Hotkey- or command-line-triggered export

[Mason M]

(Migrated from https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/190865-continuous-export-checkbox-loses-state-when-a-file-is-reopened/)

I've been using Designer for about a year as a digital whiteboard/scratchpad, and I like it so much that I'm starting to try using it in place of Inkscape to make illustrations for scientific publications and blog posts. My experience so far is that Designer is overall more stable and pleasant to use, but the export process is now significantly more complicated and intrusive.

So here's my attempt at a "user story" describing what I'm trying to do, links to a couple posts by users that seem to have similar needs, and a couple ideas for solutions. Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to read!

My use case

I'm trying to make illustration-rich technical documents (e.g. https://bytecodealliance.org/articles/making-javascript-run-fast-on-webassembly, https://www.deepmind.com/blog/rt-2-new-model-translates-vision-and-language-into-action). This involves combining 

• rich text with equations authored in LaTeX or Markdown,
• procedurally generated data visualizations, and
• hand-made illustrations

to generate either a PDF document or a static web page.

Inkscape has a command-line PDF exporter, so I can generate the full document by running a single script (which can be bound to a keyboard shortcut, run on file changes, etc.). I never have to think about a separate "export the illustrations" step and updates are continuously reflected in the full document.

But with Designer, setting up continuous exports takes 6 clicks, plus navigating to the export directory, each time I open an illustration to edit. (An article might have ~a dozen illustrations.) Even if this at some point becomes second nature to me, I can see it being a stumbling block for collaborators. The situation improves in some ways if I combine all the illustrations in an article into a single Designer file and set up export slices, but this also adds more complexity.

Ultimately what I'm trying to avoid is repeatedly manually specifying export paths, especially in projects with collaborators, because rendering PDF/SVG illustrations is only one step in a multi-step pipeline.

Related posts

I think my setup is pretty common in the engineering/science world, and from another post I found it seems like users doing web and app design are struggling with the export workflow as well:

Another user encountering friction trying export frequently:

Feature ideas

@Stefan Angermüller suggested command-line export functionality, which is the approach Inkscape takes.

An alternative that stays within the desktop application paradigm would be to have export targets, as relative paths, stored in the .afdesign file, and a keyboard shortcut for a "save and export" action. This would be more along the lines of what @BBG3 is asking for. Blender does something like this (Ctrl+F12 to render to a user-defined export location). I may have seen something like this in audio editing programs too, but it's been a while so I can't remember the specifics.

Edited August 24, 2023 by Mason M

[tudor]

9 hours ago, Mason M said:

An alternative that stays within the desktop application paradigm would be to have export targets, as relative paths, stored in the .afdesign file

Have you tried the Path option available in the Export persona? It lets you specify export paths for slices.

 

[Mason M]

Hi @tudor & thanks for the response! I have tried the path option, but unfortunately that only allows me to specify the export path relative to the root export folder, and as far as I can tell I still need to specify the root export folder (6 clicks + navigation) each time I open an illustration to edit it.