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Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
Designer Pro X now has a fly-out menu for the Text Tool under the button "ab"
I wish those features could just be on the same line with the rest of the Text tool options.Space before paragraph
Space after paragraph
Tracking
Kerning
(Baseline Shift)
Personally I use those options all the time!
There is plenty of room to the right to just put those options there.
With this new fly-out menu it also means you can't see what settings are applied to text you select. You have to click on that button first every time...
So far I really like the new options/features, but this text fly-out menu is a step back in terms of workflow.
Attachment 89668
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
+1
the kerning and tracking especially should be visible all the time when working
as this is on the tool infobar it is not customable AFAI can see
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
I tend to agree.
I suspect the Infobar is getting a bit crowded and this explains the need to contain some of the functions in a fly out menu.
And there are not separate edit functions that I can see in the Button Palette.
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
A "tear off" floating menu for this would be acceptable to me. But with modern screens, I cannot imagine 99.99% of people using DPX don't have enough screen room for the individual functions to always show.
Take care, Mike
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
+1
Hate this particular flyout.
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
All flyouts are evil..
The text toolbar has much less space now that the text styles drop down has been added in DPX.
Although I have a 1920x1200 resolution and run DPX at full screen, I also always have the arrange toolbar docked, so there is little room left.
I'm guessing whoever decided to add this new flyout were in a similar position.
So, +1 from me to at least make this flyout user manageable.
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
I run my laptop at 1600 x 900.
Attachment 89678
I think there is room (at least on this laptop... ).
And besides, I personally think they could lose the Aspect Ratio portion. Doesn't belong there and aspect ratio can easily be altered by other means--and people who do with paragraph text often do so accidentally and need to figure out how to rectify it.
Take care, Mike
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
+1 from me, too. It's a real pain in the arse. Also it seems that the leading (line spacing as Xara refer to it) option is no longer available - or is it just me? I imagine this must be a bug.
Bob.
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
Line spacing is there.
Mike
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
@ Mike: On closer inspection I see you are right. How silly of me to expect it to be in the flyout area, where kerning, tracking et al reside. (insert irony smiley here)
Bob.
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
+1 from me, as already said, pain in the arse and a backward step.
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
Agreed on all counts. I've never intentionally used the Aspect Ratio thing, but the tools I do use frequently have now been hidden. Very much a backward step. Nice to have the styles, but for the vast majority of my text work, they won't apply.
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
I just had a thought I don't know if this is possible or not or even feasible, but what if the info bar was a gallery instead? so that the info bar gallery would display all the buttons and features for what ever tool you are using like it does now but it would be a gallery on the right instead of a bar along the top. I keep all my galleries pinned open and I use the buttons along the bottom to switch from gallery to gallery. And if I need to free up more screen space I pull the galleries in to the right and make them really narrow.
This could leave lots of room for buttons for new features we have been asking for like hyphenation and Glyphs ;)
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
+1 for putting back the text options in a single bar vs the flyout
Hans
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
+1 - there is plenty of screen real estate to not use the PIA flyout. At least give us the option if someone has strong feelings for it.
Ernest
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
+1 here too. As someone who does a lot of typography in my work very day, I find his nonsense change so irritating that I have reverted to using XDP7 instead.
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
+1 from me, but not to make tool bar too wide - my screen is 1024 wide.
Also reinstate feature that dynamically changes selected text to the fonts listed in the dropdown list as you mouse over them.
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Jonopen
Also reinstate feature that dynamically changes selected text to the fonts listed in the dropdown list as you mouse over them.
There's been no change to this feature in DPX, Jono.
I assume you have selected the text you want to change before mousing over the fonts in the drop-down list?
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
Quote:
Originally Posted by
sledger
There's been no change to this feature in DPX, Jono.
I assume you have selected the text you want to change before mousing over the fonts in the drop-down list?
Yep. Just nipped back to v7, in case it was my imagination, and it works as per your video clip (thanks, nicely demonstrated), but doesn't do that for me in v8. (note: I am using the unsupported grey UI - but also in v7).
My work-around is to select the text as before, then double click a font from the font gallery, which is fine for my needs. In fact the font gallery almost makes the whole thing unnecessary, as it displays a sample of each font.
But the fly-out, that's another matter!
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
no fix in the latest update..
can I just say that I don't do body text in xara
but no matter which way I make drawings - vector raster scan all three whatever - I always do the 'paste-up' and the lettering in xara
and when lettering speech/text in cartoons kerning in particular is crucial for legibility, especially when the art is going to be reduced in print to a size that is within a given range rather than fixed - tracking often looks too mechanical [edit: especially where you have a mix of font-size/bold/italic], kerning each space is usually far preferable.. and this flyout is dreadful
it would be acceptable if you could toggle it open/closed - it's having it disappear after each operation that is the pita for me...
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
I think this is a backward step too.
+1 for putting back all the text options in a single bar
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
Quote:
it would be acceptable if you could toggle it open/closed - it's having it disappear after each operation that is the pita for me...
