Affinity Designer Customer Beta (1.5 - Beta 1)

[Dave Harris]

Thanks for Paragraph and Character Styles.

 

First a bug.

It happens when you want to update the Paragraph Style. Right-mouse click on the name of the style to get a pop-up menu to "Update Style from Paragraph.

The same crash happens when you access the same menu from the menu next to the name of the style and ask to Update the style.

 

It doesn't crash for me, but it also doesn't update. As a workaround, you can also update styles from the text selection using the buttons at the bottom of the Style Page.

[retrograde]

No problem, I'll get this sorted out asap, thanks :)

Cheers Matt!

[00Ghz]

Matt, I would love to report them... if I could actually replicate them. They seem random :(

 

Only one I can replicate is when I try to make a new artboard the pasteboard color changes from dark grey to black. The artboard name text also looks very skinny, almost unreadable. 

[anon1]

(1) the arrow to adjust the width (or height) of the side panel does not appear on my MB or iMac

++ now that we have so many useful panels available it would be nice to be able to toggle the left or right column of panels separately on/ off (for 11/12/13inch MacBook users)

 

(2) regarding symbols:

when I make a group and make that group a symbol

- only the selected group is scaled when selected

- when I select the parts of the group and rescale, all instances are scaled

if it´s intended that way, I guess it´s fine

 

- if I move a group that was made to be a symbol, only the group moves

- if I move the parts of the group that was made to be a symbol, there seems to be a certain view point to which all objects are moved in a certain ratio, if I select only n-1 parts of the group, all objects move as expected

 

(3) I still wonder if/ how one can de-detach parts of a symbol

(3.1) dragging group from the layers panel onto the symbols panel could make a symbol, would be a nice touch, same goes for assets where it does not work for me

 

(4) view > customize tool, select the number of columns

The list pops up nicely on first try but when you go from 1 to 8 to 5 e.g it does work correctly for 1,6,7,8 and incorrectly for 2,3,4,5. the list does not fully extend anymore

it´s like the annoying live adjustment filter list that does not properly pop up  :blink: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/14675-visibility-of-filter-drop-up/?p=65485

 

(5) bleed preview and pages are planned for 1.6 I guess?  :ph34r: 

 

(6) could you further a bit on what Retina Rendering Single Pass VS Retina Rendering Multi Pass (Retina) means?

It is somehow confusing because the setting says "Retina Rendering" and then the Multi pass also says retina so one might think that only multi pass is retina rendering but why is it then that single pass is also available under the "retina rendering" headline.... :huh:

 

(7) if I have artistic text and choose the pen tool and select the text in the layers panel I get pen tool like points on the glyphs but can´t modify them so I guess they are not meant to be exposed (the text is not converted to curves)

 

​(8) constraints

- having inner and outer constraints active in the constraints dialog should either lock the whole container or should be made illegal, as it is now, the outer constraints overwrite the inner ones but there is a visual clue for that missing in the panel

- no constraints behaves like inner constraints, should also be made illegal 

- right lock with inner constraints blows the object up with every container rescaling operation, left lock behaves the other way round and"micro"nizes the object 

- right and left lock with outer constraints behave just like outer constraints (I´m not yet sure how they should behave)

 

BTW: for those who wondered: If you make an asset from a symbol it does not synchronize across documents 

 

 ​file > export "has almost a responsive type of feel" as ashley might say  :lol: still beach balling while selecting the pop ups but not as excessive as it used to be

 

Crashes:

#1 Designer Crashes reproducible when you have an image or a shape masked with another shape and you want to add outer constraints to the masking shape

Edited June 25, 2016 by MBd

[Teo_]

Symbols (as implemented here) and constraints are fantastic features for interface designers  :)

[AshTeriyaki]

I've found an insta quit. Create a group with a shape and some text (Say, a button) turn it into a symbol, duplicate it, then double click to select the text inside the group. Boom. 

