Double rule strokes in Publisher

ajrich · October 10, 2023

A lifelong follower of Page Plus (since v 3.0) I've bitten the bullet and moved on to Publisher.

In Pageplus, solid line rule strokes could be specified from the Line Tab as either single, or one of four different styles of double lines (apparently called Scotch rules or Brass Rules.)

As far as I can see, Publisher does not provide this option. The Stroke window only offers a solid or dotted stroke but nothing else.

Or am I missing something?

walt.farrell · October 10, 2023

For additional Strokes, you can use the Apearance panel, but it's only in Designer. So if you have both applications, you can get to it in the Designer Persona of Publisher.

ajrich · October 10, 2023

Thanks Walt. I wondered if it was elsewhere in the Affinity suite. I am toying with the idea of Designer instead of Drawplus. Does Designer offer the Line and Hatching vector fills like DrawPlus? I've looked that the marketing material for Designer, but there wasn't enough info.

GarryP · October 11, 2023

I made a quick mock-up (file attached) of some of the things you can do with the Appearance Panel (in Designer only).

The designs at the bottom use Align Inside/Outside to achieve the ‘offset’.

The designs on the right use a Blend Mode of Erase to ‘knock-out’ the centre of the lines but, because of that, those layers will always be rasterised upon export.

Unless I’ve missed something, the Affinity applications can’t do ‘true’ repeated vector fills. You can simulate them, possibly with Symbols (in Designer), maybe other things, but they won’t work like ‘true’ repeated vector fills, e.g. hashing etc. (If I’m wrong about this then I would be happy to learn otherwise.)

You can make repeated fills with all of the Affinity applications, via the Gradient Tool in Bitmap ‘mode’, but they are raster only.