XY positioning should be relative to currently active artboard

[Jilly]

Currently, XY positioning is relative to the leftmost and the topmost artboards and those do not even have to be the same. What this means is that in the following situation:

 

The leftmost artboard controls the absolute x, and the topmost controls the absolute y. To explain, if we now take the positioning of the left artboard, it is at x = 0, y = 10mm, while the right artboard is at x = 130mm, y = 0. Talk about a confusing mess. Affinity Designer has never been good at displaying accuracy (though that is the subject for another post) but this is just weird.

 

XY positioning should change relatively to the active artboard, so each of them starts at x = 0, y = 0. Artboards are simulating pages and states, If we have them we want things inside them to matter more. Having a system that will change all the positioning of items inside one artboard when we move another artboard does not make sense.

 

It is both absolute (every follows the same origin point) and relative (the origin point changes depending on how we organise things) at the same time, which is a recipe for disaster and confusion.

 

There’s a bigger issue at work here, though, Artboards should not be mixed with layers, and there should always be one artboard.