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Congratulations! And a fantastic offer at launch.


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I think, we can be positive and constructive when providing/expressing disappointment.

Remember that we can express grievances towards Serif by simply "voting" with our wallets. There is no need for unnecessary anger towards fellow users or towards the staff. Going forward, I will listen to my own words and I will not be upgrading to version 2.

A "Shut up and take my money!" moment will be when Serif provides support for BOTH Indic languages and RTL languages.

I remain thankful towards the staff and developers at Serif for keeping Indic and RTL language dialogue open.

Although this version 2 is not for me, from reading at tweet replies and forums here, version 2 made several others of Affinity application users happy. With the release of Publisher, the people who wanted Footnotes/Endnotes/Whatever-notes got what they wished for.

Maybe in Version 3, full Indic and RTL support for languages will be supported. Cheers to the staff at Serif and Happy Version 2 Release Day to everyone else.

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All the usual bells and whistles and still NO RTL OR COMPLEX SCRIPT SUPPORT!!!

They said that they don't care about that RTL and complex text because it'll take time to code and they have other stuff to do. People asked if they can use HarfBuzz which is an open source text option and they said no. Just forget about having RTL implemented natively.

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For short snippets (even as long as 10 to 20 words) I use the glyph engine in APub and construct the words one glyph at a time

There are websites and software that allow you to enter the original text and they'll pick the glyphs for you, so you just copy paste them instead of looking for them one by one. https://www.arabic-keyboard.org/photoshop-arabic/ is one example.

 

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6 minutes ago, Ronald N. Tan said:

Remember that we can express grievances towards Serif by simply "voting" with our wallets.

There's also something to be said about using your wallet as incentive for them to keep fighting the good fight and acting as an alternative to the de facto standard (ie. Adobe). I may not have found a whole lot that excites me in v2 yet, but that doesn't mean that I should necessarily mean I want to bury Affinity either. I consider my purchase of Affinity v2 as an investment in Serif and their continued prosperity. A bit of a "stick & carrot" tactic in a sense, but one that encourages them to continue acting as a viable alternative to a company and set of apps that would see us have none.

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2 minutes ago, cookepuss said:

There's also something to be said about using your wallet as incentive for them to keep fighting the good fight and acting as an alternative to the de facto standard (ie. Adobe). I may not have found a whole lot that excites me in v2 yet, but that doesn't mean that I should necessarily mean I want to bury Affinity either. I consider my purchase of Affinity v2 as an investment in Serif and their continued prosperity. A bit of a "stick & carrot" tactic in a sense, but one that encourages them to continue acting as a viable alternative to a company and set of apps that would see us have none.

True.

At the same time, I use Affinity Publisher as a language learning tool to type out Devanagari (Hindi) and Farsi words and phrases in the context of my food photography and cooking hobby. I do not rely (professionally) on Affinity Publisher.

In that regard, I will show my support and encourage Serif by being a positive word-of-mouth for people who can't fully afford Creative Cloud subscription fees.

For me (personally and professionally) subscribing to the Photography Plan of Creative Cloud is a business expense (cost of doing business). At the moment, I am happy with the Creative Cloud Photography Plan since 2016.

Today is a Happy Day for Serif and many...many other customers. Let's give them that. 🙂

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I would like to take this opportunity to happily report that the GMIC plugin v3163 continues to work with V2.

On the other hand, my very old free verion of NIK v1.2.11 may have some problems with a couple of the filters. I do have .12 and .15, so I'll try those, too, when I have some time.

(If this isn't the right place for this, please move it.)

Edited to add that I'm a happy upgrader and user, as per usual. I will try to keep my keyboard/finger problems whilst using the software to a minimum, but I can't promise to deliver on everything.

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15 minutes ago, Ronald N. Tan said:

For me (personally and professionally) subscribing to the Photography Plan of Creative Cloud is a business expense (cost of doing business). At the moment, I am happy with the Creative Cloud Photography Plan since 2016.

I was an Adobe user for MANY years, going as far back as 1992. So, for me to finally give them the boot after so many years.... Yeah. It wasn't a decision I made lightly. (I had the same problem with Autodesk too - an ever diminishing RoI. The only reason to even remotely touch apps from either camp is if you need to be industry, pipeline compliant. I'll use PS and Maya if you make me, but ONLY if you make me. ANYWAY... ;) )

That's the end of me grousing and making something of what is largely nothing.

