Astute Graphics Technology

[peaches]

I know of at least one developer who is eagerly waiting for Designer to be able to runs Scripts/Macros.

Please Serif - can you consider adding this function to Designer in the very near future?

 

 

[jsnart]

I'm new to affinity designer and for many years I have worked with illustrator and there are so many good tools for a fast workflow from astute graphics. Please, make it happen serif that we can use the tools in affinity designer. Thank you! 

[Mithferion]

From this article:

• For now, the main effort is on getting Publisher out of the door early next year. After that, Hewson says there will probably be an asset manager to organise Affinity files, perhaps in 2020. In the meantime, Serif plans to work on extensibility, to open up Affinity so third parties can write plugins and links, historically part of the appeal of Adobe’s and Quark’s success. “If everything goes well we may have that capability towards the end of next year, 12 months away,” says Hewson. “We will then be wanting to talk to people who might want to take advantage of that. There are very specific high end use cases for print.” 

So, there is a possibility for us to see Astute Graphics' stuff in the Affinity world.

Best regards!

[manfred3443]

Yeaahh.. which great news!

[NIcholas van der Walle]

4 hours ago, Mithferion said:

From this article:

• For now, the main effort is on getting Publisher out of the door early next year. After that, Hewson says there will probably be an asset manager to organise Affinity files, perhaps in 2020. In the meantime, Serif plans to work on extensibility, to open up Affinity so third parties can write plugins and links, historically part of the appeal of Adobe’s and Quark’s success. “If everything goes well we may have that capability towards the end of next year, 12 months away,” says Hewson. “We will then be wanting to talk to people who might want to take advantage of that. There are very specific high end use cases for print.” 

So, there is a possibility for us to see Astute Graphics' stuff in the Affinity world.

Best regards!

Thanks for posting! That is very encouraging. We'd look forward to seeing firm details in 2019.

[JET_Affinity]

I learned early-on to avoid dependency upon third-party add-ons like the plague. I consider the whole long-promised "plug-in panacea" model largely a failure. Countless such extensions from relatively small companies have come and gone over the decades. The more elaborate ones often cost half again as much as the host program. Being standalone, they lack functional integration with native features, over-clutter the interface, and chronically lag behind the host program's version changes.

For users who are "married" to a single drawing program, simply buying a competitive side-grade to another program often costs less, gains a lot more for the money, broadens the user's versatility by acquiring hands-on familiarity with more than just one program, empowers them to have options when their "pet" primary program goes away (or becomes rent only) and gives them at least some validity when claiming to "compare" various programs.

I understand the Astute Graphics thing is somewhat different, in that the third-party add-on developer is offering to license its code to the host programs' developers. But right now, none of us on the user side knows how that will actually translate to us or our wallets.

So I do not just off-handedly advocate Serif's commitment to that kind of back-end deal without knowing how it would affect me as a customer and a user. I'd rather see Serif continue to develop its own proprietary, royalty-free code for drawing functionality using its own ingenuity. Who knows; they might be able to do it better.

A scripting API is a whole other subject. That gives users willing to invest the time the ability to develop his own functional solutions which are integrated with the host program's native features, and over which he has full control.

JET

[NIcholas van der Walle]

2 hours ago, JET_Affinity said:

Countless such extensions from relatively small companies have come and gone over the decades. The more elaborate ones often cost half again as much as the host program. Being standalone, they lack functional integration with native features, over-clutter the interface, and chronically lag behind the host program's version changes.

 

• Astute Graphics is now in its 12th year (approx double software company lifespan according to https://mitosystems.com/software-evolution/).
• Typically produce free updates to the latest Adobe release within 1 month (often 1 week, dependant on changes).
• Customers commented our plugins were too integrated - ie. hard to tell the difference from native - so we added color bars to the panels to assist on request.
• Fully customizable UI presence as per native functionality.
• Hell yeah, we're not cheap... that's because we produce tools which cost a lot to develop to make so good and save 100k+ users so much time (typically ROI in the first day).

But all IMHO, of course. Your mileage may vary.

However, if Astute Graphics' kind of functionality appeared in Affinity, it would be the overall market that decides on these things

Have a nice weekend!

[JET_Affinity]

Quote

But all IMHO, of course. Your mileage may vary.

