Dashed curves are not always drawn nicely

[GarryP]

Windows 10 Home 1903, Designer 1.7.1.404.

Some people might think this as being too picky but others might think it is a major problem for them so I’ll report this as a bug and see what happens.
The attached GIF shows the problem much better than I could explain it. Watch how the dashes on the curve change shape. Sometimes they’re fine but at other times they look really bad. Modifying the curve or zooming in/out alter how the curve is drawn.

This bug report comes from this forum thread: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/95564-minsk-tramway-incl-metro-transit-diagram/

line-with-dashed-stroke.afdesign

[Sean P]

Thanks for passing this on Garry, I've reported it to development now!

[GarryP]

Thanks Sean.
I have no idea what I think it should do – e.g. should the outside of the marks on the bend stay the same width as those on the straight or should they expand to keep the gap size the same, and then what happens to the inside of the marks, should they keep the same width or shrink – but the developers will have a much better idea than me.

[Alfred]

21 minutes ago, GarryP said:

I have no idea what I think it should do

I think it should do what it seems to do most of the time — i.e. the outside of the marks on the bend should expand to keep the gap size the same, and the inside of the marks should shrink — but it should do this consistently so that there are no marks which are out of step with the marks on either side. In the attached example (previously posted to the linked Minsk tramway thread)  four of the five highlighted marks are thinner on the right, but the one which is second from the bottom is rectangular.

[GarryP]

Alfred: What you’re saying is what I thought at first until I started to think about it a bit more.
The attached image shows four different ways of doing it, some more horrible-looking than others.
I think it depends on what the user might want at any given time.
What’s more important to them? The gap size, inside or out, or the width of the dash at either end?
They have specified both a gap size and a dash size so which should be ‘sacrificed’ by the software and how should it make the choice?
For me personally, I would generally prefer option 2 (it just looks nicer to me) but there may be times when option 1 is better, even though there’s an optical illusion going on where the inside widths look larger than those on the outside.
Options 3 and 4 (both crude mock-ups) look horrible to me but they have their own ‘self-consistencies’ that someone might want under certain circumstances (different curves make for different circumstances).
Someone has to make the choice, so who makes the choice (developer/user), which do they choose (keep gap or dash width), and how (an option somewhere perhaps), and why (under which circumstances)?
It’s a bit more complicated than it seems at first.

[PixelPest]

In the meantime you might want to try out this:

[Wosven]

28 minutes ago, PixelPest said:

In the meantime you might want to try out this

Optically, you need to have the tracking adjusted for the characters at the angle, so the middle of the characters is the same distance that between other characters.

[PixelPest]

5 minutes ago, Wosven said:

Optically, you need to have the tracking adjusted for the characters at the angle, so the middle of the characters is the same distance that between other characters.

Sure I did - but you can insert blanks to - and have full control over spacing. So not too bad i guess.

[Alfred]

3 minutes ago, PixelPest said:

Sure I did - but you can insert blanks to - and have full control over spacing. So not too bad i guess.

What @Wosven is saying — and I agree with her — is that the distance between the characters on the bend needs to be the same at the middle. In your ‘ArtText’ example the distance is the same at the base, so the middles are too far apart.

[Wosven]

Same at the middle, and the top will be farther appart, the bottom tighter, but it will "balance" (do the counterpart?) optically.

[PixelPest]

Not sure if there´s one correct way to do it:

[Wosven]

It looks better.

The first one is like this (it's more evident when looking at small files or thumbnail to check the overal grey: the top is a lighter grey):

New one:

Perhaps there should be one more "I" in the corner... the problem with perception is you spend a lot of time fine tuning... strangely, (I didn't  count the I), the top left and bottom right corner seem better.

[PixelPest]

1 hour ago, Wosven said:

the problem with perception is you spend a lot of time fine tuning...

... and finally you can´t stop it from doing weird stuff - and the most annoying thing is it´s just in your brain.

Perception is my thing: https://vimeo.com/353098160

Where´s the crossing?

Cheers