Showing hidden characters

[Roddie]

I'm astonished, and not a little disappointed, that there is no way to show hidden/invisible characters in Designer. I particularly need to see tab characters so I can work out why text is not lining up. This is the first real task I've done having moved from Illustrator, and Designer has fallen at the first hurdle. This is a basic function within text editing. Please add as soon as possible. Meanwhile I'll go back to Illustrator.

[Hilltop]

1 hour ago, Roddie said:

I'm astonished, and not a little disappointed, that there is no way to show hidden/invisible characters in Designer. 

Go to Text on the menu bar and select Show Special Characters.

[walt.farrell]

1 minute ago, Hilltop said:

Go to Text on the menu bar and select Show Special Characters.

That's a Publisher option, but not a Designer option.

[Hilltop]

1 minute ago, walt.farrell said:

That's a Publisher option, but not a Designer option.

Oops, I was about to correct my post but you beat me to it.

I must say, it's difficult sometimes to keep track of the different functions and features in the different apps.....

[walt.farrell]

2 minutes ago, Hilltop said:

I must say, it's difficult sometimes to keep track of the different functions and features in the different apps.....

Yes, it can be confusing at times.

@Roddie: There is a workaround that you could try, if you also happen to own Affinity Publisher. From Designer, choose File > Edit in Publisher from the menu. If Publisher offers to convert your artboards to pages tell it not to do that. Then, use Text > Show Special Characters from the menu. Finally, choose File > Edit in Designer from the menu. You'll end up back in Designer, and your document will have that option selected.

Alternatively, if you also own Publisher, you could do most of the work in Publisher using its Designer Persona.

[Roddie]

4 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Yes, it can be confusing at times.

@Roddie: There is a workaround that you could try, if you also happen to own Affinity Publisher. From Designer, choose File > Edit in Publisher from the menu. If Publisher offers to convert your artboards to pages tell it not to do that. Then, use Text > Show Special Characters from the menu. Finally, choose File > Edit in Designer from the menu. You'll end up back in Designer, and your document will have that option selected.

Alternatively, if you also own Publisher, you could do most of the work in Publisher using its Designer Persona.

Thanks for the thought but I don't have Publisher and have no plans to acquire it. I've been using QuarkXPress since version 1 and will be staying with it for the foreseeable future. It's Adobe's ransomware I want to avoid.

[Tourmaline]

In Designer there is something called the glyphs browser. It will show all special caracters.

 

Go To view - Glyph browser.

[Roddie]

56 minutes ago, Tourmaline said:

In Designer there is something called the glyphs browser. It will show all special caracters.

 

Go To view - Glyph browser.

It shows a list of all characters but I can't see a way to make hidden characters (eg tabs) appear within a block of text.

[Tourmaline]

30 minutes ago, Roddie said:

It shows a list of all characters but I can't see a way to make hidden characters (eg tabs) appear within a block of text.

Ah, you mean those hidden caracters. There is a way to add them into text but not  a way to show them.

 

For tabs to make them visible go to paragraph - tabs, click on the + and add a stop, now you'll have options to show the tab stop. Either a point, dash etc.

 

There are 2 little arrows, click on the right one to select how you want to make the tabs visible.

 

Probably won't work with imported text.

[walt.farrell]

15 minutes ago, Roddie said:

It shows a list of all characters but I can't see a way to make hidden characters (eg tabs) appear within a block of text.

There isn't any way to do that if all you have to work with is Designer.

If it helps, here's a .afdesign document with Text > Show Special Characters enabled using Publisher. You should be able to use this document as a starting point to make other .afdesign documents with that setting enabled.

show-special-characters.afdesign

[Roddie]

Thank you Walt, that's brilliant!

[walt.farrell]

You're welcome.

[Oval]

On 18. September 2019 at 5:00 PM, walt.farrell said:

show-special-characters.afdesign

Already in Resources?

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Oval said:

Already in Resources?

No, but I usually think of Resources as being for more significant things.

[Oval]

27 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

more significant things

For example a file that “unlocks” several functions. :-)

[walt.farrell]

1 minute ago, Oval said:

For example a file that “unlocks” several functions. :-)

That could be interesting

[Oval]

12 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

interesting

Perhaps Serif would not be very happy if functions that cost money will be available for less.

[Tourmaline]

23 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

That could be interesting

So, if you use a Publisher file with the feature turned on and you import that file into Designer and it works then I am thinking that the feature is allready hidden in Designer somewhere otherwise it wouldn't work.

 

Logically if a feature is missing it can't work via import.

[walt.farrell]

1 minute ago, Tourmaline said:

So, if you use a Publisher file with the feature turned on and you import that file into Designer and it works then I am thinking that the feature is allready hidden in Designer somewhere otherwise it wouldn't work.

 

Logically if a feature is missing it can't work via import.

Each of the applications needs to be able to understand the files created by the other applications, because cross-application compatibility is a key point of the Affinity suite.

So, for example, if you have a Designer file with Path Text (Text on a Path), and you open it in Photo, it has to look right, and still be editable. That doesn't mean that Photo needs to be able to create Path Text (and it can't) but it must be able to understand it and operate on it when it encounters it.

Another example: Publisher has the Text Frame studio panel that lets you adjust the fill, stroke, insets, and other properties of a Text Frame. Designer and Photo don't have that, but they need to understand those properties if they open a Publisher file. They can't adjust them, but them must display them properly.

So, yes, much of the code is shared, and present in all 3 applications. Some user interface code is omitted, based on Serif's decisions and desires to target a particular market or set of users with each application.

[Alfred]

2 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Another example: Publisher has the Text Frame studio panel that lets you adjust the fill, stroke, insets, and other properties of a Text Frame. Designer and Photo don't have that, but they need to understand those properties if they open a Publisher file. They can't adjust them, but them must display them properly.

Yet another example: you can add a live filter in Photo and it will still be there when you open the file in Designer. Unlike Publisher’s text frame attributes, Photo’s live filters remain editable when the file is opened in another Affinity app.

[Tourmaline]

4 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Each of the applications needs to be able to understand the files created by the other applications, because cross-application compatibility is a key point of the Affinity suite.

So, for example, if you have a Designer file with Path Text (Text on a Path), and you open it in Photo, it has to look right, and still be editable. That doesn't mean that Photo needs to be able to create Path Text (and it can't) but it must be able to understand it and operate on it when it encounters it.

Another example: Publisher has the Text Frame studio panel that lets you adjust the fill, stroke, insets, and other properties of a Text Frame. Designer and Photo don't have that, but they need to understand those properties if they open a Publisher file. They can't adjust them, but them must display them properly.

So, yes, much of the code is shared, and present in all 3 applications. Some user interface code is omitted, based on Serif's decisions and desires to target a particular market or set of users with each application.

If so, then I would logically think that a lot of features used in Publisher could also be implemented in Designer.

 

But, of course I understand that it is not in the interest of the developer to implement too much features of other apps otherwise some might be obsolete.

Publisher is for DTP/pre-press, Designer is for vector and Photo is for Photo editing. combining all 3 into one would make it a confusing application and the UI would be way too cluttered.

 

Each application needs specific features.

 

In other words, if you would implement everything that Publisher can do into Designer then Publisher would be obsolete and visa versa...