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Thanks to all at Serif for all the hard work you've put in to these apps.  Having the live mesh warp in Photo is fantastic, I've just opened some PSD mockups that previously didn't work and they now work perfectly.   Very happy with the universal license too.

At first glance, Designer doesn't have anything new that I'd use, but maybe I just need to play around with it a bit more and see.  It's still my favourite app for using in Surface Design.

All in all I'm happy to see the Affinity Suite doing so well and happy to pay the license to help you continue to improve these apps.

 

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1 hour ago, Ronald N. Tan said:

I think, we can be positive and constructive when providing/expressing disappointment.

Remember that we can express grievances towards Serif by simply "voting" with our wallets. There is no need for unnecessary anger towards fellow users or towards the staff. Going forward, I will listen to my own words and I will not be upgrading to version 2.

A "Shut up and take my money!" moment will be when Serif provides support for BOTH Indic languages and RTL languages.

I remain thankful towards the staff and developers at Serif for keeping Indic and RTL language dialogue open.

Although this version 2 is not for me, from reading at tweet replies and forums here, version 2 made several others of Affinity application users happy. With the release of Publisher, the people who wanted Footnotes/Endnotes/Whatever-notes got what they wished for.

Maybe in Version 3, full Indic and RTL support for languages will be supported. Cheers to the staff at Serif and Happy Version 2 Release Day to everyone else.

I'd love to be positive about this, I'd really love to. But when you have been clamoring about RTL support since 2014 and you keep getting shunned it's hard not to feel marginalized. FWIW, after this release I renewed my Adobe CC subscription which expires in 5 weeks. I honestly was hoping I wouldn't need to, but it's getting less and less likely that they'll support RTL and complex script at all. There maybe some who wonder why all the disappointment but I hope they understand that lack of RTL and CS support is a deal breaker for others.

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Congrats on a solid 2.0 release!  While I was hoping for a little more of an impactful announcement based off your teasers (video editing!) but I was still very happy to upgrade to 2.0 for all three apps.  There are a few areas though that I was hoping to see more improvements on, especially for the type of work I use designer for which is primarily technical drawing:

  • Vector pattern fill.  I know this has been talked about in the forums for some time as I'm always checking in to see if some solution has manifested for this issue, but the only way I can do cross-hatch fills or vertical-slicing linework is by manually placing premade templates I've created and masking them out per-shape.  I can't use bitmaps for the type of work I'm generating, and (I hate to go down this route) this is something Illustrator has done since practically it's inception, so I'm certain it's possible.
  • A minor issue for many but something that I asked for years ago in the forums and @MattP told me was being worked on at the time - the option for dashed lines to allow for dashes to be aligned to corners and path ends.  I deal with a lot of work that needs dashed lines, and the fact that I usually have inconsistent corners, or trailing dashes that aren't as long as the rest drive me nuts, and I'm constantly having to fiddle with adjusting the dash parameters to make them work as best I can.  Again, MattP had mentioned this was already being planned for back in 2019, so it's disappointing to still not see this feature added.

With these and a few other smaller issues I could finally move away from using Illustrator for any cleanup or issues I can't resolve using Designer.  I'm really thrilled about the shape builder, knife, deform, and measurement tools though, and can't wait to dive into using them!

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1 hour ago, Musaed said:

FWIW, after this release I renewed my Adobe CC subscription which expires in 5 weeks.

This is the second year in a row, that Adobe have given me discounts on renewals for the 20 GB Photography Plan here in the USA.

2021-2022 was 99 USD and 2022-2023 was 90.32 for the annual prepaid.

With holidays around the corners, try to ask Adobe to see if they are offering any discounts to loyal customers. Always...ALWAYS be SUPER NICE AND POLITE to the customer and tech support. Whether you're speaking on the phone or via chat. I got my discounts via chat. Your results may vary. I think I got super lucky and managed to score those discounts twice in a row during each annual prepaid renewals.

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Woohoo! So excited. Started to watch the update video and had to stop 2 minutes in because I couldn't concentrate. Had to go buy the universal license before I could settle down.

Thank you to everyone at Serif for all the work you do and for the epic release offer. You guys are awesome!

