Context Bar variance for rectangle converted to Text Frame

[MikeTO]

I thought if a rectangular text frame and a rectangle converted to a text frame would be identical objects but there is some lingering difference I don't understand.

This is the Context Bar for a rectangular Text Frame when selected with the Move tool.

This is the Context Bar for a rectangle converted to a Text Frame when selected with the Move tool - there are no controls for individual character attributes (Font, Weight, Size, Traits, and Colour) or Character Style, the Context Bar starts with Paragraph Style.

I find it interesting that the two text frames aren't identical, but the missing character controls feels like a bug.

Here's a quick test doc to illustrate the issue. Does this happen on Windows, too?

Converted Frame.afpub

[loukash]

2 hours ago, MikeTO said:

the missing character controls feels like a bug.

Inherited from v1. Was reported last year or even earlier. Still unfixed as it seems. Oh well.

[thomaso]

I had a different thread in mind but currently find @loukash's only:

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/search/&tags=afb-4776

Ironically we can't access threads like this any more since V2 was published – as if all V1 bugs were meant by Serif to appear as being solved in V2.
(which, imho, would have been the expected developing behaviour, in particular for an application upgrade that gets announced as:
"The next generation of Affinity – After tireless work, seeing how much further we could push the boundaries of what's possible with creative technology, we’re absolutely thrilled to announce that Version 2 of Affinity is here." – Does it make any sense to push bugs together with these boundaries into the next generation?)

[loukash]

56 minutes ago, thomaso said:

currently find @loukash's only

Oh, was it even me who reported it?

57 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Ironically we can't access threads like this any more since V2 was published – as if all V1 bugs were meant by Serif to appear as being solved in V2.

Yeah, this is completely silly.

[Dan C]

Thanks for your report @MikeTO , I can confirm I've updated the development log regarding this issue now, to bring it to our developers attention once again.

On 12/31/2022 at 5:28 PM, thomaso said:

Ironically we can't access threads like this any more since V2 was published – as if all V1 bugs were meant by Serif to appear as being solved in V2.

I can also confirm the V1 beta threads were hidden when we moved to V2, I believe as these threads would no longer be actively 'manned' by our team, we didn't wish for users to post new issues on these archived threads that may have been missed - however I've had some internal discussions regarding this and we believe these threads could be visible, but locked from new threads/replies, such that old threads can still be found and referenced to, as required.

We'll look at making these changes ASAP

[Dan C]

51 minutes ago, Dan C said:

we believe these threads could be visible, but locked from new threads/replies, such that old threads can still be found and referenced to, as required.

Just to verify, we've made these changes and this appears to be working as expected for me here - please let me know if you spot any issues with these changes

[loukash]

45 minutes ago, Dan C said:

this appears to be working as expected for me here - please let me know if you spot any issues with these changes

The aforementioned thread of mine is now nowhere to be found at all. 
Or is it just a forum server cache thing and it will eventually pop up later?

[thomaso]

53 minutes ago, Dan C said:

Just to verify, we've made these changes and this appears to be working as expected for me here - please let me know if you spot any issues with these changes

Currently it rather appears the V1 Beta threads not only are invisible but now are excluded from the search, too:

The link in my post above now shows only 1 result (this current thread) while the initial result (as screenshot above) does not appear any more. (same result in a different browser / not logged-in). – Regardless of being beta or not those threads my help to communicate about bugs that still occur (in V1 or V2) by possibly reducing the need to repeat tests, screenshots and words.

I agree these threads should be set to read-only. I even would appreciate the current V1 bug forum to be read-only, too, just to avoid the impression any possible V1 update might get these old bugs fixed.

Since we are there: Currently this Support & Questions forum contains V1 and V2 questions – while additionally a separate Q&A Archive exists for V1 only, which doubles the number of V1 forums and thus may confuse, in worst case for instance if a former V1 thread of the Archive gets used for a reply concerning V2. – I wonder why V1 does not have an entirely separate forum, not as subforum of V2?

[thomaso]

Correction: I just found the newly created set of V1 Beta Archive forums …

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/forum/135-archive-reports-from-affinity-version-1-betas/

… so they seem "just" to be currently not accessible for the forums search.

[Dan C]

6 minutes ago, loukash said:

The aforementioned thread of mine is now nowhere to be found at all. 

