Why download the addons seperately for photo and publisher seperately?

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, loukash said:

I'm not saying that. Affinity could store its "assets.propcol-as-a-cache" wherever they want. It's just that it should be handled as that: a cache.

Then I do not understand what you are saying. Caches by their nature are not intended for permanent data storage, just for stuff that can be prebuilt from other sources to save having to do that each time it is needed, purged & rebuilt as needed, etc. So that would increase the overall file size required, not reduce it, right?

[loukash]

17 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Then I do not understand what you are saying.

1. I download some brushes from store.serif.com/en-gb/account/downloads
2. I store them offline in my own directory, say, ~/Documents/Support Data From My Apps/Affinity/Brushes/ThoseGreatPixelBrushes.afbrushes
3. I load them into Affinity from that location (so far the same procedure as usual)
4. Affinity doesn't copy the brushes into ~/Library/Application Support/Affinity XYZ/user/raster_brushes.propcol, it only remembers the original location instead
5. Affinity adds them as a "quick-load-cache" to ~/Library/Caches/Affinity/Shared/raster_brushes.propcol where all three apps can access them

That's what I would try to accomplish as a developer if I were to enhance the interoperability within the suite.
I'm not a developer, so it's just a theoretical concept. But other developers do that, so it's technically possible.

[v_kyr]

Well since MacOS and Windows are multiuser systems the whole shared assets files handling etc. should also have then to be user account dependent installed. Since as user A I'm might not be that much interested in user B's assets at all and vice versa. - A simple old school Unix approach would be to use a users home dir  "~/.affinity" for that then, where dot dirs should be as default hidden. Similar there is also a Win user profiles dir equivalent (aka his Win user home).

[loukash]

18 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

should also have then to be user account dependent

They are: ~/Library/xyz is a user directory.

18 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

dot dirs should be as default hidden

Sorry, but dot directories in ~/ are ultimately a bad idea on MacOS.
E.g. Java based apps use them, and they are p-dot-i-dot-t-dot-a-dot if you want to sync certain settings across multiple devices or accounts. Some "old school" unix dot-folders are hidden for a reason, but modern apps don't need them. All their extra stuff should live in ~/Library/Application Support or similar instead. ~/.dropbox comes in mind. By default, ~/Library is hidden, so an inexperienced user will hardly ever poke in there anyway.

[v_kyr]

13 minutes ago, loukash said:

They are: ~/Library/xyz is a user directory.

Sorry, but dot directories in ~/ are ultimately a bad idea on MacOS.
E.g. Java based apps use them, and they are p-dot-i-dot-t-dot-a-dot if you want to sync certain settings across multiple devices or accounts. Some "old school" unix dot-folders are hidden for a reason, but modern apps don't need them. All their extra stuff should live in ~/Library/Application Support or similar instead. ~/.dropbox comes in mind. By default, ~/Library is hidden, so an inexperienced user will hardly ever poke in there anyway.

Dot directories are also hidden and a bunch of Unix apps relay on them on a user base (bash, Emacs, Vim, VScode ... etc.). Further you can access them more easily on a plain user account base, also for/from sandboxed apps. - Instead one can also reuse "~/Library/" which a bunch of MacOS apps do.

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, loukash said:

• Affinity doesn't copy the brushes into ~/Library/Application Support/Affinity XYZ/user/raster_brushes.propcol, it only remembers the original location instead
• Affinity adds them as a "quick-load-cache" to ~/Library/Caches/Affinity/Shared/raster_brushes.propcol where all three apps can access them

What exactly does this "quick-load-cache" contain? What happens when the apps need access to different parts of that content (whatever it actually is), say to change some saved brush parameters (there could be more than a dozen) or to create new brush categories & move the brush presets around in the new & previously existing ones?

For example, considering only raster brushes, my AP & AD brush panels look very different -- many of my brush categories in one app have just a subset of the brushes in a same-named category in the other app, or a superset, or different names for somewhat similar categories with a mix of some of the same & different brushes.

The same goes for assets, only more so. There is very little overlap in what I want to see in AP vs. in AD, & even the similar stuff is organized differently.

Besides, from what you say you want the "original location" could be anywhere, including on a drive or remote server that may not always be available to the app, or change even when the apps are running.

[loukash]

2 minutes ago, R C-R said:

What […]?

2 minutes ago, R C-R said:

What […]?

4 hours ago, loukash said:

I'm not a developer, so it's just a theoretical concept.

A.k.a. food for thought.
Hope that helps…

 

[jahblongz]

Still hoping for a solution, or a better file compression. What a waste of space having 3 applications store the same content in different locations.

[Patrick Connor]

@jahblongz

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums

Developers are looking into the technicalities of avoiding this problem for a future release, but I cannot say when it will be ready

[GaryLearnTech]

10 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

Developers are looking into the technicalities of avoiding this problem for a future release, but I cannot say when it will be ready

This would be very welcome if/when they can bring it to a production release.  There's an obscure(?) scenario where the inter-app problem is doubled.  I might be wrong, but I don't think I've ever seen it mentioned here, so let me quickly explain…

I'm still working from home.  I'm using my own computer.  To keep a degree of separation between work and personal computing (daytime vs evening/weekends), I use two separate accounts on my Mac.  For the three Affinity apps, this would mean six copies of some resource content - three copies in one account and three copies in the other account.

Reallusion, publisher of Cartoon Animator 4 which is occasionally mentioned here, have always taken the approach that their assets are installed into /Users/Shared/Reallusion/ on Macs (and presumably whatever the equivalent is on Windows) by default.  When I first began using their software, years ago, I really hated that approach - it just seemed fundamentally wrong.  But it has actually paid off nowadays, when I might want to quickly use it while logged in using my work account and still have access to all of their standard resources, as well as the third party stuff I've bought or have produced myself.

[GoaTrance]

I am so pleased I started this topic. Not only does it question our need for data to be transferred for particular products but also a big question as to how much of that data is required for that particular product. I don't think any check is ever (seriously) made to determine if a system already has the resources to run a product or how that product may be optimised to run on multiple systems (or multiple products on a single system!). I don't agree with big downloads with no apparent good reason. I do hope Giant downloads for no good reason do stop. When I was growing up as a programmer there were things called patches. They fixed giant programs. I don't understand the 'recent' download the whole thing attitude. Doesn't work for me.

As always please disagree!

Kindest Regards,

 

 

[GoaTrance]

I must admit I'm sorry after updates that although the 'steam' games processor seems to think the affinity apps are optimised the affinity apps don't agree.

I'm not exactly sure how 'Steam' learned about them but it did. Gotta remember I'm Windows 7 although have 10 as well. (11 was denied as I don't permit the totally secure boot). Good on me I say.

Affinity seem to say that the version they use for processing is windows10 and above. Well, I don't think it's much of a jump to windows 7 really?  Windows10 is really not an advance, more of a hindrance.

Disagree as you wish.

Kindest Regards.

 

[walt.farrell]

If you're on Windows 7 then you're still on V1 of the Affinity applications, @GoaTrance.

There will be no new features implemented for V1. V2 has the feature you want (data shared between the three applications), but it will require Windows 10. So it's your choice. Upgrade to a supported OS, or stay with V1.