Perplexity to the rescue

[Poussart]

I have often looked for answers to precise technical questions and could not find answer in this forum or elsewhere. I have come to find that perplexity.ai had a superb knowledge of Affinity. For instance, was confused navigating in the character panel while wishing to interactively change the outline witdth of a letter. Perplexity explains "Select the text you want to modify. Switch to the Node Tool. This is crucial, as the stroke properties become accessible when using this tool. With the text layer selected and the Node Tool active, look for the stroke properties in the context toolbar at the top of the screen. In the context toolbar, you should see options to adjust the stroke width. This is typically shown as a numerical value that you can increase or decrease."

affinity.ai has become part of my essential toolbox.

[MikeTO]

Using the Stroke panel, you can set text stroke width without selecting the Node tool. The Node tool can only change the stroke width of selected text objects while the Stroke panel can also change the width for a selected text range.

[Poussart]

47 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

Using the Stroke panel, you can set text stroke width without selecting the Node tool. The Node tool can only change the stroke width of selected text objects while the Stroke panel can also change the width for a selected text range.

 

[MikeTO]

@Poussart Hi, you quoted me but didn't actually write anything new. Did you mean to post that?

[GarryP]

11 hours ago, Poussart said:

For instance, was confused navigating in the character panel while wishing to interactively change the outline witdth of a letter. Perplexity explains "Select the text you want to modify. Switch to the Node Tool. This is crucial, as the stroke properties become accessible when using this tool. With the text layer selected and the Node Tool active, look for the stroke properties in the context toolbar at the top of the screen. In the context toolbar, you should see options to adjust the stroke width. This is typically shown as a numerical value that you can increase or decrease."

Those instructions are sub-optimal, at best – as MikeTO said above, you don’t need to use the Node Tool to change the Stroke Width of text.

I would strongly advise against taking any machine-learning-generated answers as being correct.

It’s probably best if you don’t promote that site as being a good way for people to get answers about the Affinity applications.

[Poussart]

Thank you. By upgrating the paragraph style taging the changed word/words with this outline modification, the change is also easily propagated.

This is just an example of information I have found very easy to locate with perplexity.ai. An other one is in processing svg maps. By its dialogue-like behavior, it helps the user in phrasing a request as if he/she was adressing an expert. It has digested considerable information on affinity (and zillions other aeas) and includes pointers to the references it uses. Amazing. 

[GarryP]

1 hour ago, Poussart said:

By upgrating the paragraph style taging the changed word/words with this outline modification, the change is also easily propagated.

I have no idea what that means.

You said earlier that:

15 hours ago, Poussart said:

I have come to find that perplexity.ai had a superb knowledge of Affinity.

But your next few sentences in that paragraph were proof that the above statement is false.

Therefore, as I said before, I don’t think you should be telling people to use a ‘service’ that gives bad advice.

I’ve sometimes given bad ‘advice’ myself in these forums but people are able to question me about that ‘advice’ and give proof if I am wrong where necessary.

If people use some general-purpose machine-learning service to get specific technical information then they will often find that the information isn’t usable, and could even be dangerous.

However, it’s up to Serif to say if they will let you continue to advertise this service in their forums.

 

[PaulEC]

9 minutes ago, GarryP said:

I have no idea what that means.

Maybe that post was written by AI. 😆

[thomaso]

43 minutes ago, Poussart said:

as if he/she was adressing an expert. (…) Amazing. 

"as if an expert":

Your "amazing" partner site (which auto-opened in German to me)  just recommended below a response regarding text stroke in an additional answer the use of the unit "em" in APub. https://www.perplexity.ai/search/kann-ich-eine-text-unterstreic-38mcVEjTR.S6IyfUnCHU0w

Wählen Sie bei den Unterstreichungsoptionen "em" als Einheit aus.
[= In the underline options, select "em" as the unit.]

It also seems to have issues with its (auto-)translations in the German version (labeled as "Standard German" in its language menu) where it translates the tooltip "Collapse" for the side bar as "Zusammenbruch" which would mean a quite dramatically action (~ "break down" / "cave in") rather than just "Zuklappen" as the opposite of "unfold" … apart from its unusual translation of the "Home" button as "Zuhause" (~ at home).

[Poussart]

In my initial comment I did not include that exercising critical judgment in an ABSOLUTE must. This is well-known - there is a ton of litterature on this - and I should have reiterated it. I certaintly do not wish to "promote" perplexity.ai or any other current AI scheme as a blind substitute for human intelligence and creativity in the general area targetted by Affinity.