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Why not saving in V1 format?


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Just now, R C-R said:

What do you base that on? More than once, the staff have explained that they are not interested in competing head to head with Adobe or any other company.

I agree, as far as I can tell, recall, it's always been the people, the consumers that have drawn that conclusion. I think in an interview Ash done a few years ago, he was asked if competing with Adobe is what he's wanting. This is not direct quotes, but he indicated it would be nice, but not what his focus was on.

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1 minute ago, R C-R said:

What do you base that on? More than once, the staff have explained that they are not interested in competing head to head with Adobe or any other company.

The comparison or competition gets indicated by the goal to be able to open their file formats.

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19 minutes ago, thomaso said:

The comparison or competition gets indicated by the goal to be able to open their file formats.

No it does not. That again is a consumer conclusion, not what Serif is really after. How many feature/request posts have there been, from Affinity customers demanding this? That's what is driving Serif to do that, not they're wanting to compete against Adobe. I will say they have not yet done the same for opening Corel native formats, like .cdr. Maybe there's something prohibiting them from doing so.

Also FWIW, Corel making their programs backward compatible didn't really come from them. Jasc, (Paintshop Pro), already had that. Corel acquiring them, provided that code in that program, and they just continued it. VideoStudio, the same, Ulead already had the backward compatibility before they sold to Intervideo, and then Corel acquiring them.

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40 minutes ago, thomaso said:

The comparison or competition gets indicated by the goal to be able to open their file formats.

Balderdash! That in no way indicates Serif wants to compete with Adobe!

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12 minutes ago, Ron P. said:

That again is a consumer conclusion, not what Serif is really after.

Do you really mean consumers make conclusions that Serif has to fulfil even against their will? – I'd rather say consumers have desires but Serif makes conclusions and turns them to plans and their own decisions. – However, it would get quite speculative to discuss "what Serif is really after", not only because marketing announcements or public relation speeches may differ from the actual goals but also because this "really" can't be unambiguous specified other than "a mix of work, money, meaning, interest, pressure and satisfaction etc.", aside the fact that Serif as company has no desires at all but the people only who differ individually. So, "really" is a rather philosophical question and useless in the context of this thread.

Since the giant exists comparison and competition can't be fully avoided as long the products cover similar or same use cases. Your thought (comparison) to Corel files illustrates this, too.

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9 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Do you really mean consumers make conclusions that Serif has to fulfil even against their will?

I hope you don't believe that. No that's not what I inferred. Why does Serif have the Feature/Request forum? They see a request and may implement it. If they do it does not mean they done that against their will.

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8 minutes ago, R C-R said:

That in no way indicates Serif wants to compete with Adobe!

Probably they don't want to. But they are forced to do, by offering similar products for similar tasks and similar clients – while the largest difference may be in the variety of clients and their differing budgets.

5 minutes ago, Ron P. said:

I hope you don't believe that. No that's not what I inferred.

Your "a consumer conclusion, not what Serif is really after" sounded exclusionary to me: The consumer rules the company / the company as a victim of the consumers.

Your hint to the feature request forum seems to be a repetition of R C-R's argument of "most users". – I made my point to this aspect above.

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31 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Probably they don't want to. But they are forced to do, by offering similar products for similar tasks and similar clients – while the largest difference may be in the variety of clients and their differing budgets.

Nonsense! Neither the products nor the clients' needs are so similar that they have to compete for the same user base, nor do they.

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7 hours ago, R C-R said:

Neither the products nor the clients' needs are so similar that they have to compete for the same user base, nor do they.

Do we have a different understanding of "compete"? For me, this means that they have some types of clients in common + new clients in this area can or must choose one or another. The wide range of tasks which can be done with both indicates similarity – which does not mean that there are no fundamental differences.

The forum shows that some Affinity users were former Adobe users, some express their plan to switch, some use both and some prefer Adobe or others. There are various comparisons around to advice newcomers by pointing out a few differences between various offers, including Adobe and Serif. Some new features in V2 reduce differences / increase competition. Comparison & similarity are indicators for competition, and vice versa.

I'd like to understand what facts make you start with "Balderdash!" and "Nonsense!" (or if it was just emotional excitement).

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9 hours ago, lacerto said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CorelDRAW

Version 2 could write to version 1, version 3 to 2, etc., I think that always at least one version backward. Current version reads and writes versions 15 to 24.

I haven't purchased CorelDraw in years, but I started to give up on them when they stopped supporting forward compatibility, and lost access to all of my CorelDraw version 1 files. Completely unacceptable.

