Geometry XOR: Is this, umm, normal?

[Cooner]

Howdy friends!

I was building a few vector shapes for a design and playing with the Geometry options to "knock out" overlapping parts of the shapes, etc. At some point I inadvertently hit the "XOR" function in the Geometry toolbar, and … well, it brought up a slowly pulsating "Xor" progress bar on top of the window. There's no option to cancel or dismiss it; I can't edit or do anything with the document while it's there; and I've tried Escape, Return, control-C, command-C, option-C, and a bunch of other keystrokes to try to kill the process. It's been running for several minutes now … I selected a few objects but I don't think it was anything THAT complex to take so long to figure out?

I could kill the app, but … well, that would lose a few minutes work, and … is this normal?

Thanks!

[Cooner]

P.S. I got work to do so I killed the app … Happily recovery mode captured everything up to just before I hit XOR so it doesn't look like I lost any work. Still, tho, curious, anyone know what was going on here?

Thanks!

[smartin684]

This just happened to me today. Accidentally hit the XOR button and bam!!!  my new M1 mac had a meltdown. I wonder if they will ever address this issue. 

[smartin684]

I just posted that this crashed my new M1 mac, and I replicated the crash on such a simple drawing. Step 1: create a circle. Step 2: create a line from the top of the circle to the bottom of the circle, setting both the lines endpoints on the circles "nodes"?.  Step 3: Hit the XOR button. Crashes all the time. 

[Greyfox]

8 hours ago, smartin684 said:

I just posted that this crashed my new M1 mac, and I replicated the crash on such a simple drawing. Step 1: create a circle. Step 2: create a line from the top of the circle to the bottom of the circle, setting both the lines endpoints on the circles "nodes"?.  Step 3: Hit the XOR button. Crashes all the time. 

What exactly did you expect to happen?
Obviously the program should not crash, or hang, but is this really a proper use of the function?

The help file gives "Xor—merges selected objects into a composite object with transparent area where filled regions overlap", and overlap a filled square and a circle and it works as advertised.

A line (which could be very thin) intersecting two of the node points of an equally thin (unfilled?) circle doesn't seem to me to provide the basis for proper use of that function.  Maybe my interpretation of the test you did isn't correct?.

Edit: If you try the attached file, which is a rectangle over the two node points of a circle, the XOR function works as I would expect.

 

XOR Test.afdesign

[Greyfox]

25 minutes ago, BofG said:

There was a passenger aircraft once that during testing happily lifted the landing gear if the button was pressed whilst sitting on the ground. Should that have been left as it was and gone into commercial service?

Maybe the help file just needs updating to state the program will crash if the wrong objects are selected...

No, as I said in my post, the program shouldn't crash, or stall. If the selected items are not valid for the tool to work properly, the tool ideally shouldn't be available (grayed out), or at least if used and unable to produce a result, then there should be an error message and a dignified exit.

My question as to what the expectation, was in relation to what part of the line would be expected to merge with the circle and what part of the "overlap" would be expected to become transparent. 😀

[loukash]

13 hours ago, smartin684 said:

Step 1: create a circle. Step 2: create a line from the top of the circle to the bottom of the circle, setting both the lines endpoints on the circles "nodes"?.  Step 3: Hit the XOR button. Crashes all the time. 

Can't reproduce. Using a boolean compound for the screenshot, but getting same result destructively:

The line simply disappears.

That said, there is a problem with open curves in boolean operations, and that has been acknowledged by Serif several times.
Here an example from my own bug report vaults, still unresolved:

So, if this is what you need:

… the workaround is:

1. set the open vertical stroke to a ridiculously narrow width, like 0.0001 pt
2. Layer > Expand Stroke – converts it to an ultranarrow fill
3. boolean operation with the ellipse

13 hours ago, smartin684 said:

this crashed my new M1 mac, and I replicated the crash

It could be an M1 or Big Sur specific issue. Apparently there are many of those – and not just with Affinity apps. (Lacking a Mac that is capable to run Bug Sir, I can't tell…)

[v_kyr]

14 hours ago, smartin684 said:

I just posted that this crashed my new M1 mac, and I replicated the crash on such a simple drawing. Step 1: create a circle. Step 2: create a line from the top of the circle to the bottom of the circle, setting both the lines endpoints on the circles "nodes"?.  Step 3: Hit the XOR button. Crashes all the time. 

If you can constantly reproduce this, file in a Affinity Designer on MacOS bug report which describes this BigSur related bug. Also look for possible crash reports you may want to add to your posting then.

[lacerto]

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