Delete node AND retain original curve geometry.

[Bryan Rieger]

After using Affinity Designer for almost 9 years now and wasting what is probably months of my life cleaning up extra nodes and geometry, I JUST learned that it is indeed possible to remove nodes AND retain the original curve geometry. Apparently, this little nugget of wisdom is buried on the 'Edit curves and shapes' page in the documentation, under a disclosure triangle labelled 'to delete nodes' and placed in a little box with the following note:

Quote

The curve will automatically reshape because of the deleted node, but you can retain the curve's original geometry by pressing ⌥ + Backspace (ahem, it's delete on macOS) instead. This needs to be a node that could be removed with the curve still remaining similar.

It's interesting that the note is larger than the actual text entry for the label 'to delete nodes'.

I have many questions, but the main one is why isn't (attempting to) retain the curve's original geometry the default behaviour? I'm guessing most people who delete nodes simply hit 'delete' without thinking about it, and then have to spend a not insignificant amount of time redrawing what they just lost by deleting the extra nodes.

Also, if this were the default behaviour it would be much more useful on the iPad as deleting nodes via the trashcan icon and then cleaning them up and redrawing them is a rather tedious process. I know this option isn't currently available on the iPad, but if and when you get around to adding it, please consider making it the default behaviour.

If anybody has any arguments as to why the current, destructive behaviour is preferred please leave a comment. I'm really scratching my head trying to come up with use cases where deleting nodes and having your geometry distort is preferable to deleting nodes and having the software attempt to retain the existing curve(s) as much as possible (with fewer nodes).

Addendum: If you select a number of extraneous nodes in a shape/curve (not all of the nodes) and use the ⌥ + Backspace (Delete on macOS) shortcut Designer does a pretty good job of cleaning up the nodes and matching the existing geometry. It's almost as if the 'simplify geometry' feature is almost there, but the user actually needs to go in and select all of the extraneous nodes they wish to delete first. Hopefully one day this might be automated in a future update.

[retrograde]

Wow, good to know. And yeah I've been a user for years and didn't know this either. Or maybe I forgot about it....

[loukash]

8 hours ago, retrograde said:

I've been a user for years and didn't know this either. Or maybe I forgot about it

Because it's apparently a new thing with v2.

[loukash]

On 8/15/2023 at 3:19 PM, Bryan Rieger said:

If anybody has any arguments as to why the current, destructive behaviour is preferred please leave a comment.

Sure: 
The default behavior doesn't change the values of the remaining nodes. That's a Good Thing™.

[Bryan Rieger]

1 hour ago, loukash said:

The default behavior doesn't change the values of the remaining nodes. That's a Good Thing™.

That is a good thing, but I still wonder if it should be the default behaviour. To me that feels more like an optional behaviour - one that would be more inline with having to use a shortcut key.

That said, if Designer (and the Affinity suite in general, ahem Publisher’s text wrap feature) didn’t leave a mess of nodes around or have an automated means to clean-up geometry this wouldn’t be an issue.

[Bryan Rieger]

6 hours ago, Red Sands said:

Default behavior should be entirely up to the customer. There is no basis for more Internet Time Wasting™ on this topic.

Oh, if only it were that simple. I always cringe a little when folks suggest everything should become a preference, when the app settings become a place where only the most power of power users dares to journey. Preferences are great, but are no replacement for intelligent defaults.

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, Red Sands said:

Default behavior should be entirely up to the customer.

Default behaviour is, by definition, whatever the developers have chosen.

21 minutes ago, Bryan Rieger said:

Oh, if only it were that simple. I always cringe a little when folks suggest everything should become a preference

Given that the developers will have their own ideas about what should happen with a single shortcut keypress and what should happen if one or more modifier keys are also used, I see nothing wrong with enabling the user to swap things around so that their preferred behaviour is easier to invoke.

[loukash]

25 minutes ago, Bryan Rieger said:

the app settings become a place where only the most power of power users dares to journey.

Yep, I'm looking at you, GraphicConverter, among others…  

[loukash]

2 hours ago, Bryan Rieger said:

if Designer (and the Affinity suite in general, ahem Publisher’s text wrap feature) didn’t leave a mess of nodes around or have an automated means to clean-up geometry this wouldn’t be an issue.

Yeah, but that is another issue.

In other words:
I, for one, prefer when applications are not attempting to be smarter than me unless I tell them to.

[Bryan Rieger]

And I prefer applications where intelligent defaults generally do what you expect, but always leave you the option to override them as and when needed. The old 80-20 rule.

Po-TAY-to, po-TAH-to…

Hopefully Serif have been user testing how people use the pen and node tools, and will adjust the features if they notice a significant number of users having to constantly redraw/reshape curves after deleting nodes.

[PaulEC]

1 hour ago, Bryan Rieger said:

Oh, if only it were that simple. I always cringe a little when folks suggest everything should become a preference, when the app settings become a place where only the most power of power users dares to journey.

People who don't want to set their own preferences can simply accept the default settings. Surely it's better to give users a choice, rather than imposing settings which will suit some users, but not others! 

36 minutes ago, Bryan Rieger said:

Hopefully Serif have been user testing how people use the pen and node tools, and will adjust the features if they notice a significant number of users having to constantly redraw/reshape curves after deleting nodes.

That's great! The majority of users will be happy! But what's the problem with having options to change default settings for people who want to change them; the majority can just leave them as they are!

[Bryan Rieger]

43 minutes ago, PaulEC said:

That's great! The majority of users will be happy! But what's the problem with having options to change default settings for people who want to change them; the majority can just leave them as they are!

That's exactly what I'm saying. Ensure that the default behaviours work for 80% of the people, AND enable the 20% where the defaults aren't ideal to modify them to better suit their needs. First you need to make sure your default works for the 80% which in this case I suspect (only Serif might have data on this) it currently doesn't. To me (as a retired UX designer) the current implementation feels backwards.

FWIW the 80/20 doesn't typically break down into people who like one option vs people who like the other. Usually (not all the time) we all fall into one bucket or the other at some point or another. The objective is to ensure that it behaves in a way that the majority of users expect, but also reduces the overall friction for all users.

[loukash]

1 hour ago, Bryan Rieger said:

always leave you the option to override them as and when needed

Aaand that's exactly what's happening here.
This default behavior was the only behavior for 8 years, as there was no option-delete node in v1. At least not on Mac. (Wasn't this one of those half-baked features that would only work on one platform but not on the other? I don't remember.)

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, Red Sands said:

By the way, developers develop what is decided must be developed - they don't design user interfaces.

OK, so I misspoke. I should have said that default behaviour is, by definition, whatever the developers have implemented. Better now?

[Barry Newman]

54 minutes ago, Alfred said:

OK, so I misspoke. I should have said that default behaviour is, by definition, whatever the developers have implemented. Better now?

It should be visible from space what @Red Sands and @Bryan Rieger are legitimately arguing for here and what slalom through the forum's oddities they are trying to avoid.

A vote here for a meaningful default: preserve shape when removing a node. And a setting to change the default. It makes so much sense.

[lepr]

7 hours ago, loukash said:

Because it's apparently a new thing with v2.

opt+backspace to attempt preservation of curvature when removing nodes was in AD 1.7 and earlier on macOS, although it wasn't a separate command in any menu. A regression in Affinity's handling of modified backspace keystrokes made the function unavailable for several years until recently.