shobbs Posted August 1, 2019 Share Posted August 1, 2019 When I am adjusting the layout, there are often times I need to see the layout without the selection boxes... this is fine until I need to make a few comparisons. I use the Undo/Redo actions for a before and after comparison but I can't because for some reason it was thought to be a good idea to include De/Selections into the Undo History. This makes it so if I Undo, and then select something, I've lost all my history I may have wanted to keep. Can you remove this "feature" from the product. It's not great and makes me want to go back to Adobe pretty quickly out of frustration. xlynx, Andreas1974, ashf and 1 other 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kal Posted October 16, 2019 Share Posted October 16, 2019 I completely agree. The undo/redo stack should be reserved for destructive actions only. This has been raised in the past and ignored by the developers. When it was raised as a bug here, they closed it as 'by design' without (it would seem) taking the time to understand why the behaviour is completely unnecessary and a frustration for many. It was also discussed here and requested again here. So I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for this to be fixed. In Affinity Designer and Photo, you have a Snapshots panel, which enables you to save various states and switch between them, but it's a pretty clunky process in practice—after saving each snapshot you have to select one with the mouse, then click a tiny icon, then repeat if you want to switch back and forth to compare them—you can't just click (or even double-click) on a snapshot to view it. (I know, it boggles the mind.) In any case, the feature didn't find its way to Publisher. What you can do, rather than deselect objects, is hold down the space bar to temporarily hide the selection boxes. However, this will not work if you have text selected, or the keyboard focus happens to be in some UI text field. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted October 16, 2019 Share Posted October 16, 2019 Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums, @shobbs. Affinity provides a form of branching, or alternative histories, that may help you, When you have used Undo, and then done something destructive, you'll see a branching icon in the history, as shown here: If you click on that icon, the other path of the history will be shown, which will contain the actions prior to that highlighted destructive action. It's explained further (for Publisher) in the Help for Using Undo, Redo, and History. Kal 1 Quote -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Laptop: Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU. iPad: iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fde101 Posted October 16, 2019 Share Posted October 16, 2019 16 hours ago, Kal said: The undo/redo stack should be reserved for destructive actions only. I 100% disagree with this. Moving a layer is not "destructive" but sometimes what gets "destroyed" is my memory - wait, where did I just move that from? Much more reasonable (and desirable) would be the ability to filter the list of undo/redo actions displayed in the panel so that the items that I want to see are not lost in the mix of less relevant smaller actions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kal Posted October 16, 2019 Share Posted October 16, 2019 11 hours ago, walt.farrell said: Affinity provides a form of branching, or alternative histories … Well I learnt something new. Thanks Walt! 6 hours ago, fde101 said: I 100% disagree with this. Moving a layer is not "destructive" but sometimes what gets "destroyed" is my memory - wait, where did I just move that from? If you'd asked for clarification on how I defined 'destructive', you might have found a percentage of agreement. I meant any action that alters the artwork, and that would certainly include moving or reordering layers/objects. Selecting or deselecting an object alters nothing. Moving an object alters it. Choose a different word if you like, but now, hopefully, we're at least talking about the same thing. 6 hours ago, fde101 said: Much more reasonable (and desirable) would be the ability to filter the list of undo/redo actions displayed in the panel so that the items that I want to see are not lost in the mix of less relevant smaller actions. That's the way Affinity seems to think… Let's add another panel feature or 'Manager' window to fix a problem that never existed before. Look, these kinds of apps weren't invented yesterday. There's no need to reinvent the wheel. I've used design, layout and drawing apps for 20+ years, and I've never once in that time wished to 'undo' a selection or deselection. This 'feature' adds nothing, but removes something very useful. Adobe tried it with the release of CS3—including non-destructive actions (switching to preview mode, showing and hiding guides, etc) in the undo/redo stack, and it was a nightmare. People hated it, Adobe recognised their mistake and restored the previous behaviour. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fde101 Posted October 16, 2019 Share Posted October 16, 2019 21 minutes ago, Kal said: Selecting or deselecting an object alters nothing. Interesting... I could see modifications to the pixel selection (in Photo for example) being logged in undo history, but selecting and deselecting layers is as well - that definitely shouldn't be, I agree. At least it does consolidate down to just one if you change it several times in a row. Kal 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kal Posted October 17, 2019 Share Posted October 17, 2019 9 minutes ago, fde101 said: Interesting... I could see modifications to the pixel selection (in Photo for example) being logged in undo history, but selecting and deselecting layers is as well - that definitely shouldn't be, I agree. Yeah, good point about pixel selection. I guess pixel selections are, in reality, a kind of artwork in themselves, and it's common to perform various (and in my vocabulary, destructive) actions on them (adding, expanding, feathering, etc). I just checked, and Photoshop does indeed include pixel selections in the undo/redo stack. I think I intuitively knew this, but didn't think about it in the context of this discussion. 15 minutes ago, fde101 said: At least it does consolidate down to just one if you change it several times in a row. Yes, indeed. I hadn't really considered that either. The CS3 behaviour I mentioned before, if I remember correctly, just included every little thing in there, which really was the stuff of nightmares. Affinity's approach seems more considered at least. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cristian Dragos Posted April 11, 2020 Share Posted April 11, 2020 Hey guys... any updates on this? I use AD for UI design and it's insane to log each time I select and deselect a layer. An option for this could be really helpful! Quote Check out my awesome Affinity Creations! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kal Posted April 11, 2020 Share Posted April 11, 2020 Nope. I guess when the devs closed this bug report as 'by design', they really meant it. Affinity has a pretty 'unique' idea of what constitutes good UX design at times. 😕 Andreas1974 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ashf Posted December 17, 2022 Share Posted December 17, 2022 Totally agree that this behavior should be removed. Or at least Serif should give us an option to remove it. Kal 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andreas1974 Posted December 17, 2022 Share Posted December 17, 2022 The far too littered and cumbersome undo history it's one of the most annoying things with Affinity Publisher, that makes me not want to use it, as long as I have access to other software. Is this any change to this in version 2? ashf and Kal 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cristian Dragos Posted December 23, 2022 Share Posted December 23, 2022 On 12/17/2022 at 12:33 PM, Andreas1974 said: The far too littered and cumbersome undo history it's one of the most annoying things with Affinity Publisher, that makes me not want to use it, as long as I have access to other software. Is this any change to this in version 2? Tell me about it! It drives me nuts! And no, it works the same way in version 2. At least they could give us an option in the settings to disable this stupid thing. Not sure why the developers are so hardheaded!? Kal, ashf and Andreas1974 3 Quote Check out my awesome Affinity Creations! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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