Opening and exporting results in modified document?

[mschuitema]

Hello,

I have drawn something in Designer 1.10.4, saved the document as normal document (.afdesign), then close Designer. After I double clicked my document, Designer opens as expected. I choose File -> Export -> PNG (default settings) and the file is exported correctly.

But why is then my document changed? When I just want to export and don't make any changes and try to close Designer, then it says that my document is changed, which is not true.

Kind regards,

Marcel

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, mschuitema said:

But why is then my document changed? When I just want to export and don't make any changes and try to close Designer, then it says that my document is changed, which is not true.

The act of exporting has modified the document, by recording your chosen Export settings to make them easy to reuse. You can see this modification by looking at the History panel.

[Paul Mc]

@walt.farrell You 've commented in a similar manner to my question about this in the past and although I agree with your explanation I don't think this is a good user experience. For some reason, not all setting are considered modifications if they are changed. For example, in the case of a PNG export, if I change the Size (output resolution) or Area (document/selection area setting) then these are not modifications and are not saved with the document whereas the Preset and Resample methods being changed are considered modifications. The destination Export folder always seems to catch me out too. Why is this the last folder you exported to rather than the folder you opened the file in? To me this is all inconsistent. In addition, and the bigger issue for me, an export causes the window to be titled as Modified. This then raises a red flag and makes me question whether I've other changes that I've made to the underlying document that haven't been saved. I know I can check the history but that's another step that (IMHO) I shouldn't have to do. I feel that the Export procedure should be a read-only step and is purely a user requested task applied to a document that doesn't change. There is already an existing understood culture of that meaning of Export. Saving the the UI step details with the document doesn't add a benefit as far as I can see. The Export Persona is where such settings should be saved if that is what is needed. Perhaps saving settings for the next visit to the export dialog might be beneficial to some users doing repeated exports but they shouldn't be considered document modifications and then saved with it. If this is desirable or even required by some users then I think that it should be made optional through the Preferences dialog. 

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Paul Mc said:

For some reason, not all setting are considered modifications if they are changed.

That's true, and there have been complaints that some of the settings in the Export dialog are not saved.

In any case, the ones that are saved are considered document modifications, and that seems to be by design (not a bug).