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Apply Styles – Options behave strangely


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14 hours ago, A_B_C said:

For what it’s worth, I couldn’t get rid of Adobe Jenson as my default font unless I manually removed all files associated with Affinity Publisher from my hard drive save for the application itself. Only then Arial would show up as my default font again. :(

You should be able to change the current default to something else, eg Arial, then Edit > Defaults > Save to make it the default default. Currently although that changes the defaults for new documents, the Save doesn't affect the current document unless you also do Edit > Defaults > Revert. This should be fixed in the next beta.

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13 hours ago, Wosven said:

And about confusing parts, any idea for the use of the "next level" option in the Text styles?

It is intended as a quick way of switching between linked text styles. It is used by Text > List > Increase Level and by pressing tab at the start of a paragraph. Increase level takes the paragraph's current style, find its Next level style, and applies that to the paragraph. (If one isn't set, then it increases indent instead.)

The linked styles can do anything you want. The default text styles use them for three things:

  • Tab at the start of a Bullet 1 paragraph will turn it into a Bullet 2 paragraph. This changes the indent and also the bullet symbol. Similarly Bullet 2 => Bullet 3.
  • Tab at the start of a Numbered 1 paragraph will turn it into a Numbered 2 paragraph. This is a convenient way to get multi-level numbered lists. Similarly Numbered 2 => Numbered 3.
  • Tab at the start of a Header 1 paragraph will turn it into a Header 2 paragraph.

Shift-tab does the opposite to tab. For example going from Bullet 3 to Bullet 2.

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23 minutes ago, Dave Harris said:

You should be able to change the current default to something else, eg Arial, then Edit > Defaults > Save to make it the default default. Currently although that changes the defaults for new documents, the Save doesn't affect the current document unless you also do Edit > Defaults > Revert. This should be fixed in the next beta.

I tried everything possible, but unfortunately with no luck. I will keep an eye on that and see if I can reproduce the issue. In any case, I don’t believe this is my main issue with the current styles implementation. We’ll see … o.O

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23 minutes ago, Dave Harris said:

The linked styles can do anything you want.

Maybe so, but as things are now, I find it waaaay to confusing to even consider testing this in the beta. A video tutorial might help with that, but even so I have some doubts about if this implementation is the way to go.

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
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I agree with Wosven: being able to apply paragraph styles to individual characters is confusing.

Paragraph styles for paragraphs. (Whole paragraphs.)
Character styles for characters. 

It is confusing to be able to apply more than one paragraph style to a paragraph, especially as the order in which they are applied determines which elements of the style appear. 

For instance, try setting a paragraph to Body style, select all, then 'Apply "Line Below" to Characters'. Now try it in reverse.

If Body style is applied first, there is no line below.
If Line Below style is applied first, the line below appears.

And with multiple paragraph styles applied, there is no quick way to clear overrides (or even find where they are). Selecting the whole paragraph then clicking on another style sometimes leaves one of the original paragraph styles selected.

Also, there is a bug (?) where if a new text box is drawn with a style already selected, changing the style adds the style to the original one instead of replacing it. The only way out of this is to select 'Detach Characters from "Stylename"' from the flyout menu. (But, these bugs are inconsistent and depend on which styles have been applied before.)

I realise there are still bugs to remove, so it's hard to work out for sure how styles will eventually work, but I think being able to apply multiple paragraph styles is a mistake. The whole idea of one style being 'based on' another is surely a better way (and already implemented), and then keep character and paragraph styles separate.

[ macos 12.6 Monterey; Memory: 16GB;  Graphics: Intel Iris Plus Graphics 640 1536 MB; Processor: 2.3 GHz Intel Core i5 ]

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9 hours ago, R C-R said:

I have some doubts about if this implementation is the way to go. 

"Base on" is an usefull feature we need for sure, since document usually use few fonts and styles are variations with those.

For a "same level" we would have to create a generic "Header Style" and have variant (different color, etc.) as "Base on" to get a clean hierarchy understandable by everyone.

"Next level" is a one step "apply next/previous style" that can be very powerfull if we have a "apply x_style and next" (yes, I repeat myself  :P). Clicking on styles is a waste of time if we have organized styles and way to apply them faster -- simple documents usually follow same patterns for styles.  I'd rather spend time working on making pictures better and nices pages than clicking on styles.

