[APu Current Status] Would you introduce GREP Styles, Toolbar/Studio Customization, Ctrl/Cmd + drag to move?

[Fantomas.CZ]

Hi everyone, especially Affinity Staff!

After searching and finding several abandoned posts for older version, I'd like to ask for a current update, if you are planning to introduce following options:

• GREP Styles. It has been quite extensively discussed in older versions, but no clear word has been said, whether it might be introduced. Could you please comment on this? 
• Toolbar/Studio Customization. In working on my books, what I change the most is: font + text size (no issue here), text language, paragraph properties like indents and space before/after. In InDesign, all of those functions are conveniently placed in the toolbar above the workspace, but in Affinity Publisher, I need to keep switching between the Character and Paragraph Studio, which eats up a lot of time and effort. Would you be willing to let us customize that? I would gladly sacrifice another row of icons in the toolbar to get the language/paragraph spacing options right there... Maybe some presets like in ID (Essential, Typography etc.) would be a nice idea too.
• Ctrl/Cmd + drag to move. While in editing mode, I often need to move a picture or resize the textbox. In InDesign, this is a simple matter of pressing Ctr/Cmd and just drag or resize, and then I'm back in the editing mode. Meanwhile in APu, I need to press Esc several times in order to really quit the editing mode (once usually isn't enough, for some reason), then press V, then move/resize, and double click to get back in the editing mode. This is definitely not more practical. Or is there some patent preventing Affinity to introduce this? 

I love Affinity Publisher, there are many things that it does better than InDesign, but those are features sorely missed, and I'm quite sure, I'm not the only one who misses them. Maybe that Canva merger could result into something good and actually useful? 

Thanks for any answers, I mean, it's quite frustrating to actually pay for the software, but still not be able to reach anyone from the support team... And I'm quite sure that I'm not the only one to have such questions.

Cheers, have a nice day!

[walt.farrell]

Generally Serif will not comment on their future plans at all, and generally they avoid commenting on requests in this part of the forum. 

[Fantomas.CZ]

1 minute ago, walt.farrell said:

and generally they avoid commenting on requests in this part of the forum. 

I can sort of understand the first, as this way they won't be bothered with questions on when will this and that be done. However they could throw us a bone, or say something like this will never be done, we are planning to do this in next two years or similar things. I guess I have seen this around here already.

Anyway, in what part of the forum do they comment on requests? Thanks.

[walt.farrell]

5 minutes ago, Fantomas.CZ said:

Anyway, in what part of the forum do they comment on requests?

In other parts of the forum, such as the Questions or Bugs sections, they may comment. But the comment will only be of the form "we don't give information on future functions". Here, generally, they won't even do that.

[loukash]

2 hours ago, Fantomas.CZ said:

Ctrl/Cmd + drag to move. While in editing mode, I often need to move a picture or resize the textbox. In InDesign, this is a simple matter of pressing Ctr/Cmd and just drag or resize, and then I'm back in the editing mode. Meanwhile in APu, I need to press Esc several times in order to really quit the editing mode (once usually isn't enough, for some reason), then press V, then move/resize, and double click to get back in the editing mode.

Hover over the bounding box, the cursor will change and you can resize and move as you see fit. Works e.g. with the Text and Shape tools.
When using e.g. the Pen tool, hold Cmd to temporarily change to the Node tool mode, then "Select All" (Cmd-A) nodes, then you can move your curve as if you were in the Move tool.

[MikeTO]

+1 for Grep styles

2 hours ago, Fantomas.CZ said:

• Ctrl/Cmd + drag to move. While in editing mode, I often need to move a picture or resize the textbox. In InDesign, this is a simple matter of pressing Ctr/Cmd and just drag or resize, and then I'm back in the editing mode. Meanwhile in APu, I need to press Esc several times in order to really quit the editing mode (once usually isn't enough, for some reason), then press V, then move/resize, and double click to get back in the editing mode. This is definitely not more practical. Or is there some patent preventing Affinity to introduce this? 

You don't need to switch to the Move tool to move or scale a text frame. Unlike most apps, Affinity allows you to move and scale any object without changing tools. If you're editing text, click any other object such as a picture once to select it and then drag on its edges to move it or drag its handles to scale it. Then click back on the text frame to continue your work.

2 hours ago, Fantomas.CZ said:

• Toolbar/Studio Customization. In working on my books, what I change the most is: font + text size (no issue here), text language, paragraph properties like indents and space before/after. In InDesign, all of those functions are conveniently placed in the toolbar above the workspace, but in Affinity Publisher, I need to keep switching between the Character and Paragraph Studio, which eats up a lot of time and effort. Would you be willing to let us customize that? I would gladly sacrifice another row of icons in the toolbar to get the language/paragraph spacing options right there... Maybe some presets like in ID (Essential, Typography etc.) would be a nice idea too.

Customizing the contextual toolbar might be difficult because commands are added dynamically based on the selected tool and selected text or objects. While I like Affinity's approach and think it's better in some ways than the "traditional" approach pioneered by Quark in the 1990s and still used by InDesign, the character and paragraph attributes I need when working on my books aren't there like they are there in InDesign. So like you, I'm always switching between the character and paragraph panels because there isn't room for both on a laptop screen. I think UX designers should be forced to write long books on a 14" screen. 🙂 There is no much more that could be done with the context toolbar. Maybe in v3.

[Fantomas.CZ]

On 12/12/2024 at 7:35 PM, MikeTO said:

You don't need to switch to the Move tool to move or scale a text frame. Unlike most apps, Affinity allows you to move and scale any object without changing tools. If you're editing text, click any other object such as a picture once to select it and then drag on its edges to move it or drag its handles to scale it. Then click back on the text frame to continue your work.

Thanks for pointing that out, I didn't know! Of course, it doesn't work for images that are in a layer beneath the text frame, but at least that's something. I would still prefer the easy temporary activation of the move tool...

On 12/12/2024 at 7:35 PM, MikeTO said:

Customizing the contextual toolbar might be difficult because commands are added dynamically based on the selected tool and selected text or objects. While I like Affinity's approach and think it's better in some ways than the "traditional" approach pioneered by Quark in the 1990s and still used by InDesign, the character and paragraph attributes I need when working on my books aren't there like they are there in InDesign. So like you, I'm always switching between the character and paragraph panels because there isn't room for both on a laptop screen. I think UX designers should be forced to write long books on a 14" screen. 🙂 There is no much more that could be done with the context toolbar. Maybe in v3.

Yes, in the context toolbar. Of course, there could also be a choice of workplaces or something like that, where I could switch between what Affinity has prepared, and something that I define and makes actually sense for me. But judging by this being a part of InDesign for a long time, as well as your and mine experience, it might actually make sense for much more people than just me.

For all my new projects, I have switched to Affinity Publisher completely, but recently I've been forced to work with InDesign again for a while, which has reminded me, what is better in Affinity (font subsystem, multiple selection! etc.), and what is better in InDesign (mainly above mentioned). And especially the interface improvements should be fairly easy to implement. I don't know about the GREP styles, but for me, it would be sufficient to sort out the orphaned one-syllable prepositions. Which is something very easily solved with GREP styles, but the paragraph composer should be able to sort this out too... I hope version 3 will come with something like this and not in a few years.