Other Improvements

[Laganama]

9 hours ago, anto said:

For this function shown in your InDesign screencast you can use the "Make Same" option within Alignment menu in Affinity:

To size objects to same:

1. Select multiple objects, ensuring the object to be sized to is selected first. To do this, use -click to target it first or a marquee selection that encompasses it first.
2.   On the Toolbar, click Alignment, then set the Make Same option, choosing to size to Width or Height.
3. (Optional) Check Maintain Aspect Ratio to ensure the objects will resize using their original proportions.
4. Click Apply.

[Laganama]

This topic I'd like to describe is maybe for Feedback & Suggestions part of this forum, but when there is a discussion about improving the transform panel, I would also (and more) prefer the ability to override the Link option for maintaining the object aspect ratio. For example when unlinked (do not aspect ratio) and typing some value in one field, hiting Enter together with for example Cmd/Ctrl or some other modifier key would override the curent link setting and make the size change constrained. And vice versa...

[Chris B]

Hi anto,

It sounds like you're expecting this to work on the rotated shapes viewport as opposed to its current transform settings but this is not how it is supposed to work. I recall another thread where I believe this has been explained before. 

[fde101]

5 minutes ago, anto said:

The "=" sign does not distinguish between width and height.
It aligns the first two objects by width, and the bottom one by height.

It does not align at all.

When multiple objects are selected they are scaled based on their orientation to the page, regardless of the orientation of their base box.

In other words, it scales their actual width on the page, not their width relative to their rotated coordinate system.

Even in 1.4 it works this way, not related to using the "=" feature.

It would be nice to be able to toggle this behavior as well when using Transform Objects Separately (we already can when working with single selected objects using Cycle Bounding Box so not sure why it should be different with multiple objects selected), but I believe that is a separate request.

[fde101]

5 minutes ago, anto said:

So why does Alignment -- Make same makes it different?

Because Serif made the same questionable choice in the opposite direction for that tool.  Instead of ignoring Cycle Selection Box and forcing page orientation as Transform Objects Separately does, the Make Same commands instead ignore Cycle Selection Box and act on base box orientation instead.

This does not appear to be a bug, and is not related to the beta.  Both behaviors are valid, and are existing behaviors in 1.4, but the opposite behaviors are questionably missing from each of the two tools.

[Chris B]

12 minutes ago, anto said:

I didn't understand your comment, and it looks like you didn't watch the video carefully.

It looks like the behaviour in Publisher is broken - I was doing the testing in Designer on WIndows. We'll poke this further.

[Chris B]

@anto we've now logged this - thanks!

[Affinity Info Bot]

The issue "= expression with Transform Objects Separately enabled is failing in Publisher" (REF: AF-2809) has been fixed by the developers in internal build "2.5.0.2415".
This fix should soon be available as a customer beta and is planned for inclusion in the next customer release.
Customer beta builds are announced here and you can participate by following these instructions.
If you still experience this problem once you are using that build version (or later) please reply to this thread including @Affinity Info Bot to notify us.