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1 hour ago, thomaso said:

this means that they have some types of clients in common + new clients in this area can or must choose one or another

Agree completely. Not sure how anyone can look at Serif offering a suite of desktop publishing + photo editing + vector drawing and come to the conclusion that they are no way competing with Adobe which offers desktop publishing + photo editing + vector drawing. Unless it's meant as an insult to what Serif can achieve, like if I was to line up next to Usain Bolt I'd be competing against him, but I wouldn't be competition for him.

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1 hour ago, Corgi said:

I haven't purchased CorelDraw in years, but I started to give up on them when they stopped supporting forward compatibility, and lost access to all of my CorelDraw version 1 files. Completely unacceptable.

I am not sure in which sense your are using the term forward compatible, but in the sense I use the term I do not remember CorelDRAW ever having been forward compatible. They have been quite wide in ability to read in old versions (but starting from version 6 could no longer read in versions 1 and 2), and pretty capable also in writing back to older versions (down to version 5 as late as in version 11, and from there on down to 7, until the last couple of versions that can write back only to version 15). CMX might have been a version where features of later versions have been made more editable also in older formats, but I have very little experience of that format.

Illustrator, too, has always been able to write back to several old versions, CS6 could write back to Illustrator version 3, and the current version can (I think) save back down to CS3 or something like that. I suppose they can all read in any older AI file (and certainly EPS file). But I do not think that Illustrator has ever been forward compatible (older versions being able to open, edit and save to later version formats), either (unless using some plugin or other external tool).

image.png.beb58f3b0612057e3a1a99e369c4eb06.png 

I mentioned specifically CorelDRAW because it was falsely stated that backward compatibility was not coming from them. It certainly was, and I suppose Corel was a smaller company than Serif at the time it released version 2 of their suite. Part of their success was probably explained by staying and becoming compatible pretty much with everything.  I remember to have purchased each and every version of CorelDRAW up to version 11 (and thereafter only X3, X6 and 2017) so in a way I have always had more or less full back (and kind of forward) CDR compatibility.

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I've resigned they won't add it in the foreseeable future. (maaybe v3?) If they can start the process, it'd be nice, especially if their base grows to businesses, starts, etc doing collaborative work. Also, good for people who upload purchasable assets.

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3 minutes ago, lacerto said:

I am not sure in which sense your are using the term forward compatible, but in the sense I use the term I do not remember CorelDRAW ever having been forward compatible.

I'm not sure I'm using the term correctly either. 😊

What I meant was that Corel started a practice whereby version Y of CorelDraw would be unable to open native CorelDraw files created in version X of the program, where X<<Y.

In my case, I was an early adopter of CorelDraw, and had a whole bunch of CorelDraw 1 files. Eventually, at some point, I upgraded CorelDraw and discovered that it was no longer able to open my old CorelDraw 1 files. So they became inaccessible unless I took some extraordinary action, like re-installing an earlier version of the program on a separate computer. Simply unconscionable behavior on the part of Corel.

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54 minutes ago, Corgi said:

Simply unconscionable behavior on the part of Corel.

Yes, starting from version 6 version 1 and 2 files could no longer be read in. I am not sure if this was somehow related to leaving behind DOS (Win 2 and 3.x were just GUIs built upon DOS rather than actual operating systems), and 16-bit file formats, since version 6 was the first one running on proper Windows OS, Windows 95. I do not remember if CMX was already invented at that time to get older versions 1 and 2 transferred fully editable to later versions.

UPDATE: I did a quick check and CorelDRAW 5 was a kind of a bridge since it was the first version to support CMX and the last version to support all previous versions of CDR (including 1 and 2), and also the last version running on 16-bit DOS (Win 3.1). So that was a version which could save all older versions fully editable to later versions running 32-bit (and 64-bit) operating systems, and then also open and edit (naturally with limitations) files saved on later versions.

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3 hours ago, thomaso said:

Do we have a different understanding of "compete"?

We seem to have very different ideas about what reasonably can be inferred by somewhat similar but far from identical product feature sets or comparisons made between companies of vastly different sizes.

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1 hour ago, BofG said:

if I was to line up next to Usain Bolt I'd be competing against him, but I wouldn't be competition for him.

Ah, this might explain the differing statements. Whereas I had the software products in mind with comparing & competing it seems @R C-R and @Ron P. rather compared the companies and their economical and personal parameters.

============
Back to the topic:

I wonder if the effort for backwards compatibility via an exchange file format is really that big: Considering that Affinity is able already to read some more or less proprietary file types (.psb, .ai, .idml/xml) and transfer them to its proprietary .aphoto/.afdesin/.afpub format, it might be easier to write a file type as well to make V2 files readable for V1 apps.

