Other Improvements

[Bryan Rieger]

1 hour ago, EricP said:

regarding enhancement 2, I really like the idea and using = for this but for some reason I can get it to work. I get a red = sign when I enter in W or H in transform panel

It requires you to enable 'Transform Objects Separately' in the top control bar (see below).

If '=' is only ever available/permitted when 'Transform Objects Separately' is enabled, then maybe it would make sense to enable it automatically if somebody types '=' into a field for that transformation only. Adding a little 'toast' animation or some sort of indication that 'Transform Objects Separately' has been applied would be helpful not only to provide feedback, but to aid in further understanding of how the feature is intended to work.

[Intuos5]

27 minutes ago, AffinityMakesMeSad said:

 

Why why why do you relate to Indesign in this thread??

It's really really Off-Topic...

Affinity Publisher isn't Adobe Indesign, so, what's the point??

Something about multiple menu clicks being more intuitive than typing "=" as expression...

I like the feature. One thing I could imagine is that the button for transform individually could be exposed to the transform panel as well, because that saves mouse travel to disparate places. Especially with the new expression feature, it makes sense to put them together imo.

[Intuos5]

1 minute ago, Bryan Rieger said:

It requires you to enable 'Transform Objects Separately' in the top control bar (see below).

If '=' is only ever available/permitted when 'Transform Objects Separately' is enabled, then maybe it would make sense to enable it automatically if somebody types '=' into a field for that transformation only. Adding a little 'toast' animation or some sort of indication that 'Transform Objects Separately' has been applied would be helpful not only to provide feedback, but to aid in further understanding of how the feature is intended to work.

For me it is also possible to type "=" without 'Transform Objects Separately' enabled. It's the same as not typing the '='. But that's on Windows.

[EricP]

2 minutes ago, Bryan Rieger said:

It requires you to enable 'Transform Objects Separately' in the top control bar (see below).

If '=' is only ever available/permitted when 'Transform Objects Separately' is enabled, then maybe it would make sense to enable it automatically if somebody types '=' into a field for that transformation only. Adding a little 'toast' animation or some sort of indication that 'Transform Objects Separately' has been applied would be helpful not only to provide feedback, but to aid in further understanding of how the feature is intended to work.

Got it. Thank you Bryan for clarifying this. Agree with your usability suggestions, wouldn't have found out by myself

[chessboard]

2 hours ago, fde101 said:

They are not simplifying it artificially.  They are ignoring nodes that are already flagged to be ignored by the file they are reading the shape from.

To simplify an arbitrary existing shape they would need an algorithm to identify which nodes to remove and/or adjust, which is not part of what they are doing here.

Maybe so. But it seems to me that there is more going on than just ignoring nodes. In the DWGs there are straight lines between all nodes. If Affinity just ignored the nodes, then the result would just be an extreme abstraction with only straight lines as well, and the shape would be far from the shape of the DWGs. As Ash has shown, the result is Bézier curves with smooth nodes and recalculated tangents. So there must be an algorithm to recreate the curve or shape.

Either way, I can't see what the problem is with introducing a function to simplify the path. Every vector software I know has this, even Photoline can do this. I am tired of waiting for this function for almost ten years now.

[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...

[anto]

"=" does not work in windows

 

 

[anto]

Returning to the topic I wrote about in another thread and which was touched upon here by Laganama.
One of the functions does not work correctly. Either "=" or Alignment -- Make same.
Look at the video carefully. All the shapes are the same "width" - 50 mm (from a human point of view), but one of them is rotated by 90.

 

 

[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. 

[anto]

1 minute ago, Chris B said:

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. 

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

[anto]

6 minutes ago, Chris B said:

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. 

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

[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.

[anto]

1 minute ago, fde101 said:

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

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

[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.

[anto]

I don't understand why two different functions interpret the width of the same object as they please.

[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.