Scripting

[Ezbaze]

On 12/22/2024 at 9:55 PM, affi.usr said:

Anyone consider walking around problem and create scripting tools based on python library like this:

https://pypi.org/project/pynput/

https://pyautogui.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html

Is it maybe not great, but after creating tool for detecting exactly positions of toolbars it can create quite simple framework to automate any Affinity app without making developers anythings. Some parts are easy as sending keys we can switch to tool. The most crucial problem is deal with position of toolbars and clickable options. The best from this suggestion is that community can start now adding scripting without Affinity Team and some solution can be easy translate to others languages as well. 

Python is supported by MacOS and Windows. If we choose good, stable solution (library) automating mouse and keyboard will be universal.

The simplest solution for different screen size resolution is create template with coordinates of GUI icon buttons. It should be done once and after that used. The main downside is that this kind scripting can be affected by main OS tools (popup from other apps), and sometimes can be needed few seconds delay to working correctly. From other hand using any way to assign script to keyboard shortcuts we can run script independently and create some effects / boring stuff faster.  

I started, but I stopped after creating a new document. It's a lot of work, which I didn't think was worth it. The accessibility features let you do pretty much anything.

[evtonic3]

Is this the kind of scripting that will be in Affinity? If so it will be awesome! 
 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DEXpjKnvlVW/?igsh=MW5keHZpZDJ3amNl

[n_shcherbakov]

On 1/3/2025 at 10:40 PM, evtonic3 said:

Is this the kind of scripting that will be in Affinity? If so it will be awesome! 
 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DEXpjKnvlVW/?igsh=MW5keHZpZDJ3amNl

I'm really looking forward to the scripting tools coming to Affinity products, but specifically in this example there is a solution that already works:
 

[evtonic3]

2 hours ago, n_shcherbakov said:

I'm really looking forward to the scripting tools coming to Affinity products, but specifically in this example there is a solution that already works:
 

FANTASTIC! Now how smart does one need to be to figure these capabilities out?!! Need more people like you sir to put stuff out that makes Designer shine! Thank you!

[n_shcherbakov]

14 hours ago, evtonic3 said:

Now how smart does one need to be to figure these capabilities out?!!

I don't think I showed anything out of the ordinary, but thanks!

[evtonic3]

4 hours ago, n_shcherbakov said:

I don't think I showed anything out of the ordinary, but thanks!

You may think you didn’t, but how many of us knew how to do that? You know users  that know Affinity Designer well enough to do these “tricks” are not influencers or people that post tricks. Sure there are tutorials for so many things but even the age old tutorial is getting “old” - people want small digestible small videos that get to the point. That is where Affinity should be. Promoting tricks like this in small 15-30 second clips. I’m telling you this would help the new generation of users.

[n_shcherbakov]

14 minutes ago, evtonic3 said:

You may think you didn’t, but how many of us knew how to do that? You know users  that know Affinity Designer well enough to do these “tricks” are not influencers or people that post tricks. Sure there are tutorials for so many things but even the age old tutorial is getting “old” - people want small digestible small videos that get to the point. That is where Affinity should be. Promoting tricks like this in small 15-30 second clips. I’m telling you this would help the new generation of users.

Okay, I'm convinced. That's what I'll be doing in the near future.

upd: for me it's obvious why there isn't a lot of tutorial content for Affinity products ← insufficient professional user base ← insufficient features for professional use of the product (I've gotten the hang of it) ← lack of full feedback from the community and lack of a roadmap

*I purposely wrote in reverse order because the latter is the most important issue.

[JET_Affinity]

 

On 8/20/2024 at 5:50 AM, baoyu said:

I‘d consider the Scripting system be the BIG CHANGE 😂

On 9/3/2024 at 8:58 AM, fde101 said:

Realistically, yes, it would be, but the majority of users are likely more casual and will write off scripting as something they will never use.

The ability to use plugins for the products will interest a larger number of people than the scripting feature, but that will not drive sales of a new version until those plugins are available, so neither of these things will likely be enough, on their own, to convince Serif's marketing department to start advertising a new major release which they expect to charge people for.

Realistically, these should have been engineered into the core of the products from the beginning and should have been a 1.0 feature, so they are coming late and pushing them to a 3.0 release if they are ready by 2.x would be a bit much.

Like baoyu said, I would certainly expect the new scripting API feature to be major enough to justify the next pay-for major release. I'd be quite willing to pay for upgrading to the new version of all three apps.

Regarding fde101's concerns:

I completely disagree with the assumption that 'casual users' would "write off" the scripting feature, whether they are ready to write scripts themselves or not. Just look at Inkscape's Extensions menu. That effectively is Inkscape's built-in scripting implementation. But it doesn't just empower scripting users. A long list of Extensions are included with the standard download of Inkscape, and any user can pick and choose from hundreds of additional free Extensions that are created by other users. Inkscape would be far less capable to all of its users without its Extensions.

Prior to Adobe's Captive Customers rip-off licensing, I built a considerable number of Illustrator scripts in its Javascript-based scripting environment. But I've only just very recently started dinking around with Inkscape's Python-based extensions. That certainly didn't keep me from having Inkscape on-hand and using its Extensions for many years. Again, Inkscape would be far less capable to all of its users without its Extensions. I would certainly be surprised if the first release of Affinity's scripting didn't come with a broadly-useful set of pre-built ready-to-use scripts that demonstrate its power and potential.

Many users in this forum have pined for Serif to implement support for commercial 'plug-ins'. I consider that approach to adding bespoke features archaic, passe', inflexible, and needlessly costly. Providing a well-done scripting API has far more potential. Scripting users will no doubt be sharing the scripts they create with other users, either for free or for a small price.

Another misconception (I think; corrections welcome) evidenced in this thread is the notion that a program that has a scripting API has to have some kind of explicit built-in 'support for AI' in order to use an AI Chat to help writing scripts for it. I'm  no programmer and don't play one on the internet. But as I understand it, AI Chats fetch from whatever is 'out there' on the subject. While Inkscape 1.4 came out late last year, you can still get help from an AI Chat about writing Extensions for Inkscape, and it can even return fully-functional Extension scripts that work in earlier versions. Sure, new versions of software (for example, FileMaker Pro) are scrambling to add AI-centric access to AI from within the program's standard interface. That doesn't mean I can't use AI Chat to assist in building a complicated relational database structure in an earlier version of FileMaker.

JET