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I am still learning how to do basic stuff in Affinity Photo for iPad. I have several questions about using text:

1. What is the easiest way to add & set the color of a stroke to text? So far, the only way I have found to do this is (not so intuitively) selecting it, switching to the Pen Tool, & adjusting Width in the Context toolbar. To set or change the text stroke color, I have to select the text, switch to the Pen tool, & then open the Color Studio. Is there a faster, less convoluted way to do this?

2. One of the new features in iOS 11 is the ability to two-finger drag across the on-screen keyboard to move the text insertion point. I cannot get this to work in AP -- the keyboard dims out when I drag as it should but the insertion point always jumps to the beginning of the text block. Is this feature unsupported in AP?

3. On the keyboard display, what is the function of the 3 buttons at the top on the far right, one of which has a scissors icon? The scissors one is apparently either cut or delete, but the other two are a mystery to me. Also, what is the fastest/simplest way to undo any of their actions? So far, the only way I have found is to hide the keyboard so I can access the undo function on the Studios panel & then tap somewhere in the text to get the keyboard to reappear. This seems overly complicated so there must be a better way.

4. Is spell checking supported & if so how is it accessed?

5. Even without adding any extra fonts via Preferences > Fonts, the list of installed fonts on iOS 11 is quite long. Is there any way to set favorites or exclude any of them from the font list popup?

6. I realize that Truetype fonts in Font Suitcases are an old & nearly obsolete Apple technology left over from pre-OS X versions of the OS. However, they still can be installed via Font Book on current Mac OS versions & used with the desktop Affinity apps. Are there any plans to add similar support to the iPad version, or any suggested workarounds to install the TrueType fonts in them? (So far, I have successfully used the free trial of TransType 4 to extract one old Truetype font from its suitcase file (ZiggyITC TT from an old saved copy of the AppleWorks Extra Fonts folder) & add the extracted ZiggyITC TT.ttf font to the iPad app. That works but I am unsure of the limitations of the free version of TransType & am hoping for a simpler way to do this.)

Any help with any of the above would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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1. If there is a faster, less convoluted way, I’d be happy to hear about it!

2. As the man (I think it was Alexander Pope) said, a little learning is a dangerous thing: not having read about this, I didn’t know to try it. Trying it now in Notes, I find that I can two-finger drag anywhere, not just over the OSK, so I suspect that the lack of this feature in APh is related to the fact that two-finger dragging on the canvas is designed to to something else.

3. Is there something about the standard Cut/Copy/Paste trio that confused you, or did you mean something else? As for your supplementary question, pressing the key to the right of the space bar reveals an ‘undo’ key.

4. In the Text Studio, pressing the three bars (why does that always make me think of Goldilocks?) menu icon reveals a ‘Check Spelling While Typing’ option.

5. See 1.

6. Wa-a-ay above my pay grade, I’m sorry to say.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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Thanks for your help! I still have a long way to go to get to the shallow part of the learning curve but your reply has gotten me much farther up the steep part than I could have managed on my own. :35_thinking:

3 hours ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

2. As the man (I think it was Alexander Pope) said, a little learning is a dangerous thing: not having read about this, I didn’t know to try it. Trying it now in Notes, I find that I can two-finger drag anywhere, not just over the OSK, so I suspect that the lack of this feature in APh is related to the fact that two-finger dragging on the canvas is designed to to something else.

I am not sure what being able to two-finger drag anywhere in Notes has to do with it. Referring to this (too cute) Apple video beginning at about the 0:31 second mark where the feature is demonstrated, the two-finger drag is being done on the onscreen keyboard, not on the document, canvas, or whatever. Since in Affinity Photo the keyboard does dim just like in the video, I think that shows the app is registering the drag as being on keyboard, so it should work the same way. Instead, the insertion point just jumps to the start of the text block & stays there, so maybe this is a bug?

BTW, the other two features shown in the video (accented characters & shifted keys) work fine in AP. :)

 

4 hours ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

3. Is there something about the standard Cut/Copy/Paste trio that confused you, or did you mean something else? As for your supplementary question, pressing the key to the right of the space bar reveals an ‘undo’ key.

What confused me was the icons used to indicate what these features are. I only just now discovered that they are standard ones hiding in other iOS apps (in the options for that leftmost button at the top of the OSK).  I also did not know that the  .?123 key revealed an undo key. I guess I would have noticed all this stuff eventually. :$

 

4 hours ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

4. In the Text Studio, pressing the three bars (why does that always make me think of Goldilocks?) menu icon reveals a ‘Check Spelling While Typing’ option.

With your kind help I found that too, but unfortunately either I still do not understand how to use it or it is working erratically on my iPad. For example, if it is not enabled & I misspell a word, even after I then enable it & delete the space after that misspelled word, it fails to detect the misspelling. It also seems to sometimes mysteriously toggle off by itself. Is it maybe not "sticky" between documents or something?

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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I think I see what you mean about the two-finger drag! Anyway, when I was dragging across the keyboard just now I must have lifted one of the two fingers, because I accidentally typed an extra letter in front of a word. At that point, a squiggly red underline appeared, but I agree that it seems to be somewhat erratic.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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