Margin View Toggle

[ASUNDER]

I have my margins the same colour as my guides.
When 'Show Margins' is on it looks like this:

When I toggle off 'Show Margins' it looks like this:

Did you notice a difference?  Ya me neither.
Could you make the 'show margins' being toggled off allow the other guides to travel to the edge of the spread please.
Like this:

Unless I'm missing something, as to why it won't do that.
Also if someone knows why sometimes objects won't snap to my margins.  ?  (They are always enabled in the snap settings).  Is there a circumstance that numbs the margin snapping?

[GarryP]

8 minutes ago, ASUNDER said:

Did you notice a difference?  Ya me neither.

You can change the colour of the Margins and/or Guides via menu “View → Guides” to make them easier to distinguish.

8 minutes ago, ASUNDER said:

Could you make the 'show margins' being toggled off allow the other guides to travel to the edge of the spread please.

The Guides and Margins are separate things and the Guides naturally extend to the spread extents, not just within the margins, unless you are talking about Column Guides which are a different to Guides and always only extend to the extents of the Margins.

8 minutes ago, ASUNDER said:

Also if someone knows why sometimes objects won't snap to my margins.  ?  (They are always enabled in the snap settings).  Is there a circumstance that numbs the margin snapping?

Can you record a full-screen video (in which we can see the snapping options) showing us what happens?

[ASUNDER]

20 minutes ago, GarryP said:

You can change the colour of the Margins and/or Guides via menu “View → Guides” to make them easier to distinguish.

I did note that I made them the same colour (on purpose).  My mention that it "looks the same" is that the guides didn't change.
They are acting as though the margins are still showing when they aren't.  I'm wondering why I still have a box around my spread when the margins are hidden.  What is maintaining that box on the screen when the margins are hidden?  What is containing my other lines?

I can't figure out what makes a column guide respect the margin and why a guide doesn't.

And how this can be controlled.
Maybe some check boxes in the margin settings to decide what does or does not respect the margins when they are shown or hidden.
And a little box to have them all on or off.

Maybe I should make my margins purple, but the blue makes me feel like I'm a technical pro; like I'm working in an autocad program for Staedtler or something.

20 minutes ago, GarryP said:

Can you record a full-screen video (in which we can see the snapping options) showing us what happens?

It's possible that since my colours are the same (my first example pic same as second one) that the times it wouldn't snap is because margins were hidden.  But I doubt it.
I already tried to reproduce the issue but can't seem to get it.  It might be when I have a group of things that have the 'Outline' FX enabled on the group itself.  I'll try some more to reproduce the problem.

[GarryP]

5 minutes ago, ASUNDER said:

I can't figure out what makes a column guide respect the margin and why a guide doesn't.

 

They deliberately work differently because they are for different things.

Guides are for the whole of the spread so they extend to the sides of the spread while Columns Guides are for page layouts and, therefore, they only extend to the Margins.

5 minutes ago, ASUNDER said:

I'll try some more to reproduce the problem.

Without being able to see what’s happening, and the circumstances in which it’s happening, with an issue that can have so many different causes, it will be difficult for us to advise without simply guessing, so a full-screen video is often a good way for us to see what you can see.

[walt.farrell]

2 minutes ago, ASUNDER said:

I did note that I made them the same colour (on purpose).

While you're trying to figure out what's going on, and how things are working, I suggest that it would be less confusing to make the Margins a distinctly different color. Then when you toggle them on/off it will be clear whether they're on, and will be clear exactly what you're seeing. 

Later, once you (and we, for diagnostic purposes) understand what is happening, changing them to be the same would be fine.

---

In your initial two screenshots, you have only one vertical "ruler guide" and one horizontal "ruler guide". They intersect at the center of the page, and run to the edge of the page.

Can you show us a screenshot of your current column guide settings? And perhaps Save your file and upload it for us to look at directly?

 

[ASUNDER]

37 minutes ago, GarryP said:

it will be difficult for us to advise without simply guessing, so a full-screen video is often a good way for us to see what you can see.

Ya, well until I can reproduce it again, I'm not sure that it's a persistent thing.  Maybe I had some settings wrong in the past.  I was hoping it was a simple fix, that I had a setting wrong somewhere.  I'll post a vid if I can reproduce it.
But right now it is snapping to margins whether the margins are hidden or not.  And even the 'snap to margins' is disabled and it's still snapping to margins.
I'm having the opposite problem.  😅  I have no control over my margins right now.

I turned snap options off one by one and now I have everything turned off.

And it's still snapping to this mysterious box that's around my project.  It can't even be the margins; those are hidden (and are purple now).
Can't be bleed.  I have the bleed set to 0 pixels.  Don't know what 'Spread Origin' is, but that's set to 0.

36 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

While you're trying to figure out what's going on, and how things are working, I suggest that it would be less confusing to make the Margins a distinctly different color. Then when you toggle them on/off it will be clear whether they're on, and will be clear exactly what you're seeing. 

