WHY is AD2 changing the orientation of my presets????

[Old Bruce]

Here is what I keep banging on about. Two presets, one is Portrait, the other Landscape. Note the differences in the margins. Easily maintained with a system that has the Orientation in each Preset and not as a Universal value. 

 

[edee]

1 hour ago, Hangman said:

Hence my earlier suggestion of using templates which for those who find having to choose between landscape and portrait a bind allows you to create as many effective presets as you want with a fixed orientation.

Templates would benefit from an overhaul, it would, for example, be great if you could set any of the options in the New Document dialogue window to be the default, e.g., New, Recents, Templates etc., and it would also be great if you could drag and drop to reorder templates and template categories but as an alternative solution for those unhappy with how this currently works I think it's a very practical solution, albeit it currently involves a second mouse click to select templates in the first place which some may find onerous...

@Hangman

That doesn't work. I tried to use templates instead of preset and all you get is a big blank box. Templates are for .... templates. Presets are preset sizes. Which is why there shouldn't be a portrait or landscape button. The portrait or landscape button should be on templates, if there needs to be one. But there shouldn't be a portrait or landscape button on presets. 

[edee]

2 hours ago, Hangman said:

V2 (on macOS at least) remembers the last preset used when creating a New Document and retains whether you last had landscape or portriat set so leaving it on portrait shouldn't be an issue... If you create a preset that is 800 wide x 100 tall and save it as a preset, next time you launch the software, that will be the default preset... if you're chopping and changing between landscape and portrait documents, again the last setting you set will be the default when you launch the software next time...

@Hangman
Why do you keep saying "V2 (on macOS at least) remembers the last preset used when creating a New Document"  And? 
The last preset has nothing to do with this. Also, I'm using Windows. 

You can't leave it in Portrait and create an 800 wide x 100 tall preset. AD automatically changes it to Landscape. That's the issue. Go update to v2, Click portrait, create a document that is 800px Wide x 100px Tall and it will automatically change to Landscape. 

When I open AD v2. I want to see all my presets and just be able to click on what I want and not have to remember that I have to click on portrait or landscape to find my preset. I have (had) at least 10 presets and now I can't find half of them, I click on the wrong thing because it's either set to portrait or landscape and I need the other one. 

Landscape and Portrait shouldn't be options. The presets should just be preset sizes. 
If they need to use a Landscape and Portrait button, it should be in templates where it matters. It doesn't belong in Presets. 

[Pšenda]

11 hours ago, R C-R said:

That's why the new system is not suitable for the workflows of users who just want a preset to create the same kind of document as the preset they created & added to their "My Presets" category.

What do you not understand about the sentence "just it is only sufficient to supplement it with the possibility of keeping orientation"? 

[Pšenda]

11 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

Easily maintained with a system that has the Orientation in each Preset and not as a Universal value. 

The current method is not suitable for all situations, and therefore should be supplemented with the possibility of storing orientation information. But this certainly does not mean that he should go back to the V1 solution (as you suggest), which is fundamentally wrong - it "forces" users to create duplicate definitions of the same documents and use some "In v1 I was using the "—" and "|" characters in preset names to mark their orientation" type mnemonics.

Simply replacing an "imperfect" way with a "faulty" one cannot be considered a good suggestion.

[thomaso]

20 hours ago, Pšenda said:

it is simply not correct to define two completely identical documents with completely identical parameters just for the sake of orientation.

"Simply" this may depend on the user habits or expectations: Especially the American paper size standard called "Letter" might imply, that a page size is related to a certain orientation. Thus a custom preset named "letter" can be expected to maintain its portrait orientation – while a custom preset "z-fold" for instance may be used in both orientations, even though it may use the same standard paper size like "letter" – whereas both require different margin and bleed settings.

Additionally, assuming a letter gets a larger left margin, because of getting filed in a ring binder for instance, then also the margins of a certain preset may be expected to be part of the orientation even if switched from portrait to landscape. As one might expect also for a photo preset representing the classical "polaroid" format for instance the margin being rotated together with the orientation.

This makes me wonder if additional lock options in this dialog window could help to surround the issue of maintaining / including certain parameters in a preset or not. A locked state would indicate "as is" (= saved in the preset) whereas an open lock indicates at least 1 altered value or setting. Or, vice versa, clicking a lock icon could (un-)lock the currently settings of its according tab and thus either de-select a currently selected preset if one of its values got altered or offer the option to override this preset ...

[user_0815]

17 hours ago, R C-R said:

I would prefer that this category be 'sticky' so I never had to scroll through the other categories to get to it. 