Rather inappropriate for you to be self-servingly pushing your software sale here. But all IMHO, of course.

JET

[Pathshaper]

On 11/17/2018 at 7:24 AM, JET_Affinity said:

Rather inappropriate for you to be self-servingly pushing your software sale here. But all IMHO, of course.

JET

It's quite clear you feel a certain type of way JET, but I think you need to slow your roll. He didn't come here selling anything, he's responding to user interest in his product, as he states, the market will decide. In any event it seem you'll have until at least 2020 before we're even close to anything happening, so let's not take to the streets in protest just yet.

[rees]

JET, if you haven’t tried any of the Astute Illustrator plug-ins (and have access to Illustrator), you should definitely download a bunch and try them. (Free trials.) Or at least watch their videos. They are insanely helpful. Expensive, but really really helpful. 

[Move Along People]

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[m.vlad]

Just now, haakoo said:

In JET's defense,at least as how I see it,the last post by Nicholas was just telling us what a great product he has.
And of course he's selling it as he surely knows that the Afiinity range is something to be in business with.
The point JET made was that it can be a plugin that a user should buy on its own but that the Affinity range shouldn't be depending on it to function.
And that Serif should try to create the functionality into their products instead of buying parts that maybe work well but would mean a price increase due to this shortcut in development
 

I would personally pay double the price I paid for Affinity (so 100% price increase) if it meant it would use Astute Graphics' vector cleanup and boolean formulas for adding vector shapes.

[Move Along People]

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[m.vlad]

Just now, haakoo said:

Of course you would but than you'll end up with bloatybloaty adobeclony with plugins or pieces of half baked code scraped from here and there and to be patched to work together.
.
 

What? On what do you base your argument? How would replacing the current boolean functions and adding one new vector feature make it bloated, and what makes you say that it's going to be implemented in a half-assed way?

[Move Along People]

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[rees]

All I want is the ability to port my Astute plugins over to Affinity. If any of you haven't yet tried them (and have Illustrator), well, do so. They save me a ton of time, and increase my creativity. I don't get paid for these comments. (If I did I'd give that money right back to them to complete my suite of their plugins...I can only afford to buy them piecemeal as they are super expensive.) I can't fathom how Serif corp could afford to buy the plugins and have them as a regular part of their software. But to allow plugins bought for Illustrator to work? Hell yes! Or for new users to buy them for Affinity, hell yes!

[MikeW]

2 hours ago, haakoo said:

Where does it end if you buy software from a third party to take a shortcut to sales?...

I don't know what is meant as a shortcut to sales.

Hi, my name is Mike. And I use Astute's plug-ins for Illy. (CS6 in my case.)

I don't use Illy enough to be as proficient with it as I am in other vector design software I use daily. The plug-ins reduce that ability-gap. And I ain't sorry nor ashamed for using such things.

I use plug-ins (both in ID & AI), XTensions in QXP and both homegrown macros and commercial add-ins to Word and Excel. The Word stuff is for cleaning and getting tagged text out of Word and into whichever layout application I need to use. To think anyone that is an Editor using Word (which all publishing houses do) and doesn't not use macros (whether commercial ones or not) is even remotely efficient is fooling themselves.

Same with add-ons to ID & QXP. Without their use I would make far less on a per-job basis than I do. And that is pretty much unacceptable. The use of such "extensions" to core applications, for myself, all revolve around project efficiency. In some cases these add-ons extend native capabilities, others provide shortcuts to native functions & their results. And others provide capabilities that simply do not exist via the UI.

I'm all for scripting solutions when possible. Even so, if an add-on exists that does what I need and/or more than a script, I'll likely just purchase it. It's cost will be made up in short order.

[Move Along People]

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[JET_Affinity]

All this discussion buttresses my point, which I clearly stated: We users have no idea how a decision by Serif to make Affinity core functionally dependent upon back-end licensing of code from a third-party plug-in developer would affect us and the future and marketing direction of the product.

And end users are effectively being urged to back that licensing — by that third-party developer—in a Serif user forum. (Try doing that on, say, Adobe's forum.)

There are sound reasons why it's illegal to campaign within a certain proximity of the voting booth.

Yes, I'm familiar with the product. I don't buy it for the reasons I already explained re avoidance of my own dependency upon third-party add-ons.

