Feature request: Change the font size of text elements in embedded PDF or SVG objects

[slowkow]

My workflow

In my workflow, I have hundreds of PDF files in a folder, and I need to arrange them on multiple artboards. I also need to edit them and re-label them. Each PDF file has graphical elements and text elements.

After embedding dozens of PDF files in an artboard, it is critical to make the font sizes uniform across all elements on the artboard. The minimum font size must be 5 pt (no smaller than that).

 

The problem

Here is my experience trying to change the font size of text elements in an embedded PDF:

• In Illustrator, there's not much to explain. Embed the PDF and edit the text elements directly. There's nothing to explain, it just works. When I set the font size to 5 pt, it is 5 pt.
   
• In Designer, the embedded PDF cannot be edited directly. I can double-click it to edit, but now the scale is different than the parent document. If I set the font size to 5 pt, it is too small in the parent document. There is no way to predict what font size I should choose to end up with 5 pt when I go back to the parent document.

 

Question

Currently, it seems to me that Affinity Designer does not support this feature at all. Am I missing something?

How can we make the minimum font size 5 pt when we have dozens of embedded PDFs in a document?

 

Please let me know if anything is unclear. I can try to make screenshots or videos to elaborate if necessary.

 

[Old Bruce]

18 minutes ago, slowkow said:

... I need to arrange them ...

Are you scaling the sizes of the PDFs when arranging them? Or are they all Placed at 100% ?

[slowkow]

All PDFs need to be scaled, and each one needs a different amount of scaling. I always need to make fine adjustments for each PDF after adding it to the artboard, because I don't necessarily know what the final layout will look like until the end.

[Old Bruce]

1 hour ago, slowkow said:

All PDFs need to be scaled, and each one needs a different amount of scaling. I always need to make fine adjustments for each PDF after adding it to the artboard, because I don't necessarily know what the final layout will look like until the end.

Using the Affinity applications you would be better off deleting (cutting to the clipboard) the Text from the PDF leaving the Graphic elements and doing the text in the Designer document.

I keep telling people that PDFs were never designed to be used as an interchange document format. But Adobe has leveraged their propriety Illustrator format to produce PDFs that work really really well with Illustrator and much less well with other software.

[slowkow]

15 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

Using the Affinity applications you would be better off deleting (cutting to the clipboard) the Text from the PDF leaving the Graphic elements and doing the text in the Designer document.

There are hundreds of text elements in my PDFs. There's no way to reasonably recreate each one in Designer. I made PDFs with text elements specifically to avoid "doing the text" in another software.

 

15 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

I keep telling people that PDFs were never designed to be used as an interchange document format. But Adobe has leveraged their propriety Illustrator format to produce PDFs that work really really well with Illustrator and much less well with other software.

SVG and PDF files are both affected by the issue I described above. This is not an issue with PDF. It is an issue with Affinity Designer.

 

Here's one more example to illustrate that Designer could support the feature I am describing:

In Designer, draw a rectangle, then make a text element inside it. Group the two elements into an object. Resize the grouped object. Now, we still have direct access to the text font size in Designer. When we're dealing with grouped elements created inside Designer, we don't need to enter a different context with a different scale to edit the text font size.

So, Designer supports direct editing of font sizes for grouped objects but not for SVG and PDF objects. Is it possible to change the behavior of Designer to also support directly changing the font sizes within SVG and PDF objects?

[thomaso]

52 minutes ago, slowkow said:

In Designer, draw a rectangle, then make a text element inside it. Group the two elements into an object. Resize the grouped object. Now, we still have direct access to the text font size in Designer. When we're dealing with grouped elements created inside Designer, we don't need to enter a different context with a different scale to edit the text font size.

This comparison sounds like a different workflow. Alternatively we can open PDFs and copy/paste their layers in another Affinity document, where we then can scale the entire set of layers and also individually resize the text directly as in your group example. – Nevertheless, a more cumbersome workflow but a workaround.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, slowkow said:

So, Designer supports direct editing of font sizes for grouped objects but not for SVG and PDF objects. Is it possible to change the behavior of Designer to also support directly changing the font sizes within SVG and PDF objects?

Today? No. Possibly, in the future, if you create a Feature Request and it fits in with Serif's plans. 

The contents of a Placed file are in essence a black-box, as far as the containing document is concerned. Basically, wine you're in the containing document, the Placed document is just a picture of the contents of that Placed document. 

 

 

[Return]

Only way now is to open the pdf files in designer and it will create artboards per page.
Save them as afdesigner file, open the file in publisher and edit the artboards at will and make the textflow and textstyles match.
It isn't the best option but the only option you have now.

[slowkow]

2 hours ago, thomaso said:

open PDFs and copy/paste their layers in another Affinity document, where we then can scale the entire set of layers and also individually resize the text directly

Thank you, thomaso! This is a reasonable workaround.

[slowkow]

2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Today? No. Possibly, in the future, if you create a Feature Request and it fits in with Serif's plans.

Hi Walt, could you please share a link to open a new feature request? Thank you.

[walt.farrell]

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/forum/122-feedback-for-the-affinity-v2-suite-of-products/

Just start a new topic there.

[slowkow]

Bug report

I noticed unexpected inconsistent behavior. Details below.

Before using Designer, I would have assumed that Procedure 1 (P1) would produce the same result as Procedure 2 (P2).

Confusingly, the behavior is different for PDF and SVG files:

• For PDF files, P1 is not equivalent to P2. P1 produces undesirable results, but P2 works as expected.
• For SVG files, P1 is equivalent to P2. Both P1 and P2 produce undesirable results.

 

Procedure 1 (PDF): ❌

Open the PDF in Designer. Copy all. Open a new document. Paste.

Problem: Lines are too thin.

 

Procedure 2 (PDF): ✅

Open a new document in Designer. Drag the PDF directly into the document. Double-click to edit the PDF. Copy all. Paste into the parent document.

Problem: None. Render looks good!

 

Procedure 1 (SVG): ❌

Open the SVG in Designer. Copy all. Open a new document. Paste.

Problem: Lines are too thick.

 

Procedure 2 (SVG): ❌

Open a new document in Designer. Drag the SVG into the document. Double-click to edit the SVG. Copy all. Paste into the parent document.

Problem: Lines are too thick. (Same problem as Procedure 1 (SVG).)

 

[thomaso]

5 minutes ago, slowkow said:

Procedure 1 (PDF): ❌
Open the PDF in Designer. Copy all. Open a new document. Paste.
Problem: Lines are too thin.

Procedure 2 (PDF): ✅
Open a new document in Designer. Drag the PDF directly into the document. Double-click to edit the PDF. Copy all. Paste into the parent document.
Problem: None. Render looks good!

Interesting difference. Possibly this issue varies with the DPI of the two involved documents? Also, a change of line width when scaling may depend on the Stroke Panel setting "Scale with object".

[v_kyr]

Looks like for SVG probably different documents DPI resolutions were used, other wise zoom levels should be equally too here. AFAI recall copying/pasting SVG from one doc to another via the clipboard has once been enhanced from 72 DPI to use 96 DPI here, so one has to take this into account when transfering SVG code between docs. - Didn't looked at the PDF stuff here.