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11 hours ago, R C-R said:

far from identical product feature sets or comparisons made between companies of vastly different sizes

I think it is a question about culture and what people using graphic design software have grown accustomed to and accordingly expect -- Corel was pretty small at the time they released the first proper Windows OS version. However, in a way Corel did leave their 1.x and 2.x users behind the OS barrier because the first 32-bit version (version 6) could not read in those early 16-bit v1 and v2 formats, nor could it save back to these versions. But version 5 was not stopped being sold so there was a bridge across that barrier.

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18 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Ah, this might explain the differing statements. Whereas I had the software products in mind with comparing & competing it seems @R C-R and @Ron P. rather compared the companies and their economical and personal parameters.

Simply put, I do not see how we reasonably could compare the products & their features without also considering the companies who make them & how much effort they can devote to things like backwards compatibility.

Regardless, it seems clear enough that Serif is not going to add some kind of V1-compatible export format to V2 because they do not think it is worth devoting any of their limited resources to doing that when there is still so much work to be done to improve V2.

Personally, I think that is the right decision. If you do not, then I think it best that we just agree to disagree & leave it at that.

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On 11/28/2022 at 10:00 AM, walt.farrell said:

The Affinity Suite has never provided backward compatibility. Even in V1,

  • 1.8 could not open files saved by 1.9
  • 1.7 could not open files saved by 1.8
  • 1.6 could not open files saved by 1.7
  • etc.

V2 simply carries on that behavior, and 1.x cannot open 2.x files.

I just got bitten by this while testing and I am only a casual user. I have bought one V2 upgrade while I wait for the full installer. My wife has V1 on her computer. I fixed up a photo and sent the file to her and she can't open it.

V1 version upgrades are a very different situation compared to V1 to V2. Anyone sharing files has to make sure they are all on the same version. With V1 and the generous upgrade model, that wasn't an issue because people could just tell the other person to upgrade to the latest version. Now that upgrade involves a payment.

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There are several imperfect methods of transferring V2 files to V1 :-

  1. PSD
  2. PDF
  3. TIFF
  4. SVG
  5. EPS

All we are missing is one more imperfect methods of transferring .(afphoto & afdesign & afpub) V2 to .(afphoto & afdesign & afpub) V1. (Q Ricky Gervais quote)

Should we be also asking Adobe where is their equivalent to streamlined file format .(afphoto & afdesign & afpub) for their software Photoshop, Illustrator etc

Should we be also asking Adobe where is there .(afphoto & afdesign & afpub) V1 & V2 import from Affinity.

Should we be also asking why Adobe don't sell inexpensive software packages and offer 40% discounts for existing customers.

So there are at least 5 methods of transferring from V2 to V1, even by copy and paste.

At least hopefully we can all agree the export V2 --> V1 import can only ever be imperfect.

I'm sure, given time, one more imperfect export method will be added if demand persists, however I am looking forward to the journey ahead and look forward to all the new features as Serif progress V2.0 -> V2.1 -> V2.2 ......

 

 

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Just waiting for Ronny Pickering…..

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Sorry, I did'n want to produce this important reaction.

My aim was very small: if Publisher 2 was stable, I never would ask a way to save in the previous format. 

But when you release something like that, without a proper test, it should be nice if at least you leave a door open to go back.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Funny guys! It's no matter what Adobe does when I buy Affinity. The question is, what the customer expect. So all those who argue affinity or serif is not adobe should come off their high horse.
I think Affity is made for being productive and the question is: What do i need to be:

  • Being able to exchange my files with others or import them. Backwards compatibilty should always be possible without workaround for all functions that exists in both versions. And it's easy. I once made a Roleplaying Map Generator. Every function I included I checked when opening a file and ignored them for future functions and handled them for actual ones. The compatibility mode took me an hour or two for a software I programmed for hundrets of hours. So no argue in small team. It's just standard
  • Affinity Designer V2 crashes just my moving from one to another page when clicking on the pages overview. Multiple Times a day. And I just create my Instagram Posts with that at the moment. So two or three stories with up to 10 pages. That is quiet buggy. But I can't go backward to V1 cause I made the mistake of converting the posts. Okay, I could rebuild them, but it should be possible just to save them fpr v1.

No one expects Indesign. This software has a far better price so I accept, that there are less functions. But some features are really standard for a photo programm, a publishing software or a designer app, so it's hard to understand why there are so many cool functions while standard is still missing.

By the way, I bought all Affinity products when V1 was published, I bought V2 immediately. It's because I accept small issues, but I would expect some more standard features. I still need Adobe because I can't work productive with any Affinity Software without switching to Adobe from time to time (once every day, I bet). And I am not a professional designer.

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