Publisher: Rotating a gradient in a text decoration fill/stroke

[loukash]

Has anyone figured out how to rotate a linear gradient applied to the Paragraph Decoration fill or stroke?

I haven't…  
It's always from left to right, no matter what I try.

Edited April 7, 2022 by loukash
clarifed question

[RM f/g]

Click text with fill tool, now the endpoints of gradient appear.

Click endpoints and move around freely. At least in Designer. Haven't tried the other apps.

 

[Callum]

In addition to what RM f/g mentioned you also have access to the context tool bar buttons once you have the fill tool selected. These can be used to reverse a gradient or rotate it by 90 degrees.

Thanks
C

[loukash]

23 minutes ago, RM f/g said:

Click text with fill tool, now the endpoints of gradient appear.

That's how you edit gradients of the text frame. No problem with that.

I'm talking about the Paragraph attribute Text Decoration:

[loukash]

12 minutes ago, Callum said:

you also have access to the context tool bar buttons once you have the fill tool selected

I know all of this. That's not it. Please see my screenshot above.

[Callum]

11 minutes ago, loukash said:

I know all of this. That's not it. Please see my screenshot above.

Currently there is no way to edit paragraph decoration gradients the way you would normal gradients. The only transform operation you can perform on these types of gradients is reversing them using the button in your attached screenshot.

Thanks
C

[loukash]

So is it a bug, an oversight, or a deliberate "lack of feature"?

For the record, apparently I'm not the first one to ask this question:

Unfortunately, @lacerto (aka Lagarto) has deleted their responses and workarounds.

[loukash]

Annoyingly, even working around via pinned objects is only possible by using ugly workarounds because pinned objects will always stay in the foreground:

(ff.)

[NotMyFault]

6 minutes ago, loukash said:

So is it a bug, an oversight, or a deliberate "lack of feature"?

For the record, apparently I'm not the first one to ask this question:

Unfortunately, @lacerto (aka Lagarto) has deleted their responses and workarounds.

How important is this feature for you, and what level of automation is required?

I'm sure you already know manual workarounds like putting a rectangle with the intended gradient behind the layer - but this might require movement / resizing depending on text frame content.

So one idea is to use a regular single "magic" colour decoration, lay a gradient behind, and use blend ranges to make the gradient visible only where the magic color is applied. This could work if the exact position of the gradient does not matter so much.

The general idea is to use a helper like magic colors to create a dynamic mask. If you need a gradient in Y-direction, using PT filters might be an option.

I don't know if Publisher is abler to overprint text. If yes, you might create a special font consisting of of black to white gradient boxes in the wanted angle. Then apply a gradient map to replace by actual colors.

 

 

[loukash]

@NotMyFault, thanks for your attempts to help…  
… but my main question has been answered already.

Workarounds in the pixel domain are out of question.
In that sense, the best workaround here remains one of my own: 

cheers!

[loukash]

Also a possible workaround technique from my own archive: 

Edited April 8, 2022 by loukash

[NotMyFault]

Using blend range part of the no-go list? You could easily virtually put the red cow (which remains  physically in foreground) in the background with help of blend range on destination excluding black (of text).

[loukash]

47 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

Using blend range part of the no-go list?

Stuff like that usually ends up with vector objects being rasterized on PDF/X-3 export. My patience to work around those issues is meanwhile highly limited.

***

1 hour ago, loukash said:

Also a possible workaround technique from my own archive: 

^ Turns out that it's an absolutely pointless workaround for this purpose because text gradient is static, with a fixed position relative to the frame bounds (face palm).

So the only usable dynamic workaround ultimately is a temporarily pinned object set to Multiply, then unpin and place to background.

Or back to InDesign, which is what I did for the actual layout that I had to do today.  

[lacerto]

15 hours ago, loukash said:

Unfortunately, @lacerto (aka Lagarto) has deleted their responses and workarounds.

Did some spring cleaning, in more meanings than one, yes. As far as I remember the work around was related to using a glyph instead of a shape (and then using multiple decorations on multiple lines). Something like below could also be achieved using a glyph:

 

But if it does not need to be under the text then pinned shapes work no doubt better. Glyph based gradients are anchored to the text frame so they need to be reapplied for each position and cannot be duplicated but the trick used here works well enough for these kinds of single effects.

I agree that not supporting the angle is an odd oversight. The angle should at least be supported in a gradient swatch as that would allow using them in context of decorations, as well.

[loukash]

4 hours ago, lacerto said:

Glyph based gradients are anchored to the text frame so they need to be reapplied for each position and cannot be duplicated

Yeah, that's what I've figured out already in my previous post. But thanks for confirming. :) 

[Murfee]

Hi @loukash, I raised this as a feature request in 2019, it is frustrating that a basic feature has been omitted and workarounds are the only option 

 

[lacerto]

Here is a further study on using glyphs as a work around for custom gradient shapes applied as part of frame-based text. If the gradients are encapsulated in text frames of their own, they can be duplicated without restrictions, and also be governed by using text styles, Styles and the Symbol feature:

Note: The attached Publisher document was created on Windows so the fonts used should be replaced when opening the file on macOS (EDIT: Just checked and it seems that both Wingdings and Webdings are part of the system fonts also on macOS, at least on Monterey).

gradient_workarounds.afpub

 

Edited April 14, 2022 by lacerto
Updated Publisher document to include heading styles with custom gradients

[loukash]

6 hours ago, lacerto said:

If the gradients are encapsulated in text frames of their own, they can be duplicated without restrictions, and also be governed by using text styles, Styles and the Symbol feature

That's true, but you still cannot use them as a floating background decoration, because every pinned object floats above the text frame.

[lacerto]

27 minutes ago, loukash said:

That's true, but you still cannot use them as a floating background decoration, because every pinned object floats above the text frame.

Yes. In some situations you could apply Multiply Blend mode e.g. for a symbol, like here:

 

gradient_workaround_symbol_multiply.pdf

[loukash]

6 hours ago, lacerto said:

The attached Publisher document

Ah, now I get it! It's not the same one as your screenshot above.
Yeah, that's a valid workaround.

However, you can also simply apply a text frame fill to the inline pinned heading frame. Or convert any other shape to text frame and pin it inline. So your approach slightly overshoots the actual target…  
The drawback remains that the heading will be separated from the rest of the text.

[loukash]

6 minutes ago, loukash said:

a valid workaround

… all of which workarounds – retrospectively – somewhat remind me of the XPress 3 & 4 or even InDesign 2.0 (pre CS) days. As in: The 20th century has called and wants its layout software back. Oh well. 

[lacerto]

16 minutes ago, loukash said:

So your approach slightly overshoots the actual target…  

Yes, it's awkward. I was mainly looking at ways of having that gradient in a style so that it can be changed in one go -- the bullet and character style trick work but require those separate heading frames. I suppose the best method would be just pinning a gradient symbol with a blend mode. But that of course requires Designer or Photo. But its seems to keep the text as text and keeps K100 overprinting.

[loukash]

On 4/14/2022 at 2:50 PM, Hens said:

Perhaps

Interesting approach!  

It's in fact amazing that there are that many possible workarounds. Every one of them may be quite useful in certain specific scenario.

That said, I would still rather appreciate a direct fix for the Paragraph Decorations in the next Affinity update.
Time to post a feature request, I guess.