I like this idea, as well as kerning I use the baseline shift a lot when doing ad layouts with prices
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
+1
Maybe put the bullet and indent buttons in a flyout instead?
Marc
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
Quote:
Originally Posted by
SmartEd
+1 from me, as already said, pain in the arse and a backward step.
+1!! All text options including bullet should be available in one spot with no fly out menus whatsoever. It's very time wasting clicking another icon for things that need constant editing. It seems like the idea was to force the user to save these settings into a font style? While this is correct for multiple page documents, it's painful for designing 1 page documents such as flyers.
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
Can't say that I use it all the time, but I also miss this controls on the default control bar.
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
One solution would be for Xara to make all of the buttons available on the Infobar (for any tool) available as single buttons (not grouped flyouts) on the Control Bars / Button Palette so users could create their own custom button bars with these.
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
+1 for this eminently sensible suggestion.
Bob.
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
Quote:
Originally Posted by
StevenWWinters
One solution would be for Xara to make all of the buttons available on the Infobar (for any tool) available as single buttons (not grouped flyouts) on the Control Bars / Button Palette so users could create their own custom button bars with these.
whilst I can see the argument, it is quite possible that infobar button coding is integral to their tool coding - true some, eg 'reverse path', 'scale line width' and 'lock aspect ratio' whose actions persist would be useful to have globally but I'm thinking that this may involve a heck of a lot of work programming-wise and be fraught with potential bug-inducing situations...
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
Quote:
Originally Posted by
handrawn
whilst I can see the argument, it is quite possible that infobar button coding is integral to their tool coding - true some, eg 'reverse path', 'scale line width' and 'lock aspect ratio' whose actions persist would be useful to have globally but I'm thinking that this may involve a heck of a lot of work programming-wise and be fraught with potential bug-inducing situations...
No, not as I read it. The info bar itself doesn't need to be customizable, but that any and all commands should be available as single buttons via the button palette so one can customize the button bars one can currently customize--which is abotu any other than the context sensitive infobar.
Take care, Mike
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
yes - but for a start [allowing for duplicates] there are around 300 commands you can set in keyboard shortcuts in designer pro, plus many more you can't - thats a lot of buttons... [and a lot of icons too many of which are too similar already]
if a command is in the shortcut list it probably can be given a floating button, all else being equal, so that would apply to 'reverse path' amd 'lock aspect' - but not to 'scale line width' which does not appear to be there
it's not a given that because a command exists when a certain tool is active and can be initiated from the info bar, that it could be intiated from another part of the UI, that's all I'm saying - some can I'm sure, but I'd like to bet that some would prove difficult
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
Quote:
Originally Posted by
handrawn
...but I'm thinking that this may involve a heck of a lot of work programming-wise and be fraught with potential bug-inducing situations...
As someone who has programmed, I fail to see how the InfoBar buttons are any different from the other command bar buttons. But then, without knowledge of the code and architecture, such judgments are best left the to actual coders. It's up to the developers to assess the complexity of an implementation.
However, this is a user suggestion forum after all. In any event, my suggestion was only for the buttons already present on the Infobar (not all commands) to be made available for custom bars. They could be disabled and enabled when appropriate in the same way other buttons behave.
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
Yes it is not possible to know how difficult or otherwise it would be for sure without knowing the code and the architechture
But it is likely that if a function is only useable when a tool is selected [say because its code is a modular part of the tool code, only loaded into memory when the tool is], then there will be issues
yes it is a user suggestion forum - but it's open to comments as well - and strictly this thread is about the text tool flyout only, so buttons in general is OT and should be in its own thread ...
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
Tracking and Line Spacing is what I use the most.
Personally, I have no need for the 'Style' box and it's taking up space for nothing (for me) and I can't remove it, like you can with other items.
Also, the options available in the text flyout are not available on their own.
Regarding the Text Tool, I wish I could set things up the way they were in XDP7.
Why can't users be allowed to set things up the way they want?
Is that not better for work-flow?
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
Text Styles can be used to save custom tracking and line spacing settings as well as headlines etc.
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
Thanks Xara :D
In the latest update (8.1.2) you can go back to having everything showing up on one line, but you do need to change one thing in the registry (SuperWideInfobar).
Here's how to do that:
http://support.xara.com/index.php?_m...articleid=2989
Another thing I'd like to suggest to enhance the text tool is adding icons for the Tracking and Kerning, basically like in version 7.
Now I find myself hovering the cursor over one of the two and reading the tool-tip popup to see if I'm going to modify the right one.
Adding these icons will remove the guesswork for the user. I suspect these icons were also removed to safe space.
I do like the simplicity of the Baseline shift triangles, spaced further apart than necesary to illustrate what they'll do. Simple, but very effective.
I've added an image to illustrate, the two added icons are shown in red.
Attachment 91093Attachment 91092
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
Thanks for that link to the registry tweak. I am a happier person.
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu
Grand!!
Me happy also.
Marc
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Re: Designer Pro X - new Text Tool fly-out menu