Things I can't do in Affinity Designer

[misc33]

I've just completed a large project ready for printing; my first using Affinity Designer. While working, I made a series of notes as I came across things I couldn't do, or which behaved in a manner I didn't expect. I'm happy to post feature requests, but I thought I'd ask here first in case some of these things have been disregarded, or perhaps there's a way I don't know of to do what I'm trying to do.

 

 

 

THINGS I WANT TO BE ABLE TO DO IN AFFINITY DESIGNER:

 

☐Hover pen tool over anchor point (which becomes visible at that point) at end of unjoined line without first selecting the path, and click to activate it and continue drawing.

 

☐Join two open paths by clicking on each in turn with the pen tool, rather than having to select two paths and choose the Join command.

 

☐Eye dropper - copy styles to selected object or text, as well as colours and gradients.

 

☐Continuous export in Export Persona: it's always greyed out; why? This would be a really useful feature if I could use it.

 

☐Insert in front/behind/inside: keyboard shortcuts please

 

☐Stroke presets to click on; also up / down arrow to change stroke by preset increments. Is there a keyboard shortcut to change the point size up/down by single rather than double increments?

 

☐Use the direct selection tool to select a segment of a path, and copy just that segment. When I try this with the node tool, the whole shape is selected rather than just the part I wanted. I'd rather not have to drag a marquee around the part I'm trying to select; just choosing a couple of anchor points should do the trick in my opinion.

 

☐Command+Shift+{  is supposed to be the shortcut for range left text. Half the time it performs an operation called Move Nodes to Bottom - what even is that, and why does it get in the way of range left text?

 

☐Default leading is the same as the font size - needs to be defined as a percentage, eg. 120% of font size. This is really important! I really hope this is just a hidden option that I haven't yet been able to find.

 

☐Document setup box should close when Return (or another key, like esc) is pressed. It’s super annoying having to pick up the mouse each time to close the dialogue box.

 

☐Have a padlock as part of each layer to simplify locking and unlocking layers. I’m aware I can select the padlock at the top of the layers panel, and that I can CTRL click to lock - but as I’m doing this so often, one more movement of the mouse or an extra click really does feel cumbersome and not fluid at all. 

[Callum]

Hi Misc33,

 

The continuous export option becomes available when you have exported your slice at least once.You can definite Text Leading as a percent by selecting percent from the attached dropdown menu in the Paragraph tab. The issue you are experiencing with the ( Command+Shift+{ ) shortcut has been fixed in our latest beta it looks as though it was clashing with another shortcut that has now been changed :). 

 

The rest of your points are more feature requests than questions I would advise posting them there to be considered for future updates as the developers monitor it very closely!

 

Thanks

C

[JokeRat]

☐Document setup box should close when Return (or another key, like esc) is pressed. It’s super annoying having to pick up the mouse each time to close the dialogue box.

 

This works for me with both Return and Esc. (I use the current windows beta)

[misc33]

Callum, thank you! It'll be great to get continuous export up and running.  I wasn't expecting leading rules to be in Paragraph, but it makes sense now that I know it's there. I'll get to and post the rest of my points in the appropriate place.

 

JokeRat, I just tried again closing the Document setup box, and it worked as you described. Not sure why I was having a problem before.

[Dave Harris]

☐Default leading is the same as the font size - needs to be defined as a percentage, eg. 120% of font size. This is really important! I really hope this is just a hidden option that I haven't yet been able to find.

 

Just to expand on this: our default leading is taken from the font file (the LineGap value from the hhea table), so it will only be the same as the font size if that is what the font designer specified. From the Paragraph panel you can set it to a percentage of the font size, as Callum says, and you can also set it to an absolute points value, or several other options. Setting it on the paragraph should make it easier to get consistent vertical spacing across the paragraph. There is also a Leading Override on the Character panel, which is intended to fix special situations such as when you have different fonts in a line and their heights don't match visually, or you are setting an equation or something that needs extra vertical space.

[Narsilion]

very important for working with vectors:

• possibility to select nodes from multiple paths (with the white arrow) and then moving/aligning only them