Recent files taken from retail version?

[joe_l]

Nothing spectacular, something I noticed and surprised me. When I installed and opened the RC1 today, the recent file list was the one from the retail version.

Same for AP and AD.

[Murfee]

Hi @joe_l what OS are you on? I am running Mac Mojave and I don't see this issue on any of the apps

[joe_l]

Windows 10.

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, joe_l said:

Windows 10.

As specified in the topic tags, but not everyone remembers to look at those! If you put your system specs in your signature, the info will be included at the bottom of every post.

[Chris B]

This is the correct behaviour  

[walt.farrell]

19 minutes ago, Chris B said:

This is the correct behaviour  

Meaning, that the RC builds use the retail Preferences, etc?

[Bit Disappointed]

It is okay and standard practice to move into the borderline area between the test version (beta) and the release version when reaching the release candidate stage.

It is in this phase that beta testers need to understand - as they hopefully have already done by risking to overwrite older versions of files with newer formats - that they are taking a small risk at their own expense as beta testers in order to help themselves by reporting bugs and deficiencies, which hopefully then won't end up in retail.

[Ron P.]

I'm on Windows 10, and I don't see this behavior. The recent files lists are different.

[Chris B]

15 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Meaning, that the RC builds use the retail Preferences, etc?

That is what I was told - yes.

[joe_l]

5 minutes ago, Chris B said:

That is what I was told - yes.

Personally I think, that this is a BAD idea. After your post I checked again and saw that assets are also shared. Does this mean beta and retail use the SAME data? Or copied data? So working on the beta can damage the assets or not?

Not sharing anything between beta and retail has the benefit, that I can test the beta to its limits, without worrying to damage something. If data is really shared I have to think over, if I am taking a risk using the betas.

Yes, I know. Backups are a must. Recovering backups during work take their time.

[Sean P]

Hi @joe_l

What Chris said isn't strictly true and was a result of a slight misunderstanding. When the software is built it is built into two different variations; one is a Customer Beta, and the other is a full Retail Build (which is what gets released to the Affinity Store). Whilst the code is predominatly the same, there are a few changes in them when it comes to licensing (i.e no Customer Betas will ever offer trials, and always require a valid software licence to run), and lastly one of the major differences is where it stores its preferences and settings.

For Windows a Customer Beta will store its settings in the following locations*:

• %UserProfile%\.affinity\Common\2.0 (Beta)\ - for files shared between apps (of the same build type i.e Beta) i.e Assets, Brushes, Styles, Store downloaded content etc
• %UserProfile%\.affinity\Designer\2.0 (Beta)\ - for App specific settings and preferences

For a Retail build it will store the same settings in similar, but slightly different location*

• %UserProfile%\.affinity\Common\2.0\ - noting the lack of (Beta) in the pathname
• %UserProfile%\.affinity\Designer\2.0\ - noting the lack of (Beta) in the pathname

For recent documents these are stored in a file called RecentFiles.xml which is stored inside (For the Designer Customer Beta):

%UserProfile%\.affinity\Designer\2.0 (Beta)\settings\

This means that the 2.4.0 Beta will store Recents in a separate location to the 2.3.1 Retail downloaded from the Affinity Store. There is an option inside the Customer Beta to Copy Settings & Content from Release apps, which will copy over this data and the Recents are part of this, so you may have done that. I assume you haven't created any custom aliases within Windows to link the two locations?

With that said can I confirm that you're saying that opening a document in the Retail app will then show up in the Beta Recents list inside the app? If that is the case could you attach a video (of your whole screen) demonstrating this behaviour please? Also if you could take a copy of the Log.txt files from the locations above (changing the app name for the one you're using) after you close each app and attach those that would also be helpful.

Thanks,

*These locations are given for the MSIX builds - For EXE users these paths are slightly different:

• %AppData%\Affinity\Common\2.0 (Beta)\ - For Beta Common
• %AppData%\Affinity\Designer\2.0 (Beta)\ - For Beta Designer
• %AppData%\Affinity\Common\2.0\ - For Retail Common
• %AppData%\Affinity\Designer\2.0 (Beta)\ - For Retail Designer

[joe_l]

Oh dear. I have to apologize. At some point I must have imported the contents of the retail version into the Beta without thinking about it too much (if there was thinking involved in any way). Everything is sorted now.

Feel free to delete this irritating, embarrassing thread.

[Sean P]

Don't be silly - just glad to hear that nothing has gone catastrophically wrong!