Designer: Expand stroke is completely broken

[MEB]

It doesn't work simply because it's a less common operation compared to changing their fill/stroke properties and so no code was written to accomplish this yet. It's not exactly a bug, more of an inconsistency. Feel free to create a thread in the Feature Requests section for this if you feel it's important for you.

[SteveMose]

Any update on this yet? I'm still experiencing the warp when trying to expand.

It seems to have been on a dev priority list for 2 years but is still an ongoing issue? 

[MEB]

Hi SteveMose,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
No updates yet. The dev teams were/are all quite busy and this is not something quick to fix.
In some cases increasing the scale of the objects, expading them, then scaling them down again to their original size might help.
I'm sorry for the inconvenience this is causing you. We are working as fast as possible to address the issues reported but due to limited dev resources/time some things will require more time than others.

[SteveMose]

Thanks MEB,

Hopefully it gets attention at some point, fairly important in a vector program, I'll stick to Illustrator for icon creation for now. 

Cheers.

[mredig]

Also running into this issue - seems a bit ridiculous that this seemingly common function is a low priority that's been waiting to get fixed for at least 6 months.

[WhiteX]

On 6/9/2018 at 1:33 AM, mredig said:

Also running into this issue - seems a bit ridiculous that this seemingly common function is a low priority that's been waiting to get fixed for at least 6 months.

@mredig It's been three years...

Please, we need a solution already.

[sarneeh]

I've also encountered this issue  Can I do anything to bump the priority of this problem? A vote or something?

[MEB]

Hi sarneeh,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
The developers are well aware of this issue (it has been reported by several users already) and i'm sure they will fix it as soon as they can however rewriting/revising the boolean operations/expand stroke code requires some effort and testing and may take some time. There's no vote system in place as we can't rely solely on users requests to decide what will be worked on. There's other things to take in consideration. Please bear with us. We will get there.

[m.vlad]

This is also present on the windows version of Affinity.

[Xavez]

On 7/30/2018 at 9:40 PM, MEB said:

Hi sarneeh,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
The developers are well aware of this issue (it has been reported by several users already) and i'm sure they will fix it as soon as they can however rewriting/revising the boolean operations/expand stroke code requires some effort and testing and may take some time. There's no vote system in place as we can't rely solely on users requests to decide what will be worked on. There's other things to take in consideration. Please bear with us. We will get there.

Would it help if I said that this is the one thing keeping our entire company from switching to Affinity Designer full-time? If you’re drawing vector icons for UI work at 24pt, you really need expand stroke to work. Otherwise you might as well draw them in a different programme.

[MEB]

Hi Xavez,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Thanks for your feedback. We are aware this is essencial for some types of work but as said, the dev teams are already doing the best they can.

[SteveMose]

57 minutes ago, Xavez said:

Would it help if I said that this is the one thing keeping our entire company from switching to Affinity Designer full-time? If you’re drawing vector icons for UI work at 24pt, you really need expand stroke to work. Otherwise you might as well draw them in a different programme.

I think you're better off looking for an alternative platform for precise vector asset creation. This has been an issue for years, I doubt it's getting fixed anytime soon. 

[Xavez]

1 hour ago, MEB said:

Hi Xavez,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Thanks for your feedback. We are aware this is essencial for some types of work but as said, the dev teams are already doing the best they can.

Should I read this as "UI design asset creation is not a priority for us"? If so, I want my money back, because that was the promise

[MEB]

Hi Xavez,
No, not at all. It simply means it's an issue that's not easy/quick to solve, it implies revise/rewrite a good chunk of code and testing and there wasn't yet time to pick it up because the developers have been all quite busy with other (also important) tasks. I'm sorry for the inconvenience this is causing you. I've bumped this issue quite a few times already but that's all i can do.

[Xavez]

5 minutes ago, MEB said:

Hi Xavez,
No, not at all. It simply means it's an issue that's not easy/quick to solve, it implies revise/rewrite a good chunk of code and testing and there wasn't yet time to pick it up because the developers have been all quite busy with other (also important) tasks. I'm sorry for the inconvenience this is causing you. I've bumped this issue quite a few times already but that's all i can do.

