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Sneak peeks for 1.7


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5 minutes ago, JET_Affinity said:

I've long maintained it would be less tedious and more accurate to simply provide a set of straightforward commands or buttons which allow the user to convert any ordinary path into a selection marquee or a cutting path (complete with appropriate contact-sensitive and select/subselect options). That way, any path drawing tool could be used, with all its accuracy advantages, instead of the conventional separate screen pixel-based marquee selection tool that:

  • Makes it far too tedious to weave around the desired selection in tight circumstances (a very frequent problem when working with the disjointed polylines exported from CAD programs).
  • Prevents being able to zoom in or out while making a selection.
  • Wreaks havoc when the "lasso" comes into proximity of the screen edges, causing you to have to start all over.

I see no reason for separate functionally-limited "lasso" selection and "path cutting" tools, when the whole set of drawing tools could be used to perform both with more versatility.

Consider how ironic it is that conventional-wisdom vector drawing programs always resort to a clumsy screen-pixel tool for a so-called "lasso" tool, while Photoshop and similar raster imaging programs let you draw an accurate vector-based path and then convert it to a selection.

JET

Agreed 100%. Maybe by implementing this, Affinity could get more user. Ben, do you have any opinions or thoughts on this?

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1 minute ago, Alfred said:

 

We can already convert an ordinary path into a selection marquee (but not the other way around). We don’t have cutting paths yet, of course.

But it select pixel and not anchor points or nodes.

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11 hours ago, retrograde said:

Hey @Ben, regarding your video sneak peeks. Are you targeting the node to snap to somehow for all of these snapping maneuvers?

 

How would some of these works with more nodes along a path? (and/or) Does it always have to be an adjacent node or can it be any node on a path?

 

Just wondering how you're enacting the behaviour or how this might work in a slightly more complicated situation. Thanks.

 

No, the snapping occurs between adjacent nodes and handles on the immediate curve. I've only included snapping to close partners.  Snapping to everything in the curve would make it unusable (or certainly less helpful).

 

There will always be a edge case where some kind of snapping might be useful, but it's always going to be a balance to ensure that the common snapping requirements are not hampered by those edge cases.

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As for lasso or other selection methods - I'd have to talk to @MattP about it, and see what we would want to do.  

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4 minutes ago, Fatih19 said:

Yassss. Developer access granted woohoo! 

 

I don’t understand that remark. Please explain!

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
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8 minutes ago, Fatih19 said:

Yassss. Developer access granted woohoo! 

 

That's a guarantee that we will talk about it here - not a guarantee that will translate directly into us implementing exactly what you've asked for. ;)

 

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Regarding the new snapping, i have an idea about how to set the snapping target. You would need to make a separate dock for those snapping feature to implement the new snapping because putting it to the current tab would be too hectic. 

1. You can set the snapping target to nearest neighbor (2,4,6,8...)

2. You can set the snapping subject and target manually. The software will ask you to make 2 selection of nodes, any nodes out of the selection will not granted the new snapping feature. The nodes in selection A will snap to nodes in selection B or the other way around. But, nodes in selection A will not snap to nodes that is not in selection B and the other way around. The idea is you can save the 2 selection and toggle it off and on. For example, I have 4 shapes that I'm working on. I make 2 selection for every shape. I want to edit shape A and enable the new snapping on. I will turn on the 2 selection on shape A and turn off the other 2 selection. Now I want to snap between shape B and C, I will make a new dual selection and toggle off the other one. The idea is kinda hard to explain in word. Basically, you can set manually "this group A of nodes can snap to this group B of nodes but it will not snap to nodes that is not in group B of nodes"

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7 minutes ago, Ben said:

 

That's a guarantee that we will talk about it here - not a guarantee that will translate directly into us implementing exactly what you've asked for. ;)

 

Still better than nothing. We just lay down the foundation but the developer make the final construction. 

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13 minutes ago, Alfred said:

 

I don’t understand that remark. Please explain!

"Yasss" is a word used for expressing great happiness. 

PS. The term is used by youngster and its already dead for 2 years I think. 