[olibclarke]

I've never seen that before... I'm developing on a 15" MacBook Pro Retina early 2015 model - is yours a 15"? Does yours have a discrete card too? (Mine does) What other apps/utilities do you have running (the top right of your screen shows a number of utilities running) It can definitely be fixed, I just need to find what's provoking it...

 

Could you try closing all other open apps and seeing if the problem is still there?

Hi Matt, Mine is a 13" with integrated graphics. Just tried closing all other apps and restarting the beta - same problem reoccurs.

 

Cheers

Oli

[william7]

(1) the arrow to adjust the width (or height) of the side panel does not appear on my MB or iMac

++ now that we have so many useful panels available it would be nice to be able to toggle the left or right column of panels separately on/ off (for 11/12/13inch MacBook users)

Forgive my ignorance but what do you mean by left and right column of panels?

[anon1]

"column" s probably a bit misleadingly

https://vimeo.com/169816724

I´ve not used it until now either so ......you can have two sets of panels left/ right as you can see in this video

you have to drag a panel all the way to the left and then you see a rectangle and when you let go, the panel snaps into place

 

It´s just that it takes up really much "screen estate"

when bug (1) is addressed we can shrink the left panel quiete a bit, I personally don´t need much space for the symbols area/ constraints box

I´d suggest shift + tab to "toggle away" the left "column"

 

alternatively workspaces like PS has would be acceptable but the dev team probably has reasons for why they don´t go that route, it somehow conflicts with the idea of personas I think

[william7]

"column" s probably a bit misleadingly

https://vimeo.com/169816724

I´ve not used it until now either so ......you can have two sets of panels left/ right as you can see in this video

you have to drag a panel all the way to the left and then you see a rectangle and when you let go, the panel snaps into place

I totally missed that in the video. yea thats nice. and now I see what you are saying although to be honest what I would really like is the option to put both columns on the right side. that way I have tools on the left with easy access to the canvas and then all the other stuff on the right

[william7]

Question: so in constraints for my object I have the two middle lines (inside the box) selected along with the top and right sides. The way I interpret the lines inside the box is that with those selected the object will maintain its size at all times. However when I adjust the item it is constrained to, the size of my constrained object still changes. Is this a bug or how is this supposed to work?

[Seneca]

Would you care to explain what the Group in the Edit Text Style Dialog mean?

 

Also what's does the Show in both panels check box mean?

 

At this stage we have 2 types of Styles: Text Styles and Styles for objects.

 

This may be confusing to fresh starters. I was confused myself when I selected a word and right mouse clicked on it then got a pop-up menu with Define Style available. Maybe this should be dimmed as it's not applicable to text. This goes for the Edit menu too.

[KipV]

Bug: My screen will flicker most times when I add a shape or make a click with the pen tool. At times the artboard will disappear and  other times everything will disappear.

El Capitan, 2016 MacBook.

[Dave Harris]

Would you care to explain what the Group in the Edit Text Style Dialog mean?

 

Gladly. In some apps there is a strong difference between paragraph styles and character styles, and they never mix. In Affinity, they are virtually the same, and you can apply paragraph styles to characters and character styles to paragraphs. You can also have character styles that are based on paragraph styles, and vice versa.

 

The Type in the Edit Text Style dialog merely sets how the style is applied by default. So if Paragraph is checked, then a single click in the Text Styles tab will apply the style to paragraphs, and you will need to use the menus to apply it to characters. The type also affects which quick lists the style appears in. There are lists of text styles in the Paragraph Studio tab, the Character tab, and two lists in the text context toolbar. The idea is that some people will hide the Text Styles tab when they are not actively editing styles, to save screen space, but they will still apply text styles via one of the lists.

