Symbols with editable text

[Ulaxes]

As a user I like to define symbols and then alter the text of the instances.
This would vastely improve the reusability of symbols.

(See Adobe XD, Gravit Designer)

[firstdefence]

1. Type some text
2. Go to the symbols panel
3. Click Create 
4. Drag a few symbols onto the workspace
5. Edit text, all symbols change

[Ulaxes]

Okay, sorry. I probably didn't phrase my feedback correctly.

I would like to type a unique text for each symbol instance.
The key issue here is that all symbols will share the same text content. 

Here's an example from Adobe XD:

 

So each of the symbol instance can have it unique text content, but you can also overwrite the changes in the master symbol.

 

Edited March 7, 2019 by Ulaxes

[hawk]

You can disable sync in the symbols panel to change individual symbols' text, but there's no way to propagate it to other symbols after that, or to re-sync. I would like to see those options come to Affinity.

[Ulaxes]

Syncing or re-syncing are really useful.

However, my suggestion is you can alter the text of each instance, while keeping the style.

Here's me doing a quick example in Gravit Designer, Adobe XD and I think Sketch have similar possiblities:

 

Edited March 7, 2019 by Ulaxes

[firstdefence]

I get ya, have a symbol and disable sync on any element within that symbol, so disable sync on the text but everything else remains in sync.

At the moment you can't expand the symbol within the symbol panel to edit in this way but I think the symbol feature needs a major rework to put it on top.

[Ulaxes]

@firstdefence thanks for the advice, good to know you can do this.

Yeah, I'd love to see Affinity Designer improve the symbol feature and get it on par with the other top design tools.

[Chevdor]

> have a symbol and disable sync on any element within that symbol

Yes ! Was there any news since 2019 ?
This sounds like a basic and much required need. This makes tools like Figma so enjoyable to use:

• you draw an ugly box
• make it a component
• create instances
• change the text so your content is right
• then work on the styling so the style is right, while the content remains
• then at any point, you can revisit the initial component and tweak it

This makes it enjoyable since you do not need to take care of everything at once. If you know you need components (call them Assets, Symbols, or whatever), you just need to start a component placeholder for later and make instances of it. Then you can later on change the base component and suddenly your all doc/book illuminates.

Say you have a book with 300 buttons from a Symbol / Asset, and you want to update the style of the buttons (without afffecting the text content).
I shortly thought using actual STYLES could be an option but there seem to be the same issue (at least in aD) that styles cannot be updated.

There is just no way someone will create a new Symbol and replace the 300 instances manually.

 

[silverfly]

I just bought Affinity Designer 2 primarily because I thought text was editable within symbols.

I understand that you can detach text to edit, but you can't reattach the text to ensure future changes to the symbol will stay consistent.

Example: Let's say I have an artboard that says 'test' in red letters. I create the symbol and duplicate it. Then I detach the text in the copied symbol and change the text to say TESTING. But now I want to change the text in all symbols to blue. The instance of the symbol won't change.

[Komatös]

Hello @silverfly and welcome to the forums.

Have a look at the video.

 

[Hangman]

Hi @silverfly and another warm welcome to the forums,

11 hours ago, silverfly said:

Let's say I have an artboard that says 'test' in red letters. I create the symbol and duplicate it. Then I detach the text in the copied symbol and change the text to say TESTING. But now I want to change the text in all symbols to blue. The instance of the symbol won't change.

I have a feeling this is by design, though don't quote me on that, it would certainly make a lot of sense if edited text did resynch... I only assume that because the issue was discussed in this thread and hasn't been flagged as a bug...