Few Questions Regarding Text-to-Curve Workflow in Designer

[SKT7]

Hi, I have almost completely moved to AD and AP and really enjoying it - really thank the Affinity team for creating such great tools and yesterday's 1.6 update.

 

I am facing 2 workflow issues while converting fonts in an AD document when converting text to curve while creating PDFs for sending out to vendors.

 

1. I am not able to convert grouped text blocks together at one go - I have to un-group them then hit ctrl+enter in order convert them - regrouping in the right order is very difficult - esp. for a complex document.
Is there a way to convert text to curve without removing the group hierarchy?

 

2. Is there a way to quickly identify text and curves from converted text easily? In Illustrator it can be easily done in the view-outline mode - the text would in solid and converted curve would be outline mode.
 

 

 

[MEB]

Hi saikat,

Welcome to Affinity Forums

1. ⌘ (cmd) + drag a marquee selection around the text objects on canvas to force select them no matter their layer hierarchy. If you want to select (or add) them individually to the selection press and hold ⇧ (shift) in conjunction with ⌘ (cmd)

 

2. No, sorry. Feel free to create a new thread in the Feature Requests section to request it.

[toltec]

2. If you select multiple objects, the selection indicators are different.

 

In the top (converted to curves) the blue selection shows as a box around the "text" (curves). In the case of text objects, the blue selection shows around each letter.

[R C-R]

When multiple text objects are selected with the Move Tool (whether individually in a group or not) there are so many items on the Context toolbar that unless your display is very, very wide, there will not be enough room to display the last few items, including the Convert to Curves button. You can expose them in a menu dropdown by clicking on the ≫ icon at the right end of the toolbar if for some reason it is not convenient to use Layer menu > Covert to Curves or a keyboard shortcut to do that.

 

I keep forgetting that dropdown menu feature exists, so since I prefer to use the Context toolbar wherever possible, I have to go looking through the main menu choices to find the "missing" commands. 

[SKT7]

MEB: Thanks! Thats a nice trick to use Ctrl selection - didn't think about that! thanks!  I will start a new feature request about the 2nd one.

Toltec: Thanks. Yes, that's a good trick - but it needs the text to be un-grouped or ctrl+selected - and for a large and complex document - it's not as easy to notice as it's in Illustrator.

R C-R: Thank you for the reply. I didn't know that convert to curve button exist in the context menu bar!  But that drop down menu visible only if there is a un-grouped text object among the selection - and if you use it it converts only the un-grouped text object but not the grouped one, layer menu has the same behavior - Convert to Curves option is inactive for grouped text blocks (at least on Windows). MEB's tip is effective though - and much quicker.