Text formatting

[Tony Webb]

I am wondering why text formating is so difficult.

I am trying to make a button image for a website but it is proving more difficult to create than if I coded one. The only reason that I need to create a button on affininty is that for the app that I want to link to requires an image of a button.

I want to set my font style, size and to centre the text withing a frame. There apears to be no feature for this. It's not mentioned in help  ie. formatting text. 

In text, I have set font characteristics but the font size is too big. I try to go bag to adjust the font size. 

I select text size make smaller it adjusts it by 1px at a time. At thid right, I could be clicking make smaller until Christmas.

I've tried updating character style but when I select it nothing happens.

I also want to centre align the text. There doesn't appear to be an option for this.

Is there an easier way to set font style and size and a way to centre align text.
 

[Alfred]

Which Affinity app are you using, and on what platform? Are you using a Frame Text object or an Artistic Text object?

[William Overington]

Is this the sort of button you are wanting to produce, maybe different size, different wording, different font, different colours, but this sort of thing?

[William Overington]

Other people may take a different approach, but for doing something like this, and for many other things, I set the units used in the document as pixels, and I position items using the Transform panel, using whole numbers of pixels for the location and the size of each item.

For a project such as this, where centring and symmetry are important, I set the place from which measurement takes place as the centre point in the picture of nine points in 3 rows of 3 columns that is on the left side of the transform panel. Thus, set like that, if the items have the same setting for X and Y then they are located symmetrically together.

I made the button in Affinity Designer using two items, first a text frame (NOT an Artistic text frame) and after I had got the text as I wanted it in the text frame, a rounded rectangle drawn using the Rounded Rectangle Tool. Then afterwards use Layer Arrange to send the rounded rectangle to the back.

When starting an item, text frame or whatever, first draw it any size just to get it started, then set the position and the height and the width in pixels using the transform panel.

I appreciate that this may be regarded by some people as very mathematical and even the geek approach, but it works and is a straightforward way to get good results.

I have no idea at this time whether you can do some of these things at present.

If not, please say, I have set the follow for this thread, and I will try to help you get a good result.

William

 

[Pšenda]

or

 

[Alfred]

7 minutes ago, William Overington said:

I appreciate that this may be regarded by some people as very mathematical

If you imagine (or actually draw!) a horizontal line which is equidistant between the bottom of the V and the top of the P, you should be able to see that your mathematical approach has resulted in the two lines of text being too high up.

[William Overington]

Well, it is like the space below a picture in a picture frame should be taller than the space above the picture.

William

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, William Overington said:

the space below a picture in a picture frame should be taller than the space above

Perhaps a little taller, but twice as tall seems somewhat excessive. If the mat is 10 cm taller than the picture, deviating from an even 5/5 split by more than a centimetre would look rather odd.

I’m afraid we’ve veered sharply off the topic of text formatting! That’s unless you want to discuss text for matting, of course.

[William Overington]

3 minutes ago, Alfred said:

I’m afraid we’ve veered sharply off the topic ...

When you state "we" ... ?