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2 minutes ago, Fatih19 said:

"Yasss" is a word used for expressing great happiness. 

PS. The term is used by youngster and its already dead for 2 years I think. 

 

LOL. I understood the "Yasss", which is clearly just a corruption of an emphatic "Yes", and I understood the "woohoo", but what I didn't understand was the "developer access granted" part of your post. We already had developer access before @Ben created this thread, and we've had developer access specifically in relation to Ben's "sneak peeks" ever since he created it, so his saying that he would have to talk to @MattP about some things doesn't mean we now have developer access which we didn't have before.

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16 minutes ago, Alfred said:

 

LOL. I understood the "Yasss", which is clearly just a corruption of an emphatic "Yes", and I understood the "woohoo", but what I didn't understand was the "developer access granted" part of your post. We already had developer access before @Ben created this thread, and we've had developer access specifically in relation to Ben's "sneak peeks" ever since he created it, so his saying that he would have to talk to @MattP about some things doesn't mean we now have developer access which we didn't have before.

Yeah, it's an exaggeration. 

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1 hour ago, Ben said:

 

That's a guarantee that we will talk about it here - not a guarantee that will translate directly into us implementing exactly what you've asked for. ;)

 

 

Cheers @Ben understood. :-)

 

...and thanks for the explanation re the nodes and snapping. Make sense. Can't wait to get rocking with all of these improvements. 

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14 minutes ago, hperticarati said:

+1 to scale and transform a node selection, the way Inkscape does :)

 

Errr, have you watched the videos?  It's already been done.

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So, this is my feature suggestion regarding the new snapping feature. I post it here because it would be stupid to post a feature suggestion that is meant to compliment a feature that is not yet implemented. On the attached files below, there is a png image and an afdesign files that will illustrate my point. I will explain the image below here. Like I said before, this feature is complimenting the new snapping feature that will be implemented on the 1.7 version. I don't expect you guys to implement this on the 1.7 or the whole 1.x. In my opinion, Serif should save this for the 2.0 version as a "trick up their sleeve" to make people willing to upgrade to version 2 (IF they want to implement this feature at all). It's in my opinion a very complicated feature (although i don't know anything about programming so i don't know). This comment will probably be as long as @JET_Affinity comment.

  1. The "same path" will enable you to snap your currently selected nodes (cns, as i would like to call it from now on) to other nodes that is in the same path as your csn. If you take an arbitrary point on a line. There will be 2 ways to go, in this case i name it forward and backward. Where forward or backward go is beside the point (get it), the important thing is they are the antithesis of the other. Under the forward and backward button is a typebox where you can select how much nodes you can snap to. If i press the forward button, and type in 2 on the typebox, my csn will snap to 2 nodes that is in the same path as my csn and is in front of my csn. You can press forward and backward (both). If i did that and type in 10 on the typebox, my csn will snap to 10 nodes that is in the same path as my csn and is in front and behind of my csn, (whether it's 10 front and 10 behind or 5 front and 5 behind is up to Serif to decide)
  2. The "proximity" will neglect whether your csn and other nodes is in the same path or not. Instead, it will make a circle that follow your csn around (in the background of course). Your csn will snap to nodes that is in the circle. How big is the circle radius? You can specify it on the typebox and change the unit as well. I think Serif could expand on this an make the shape used more than circle. It could be any shape that is symmetrical in my opinion.
  3. The "node group" is the most complex concept i think. Below, there is an attachment on how node group works. I want to make the picture clarer by specifying how it works.
  • A path can have several node groups in them.
  • A node group can have nodes from several path. 
  1. Below that, you will find some group name and arrow that is correlated to the 2nd attachment. You will see that group B and C is connected through a double edged arrow. That means that nodes in group B will snap to node in group C. Nodes in group C will snap to nodes in group B. You will see that group A is connected with group D but it's just a one way arrow. This means that group A will snap to group D but group D won't snap to group A. There is also csn there. According to the attachment, my csn will be able to snap to group C. Arrow that begins from csn is in higher priority other arrow that do not. Something i didn't put in the attachment is multi arrow. Any given group can snap to any number of group at the same time if you put multi arrow. It's several arrow that have the same beginning group that is directed to different group. Group B can snap to C and D if i put multi arrow that connect B to C & D.
  2. You can rename node group, it's not just the letter of the alphabet.
  3. You can see the which node is in group D,C,B, or A.