Sure, I'd like to see whatever I consider better functionality or interface approach in whatever drawing program I license, regardless of where I see it. I like, for example, some of the new wrinkle interface stuff I see for path manipulation in FontLab. That doesn't mean I want Serif to license that interface from FontLab and pass the cost on to me. For another example, the very best thing any object-based graphics program could do is re-map the entire interface onto the object inspector concept, as FreeHand did many years ago. That certainly doesn't mean I'm going to become a volunteer campaign worker to urge Serif to license that idea from Adobe just because it now owns FreeHand's code.

JET

[m.vlad]

5 hours ago, haakoo said:

He Mike,

Your blackish witticism is dripping of the page here 

I,like you and many others use plugins to make things easier for me but that wasn't the point;
It's about,if ag software should be licensed to Serif and be incorporated into the code base of the Affinity range,to this I say,don't go there.
 

Support as a plugin is a yes
Licensed code into Affinity products is a Hell no!

If Serif would have a license,it would mean a dependency to it,don't you think?
Besides, what happens if AG ups the price because the illy way isn't working anymore?
Do you like to pay that much more money to stay in business?
I guess you do,so in a way you're only thinking short term, what suits only your needs, but with no regard for those that haven't got the big bucks to stay in business for themselves.
 

But once there's talk of a license it can't be refuted/changed after a it's given or a contract is signed. Worst case scenario, if Astute were to change the license in a further version, Affinity would be stuck with the last version that has the same license they bought, which would still be superior to the current implementation of "pathfinder" tools. Just because Astute were to change the license it doesn't mean it changes every contract they've signed and the license for every piece of software they released before. Licensing just doesn't work that way.

[Move Along People]

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[m.vlad]

5 minutes ago, haakoo said:

Uhm.you're an expert on this I presume?
The discussion wasn't about the conditions of the licensing but if Serif should use third-party software inside Affinity.
 

It doesn't take an expert to know how licensing software works. Also this was a counter argument to you saying that if Serif uses third party software in their own software that makes them the slaves of that specific company and if that company decides they want to cripple affinity they can. Unless the contract specifies that Affinity has to always use the newest version of the software (and that'd be an odd thing to see in such a contract), then they can just stick with one version and be done with it.

[Move Along People]

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[MikeW]

21 minutes ago, haakoo said:

The discussion wasn't about the conditions of the licensing but if Serif should use third-party software inside Affinity.

Serif uses third-party licenses already, albeit most all are from OpenSource projects.

However, for at least PDF opening and creation, Serif uses a commercial license from PDFLib. And they are hampered by what is possible and/or how well it is implemented. They could license Adobe technology (tis what Quark did this past version) and some of the current issues with PDFs (because there are some) would/could vanish (like transparency issues in placed PDFs).

Serif have a license from Pantone as well. Ask Adobe why they haven't updated the libraries for years and years (perhaps a decade) and they will point to Pantone's changed licensing. Pantone points the finger at Adobe.

No one knows what Serif is going to do. Serif has not said whether if or how Astute technology could/would be used, whether implemented code or as a plug-in technology. The Serif announcement was only for opening up a plug-in route, not licensed code.

I don't think there is any "danger" from Serif doing something not in its best interest, and hence ours (to some extent). Serif has proven it will go its own way for doing many things. Whether this is for "good" or "ill" doesn't matter much, it's what they have done over the years. For drawing functions I cannot imagine Serif would license Astute's technology. Could be wrong, but I doubt it. And I have no idea if, when plug-in architecture is first implemented whether it would be extensible enough for Astute to make use of it anyway.

However, if the path to Astute technology is only via plug-ins, is there anyone here that will be willing to pay whatever price point Astute will assign to the plug-ins? I would doubt if there will be enough people in this thread willing to pay whatever the price is to make it pay unless they are very, very competitively priced. I buy several XTensions/plug-ins that have an initial price of $400 or so with upgrades at $199 that I use in QXP & ID. Is there anyone here that would pay that for a perhaps $50 release price for Affinity Publisher?

Nicholas van der Walle has made one statement that people should remember...let the market decide. I'm all for that model. Aren't you?

[thegary]

These would be fantastic tools to addon. Some very big time savers in there..

Also CAD TOOLS would be brilliant. 

Need to stop using ADOBE, this tools would do that.

Gary