I get that software has bugs, and that you cannot allocate 100% of resources to bug resolution. And I get that this is a difficult problem to solve. What I don’t get is how this bug can exist for years without even getting a hint of a timeline for when it will be solved. It’s not a cosmetic bug, it’s a major basic feature that doesn’t work reliably. It’s the equivalent of a car of which the lights work, sometimes.

The basic promise of Designer is that it is great vector editing software. And for 99% it is, but this is a major oversight, not a tiny bug. Whoever is doing product management is either drunk, or doesn’t understand how much this feature is used, and how reliable the results should be.

[raglet]

Let me start by saying that I am a huge advocate of Affinity products and I own Designer and Photo for Mac and iPad. We're coming up on 4 years of having this bug (critical IMHO) and all I still see is @MEB's copy-pasted response from years ago. Now I get that this is a harder bug to fix but it seems to have been completely ignored. And if it has been ignored, I think it's very misleading to have the word 'Icons' listed on the website. Even 'pixel perfect' is quite misleading considering this bug. And as people pointed, there are free and cheaper vector apps that handle Expanding of strokes far more gracefully than Designer does. Many icon designers purchase this as an illustrator alternative and as it stands today, Designer is NOT suited for icon design.

I completely agree with @Xavez's comments above. This is definitely a major oversight!

[Oval]

On 2. August 2018 at 5:22 PM, Xavez said:

software has bugs […] for years

The problem is that Affinity Help does not clarify when / that functions do not work exactly.

[Alfred]

30 minutes ago, Oval said:

The problem is that Affinity Help does not clarify when / that functions do not work exactly.

I don’t think it’s the job of the Help to do that.

[Oval]

On 15. August 2018 at 11:42 AM, αℓƒяє∂ said:

I don’t think it’s the job of the Help to do that.

Perhaps the launch screen?

[Mark Ingram]

FYI, the exact same discussion is being had in the Windows forum:

 

[Xavez]

35 minutes ago, Mark Ingram said:

FYI, the exact same discussion is being had in the Windows forum:

 

And the exact same bug exists on Designer for iOS, but that was probably a given.

[raglet]

Jeez, we have radio silence on this from the Affinity team. It's quite disheartening, to be honest. And we have moderators pointing us to other threads where more people are frustrated about the same issue. I'm a big advocate of supporting smaller companies and have got many of my friends and clients to purchase Affinity products but this is really disappointing. Obviously, there is no compulsion to do anything based on user request but I think it's very irresponsible to say that you're working on a fix and 4 years on you're still saying the same thing. Say it won't be fixed in the near future or at least give us some information that is less vague.

[Xavez]

 

13 minutes ago, raglet said:

Jeez, we have radio silence on this from the Affinity team. It's quite disheartening, to be honest. And we have moderators pointing us to other threads where more people are frustrated about the same issue. I'm a big advocate of supporting smaller companies and have got many of my friends and clients to purchase Affinity products but this is really disappointing. Obviously, there is no compulsion to do anything based on user request but I think it's very irresponsible to say that you're working on a fix and 4 years on you're still saying the same thing. Say it won't be fixed in the near future or at least give us some information that is less vague.

I agree. Not addressing this could blow up and wipe out all the good stuff this product has to offer...

[raglet]

Exactly! What surprises me is, this one bug is pretty much the only thing stopping several designers from completely switching over from illustrator and it's not being given any importance.

[SteveMose]

3 hours ago, raglet said:

Jeez, we have radio silence on this from the Affinity team. It's quite disheartening, to be honest. And we have moderators pointing us to other threads where more people are frustrated about the same issue. I'm a big advocate of supporting smaller companies and have got many of my friends and clients to purchase Affinity products but this is really disappointing. Obviously, there is no compulsion to do anything based on user request but I think it's very irresponsible to say that you're working on a fix and 4 years on you're still saying the same thing. Say it won't be fixed in the near future or at least give us some information that is less vague.

I think they are more concerned about launching tablet versions than actually fixing their main product. You cannot tout UI software which fails in a primary requirement for UI design. The auto-response from moderators is very disheartening.