Hurdles: 

PERFORMANCE. If Serif somehow manage to implement this monster of a feature (not underestimating Ben and friends, the feature is just very complex in my opinion), performance would be a huge hurdle, especially if you have a lot of nodes.

Would like to know @MattP and @Ben on this "monster feature"

P.S. I don't think i did good on replicating the UI. Also, i think there is a lot of grammar mistakes. Apologies for that. From my location, you know that i don't speak english natively.

Advanced Snapping.png

Node Group.png

Node Group with Node.png

Advanced Snapping.afdesign

Node Group.afdesign

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Thanks for your suggestion.

 

My initial reaction is that this is far too complicated to make it a "go to" feature.  Firstly, having different swappable selections is not something we want to do.  Our selection tracking logic is fairly integral to a lot of how the app functions.  Changing this is no small task.

Anything we do needs to be dependant on the current selection.  Anything else gets complicated as we'd have to track document changes with additional selections.

 

The snapping features we a talking about are just centred in the Node tool.  To this end, we'd not want to create a special dockable panel to reflect complex options.  It would be redundant for every other tool.  Also, the set of snapping features I've shown are (currently) controlled by two simple buttons on the Tool context bar.  I wouldn't want to provide any finer grain control than that.  It's basically on or off.  To add specific control over which construction angles you want is way too much 'control'.

 

The one thing I'd take from your suggestion is controlling the number of nodes either side of the edited node that you'd want to take into account when searching for snaps.  At the moment it just tracks the immediate adjacent nodes, but (with a bit of work) it could track a little further.  I'd have to experiment to see what I can do.  Any required UI would have to fit on the Node tool context toolbar, so will have to be simple (maybe just a drop down of limited options).

SerifLabs team - Affinity Developer
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  • iMac 27" Retina 5K (Late 2015), 4.0GHz i7, AMD Radeon R9 M395
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8 minutes ago, Ben said:

Thanks for your suggestion.

 

My initial reaction is that this is far too complicated to make it a "go to" feature.  Firstly, having different swappable selections is not something we want to do.  Our selection tracking logic is fairly integral to a lot of how the app functions.  Changing this is no small task.

Anything we do needs to be dependant on the current selection.  Anything else gets complicated as we'd have to track document changes with additional selections.

 

The snapping features we a talking about are just centred in the Node tool.  To this end, we'd not want to create a special dockable panel to reflect complex options.  It would be redundant for every other tool.  Also, the set of snapping features I've shown are (currently) controlled by two simple buttons on the Tool context bar.  I wouldn't want to provide any finer grain control than that.  It's basically on or off.  To add specific control over which construction angles you want is way too much 'control'.

 

The one thing I'd take from your suggestion is controlling the number of nodes either side of the edited node that you'd want to take into account when searching for snaps.  At the moment it just tracks the immediate adjacent nodes, but (with a bit of work) it could track a little further.  I'd have to experiment to see what I can do.  Any required UI would have to fit on the Node tool context toolbar, so will have to be simple (maybe just a drop down of limited options).

Yeah I agree. I myself think that this is far too complicated. I still think you should keep this idea in your basement somewhere ;). As far as I know, no other software have this kind of features, so when Serif got big and had a large teams of developer in the far future you can pull this up and dab on the people saying that Serif doesn't innovate.

 

Yeah, the "same path" suggestion is probably the simplest and easiest to implement. Also, the most used one I think. 

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2 minutes ago, Busenitz said:

Any possibility of warp text (while remaining text) and contour / offset?  Those are huge omissions for me yet.  

I assume they will have that when they implement warp/distort. 

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I'm not that sure what all the updates mean in terms of application etc (still getting to grips with the program) but since I've been using AP it just keeps getting better and better. I'm glad I made the switch from PS to AP.

So. . .keep up the good work guys!

Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.

These are not my own words but I sure like this quote.

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