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Odd behavior with auto measurements


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Strange things are happening in the latest builds. Now I'm getting this sometimes:

image.png.7f55aa3a3d29f0f9482831980eab77b3.png

Crazy, huh? It seems AD is trying to measure the distance between all single characters in a text object at once. Also I feel that snapping is a lot more difficult in build 258. Did you change something there? 

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Here is an example, it's easy to recreate the problem using the attached file. Use the snapping option shown below, select the text objects, then try scaling the blue rectangle vertically using the upper handle. Do it slowly and you'll easily see the problem.

2019-03-11_16-09-08.png.d34aaae5edc87e8b85c6394ab1f59fa3.png

 

Odd behavior with auto measurements.afdesign

Edited by rubs
Changed name of attached document to something more meaningful
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Snapping is obviously strange in the latest build(s). I'm not sure what the devs did, but it worked well before and now it doesn't. Text baselines don't seem to align to each other anymore, and snapping tolerance is reduced so everything is more difficult now.

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no, it isn't

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Probably isn't helped by having "Snap to literally everything" turned on in the options.  I think we've always warned about this.

 

We have made a change that enables snapping to the boxes of each curve in a poly-curve.  This was requested to behave more like Illustrator.  Problem is that Art text offers the geometry of each character as separate snapping objects.  This is different to Frame text that offers the frame geometry for snapping purposes.

 

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And, text baselines do still align to each other - you just need to start your drag with the mouse on the text line for which you want to snap the baseline.

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Hi Ben,

30 minutes ago, Ben said:

Probably isn't helped by having "Snap to literally everything" turned on in the options.  I think we've always warned about this.

Serif's implementation of snapping at first seemed to be the best around since we are granted with so many individual options. If the options are there, users will use them and just expect things to work. If you want to limit options for some reason, the correct approach would be to enforce the limits using software logic. "Warning users" is very inefective (and old fashioned IMHO).

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We have made a change that enables snapping to the boxes of each curve in a poly-curve.

Well, I didn't get this warning either. So you have made changes to snapping after all :D

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Problem is that Art text offers the geometry of each character as separate snapping objects.

So I think we should be provided with an additional option to the snapping box, maybe something like "snap to curve boxes". Forcing some new behavior on users without documenting it may lead to some headaches.

Quote

And, text baselines do still align to each other - you just need to start your drag with the mouse on the text line for which you want to snap the baseline

Goo tip! I'll try it out, thanks.

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And, text baselines do still align to each other - you just need to start your drag with the mouse on the text line for which you want to snap the baseline

Hmmm. I'm not getting any results even if I start from the baseline. See for yourself:

2019-03-12_10-13-11.gif.173891aed5f61c6a20879411ae9063e0.gif

So it's currently very hard to align baselines in some cases. But I've noticed that disabling "include bounding box midpoints" improves it quite a bit. But the name of this particular option doesn't suggest it will.

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What tool are you using?  It's working fine for me.  Try turning off all the snapping options, but leave snapping turned on, and see if it works.

 

And why do you have your UI Decimal Places set so high - that doesn't exactly help keep things easy to read...?

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It could also be a result of the Art text thing I already explained to you.  You've got too much snapping going on, so the chances of hitting the actual thing you want are reduced.

 

There will be a fix for the bounding boxes issue - but, just for now, how about you try turning off bounding box snapping and see if it works.

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29 minutes ago, Ben said:

What tool are you using?

Move tool in Affinity Designer v. 1.7.0.258 beta for Windows.

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It's working fine for me.

Hahahaha, no comments.

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Try turning off all the snapping options, but leave snapping turned on, and see if it works.

Yes, thanks. As stated above disabling "include bounding box midpoints" restores it to what it used to be.

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And why do you have your UI Decimal Places set so high - that doesn't exactly help keep things easy to read...?

I agree, but I always use 6 digits for pixels because this will guarantee pixel-perfect results, and it sure does. Not every other tool does it. Being able to set the this kind of precision is one of the great things Affinity provides us.

Quote

It could also be a result of the Art text thing I already explained to you.  You've got too much snapping going on, so the chances of hitting the actual thing you want are reduced.

Yes, looks like it. You can see small boxes around characters when moving the text object.

Quote

There will be a fix for the bounding boxes issue - but, just for now, how about you try turning off bounding box snapping and see if it works.

Yes, that's what I'm doing now, thanks. I look forward to next build will these fixes!

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Me again... Snapping is definitely much more difficult in the latest beta. The simplest things e.g. snapping objects to artboard edges, must be done very slowly because the snapping range seems to be just one pixel which is easily miseed. Please at least provide an option to leave things as they were!

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It hasn't changed (aside form the above issue which we've already identified).  It's more likely your settings...

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  • 2 weeks later...

I know you'll say you didn't touch the snap settings again :D, but I feel like they just went back to normal in build 284. BTW, thanks a lot for the fixes in the new Assets panel.

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