Align Stroke to ... doesn't work

[maxen]

None of the three align modes have any effect in Publisher. Stroke is aligned center, no matter wich mode is selected.

[dominik]

1 hour ago, maxen said:

None of the three align modes have any effect in Publisher. Stroke is aligned center, no matter wich mode is selected.

Yes, I can confirm this. Amazing noone noticed this before 

d.

[MickRose]

I'm not finding that here.

[dominik]

15 hours ago, MickRose said:

I'm not finding that here.

Interesting. I went back to the document I was trying this. Here it seems to work for some objects (e.g. picture frame, table outline, freeform drawn object) but not with custom shapes (e.g. trapezoid, segment).

I have not found a general rule, yet, what makes it to fail 

Can you by any chance try with one of the custom shapes, please?
d.

[GarryP]

Windows 10 Home 1809, Publisher 1.7.0.257.

I've just tried adding a few custom shapes - Trapezoid, Square Star, Donut - to a new document and the "Align Stroke To..." buttons in the Stroke panel work as expected. The same goes for Rectangles, Rounded Rectangles and Ellipses, they all seem to be working fine for me.

However, I have experienced some rare occasions where the Stroke, Swatches and Colour panels have had no effect on Text Frame contents. When you convert a shape to a text frame, the Stroke, Swatches and Colour panels move their focus to the text rather than the frame - with those functions instead being taken up by the relevant controls in the Text Frame panel - but every now and again they stop having any effect at all. Could this be a related symptom? In the original post, maxen didn't say what kind of object they were having problems with.

I have not been able to come up with a reproducible work-flow to pass on to the developers. (My work-around has been to delete the object and try again, which isn't ideal.)

Note: Another way of looking at this is that if maxen was working on a text frame with no text in it then it would look like the Stroke panel had no effect on the frame stroke because the Stroke panel for a text frame relates to the text in the frame and not the frame itself. No text so no visible effect.

Edited March 16, 2019 by GarryP

[dominik]

2 hours ago, GarryP said:

However, I have experienced some rare occasions where the Stroke, Swatches and Colour panels have had no effect on Text Frame contents. When you convert a shape to a text frame, the Stroke, Swatches and Colour panels move their focus to the text rather than the frame - with those functions instead being taken up by the relevant controls in the Text Frame panel - but every now and again they stop having any effect at all. Could this be a related symptom? In the original post, maxen didn't say what kind of object they were having problems with.

This, indeed is important to know. A while ago it took me some time until I learned this 

I enclose a stripped down sample document with some objects where stroke align works and some object which refuse to align the stroke to anything other than 'Centre'.

d.

Testing 20-13e.afpub

[GarryP]

Yeah, that's weird.
My tests on your document show the same issues that you get. I can't see any problems with the shapes other than changing the alignment doesn't do anything on the ones you specified.
I drew another trapezoid in the same document and the issue persists there too.
I drew a trapezoid in a new document - with the original document open - but that one worked as normal.
I went back to the original document and the issue still persists in your shapes.
I selected my trapezoid, reverted it to default, and the stroke now works as would be expected on that particular shape but still doesn't on any of the others that had the issue.
A copy of one of your problem shapes also has the same issue.
Changing the stroke to "No Line Style" and then back to "Solid Line Style" doesn't make any difference to the fact that the alignment still doesn't work.
So, after all that, I now have multiple shapes of the same type in the same document which work differently.
I think that's one for the big brains at Affinity Towers to work out.

[carl123]

Something to do with Arrowheads, maybe?

Once I add an arrowhead to a stroke, you cant change the alignment

Even if you then remove the arrowhead you still cant change the alignment

Selecting the shape and hitting the Revert Defaults button, cures the problem

[dominik]

22 minutes ago, carl123 said:

Something to do with Arrowheads, maybe?

Hi @carl123,

good call. I remember when I created the first object it hat accidentially an arrowhead (even it was a closed object).

I just tried the following:

• Revert to default (icon on the toolbar) and assign a new line width > align inside/outside works as expected.
• Deselect everything and switch in the stroke panel to some arrowhead > create an object > remove the arrowhead.
  Align doesn't work anymore.

I guess this is a bug. Maybe it is OK that lines with arrowheads are not supposed to align. But it should work again once the arrowhead was removed.

I hope the moderators see this on monday an double check.

d.

[dominik]

FYI, I created a bug report to bring this to attention:

d.

[AdamW]

Thanks. Alignment should be disabled if a stroke has Arrowheads, but also should be re-enabled if they are removed. I’ve brought this to he attention of the ‘Arrowheads Department’. 

[GarryP]

On a related note, should the "Align Stroke to..." buttons also be disabled for non-closed curves?
At the moment they don't change anything visible - and that's what I would expect - but they can still be pressed.
For example, you can:
* create a rectangle;
* set "Align Stroke to Outside";
* convert the rectangle to curves;
* break the curve.
The visible alignment goes back to Centre, as I would expect, but the "...Outside" button is still pressed and I can set different alignments that have no meaning for a non-closed curve.
Re-closing the curve re-asserts the selected alignment, which is nice, but should I be able to set an alignment without it making a visible difference?
Maybe, instead of disabling the buttons, a little 'info tool-tip icon' could be shown next to the alignment buttons - only when a non-closed curve or a curve with arrowheads is selected - to tell the user that those effects are not visible on non-closed curves (or curves that have arrowheads).