After using AD trial

[kehom]

Hello,

 

I have installed Affinity Designer trial with the main purpose of diagramming my origami work.

 

The first impression I got was simple "WOW". The way I helps me correctly position everything is absolutely amazing!

 

Then I went to experiment drawing a simple origami diagram and got into two problems:

1 - Creating two different line patterns (dash-dash or dash-dot-dot) was not very fun. Actually, the dash-dot-dot was only possible through the use of brushes, which was not ideal (no way to define the phase). Then, actually messing with the number to reach the ideal pattern (size and gap) was not fun! I really like how Inkscape does in this case (there is a dropdown menu with all the available patterns - and I can add to it). Is there any plan to change how to define the line styles/patterns?

 

2 - This is the problem that no workaround could solve properly: no arrowheads! OK, I have seen that it's on the roadmap but not knowing if this feature will actually be available within the next update makes me hold up (heck, the first forum posts I have seen about this date back to 2015). In regards to the arrowheads, I will mention again Inkscape as it allows me to define my own styles and provide me with dropdowns. That is a must as I do need different arrowhead styles.

 

In short, in current state I unfortunately have no use for AD!

Should at least the arrowheads be implemented I may be able to use it. By the way, whenever that happens will I be able to trial it again before buying?

 

Many thanks in advance and I'm really looking forward for improvements!

 

[gdenby]

I tried to figure out if there might be a synergy between the 2 programs for your purposes.

 

I'm a clod when it comes to using Inkscape, but I made a couple of dashed lines w. it and added arrows. Exported those as .svg files and opened them in AD. I don't know if I missed something, but the dashed lines came thru fine, but not the arrowheads attached to them. ? don't know why. Seems the arrowhead is actually a reference to an url which isn't pasted into the .svg file. So, I don't know that the arrowhead implementation would work w/o a net connection, something I frequently lack.

 

So while making dashed lines in AD is really quite trivial, (see the stroke dialogue panel) and variations made  can be saved as styles, the arrowheads are still a work around. On a Mac, the system symbol viewer allows on to copy any font arrow into an AD file, where it can be easily be manipulated for diagram purposes. Or built in shape combinations can be used, but it does take a couple of seconds.

[Alfred]

Creating two different line patterns (dash-dash or dash-dot-dot) was not very fun. Actually, the dash-dot-dot was only possible through the use of brushes, which was not ideal (no way to define the phase).

 

You might like to refer to JimmyJack's post here, and A_B_C's reply in the next post to that thread.

[R C-R]

I'm a clod when it comes to using Inkscape, but I made a couple of dashed lines w. it and added arrows. Exported those as .svg files and opened them in AD. I don't know if I missed something, but the dashed lines came thru fine, but not the arrowheads attached to them. ?

I am not certain about this but I think the arrowhead issue occurs because there is no support in the SVG specification for any kind of arrowhead shapes for the ends of lines, polylines, or open paths, just three "stroke-linecap" shape attributes (butt, round, or square).

 

So minimally, for SVG export lines with arrowheads should be converted into SVG polygons or one of the path types above, with enough points (nodes) to define the outline shape of the arrowhead end(s) & connecting line segments.

 

I suspect this is part of why Affinity currently just has an Arrow tool that creates a closed polygonal shape -- arrowheads for lines would not be that hard to implement but would complicate exporting them to svg files.

[v_kyr]

The common way here for creating SVG arrowheads and polymarkers is usually to use <marker> elements. - See for examples ...

• How To Create SVG Arrowheads and Polymarkers
• The SVG marker element
• SVG arrowheads and turtles
• ... and so on ...

[kehom]

Hi! Thank you everyone!

 

When gdenby talked about importing SVG (which I didn't), I immediately started testing (specially the dash-dot-dot pattern). Once I dragged the SVG into AD, nice! I got the line with the pattern. However, it got there as an embedded document. I double clicked it thinking I would be able to edit the nodes and that resulted in a crash. So I tried directly opening the SVG file from the open menu/dialog and that also resulted in a crash. If it's of any interest I can upload said SVG file somewhere (or even paste the text in here - it's not that big).