Interesting, as I can still navigate to and view the thread - both as a moderator and a 'guest' (not-signed in) user:

However I can see that this is now not appearing in search results currently - I suspect this is the forum updating it's cache since we've only just made changes to these threads, but I'll continue to monitor this going forward.

3 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Currently it rather appears the V1 Beta threads not only are invisible but now are excluded from the search, too:

As above, these threads should all now be visible - but I can see they are not included in search results currently.

4 minutes ago, thomaso said:

I even would appreciate the current V1 bug forum to be read-only, too, just to avoid the impression any possible V1 update might get these old bugs might get fixed.

This was discussed internally, but as there are users of Affinity V1 who are choosing to remain on this version, we need an area of the forums where new issues can be reported - for example if an OS update breaks the apps expected behaviour (such as the recent font search crash on Windows), and the V2 section would not be the place for this - therefore these threads were left as 'editable' by all users.

7 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Since we are there: Currently this Support & Questions forum contains V1 and V2 questions – while additionally a separate Q&A Archive exists for V1 only, which doubles the number of V1 forums and thus may confuse, in worst case for instance if a former V1 thread of the Archive gets used for a reply concerning V2. 

As I understand it, 'Questions' was not split into 2 forums/sub-forums, as most, if not all, of the Questions asked and answered for V1 are applicable for V2 and vice-versa (unlike bugs, which is important to be distinctly version specific), so we decided that having all 'Questions' in one forum was probably best - but we're always looking at ways to improve this going forward.

10 minutes ago, thomaso said:

I wonder why V1 does not have an entirely separate forum, not as subforum of V2?

We only have a limited number of technical support & QA staff, in my opinion this wouldn't benefit our ability to provide support in a timely manner, as it would mean 'spreading out' the team across multiple forums, which is not ideal with the resources we have currently - but perhaps this is something we may look to from V3 onwards

[loukash]

16 minutes ago, Dan C said:

having all 'Questions' in one forum was probably best

I agree with that. Too much "granulation" isn't always the best thing.

17 minutes ago, Dan C said:

perhaps this is something we may look to from V3 onwards

Let's talk about that in 8 years…  

[thomaso]

47 minutes ago, Dan C said:

However I can see that this is now not appearing in search results currently - I suspect this is the forum updating it's cache since we've only just made changes to these threads, but I'll continue to monitor this going forward.

Thank you! (for your monitoring, this post contains another example: the link should show at least two search results, currently it shows only the newer V2 post)

Are the search results relative – or did the new structure alter the URL for old threads? In case of the latter any link within the former V1 forum posts would not work any more, right?

47 minutes ago, Dan C said:

As I understand it, 'Questions' was not split into 2 forums/sub-forums, as most, if not all, of the Questions asked and answered for V1 are applicable for V2 and vice-versa (unlike bugs, which is important to be distinctly version specific), so we decided that having all 'Questions' in one forum was probably best - but we're always looking at ways to improve this going forward.

While I agree to the plan to have all Questions in 1 forum (with old V1 threads auto-moved to the end just by their dates), currently I do see a link to "Pre V2" as a sub-forum on top of the Questions forum (click pic to enlarge):

… which obviously still gets used (fine so far) and obviously not only for V1 questions (possibly confusing). So, I don't understand you (and @loukash) mentioning "not split" respectively "granulation isn't" because I do see the split. This split appears problematic especially if users do a search for  possibly existing thread, reply to one of this subforum (archive) while their post will not occur in the list of the main Questions forum but "hidden" in this Pre-V2 archive (which displays only 1 newest reply, here Walt's, 19 min ago).

[Dan C]

3 hours ago, thomaso said:

Are the search results relative – or did the new structure alter the URL for old threads? In case of the latter any link within the former V1 forum posts would not work any more, right?

Honestly, I'm not certain. I don't believe any of the URLs will have changed with our restructure, as the forums simply use /topic/XXXXXX-TOPIC-NAME, regardless of where the thread is actually located, so that they will always resolve correctly.

3 hours ago, thomaso said:

So, I don't understand you (and @loukash) mentioning "not split" respectively "granulation isn't" because I do see the split.

Apologies, although the Questions from the V1 cycle were moved to an Archived section, I'm referring to our decision not to create a separate 'V2 only' Questions section, instead allowing these to be mixed V1 & V2, albeit in a new Questions section.