Ya true.  I just made them purple, but that's not helping very much.  I wish we could define the stroke width of all these guides.

36 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

And perhaps Save your file and upload it for us to look at directly?

Ok well, I'm just testing out this problem right now so I only have a few shapes on the go.

(EDIT: Removed wrong attachment)
 

 

Edited August 22, 2024 by ASUNDER
Removed Attachment

[GarryP]

3 minutes ago, ASUNDER said:

Ok well, I'm just testing out this problem right now so I only have a few shapes on the go.

That’s not an Affinity file, it’s a lock file.

Close, saving if necessary, the Affinity file and then please share the actual file.

[ASUNDER]

Update: The mysterious box is my column guides, that just so happen to make a box at the same place as the margins.
So things are snapping to the column guides whether I want them to or not.  Maybe in the past I had 'Snap to column guides' disabled and the system treated the margins the same, seeing as they were on the same pixels.

[ASUNDER]

My fault.  I clicked on the first thing that had that name.
Maybe the 'lock' files are temp files for when the project is still in use.  Odd that it let me upload it; maybe google chrome made a temp of a temp.

Margins Test.afdesign

[GarryP]

5 minutes ago, ASUNDER said:

Maybe in the past I had 'Snap to column guides' disabled and the system treated the margins the same, seeing as they were on the same pixels.

In Designer (I haven't tried the other applications yet) I can’t see a “Snap to Column Guides” option the snapping options so maybe Column Guides are automatically snapped to whether we want them to be or not.

Seems to be more of an accidental omission rather than a deliberate inclusion if that’s the case.

[GarryP]

10 minutes ago, ASUNDER said:

Maybe the 'lock' files are temp files for when the project is still in use.

The lock files are there to stop multiple users opening the same document.

10 minutes ago, ASUNDER said:

Odd that it let me upload it; maybe google chrome made a temp of a temp.

The forum software doesn’t really care what type of file you upload (except it has an annoying ‘tic’ where it sometimes refuses to upload ‘perfectly normal’ images from time to time).

[GarryP]

I have a feeling that the problem is that, when Serif added Column Guides to Designer (and Photo), after they were introduced in Publisher, they omitted (maybe accidentally) the ability for the user to not snap to them. That’s what I’m getting from my testing anyway.

If this is true, I’m not sure whether this would be classed as a bug or something needing a feature request.

Edited August 22, 2024 by GarryP

[ASUNDER]

17 minutes ago, GarryP said:

If this is true, I’m not sure whether this would be classed as a bug or something needing a feature request.

The request is to be able to control if the column guides respect the margin or not.
And also a bit of info on what's going on with my margin snapping.

Here, this circle won't snap to the sides of the margin but will snap to the top of it.  ?

Margins Test 2.afdesign

[ASUNDER]

Sorry, I meant when doing a Ctrl + Shift resize on it to make it bigger while keeping aspect ratio.  It won't snap to the sides of the margin.

I just disabled 'snap to guides' and it's still snapping to the guides.  'Immediate Layers' , 'Candidate List' doesn't matter.  I think there's a bug here somewhere.
And you're right, I'm not seeing a 'Column Guides' snap option either.

[GarryP]

There are so many possibilities we really need to see what you are doing to be able to try and replicate it ourselves.

Having the document is great but we don’t know exactly what you are doing with it.

For example, which handle are you Ctrl+Shift dragging to resize and which Margin side are you expecting it to snap to?

As mentioned above, a video will give us more information.

[ASUNDER]

Here.  The circle won't snap to the sides but will snap to the top and bottom.
This has been a problem for me when my finished image is wider than it is tall.  And I want to control its size by snapping it to the margin, which I keep consistent.

 

 

In the video I forgot to show my snap settings.

[GarryP]

Thanks for the video; that makes it much clearer what you are trying to do.

I’m not sure if snapping is supposed to work the way you think it should work while resizing.

I think someone from Serif might need to give an official opinion on this one.

In the meantime, you should be able to resize using the side which is relevant to the direction of movement that you are trying to snap to. i.e. If you want to snap to the side while resizing, drag a side node.

[ASUNDER]

2 hours ago, GarryP said:

I’m not sure if snapping is supposed to work the way you think it should work while resizing.

I've discovered it's not the margin's fault.  The Ctrl + Shift resize (from the top middle handle, as in the video) will only snap to the top of its bounding box.
It won't snap to any other side.  This is no good.

[ASUNDER]

I thought of a workaround to my resize problem, but it doesn't work.  Thought that I could use the transform options to resize the width and keep the aspect ratio.
For me having a spread that's 640 x 640 pixels, my margins being 32 pixels each; I could select-all, then hit Enter to open the transform dialogue.  Then put 546 in the width box and 'keep aspect ratio' but sadly that's missing as well.

So that will be another feedback request.  Assuming the mods read everything, or should I make a new request.

[ASUNDER]

The absolute transform, with keep aspect ratio, is already in the 'Transform' window (just not the Enter key = Move/Duplicate dialogue), my bad.