I suppose at first we'll have to plan ahead and test, but it'll be an interesting workflow.

Add to this text frame's/object style with an option for applying the paragraph styles depending on their "next style" propriety and it became more and more interesting.

 

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3 hours ago, Jim_A said:

try setting a paragraph to Body style, select all, then 'Apply "Line Below" to Characters'.

No DO NOT try this. I think I broke something. Sigh. [sigh emoticon]

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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2 hours ago, Wosven said:

"Base on" is an usefull feature we need for sure, since document usually use few fonts and styles are variations with those.

Ever see an issue of Wired magazine? ;)

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19 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Ever see an issue of Wired magazine?

Like The Face and such, and some magazines/books about graphic design you can only look at few pages at a time… some are more "experimental" than beautifull.
If not made by talended people, that's better to avoid too much fonts in a document… “keep it simple” is a good advice :)

I spend a lot of time in public transport… and miss my trains a lot: that's a good way to wait looking at new magazines and books in the bookstore. I usually buy some of them for their content or their design.
I usually read part of the ones with the most "clean" design, where texts and photos/illustrations are highlighted, pages are more "airy" and not cluttered as publications for teenagers. The other ones are for design examples I keep. The only way I can forget a bad design is an important content that I want to read.
I learned a lot more reading my parents schoolbooks (black and white, good explanations) than my owns when they tended to add a lot of pictures and framed contents, some of them in duotone or with black and white pictures :S 
I don't want to do the same as those old books, but if I should compare with architecture: I love more romanesque architecture than gothic architecture.

That's my way of doing things. We had a hard time trying to produce such a beautifull magazine for a client, and in fact he wanted something complicated and more like a publication for teenagers (that's certainly not his readership). It should have been funny to take picture of our faces through the process!

 

As a side comment, I find UK and USA's got a better history with fonts and lettering than France. It shows in the results today: we have some talented people, but I can see more interesting and nice result in yours publications.

 

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46 minutes ago, Wosven said:

Like The Face and such, and some magazines/books about graphic design you can only look at few pages at a time… some are more "experimental" than beautifull.

Apologies for going a bit off-topic but there is an old saying that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This has never more true than in the magazine industry, which must cater to the ever changing tastes, interests, & sensibilities of an increasingly fragmented & multi-cultural readership. I mentioned Wired as a prime example of this, because its focus has always been on emerging technologies & how they affect everything including culture, politics, & economies on a worldwide scale. But the same thing applies, perhaps even more so, to other magazines like the other 13 Condé Nast print publications.

Like many others, ' adapt or die' is fundamental to their survival, & to some extent to the publishing industry itself. You can not write off something as just for teenagers, not just because they will mature (one hopes) to become future buyers of other print publications, but also because what one culture might see as just for teens, another might see as more for adults.

Like it or not, a big part of 'adapt or die' is adapting to paperless electronic publication, which means we can't even assume that the text styles seen by all of the readership will be the same.

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
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I'll keep on disparaging part of the teenagers's publications,  same with some specific feminine/male publications* since as it happens sometimes, the main focus it to put a maximum of texts/visuals and distinguish all part, more than beauty. You've got specifications to follow and need to do compromises.

We can compare this to web sites from 2000’ and the simple Google’ search page. The first ones disappeared (and studies show few informations are read on cluttered pages), the second one keep on surviving (with as main change the logo's modernizations). All of this is mostly due to responsive design and the interesting challenges it gives to reflow the page to different widths.

And looking at magazine, "adapt or die" is effective: when it's too cluttered and badly done with bad choices preventing lisibility, they'll have to correct a new layout in a few monthes. Creating/making pages with a lot of different contents is easier when you've got experience so they stay readable and nice. Some rules come for century of writing and designing.

*Difficult to give examples while living in different coutries, we won't have the same visual history of different magazines through decades. I've got some French ones’ titles in mind, some about cars and some generic feminines publications (not Elle, that is classy) as cluttered examples. For thoses magazines, we can go from class and elegant ones to cluttered ones. I take teenager publications as an example since it seems the tendancy for all those publications and schoolbooks since the 70’ is a cluttered one.
Sometimes it's easier to use a "clean" web page about a lesson than a cluttered schoolbook to help doing homework.

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