no artboards from Designer (unless working with documents that were created in Photo or Designer and have not been converted to support multiple pages using Publisher), no Export persona from Photo/Designer, etc.

It is also missing the panorama/merge (HDR, Focus, etc.) features from Photo.

Granted that much more of what is currently in Designer is available via StudioLink than what is currently available from Photo, but not quite 99% of it.

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