SVG Export has no option to export hidden layers

[Tustin2121]

I know I'm not the first person to request this; apparently a couple requests were made back in 2015 and it still hasn't been implemented. In Adobe Illustrator, when you export to SVG, all of the various hidden layers are exported as well, with display="inline" and display="none" being put on visible and invisible layers, respectfully. Part of my HTML5 game is built around showing and hiding various layers of an SVG, using css classes to show different layers at different times. The build pipeline for the game takes Illustrator's odd converting of layer names into pseudo-html-safe strings and reverts them to be used as class names on the elements, and I was happy to redo that bit to function with however Designer outputs its SVG and re-prepare it for use in my project.

But Affinity Designer just removes the hidden layers, period. There's no option to NOT have it remove the layers, there's only an option to remove additional layers for some odd reason. I get the reasoning behind wanting to optimize SVG for the web, but that should be an option left for me to decide, not have it dictated to me by the program. I have an SVG optimizer already in my build pipeline, and its tailored to my needs, meaning it doesn't remove the hidden layers I want to keep while still allowing me to remove bloated pixel data that might be left over. Why is turning off this unwanted optimizing not an option in Designer? And more importantly, why is it still not an option after apparently five years of it being requested?

And before it's suggested again, no, just unhiding all the layers is not a suitable work around. It's tedious to have to make sure every nook and cranny of a complex SVG is unhidden just so it will export, and couple that with the fact that I have several of these SVGs, and it's just not worth the hassle. Plus, it's nice that the SVGs inherently look correct when viewed outside the game window because their initial hidden/shown properties are kept, while still being able to work correctly.

I was recommended the Affinity suite as a cross-platform replacement for Adobe's suite (I'm basically using a decades-old version to avoid the subscription stupidity). But this behavior (coupled with the lack of support for opening AI files natively - though I can understand why for that) is a major deal breaker...

[hokic]

Hey, same experience here. Though there is an option "Don't export layers hidden by export persona", it mirrors the visible/hidden settings in layers palette. So to export everything, you got to open all the groups, all the layers and manually set them visible. 

[Al Smith]

Any movement on this problem? People requested this years ago - I can’t believe nothing’s been done. It makes Designer unusable for my purposes.