2019 MacBook Pro 16” | Affinity Designer 2 | Affinity Photo 2 | Affinity Publisher 2

2018 iPad Pro 12.9” | Apple Pencil 2 | Affinity Designer for iPad 2 | Affinity Photo for iPad 2 | Affinity Publisher for iPad 2

Years with Affinity: 5 ❤️ https://www.instagram.com/cealcrest/

FEATURE WISH LIST  Vector Mesh Tool    Shape Builder Tool   🥚True Vector Brushes   🥚Vector Pattern Fill  🥚Studio Link in All Apps

APP WISH LIST  Publisher   🥚2D Animation/Video

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5 hours ago, Distill7 said:

They said that they don't care about that RTL and complex text because it'll take time to code and they have other stuff to do.

Nobody from Serif has said they don't care.
They are a relatively small company with only so many resources that has to make tough decisions on what to prioritize. They do not have the benefit of unlimited financial resources from bleeding locked-in customers for over 20 years.

RTL support requires completely re-writing the text engine - a huge project. Supporting Arabic script requires writing a shaping engine - another huge project.
Not going to happen any time soon.
Indic is another complex script, but it is LTR, and less complex.
So no re-writing the text engine needed, and an easier shaper project.
My guess is that Indic will happen before RTL/Arabic.
It is simply the reality of the situation.
Support for either of these scripts is not going to happen any time soon.
They have many other things to work on.

Different users have different priorities.
The lack of cross-reference support is really a problem for me.
I do not care at all about RTL or Indic or whatever.
They obviously do not care about me because they do not support variable fonts, and they do not support color fonts, and they still have not given me a way to turn-off fake small caps!!! 😁
They clearly do not care about font geeks. Appalling!

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@LibreTraining Not supporting RTL/Indic languages will make the apps completely useless to a large number of these language users. Cross references might affect it only partially, and variable fonts don't really hinder the usability of the apps.

For example, in the world there are: 

  • 400 million Arabs
  • 250 million Pakistanis
  • 80 Million Persian
  • 7 Million Hebrow
  • 1400 million Indians
  • 250 Million Pakistanis
  • 165 Million Bengalis

If not making your product available to designers from these countries, especially considering that they're low income, so most likely the Affinity pricing will make sense more to them. Language support is the biggest update they can offer to attract in more customers. If it's not top priority, I don't know what should be.

And there is the open source HarfBuzz, why don't they use since it's already available?

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I just saw and immediately bought the V2 versions of all 3 products. A BIG thank you to Serif and the Affinity team for the amazing work. I love these tools. Absolutely unbeaten at the price, and the speed alone compared to a software suite which we will not name here is like a light from heaven. Could they have all the bells and whistles which some people are complaining about? Yes, if time and budget were infinite, but what most people complaining don't realise is the size of Serif compared to the software company which we will not name. If you don't want to or can't afford to spend the money on that big publisher (and the pain they cause is seriously not worth it IMO), there's always Open Source as an alternative - Gimp, Inkscape etc.

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3 hours ago, Ronald N. Tan said:

This is the second year in a row, that Adobe have given me discounts on renewals for the 20 GB Photography Plan here in the USA.

2021-2022 was 99 USD and 2022-2023 was 90.32 for the annual prepaid.

With holidays around the corners, try to ask Adobe to see if they are offering any discounts to loyal customers. Always...ALWAYS be SUPER NICE AND POLITE to the customer and tech support. Whether you're speaking on the phone or via chat. I got my discounts via chat. Your results may vary. I think I got super lucky and managed to score those discounts twice in a row during each annual prepaid renewals.

I don't want to rain on your parade, but honestly, price the full Adobe suite for one year, inclusing the yearly subscription and then come back and complain. If you like the stuff so much why on earth are you complaining here? I'm the IT guy for a design agency and we have around 35 licenses for Adobe CC, around 40 for MS 365 and 12 for Solidworks. That's not all, but it amounts to a significant yearly cost. Some people have started using Affinity Designer for various projects simply because it is far faster and much more stable. There's a great deal of code in Illustrator, Photoshop and Acrobat that has the same user interface (and bugs) as those programmes had 25 year ago. I know this because I used all three in the early 90s. 

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3 minutes ago, Theolein said:

If you like the stuff so much why on earth are you complaining here?

