Dashed lines / stroke panel Improvements

[Michail]

2 hours ago, Peter1959 said:

You're quite right Old Bruce but it's not an exact science for the type of dual lines I mean and takes some trial and error, the option I was referring to would be able to select dual lines inner line = x pt, offset = x pt, outer line = x Untitled.afpub

Due to the blending mode "Erase", the middle contour is not coloured, but transparent - which has consequences.

[Peter1959]

6 hours ago, Michail said:

Due to the blending mode "Erase", the middle contour is not coloured, but transparent - which has consequences.

and the consequences are? 

Do you know of  a different way of achieving this effect with the appearance panel?

[Michail]

7 hours ago, Peter1959 said:

and the consequences are? 

The consequence is that you see the background at this point. So this method is not universally applicable.

7 hours ago, Peter1959 said:

Do you know of  a different way of achieving this effect with the appearance panel?

I don't know exactly what you want to achieve. With the Appeareance panel you can create as many parallel contours as you like.

[Hangman]

9 hours ago, Peter1959 said:

Do you know of  a different way of achieving this effect with the appearance panel?

@Peter1959, I'm likewise not quite sure what you want to achieve, but if as per your screengrab on a solid background then this approach should work...

 

If not on a solid background then your approach should work...

 

If this isn't what you want to achieve, could you elaborate a little further...

[Peter1959]

4 hours ago, Michail said:

The consequence is that you see the background at this point. So this method is not universally applicable.

I don't know exactly what you want to achieve. With the Appeareance panel you can create as many parallel contours as you like.

Thanks Michail

The “consequence” is the result I wanted, a transparent gap between the lines.

What I want to “achieve” is for serif to put a dual line option in the stroke panel like pageplus had 20 years ago

 

[Peter1959]

2 hours ago, Hangman said:

@Peter1959, I'm likewise not quite sure what you want to achieve, but if as per your screengrab on a solid background then this approach should work...

 

If not on a solid background then your approach should work...

 

If this isn't what you want to achieve, could you elaborate a little further...

Thanks Hangman

The post you replied to I was trying to get clarification of what Michail meant by consequences. Thank you for taking the time with your above demonstration. I confess I hadn’t thought of doing the three different alignments that makes much more sense. 
 

[Michail]

36 minutes ago, Peter1959 said:

What I want to “achieve” is for serif to put a dual line option in the stroke panel like pageplus had 20 years ago

I don't know "Pageplus", but I'm curious. What could you do with the "dual line option"?

[md_germany]

Same topic, my suggestion in Feedback & Suggestions 

[Ash]

Thanks for this feedback - though getting a bit off topic from balanced dashed lines

It won't be in this update but a double line style is something we'll get on the list for future consideration. What we could also do with a a much better way to save any line styles you create yourself (with various dash patterns, arrow heads, multiple strokes in appearance, etc,) as well as us being able to provide a nice set of presets. These could potentially just be saved in other categories of the brushes panel within Designer persona. Again one for a future update...

[Ash]

On 3/20/2023 at 9:14 AM, anto said:

Is it possible to create dash-dotted square as in picture in the right side? I cannot find settings how to.

This is hopefully now sorted in the latest build

 

[Hangman]

Quote

We now accept zero as the 2nd and 3rd dash value to give different options, particularly when in combination with balanced lines.

Perfect, thank you... sometimes it's the smallest of changes that make for the biggest improvements... 👏

[Peter1959]

13 hours ago, Ash said:

Thanks for this feedback - though getting a bit off topic from balanced dashed lines

It won't be in this update but a double line style is something we'll get on the list for future consideration. What we could also do with a a much better way to save any line styles you create yourself (with various dash patterns, arrow heads, multiple strokes in appearance, etc,) as well as us being able to provide a nice set of presets. These could potentially just be saved in other categories of the brushes panel within Designer persona. Again one for a future update...

Sorry for wandering off topic Ash but really pleased to hear it's under consideration for the future. Saving line styles sounds brilliant too.

[Peter1959]

On 3/28/2023 at 2:07 PM, Michail said:

I don't know "Pageplus", but I'm curious. What could you do with the "dual line option"?

Hi Michail

PagePlus was the desktop publishing app created by Serif and is the predecessor of Publisher. A lot of people looked down on it as being amateurish, but I managed to produce some very nice publications with it. I've attached a file with 4 boxes using the for different dual line stroke options, while you can only alter the total point size for the dual lines, you can't edit each line individual it was just a quick and easy way of producing a dual line. 

[Hangman]

9 hours ago, Peter1959 said:

I've attached a file with 4 boxes using the for different dual line stroke options, while you can only alter the total point size for the dual lines, you can't edit each line individual it was just a quick and easy way of producing a dual line.