You can drag it up on top. You can also click the heart icon and it will only list the ones you marked as such.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, user_0815 said:

You can drag it up on top. You can also click the heart icon and it will only list the ones you marked as such.

I did not realize I could drag "My Presets" to the top so thanks for that tip. As for the favorites heart icon, it keeps resetting to off every time I quit & restart the app, which is annoying & again adds another unnecessary step to what should be a one click operation.

[GRAFKOM]

I see that Serif has already abandoned the problem of placing page layout icons vertically or horizontally in the New Document Window. The matter somehow calmed down and Serif decided that the problem was solved. And I'm still annoyed that all my presets change when I change the page layout in New Document.

As many users wrote, page layout icons should be in the Layout segment and not in the Presets segment. In addition, to change the page layout, e.g. from horizontal to vertical in an existing document, you need to go to the Document Setup button on the Move Tool context bar and then select the horizontal or vertical layout.

Can't you add these vertical and horizontal icons to this context bar?

Does anyone from Serif read these posts? I'm writing, and these messages seem to be going to the Archive.

 

[R C-R]

59 minutes ago, GRAFKOM said:

Does anyone from Serif read these posts?

Yes, some of the staff does but usually not the developers (because if they did, due to the high volume of posts/topics, they would have little time left to work on the code), which is why there is a separate forum for feedback & suggestions.

[Pšenda]

5 minutes ago, R C-R said:

some of the staff does but usually not the developers

... regardless of the fact, that "reading" the posts itself has nothing to do with development capacities and their priorities, with the concept and architecture of applications, and...

[GRAFKOM]

1 hour ago, Pšenda said:

... regardless of the fact, that "reading" the posts itself has nothing to do with development capacities and their priorities, with the concept and architecture of applications, and...

Then there's no point in writing posts...

[edee]

Folks, this is nearly a year and half old - Serif doesn't care. Affinity was acquired by that worthless Canva - it will probably become a subscription service or software for children like the Canva site. Either way, it's no longer serious software and there's no longer any point in talking about it. We'll all end up either going back to Adobe or finding something else. 

Has anyone else started looking yet? Suggestions? 

[R C-R]

16 minutes ago, edee said:

Either way, it's no longer serious software and there's no longer any point in talking about it.

As of now, what has changed that makes it no longer serious software, whatever that is supposed to mean?

[edee]

23 minutes ago, R C-R said:

As of now, what has changed that makes it no longer serious software, whatever that is supposed to mean?

You must have missed the memo "acquired by Canva" - You didn't hear?
Canva is worthless software for children. Now they have it, we may as well break out the crayons. 

[R C-R]

13 minutes ago, edee said:

Canva is worthless software for children.

Canva is the company that bought Serif but they have not done anything to the Affinity apps they acquired in that purchase. They certainly did not suddenly make those apps worthless or suitable only for children, nor is there any indication that after paying a great deal of money for Serif to its previous owners that they would decide to dumb it down. It does not compete with any of the other several software products they own, so it would be quite stupid for them to do that.

[edee]

12 minutes ago, R C-R said:

it would be quite stupid for them to do that.

Just give it time, they'll dumb it right down just like their online software for morons. 
They'll start with "integration" and dumb it down from there.  
Serif doesn't have control over the software - Canva does. The "idiot software" people. 
 

[R C-R]

31 minutes ago, edee said:

Just give it time, they'll dumb it right down just like their online software for morons. 

They never dumbed down their existing visual suite software. From the beginning, it was designed so that anybody could use it with essentially no learning curve, which is why there are so many people using it, most of whom are not children or morons. They started off primarily targeting small & medium sized business but it is also used from time to time by many of the Fortune 500 companies, particularly for quick one-off projects they can do in house.

All this & much more info about the company is readily available via internet searches. Among them, https://www.theclueless.company/canva-case-study/ provides a lot of info about how & why the company became so successful so quickly, the various things it has added (not removed!) to increase the user base, & the challenges Canva faces going forward & what it is doing to meet them.

Edited May 4 by R C-R

[edee]

29 minutes ago, R C-R said:

 

You just keep believing that, I'm sure all that is true [laughing hysterically]

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, edee said:

You just keep believing that, I'm sure all that is true [laughing hysterically]

I simply believe that the truth is, that like thousands of others, I can still use the Affinity suite for all the things I used it for before the acquisition ... & in fact via the new 2.5 betas can do even more things with it. So rather it being being dumbed down it is getting even more capable.

I leave the crystal ball predicting the future stuff to those who believe in such things.

[Pšenda]

6 hours ago, GRAFKOM said:

Then there's no point in writing posts...

I think it makes sense, but you can't expect requests to be always and immediately fulfilled - it's not software to order.