 

So, to answer your questions, the Group type means the style is neither paragraph nor character. It appears in none of the quick lists, and the only way to get to it is via the Text Styles tab. Nothing happens when you single-click it. The idea is that you use it to help manage your other styles, by basing other styles on it. For example, in the default style sheet, there is a group style called Base that contains all the default formatting, and then the other paragraph styles are based on that and just set what they need. Base provides a single place to set attributes that applied to all the styles, such as language and colour, but you aren't expected to apply it to text directly. Instead you apply a style based on it, such as Body or Heading 2. For that reason, you probably don't want Base listed in the text context toolbar, and it won't be.

 

The burger menu at the Text Styles tab top-right has an option to Show Heirachical (sic - we'll fix the spelling). When checked, it shows the based-on tree structure. With this mode you can use group styles for, well, grouping. That's why they have that name. It's off by default because I didn't like having to expand styles to find the one I wanted, especially when the default style sheet is so short, but it may be useful when you have more styles. We don't have any other mechanism for categorising text styles.

 

The Show in both panels checkbox causes the style to be appear both in lists of paragraph styles, and in lists of character styles. So it's kind of the oppose of the Group type. It's for when you have a style that you commonly use both ways.

 

This is all a bit experimental. We welcome feedback on how well it works in practice. It might be a good idea for us to rename the old Style tab to Object Styles.

[MattP]

In one word: this is a spectacular release … thank you so much …  :)

 

(I am almost reluctant to post this, since you have done such a fabulous work. But there is a minor bug with the Pen Tool … when drawing the first two nodes of a path. See below.)

Hey, that looks pretty cool!

 

(err, I'll fix it though...)

[MattP]

Question: so in constraints for my object I have the two middle lines (inside the box) selected along with the top and right sides. The way I interpret the lines inside the box is that with those selected the object will maintain its size at all times. However when I adjust the item it is constrained to, the size of my constrained object still changes. Is this a bug or how is this supposed to work?

 

Hi william,

 

When the lines are on inside the constraints box, it means the shape can stretch in those directions. When the lines are on around the box it means they are clamped to that distance. Hopefully that makes sense?

 

Thanks,

Matt

[MattP]

Bug: My screen will flicker most times when I add a shape or make a click with the pen tool. At times the artboard will disappear and  other times everything will disappear.

El Capitan, 2016 MacBook.

We've already had a similar report to this - I'll try to get it looked into on Monday morning :) Thanks!

Matt

[Dave Harris]

Incidentally, it might be worth spelling out how the test style font traits are supposed to work. If the style sets the Font family, then you can use the Font traits control to set the font used exactly. In this case Affinity will offer the list of named traits from the font file, and there should be no font matching (as long as the font is installed).

 

If the style does not set the Font family, then the other controls for Font weight, Font width and Italic attributes become available. These provide generic names that are not specific to the font, and they do do font matching. For example, if you set the Font weight to Black, and apply the style to Arial, you will actually get Arial Bold because Arial does not have a Black variant.

 

These generic traits are how the Strong and Emphasis styles in the default style sheet work. You can change the Font family in the Base style, and Emphasis will still give you a slanted variant (if the font family has one), even if the new font calls it Oblique or something else rather than Italic. So this approach allows the style sheet to be more flexible and fluid.

 

The downside is that the font matching might not always do what you want, which is why we also let you specify the font exactly by setting both Font family and Font Traits in every style that changes the font. This leads to a more rigid style sheet, in that if you change your mind about the font you'll have to edit all the styles that set it, but it also gives you complete control.

 

[MattP]

Matt, I would love to report them... if I could actually replicate them. They seem random :(

 

Only one I can replicate is when I try to make a new artboard the pasteboard color changes from dark grey to black. The artboard name text also looks very skinny, almost unreadable. 

Then it sounds like what you're experiencing might possibly be linked to the fact that your background colour is wrong - that suggests to me you're suffering from a similar issue to the people who are getting flickers of the document being drawn then not, etc, and is some kind of video driver issue. If e're provoking a driver issue then it's likely that the program could be getting unhappy and will fall over pretty much at random. I'm going to look into this on Monday - I may back out of one change I made to the OpenGL stuff to make it better (it's not worth introducing random flashing and instability just to use one extra feature of OpenGL!)