 

 

You might like to refer to JimmyJack's post here, and A_B_C's reply in the next post to that thread.

Really clever workaround although a bit.. err, clunky!

 

I have thought about a workaround for the arrowheads:

1 - Create said arrowheads as objects

2 - Copy it and snap into the start or end of the line

3 - Rotate it

 

Can work but also clunky!

 

I have attached an image showing what I'm used to (when changing the line patterns).

After adding the file here I realized I forgot to add some lines with arrowheads...

Anyway, what I'm saying, a dropdown with a few preset patterns is way faster than changing 4 text boxes (Ok, maybe I'm just not used to this workflow...).

 

Again, thanks everyone for all the answers!

 

[R C-R]

The common way here for creating SVG arrowheads and polymarkers is usually to use <marker> elements. - See for examples ...

Thanks for the informative links! I know much less than I would like about the nuances of SVG elements & this will help. I should have guessed that there would be some way of defining (among other things) arrowheads in the standard but it never occurred to me look at markers. 

 

Anyway, armed with a (tiny bit of) knowledge from the first link, using a text editor I tried manually creating an svg file with a <defs> <marker> element. The resulting svg file opened OK in an old trial version of EasyDraw I have (I don't have Inkscape installed on my Mac) but not in AD.

 

In AD I got the same results as gdenby mentioned earlier: just the line but no arrowhead. From this I am guessing the AD currently does not recognize <marker> elements in SVG imports. Can anybody confirm that this is true?

[gdenby]

I mucked about some more, and saved the Inkscape file as a .pdf. It opened w. the arrowhead marker properly positioned on the dashed stroke, but available as a separate vector object.

 

The dashed line is correctly interpreted, and can be modified w. AD's dialogue. This means the dash samples from Inkscape could be saved as AD styles and picked as desired from the styles panel.

[v_kyr]

...

 

Anyway, armed with a (tiny bit of) knowledge from the first link, using a text editor I tried manually creating an svg file with a <defs> <marker> element. The resulting svg file opened OK in an old trial version of EasyDraw I have (I don't have Inkscape installed on my Mac) but not in AD.

 

In AD I got the same results as gdenby mentioned earlier: just the line but no arrowhead. From this I am guessing the AD currently does not recognize <marker> elements in SVG imports. Can anybody confirm that this is true?

 

You can open those hand edited SVG files in any of your browsers, in order to see how things should usually look.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<svg width="120" height="120" viewBox="0 0 120 120"
    xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1">

  <defs>
    <marker id="Triangle" viewBox="0 0 10 10" refX="1" refY="5"
        markerWidth="6" markerHeight="6" orient="auto">
      <path d="M 0 0 L 10 5 L 0 10 z" />
    </marker>
  </defs>  

  <polyline points="10,90 50,80 90,20" fill="none" stroke="black"
      stroke-width="2" marker-end="url(#Triangle)" />
</svg>

Yes it seems AD doesn't parse or can't interpret SVG <defs> and <marker> elements. That's a pity since every browser usually can do and it would be useful to have, probably also for writing then back (exporting) by AD internally own used and defined arrowheads and polymarkers styles into the SVG format.

[R C-R]

Thanks for the confirmation. I did try opening my test file in several browsers & they all displayed it properly. I even opened it converted to a bitmap using Graphic Converter, so it is quite disappointing that AD (& AP) ignores <defs> and <marker> svg elements.

[v_kyr]

Let me see, yes even my older GC9 version on the Mac here can deal with SVG quite good so far. When time permits have to check if LibreOffice Draw can handle that SVG stuff properly, which BTW seems to support a rich set of line with arrowhead drawing styles etc. and thus might be another useful candidate for doing more technical and diagram based drawings etc.