I think you got mixed up with the context. Ronald N. Tan was not complaining, and in fact I complemented him earlier in this thread on his good attitude. In the post you quoted, it seems Ronald was just trying to give friendly advice. Even though Affinity is not for him at the moment, notice what he says:

 

7 hours ago, Ronald N. Tan said:

I remain thankful towards the staff and developers at Serif for keeping Indic and RTL language dialogue open.

Although this version 2 is not for me, from reading at tweet replies and forums here, version 2 made several others of Affinity application users happy. With the release of Publisher, the people who wanted Footnotes/Endnotes/Whatever-notes got what they wished for.

Maybe in Version 3, full Indic and RTL support for languages will be supported. Cheers to the staff at Serif and Happy Version 2 Release Day to everyone else.

 

7 hours ago, Ronald N. Tan said:

Today is a Happy Day for Serif and many...many other customers. Let's give them that. 🙂

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1 hour ago, Distill7 said:

@LibreTraining Not supporting RTL/Indic languages will make the apps completely useless to a large number of these language users. Cross references might affect it only partially, and variable fonts don't really hinder the usability of the apps.

For example, in the world there are: 

  • 400 million Arabs
  • 50 million Pakistanis
  • 80 Million Persian
  • 7 Million Hebrow
  • 1400 million Indians
  • 250 Million Pakistanis
  • 165 Million Bengalis

If not making your product available to designers from these countries, especially considering that they're low income, so most likely the Affinity pricing will make sense more to them. Language support is the biggest update they can offer to attract in more customers. If it's not top priority, I don't know what should be.

And there is the open source HarfBuzz, why don't they use since it's already available?

Apart from now being confused as to just how many Pakistanis there are in the world (50 million or 250 million), I wonder if the poster has actually read what HarfBuzz does and more importantly, what it doesn't do?

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19 minutes ago, Theolein said:

Apart from now being confused as to just how many Pakistanis there are in the world (50 million or 250 million), I wonder if the poster has actually read what HarfBuzz does and more importantly, what it doesn't do?

250 Million, it was a typo, and I corrected it.

Even if HarfBuzz doesn't do everything, it can serve as a good starting point, and they'll have to code the things that it doesn't do.

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16 hours ago, Mike Hermes said:

Congrats on a solid 2.0 release!  While I was hoping for a little more of an impactful announcement based off your teasers (video editing!) but I was still very happy to upgrade to 2.0 for all three apps.  There are a few areas though that I was hoping to see more improvements on, especially for the type of work I use designer for which is primarily technical drawing:

  • Vector pattern fill.  I know this has been talked about in the forums for some time as I'm always checking in to see if some solution has manifested for this issue, but the only way I can do cross-hatch fills or vertical-slicing linework is by manually placing premade templates I've created and masking them out per-shape.  I can't use bitmaps for the type of work I'm generating, and (I hate to go down this route) this is something Illustrator has done since practically it's inception, so I'm certain it's possible.
  • A minor issue for many but something that I asked for years ago in the forums and @MattP told me was being worked on at the time - the option for dashed lines to allow for dashes to be aligned to corners and path ends.  I deal with a lot of work that needs dashed lines, and the fact that I usually have inconsistent corners, or trailing dashes that aren't as long as the rest drive me nuts, and I'm constantly having to fiddle with adjusting the dash parameters to make them work as best I can.  Again, MattP had mentioned this was already being planned for back in 2019, so it's disappointing to still not see this feature added.

With these and a few other smaller issues I could finally move away from using Illustrator for any cleanup or issues I can't resolve using Designer.  I'm really thrilled about the shape builder, knife, deform, and measurement tools though, and can't wait to dive into using them!

Sorry Mike :( I will get there - but there's always so many other priorities that it's difficult to do everything at the same time... It *is* important - and *will* get done. I've got about 4 things in my head at the moment that I'm hoping to get done imminently, but I'll try to keep this up there... :)

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Still puzzled by those offended by complaints and doing their best to defend Serif!

People: Stop hijacking others' right to voice their opinion and complaints! This forum is not meant for niceties only. Complaints ARE permitted!

It is quite natural to wonder why after EIGHET YEARS the supposed "technical difficulties" and "priorities" and "small team" are still cited as the reasons that are preventing the implementation of huge features like RTL and CS! The same reasons were being cited all that time.

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