 

Thanks,

Matt 

[smallreflection]

Simply amazing—fantastic, fantastic work guys. I've just been playing with it for a few minutes so I haven't run into any bugs yet, but by appearances you've already solved problems that I haven't seen Sketch address after years of requests. Paragraph styles + symbols + constraints is an absolute Godsend for UI design. If you guys can form some kind of integration with the likes of Zeplin, I'd never have to leave. :) Think that could ever be a possibility?

 

Seriously, guys, this is almost a shameful amount of goodness to sell for a mere $50. :)

[Seneca]

 

... you can apply paragraph styles to characters and character styles to paragraphs. You can also have character styles that are based on paragraph styles, and vice versa.

 

 

Thank you for such an exhaustive answer,

 

I'm struggling to understand the rationale behind it though. Why would anyone want to apply a paragraph style to a character?

 

Paragraph styles affect the appearance of the whole paragraph, so if you apply Heading 1,  you will only apply bold and size, and possibly colour to the selected letters. The other characteristics like centre text are left arbitrarily out of the equation. This might be very confusing.

 

If in the future you want to add search and replace character/paragraph styles from one style to another this may prove problematic too. I hope I am wrong here.

 

I like the fact that we can create Base styles. This may be extremely useful for grouping of styles as you suggest or it may prove very useful for importing CSS styles (if that facility is provided) to the project. I refer to this as "contextual styles" because for example a style may have a number of Heading 1's depending where in style hierarchy it is in.

 

It would be great if you could briefly describe "Figures" in the Text Styles.

Thanks,

[Seneca]

Incidentally, it might be worth spelling out how the test style font traits are supposed to work. If the style sets the Font family, then you can use the Font traits control to set the font used exactly. In this case Affinity will offer the list of named traits from the font file, and there should be no font matching (as long as the font is installed).

 

I really think this is a very good idea. I found myself re-defining Character Styles a number of occasions just because I changed a fond and Bold, Italic, etc wouldn't hold true anymore. 

Thanks

[000]

As I understand it, and please, feel free to correct me, if I'm wrong, Affinity offers only one kind of style, "Text Style", and you can configure whatever you want want in this one kind of style. The two settings for paragraph and character are, in my understanding, simply a sorting mechanism, that help the user identifying their styles faster.

In my opinion, this is great -- not only does it make the design of styles simpler, it also allows to link styles together exactly as I need them, without the restriction of having to think about which options are available in which kind of style: Every option is available anywhere.

I am looking forward to using this in catalogues and books to keep them in register by simply assigning a line height to one single base style and use this as base for all other styles -- every style will use the same height and I don't need to calculate or double-check if everything is in order. Also, if I want to change the line-height, I simply adjust the base setting and all styles in the entire pubication are updated.

It's a new concept (similar to CSS styles) and all of us need to get used to it, but when you think about it, it makes sense and is almost genius in it's versatility. Sheer elegance in it's simplicity.

[Dave Harris]

I'm struggling to understand the rationale behind it though. Why would anyone want to apply a paragraph style to a character?

Because even a paragraph style can have formatting that may be useful for ranges of characters. And for example, you might have a style called "Caption" that you apply to paragraphs that are captions to illustrations, and then when you refer to one of those illustrations in the body of your document, you can use the same style for the referring text. Or a style based on that style.

 

You don't have to use it if you don't want to. We've tried to make it so it doesn't get in the way if you don't use it.

 

It would be great if you could briefly describe "Figures" in the Text Styles.

 

The Typography > Figures page of the Edit Text Style dialog refers to the OpenType features. Normally in our main Typography panel we only expose OpenType features that the current font and selection supports. For text styles, we may not know what the font or selection will be, so we have to expose everything possible. Which turns out to be quite a lot.

[evtonic3]

Can't wait for a text styles demo, these posts on here are painfully hard to understand.