Until the option is added to the Affinity Suite these are still possible to achieve using the Appearance panel with each line indepenedently editable...

File attached...

Dual Lines.afdesign

[Rygle]

I believe that there has been a fix for the following bug in the Windows 2.1.0.1736 build

Quote

AFD-6489 - First Dash Pattern Gap no longer has a minimum value of 0.05 on Windows

However, I seem to be having exactly the same bug with the second box in the dash pattern. No matter what I do, it will always set itself to a minimum value of 0.05.

I cannot find a link to that bug to comment directly on it, however it seems to me that whatever fix was made to fix the first dash pattern, it should be made to the second.

Edited April 4, 2023 by Rygle
Pasted screenshot did not appear after save

[Sean P]

5 hours ago, Rygle said:

I believe that there has been a fix for the following bug in the Windows 2.1.0.1736 build

However, I seem to be having exactly the same bug with the second box in the dash pattern. No matter what I do, it will always set itself to a minimum value of 0.05.

I cannot find a link to that bug to comment directly on it, however it seems to me that whatever fix was made to fix the first dash pattern, it should be made to the second.

Hi Rygle,

This behaviour is correct - If the first dash length is set to 0, then the subsequent dash gap cannot be set to 0 and defaults to a minimum of 0.05. The second and third sets of lengths and gaps can be set to 0 so you only have one repeating set of dashes

[Hangman]

@Ash, great to see the addition of 0.1 increments for the dash and gap intervals, I wonder though if we could include a modifier key whether Shift, Cmd or Alt to allow 1.0 increments as well, so no modifier = 0.1, with modifier = 1.0 or even vice versa for consistency with the Character Panel, so drag without modifier = 1.0, Alt drag = 0.1.

The other thing I've been meaning to ask and am sure there's a logical explanation for is, why when the stroke is aligned either inside or outside does the radius/diameter of the stroke double, i.e., if you have a centred 4pt stroke, the stroke width is correctly shown as 4pt, if you align the stroke either inside or outside the stroke width is now 8pt, I can't see any logic to this, surely the stroke width should remain at the value set in the stroke panel regardless of its alignment?

[MajesticFlame]

Is there a way to maintain round dots on corners with the balanced mode instead of them becoming teardrops? I noticed if you expand the stroke it will make them round, but for me two of the four corners messed up.

[Hangman]

7 minutes ago, MajesticFlame said:

Is there a way to maintain round dots on corners with the balanced mode instead of them becoming teardrops?

It should be as simple as changing the Join from Mitre to Round...

[MajesticFlame]

4 minutes ago, Hangman said:

It should be as simple as changing the Join from Mitre to Round...

Thanks, I had it checked, you can see my previous settings in the screenshot but I went back and it worked this time.  Maybe I needed to switch between two different joins to get it to correctly register. *Shrug*

[Hangman]

2 minutes ago, MajesticFlame said:

Thanks, I had it checked, you can see my previous settings in the screenshot but I went back and it worked this time.  Maybe I needed to switch between two different joins to get it to correctly register. *Shrug*

I was slightly baffled by your screengrabs as they show the solid rather than dashed line selected in the stroke panel or was that after you'd expanded the stroke?

[MajesticFlame]

 

13 minutes ago, Hangman said:

I was slightly baffled by your screengrabs as they show the solid rather than dashed line selected in the stroke panel or was that after you'd expanded the stroke?

I know the one was after I expanded it for sure. The first photo I had deselected the line so it didn't have the selection/border line showing when I did the screenshot. Not sure why it went back to showing a solid line though, Went back to see if it did that once you deselected but it didn't. That was all I had on the page so I don't I couldn't have accidentally clicked on something else. So no idea.

[MoonaticDestiny]

For the dials at the very bottom of the stroke studio that control that scale of the arrow heads can we fix the percentage symbol inside the dial? Currently, the percentage symbol is under the number when it should be to the side of the number. Below is an example of how it looks and how it should be. 

• Current:
• 100
• %

 

• Fixed
• 100%

[Ash]

That looks like a bug on Windows for these controls - indeed with hover mouse scroll default behaviour should always be integers, alt/ctrl modify to decimals, shift modify to 10x (and that is how it currently is on macOS for dash/gaps).

[Sean P]

16 hours ago, anto said:

@Ash ,

Is it possible to maintain a consistent interface style within one program? For example, changing the stroke width, scrolling with the mouse wheel, changes the step to integer values. Pressing control+scroll changes the step to decimal values. However, if we look at the dashed line, everything is reversed: scrolling changes the value to decimals, and to change it to integer values, you need to press the shift key. Wouldn't it be better to make everything consistent, at least within one program? That is, when using the scroll wheel, the dashed values change to integer values, and control+scroll changes the step to decimals.

Thanks Anto! I'll get this logged - as Ash said it is a Windows bug.