New Document dialog, document units control doesn't show correct value

[MikeTO]

The New Document dialog on macOS always shows Millimetres for Document Units regardless of what has been saved as the default. For example, I created a Letter document using Inches. I then quit Publisher so the defaults would be saved and restarted. This screenshot is what I see when choosing New Document - it correctly defaults to Letter and 8.5x11 in but it shows Document Units as Millimetres. The value of the control has been set incorrectly and is ignored when I click Create because Publisher thinks it's set to Inches so the resulting document will match what's shown in Width and Height and not in what's shown in Document Units. I imagine this is confusing new users and leading to questions about how to set the default units.

It doesn't seem to matter which units you last used, I confirmed this with points, picas, cm, feet, and all of them have the same issue. Another user tested this on Windows and found that the problem didn't exist there so it must be Mac specific.

[thomaso]

It appears to work as designed to me.* Though my macOS system pref is set to "metric" the presets show their unit depending on the preset, so all Photo presets have inches while Print presets mostly millimeter, non-european formats like "letter" excepted, which opens as inches.

* EDIT: in fact the issue does occur after app launch if an inch preset was selected before closing the app. See next posts…

[MikeTO]

3 hours ago, thomaso said:

It appears to work as designed to me. Though my macOS system pref is set to "metric" the presets show their unit depending on the preset, so all Photo presets have inches while Print presets mostly millimeter, non-european formats like "letter" excepted, which opens as inches.

Are those screenshots from after creating a doc, closing it, quitting  Publisher, restarting Publisher, choosing File > New, and without clicking anything in the dialog? For me, the units show correctly when I click a preset to create it but after doing the above the next time it will be incorrect. Here's a screen recording that demonstrates the bug - it's clear that the Document Units control is displaying Millimetres when its actual value is Inches.

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, MikeTO said:

quitting  Publisher, restarting Publisher, choosing File > New, and without clicking anything in the dialog?

Oh, indeed, sorry! Yes, after app launch with a previously selected inch-preset, e.g. "Letter" or the Photo format "5R", its dimensions are displayed correctly as "in" but its unit menu is set to "Millimetres" while an extra click on the already highlighted preset icon corrects the unit menu entry to inch.

And, usually if I manually alter any property of a preset then its name aside the '+' symbol switches to "Custom" – but here for e.g. "Letter" both of the unit menu states keep the default preset name "Letter" if I use a click on the preset icon to update. Whereas if I choose manually "inch" form the menu the name switches to "Custom".

 

However, this initially wrong menu entry appears to have no influence on the created document which would mean this bug may easily be ignored without harm.

By the way, this reminds me once again of the various glitches of the "New..." dialog, which still feels like it was designed by a non-Affinity designer and not finished before its release a few app versions ago. For instance…
– the missing ability to link / lock the aspect ratio for page width & height
– the inability to sort / move page icons in My Presets
– the confusing preset icon highlight even if any of its attributes got changed (though its name auto-switches to "Custom")
– page icons don't reflect the page orientation
– page icons show 1 or 2 frames <– any rule for this?
– page icon size & layout (padding) feels like waste of screen space (> scrolling required)

[Callum]

Hi All,

Thank you for your work in reporting/reproducing this issue I have logged this with our developers to be fixed and will update this thread once I have more info

Thanks
C