still missing help features

[Oval]

Incredibly, many things are still missing, like Workspace ⊳Visual Reference (the links in other languages**), this, an index, a glossary, a list of known problems and how to deal with them, thanks (for using, purchasing, reporting, …), …

 

**in the hidden content text

[Oval]

Why is such an important link for the visual reference (Where is what? What is the naming? Where are context toolbar, personas, …?) still missing for most foreign languages/users and Photo, Designer and Publisher?

[Oval]

@acapstick One would like to understand it ...

[thomaso]

On 6/10/2019 at 11:15 AM, Sean P said:

On 6/8/2019 at 2:36 AM, Oval said:

images/panel_stroke.png is missing in most localisations,  

Are you referring to the Help? If so where are you seeing this is missing?

@Sean P, this screenscast shows an example of a missing graphic object in the online help for German, towards English. Apparently it gets loaded first but repressed (flickering shorty on page load).

https://affinity.help/designer/de.lproj/index.html?page=pages/Panels/strokePanel.html?title=Das Panel "Kontur"

The issue also occurs in the offline/app help:

Offline it is also disturbing that the search keyword seems not to find "stroke panel" in the app help menu > list of found help topics:

Furthermore it appears even not possible to get the offline help in the set app language (EN) but in the system language only (DE) – though the search appears to work for both languages. (There is no language menu in the help.app which could be used as a workaround.)

[thomaso]

On more example which, in that case, isn't only missing an additional illustration but its 15 fundamental panel descriptions 'A' – 'I', too.
(regardless of the selected Affinity app Designer/Photo/Publisher)

This example chapter "Swatches Panel"  shows the panel graphic + description only in the 2 English versions, none of the 8 not-English languages shows the content in the help article. (again, regardless of the selected Affinity app Designer/Photo/Publisher)

 

 

[Alfred]

I thought I had mentioned this before, but I’ll mention it (again?) here while I think of it! ‘PT-BR’ is identified as ‘Portuguese Brazilian’: it should, of course, say ‘Brazilian Portuguese’.

’Chinese Simplified’ is OK, but it would perhaps be better as ‘Simplified Chinese’.

[Oval]

19 hours ago, Alfred said:

I thought I had mentioned this before

Yes, here.

[Oval]

No forum for Affinity Help. Seems there will be none. Also seems that there is no high interest to have a correct help for new users, although the problems could be fixed quickly with little effort.

[Alfred]

2 minutes ago, Oval said:

No forum for Affinity Help. Seems there will be none. Also seems that there is no high interest to have a correct help for new users, although the problems could be fixed quickly with little effort.

Why do we need a separate forum for it? An incorrect help entry is a bug in the app.

[Oval]

On 1. Oktober 2019 at 1:25 PM, Alfred said:

Why do we need a separate forum for it?

To find easily all related stuff in that chaos (could be without double posts, easier and quicker for the responsible persons of Serif, more efficiency, …) and to be motivated to post more reports that seems to be read and answered by Serif? Could be some reasons. Or is it also the job of the developers to create/correct the help? Hardly likely. So far no one from the Serif crew has answered here or changed these issues in the online versions. Perhaps because the right person did not find these posts. Another reason could be that the other languages are not so important for Serif and that separate forums for other languages could change the situation..

((It's just half a product because the help is not correct / complete but could be if someone would change it at last.))

[Oval]

On 1. Oktober 2019 at 1:25 PM, Alfred said:

An incorrect help entry is a bug in the app

or in the online version … that still has no forum. But even in important releases like 1.7.3: not corrected. Unintelligible.

[Oval]

Another month without a log information or answer from Serif. 

[Patrick Connor]

Sorry for the delay replying to this thread, which is in the correct forum for help issues.

Index and Glossary are not features of the Mac help system we use. We would need to write our own help environment to change this.

At the moment the translated help for all non English languages is not as complete as the English, as we do not translate screenshots. For now this is by design. This may change in the future.

 

 

[Oval]

3 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

At the moment the translated help for all non English languages is not as complete as the English, as we do not translate screenshots. For now this is by design.

Thanks!  So the missing visual reference for others is no problem for Serif?! But for others.  It really is missing!

[Patrick Connor]

21 minutes ago, Oval said:

 So the missing visual reference for others is no problem for Serif?!

We would like to fix/improve this when time and resources allow.

[thomaso]

7 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

we do not translate screenshots. For now this is by design.

That's not quite right. For instance in the screenshots above the 3 markers on swatch icons appear as a translated screenshot in the German (and all non-English?) app help – whereas here 'just' the according screenshot + caption about the panel itself is missing. I do understand that it would mean a lot work to generate all language related screenshots of the UI, which is visible for the user anyway. But those situations with additional image caption info, not obvious in the UI, might be worth to become translated. (for instance the info about the switch from Opacity to Noise)

A well working help can act like a positive public relation for an entire Affinity app to a broad group of users (– different to e.g. a specifically missing feature discussion in the forum.)

Because of the problem of the mac help app not allowing a language switch, it might be a useful info for non-English users of the app help that the English help, accessible via website only, does contain most information. That might reduce kind of frustration or disappointment when using the app help for those who are not aware about the additional web option. Possibly a link to the web help can be placed in the help menu / or the help app start page / or the Affinity welcome screen.

[Oval]

On 6. November 2019 at 2:36 PM, Patrick Connor said:

the translated help for all non English languages is not as complete as the English

Was it already discussed how users could do the job?

BTW: What about a macro for the screenshots?