[solved by workaround] Affinity suite ; dashed borders

[laurent32]

I think dashed borders are nearly impossible to use…

Even when I play with A, I can't get something fine…

We need regular ones like these :

Thanks.

[GarryP]

This sort of thing has been requested many times before.
Try searching the forums for dashes and see how many threads you can find, some with 'word-arounds'.

[loukash]

2 hours ago, GarryP said:

some with 'word-arounds'.

Here's one I could come up with right now, but that works only on shapes via Designer (persona), not directly on text frames:

The bottom one is a 1/1/0/0/1.5 dash
Next up is the corner half in one direction 3/29/0/0/0
The top one is the corner half in the other direction 3/29/0/0/3

Caveats:

• Stroke align must be inside, otherwise you won't get an edge at the red node
• It will reflow as soon as you resize the object, then you may have to recalculate all dashes/gaps/phases

[laurent32]

Thanks @loukash I only tried in A_Publisher but what you've come up is quite nice !!

Again it's a temporary solution, I really think Affinity need to modify their code for this part…

By the way, I love your modified UI with that green color, is it complicated to do (just for the green color) ?

It is so clear !!

[loukash]

6 minutes ago, loukash said:

Stroke align must be inside

If you need a fake "outside" stroke, you can place a plain white stroke at the bottom:

[loukash]

1 minute ago, laurent32 said:

I love your modified UI with that green color, is it complicated to do (just for the green color) ?

Oh, thanks!  
That's my "most efficient global MacOS Highlight Color" that I have settled on, after years – if not decades – of thorough testing, haha…

[laurent32]

2 hours ago, loukash said:

That's my "most efficient global MacOS Highlight Color"

I can't get it !

Probably because I don't have same system version…

[loukash]

1 hour ago, laurent32 said:

Probably because I don't have same system version…

For me it doesn't look very nice either when I boot my MacBook from Catalina.  
Perhaps you may need to apply a custom Accent color as well. That option didn't exist on Catalina yet, hence my Purple choice, plus "Sea Foam" for highlight color:

In general, similar to Serif with the Affinity v2 UI, Apple is constantly attempting to "fix" things that don't need fixing.
Heck, just recently I found a 3rd party tool to make Lucida Grande the default MacOS in place of the Apple SF system font, as you can see from my previous El Capitan screenshots. Unfortunately it works only up to Mojave, but not on Catalina and above.

There are many reasons why I'm sticking with MacOS El Capitan as my main platform. At least as long as my "antique" MacBook Pro keeps on running (mid-2012 with DVD-R drive, matte display, and a replaceable hard drive: having an ultrafast 2TB SSD drive in there by now!)

[loukash]

12 minutes ago, anto said:

Or use table

That's clever!  

[loukash]

Another workaround, with a rectangle split into individual lines, each manually dashed (actually i did just one horizontal and one vertical line, for the opposite two lines the attributes were simply copied):

May also work by using Symbols.

All in all though, all these workarounds are totally nuts since this "wheel" has already been invented elsewhere decades ago.  

[loukash]

Another variant of the above, with square arrow ends to always have a corner square regardless the gaps or the phase:

[laurent32]

Thanks all, very nice workarounds 👍

I've got to add [solved by workaround] in the topic !!

[laurent32]

11 hours ago, anto said:

Another 2 ways how to use dashed borders.

 

Or use table

Fantastic @anto !!

[loukash]

Another day, another crazy workaround…
Here I'm using text on path combined with symbols pinned as inline objects:

There are quite a few benefits to it:

• adjustable attributes via Character panel
• global color, shape and transformation attributes via symbol sync

"Gap" is here a blank rectangle with no fill, but it can have a fill and a shape as well:

Again, it seems to work best if it all runs inside the text frame shape. 

[loukash]

Another totally crazy workaround, requires Publisher:

This one uses linked text-on-path frames with simple "Black Square" ■ characters (U+25A0) fully justified, split by Frame Break special characters, edges manually adjusted using character attributes like Sheer, Horizontal Scale and Kerning.

What?
You're saying that there is no linked text-on-path in Affinity?
Haha, think again…  

This dirty little trick requires an *.idml template that I have set up a few years ago:

linked_text_on_path.idml

Open in Publisher, copy as many linked paths as you need, remove the placeholder text, arrange the paths as needed.
It can get a bit tricky and unpredictable at times because this is actually an "unsupported" Affinity feature, but it works.
Pinned objects may go havoc, so use them only at your own risk.

Here my example afpub:

apu_dashed_stroke_edges_workaround7.afpub