whitewolf7070

Well, despite the lack of the "Span column" feature, I made the move to Affinity Publisher five issues ago for our monthly publication. I love it. Great decision. First month of transition was a challenge, but after that, it has gone fairly smoothly. Haven't really missed the Span Column feature, once I got used to simply putting in a Text Box for each headline. Still looking forward to it being added, but it has not been the deal-breaker for us that I thought it would. Great program, Affinity!

Glad to see the old Ventura Publisher get some well-deserved and past due love. It was very powerful, intuitive, and easy to learn and use. RIP. I used the No Paragraph Break feature all the time back in the day. The Affinity Publisher programers could learn a lot from revisiting the features of VP :-). Be that as it may, also glad to see Span Columns for AP getting more attention. Needed.

I think it depends on your work. For people whose text/article blocks can move or be rearranged during production, it's a must. Also, it just seems like a basic function that got overlooked and now programmers aren't sure how to implement/integrate it. It's not a sin. Things get overlooks. Maybe it's hard to implement. Who knows? However, without it, I cannot make Publisher my production program and have to stick with ID. That's just me. It would be nice if they would let us know where it is in the roadmap. I do want to point out that the greatest, most powerful yet easy-to-use page layout program, Corel Ventura, which was cruelly euthanized by its owner, had the span column feature back in the 1990s, over 20 years ago. It was, like most things with Ventura, elegantly implemented and easy to use. It just seems that 20 years later a program that deigns to be a professional tool would include Span Columns as a matter of course. Again, just my view. Don't freak out, people, I actually own and (try to) use Publisher whenever I can.

And I thought it was me...

Pariah73: Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Serif and Affinity. I use their products daily to produce work. I even bought products (Publisher, iPad Designer and Photo) that I can't/don't use just to support the company and its wonderful efforts. Here's the concern: When we bring up these basic features that are missing, there is no feedback or response. Will they be added at some point or not? Is the company hearing daily users? Do they realize that while we can work around or live with missing features for a while, it would be nice to know that someone is listening and perhaps if and when they might be coming. Just that would make all the difference. In any relationship, communication is the key 🙂. BTW, the snarky comments from Affinity preview version testers — I am not referring to you — who seem to regard themselves as our betters, don't help and just turn people off. Just FYI.

Jowday: Perhaps you can help me with something. In Adobe Illustrator, there are two issues that keep me from using the program: 1) It does not seem (easily) possible to align a stroke on live text to the outside, only to the middle or inside, both of which intrude on the text itself. I do a lot of ad designs with busy backgrounds and need this feature (Designer has it and Corel Draw has it). Plus, I just don't like the look of text with strokes in it. 2) When marquee selecting in Illustrator, it seems that every element the selection box TOUCHES is selected.To me, this is nigh on unusable. In Designer and Draw, only the elements entirely enclosed are selected — which is much preferable being quicker and easier with little de-selecting. I use a lot of elements from one illustration as templates when starting another, so this a key thing for me. These functions seem so basic, yet I have not found any answers for them anywhere on the web. Am I just missing something obvious in Adobe Illustrator? Thanks for any help.

Hmmm. That could be. Could it be hired, though?

It does seem inexplicable. This feature was in Corel Draw in 1998 — 22 years ago. I used to to create logos back then. Count me as one who would like to leave Adobe behind completely too, but can't. In Publisher, did they add Span columns yet? It was one of the key missing features that kept me on InDesign. However, as long as we keep buying the products whether they have these key features or not, what incentive does Affinity have to include them? Part of it might be a desire to have feature for which users will upgrade to 2.0 — which is a foolish way to try to build loyalty — and part of it may be simply a lack of real-world, everyday experience by programmers. They simply don't realize that text warping and spanning columns are vital features because they don't use the programs daily. (And, I have seen so many fanbois arguing as to why you shouldn't need these features... Where do they find these people?)

Yep. I think the main problem is that the programmers are not end users. They give us what they think we need, not what we really need. Or, they burn the midnight oil to copy some arcane Adobe feature that almost no one uses in real life. Then, they don't listen to their users when we users tell them what we need/want. So, in a way, Adobe is still setting the standard. Look at Publisher, all ready to be an InDesign killer and what do they do? They leave out a fundamental, everyday feature like span columns. People immediately pointed it out, then complained. Nothing has been done. So, now Publisher sits, languishing and unused, in my dock while I still do my regular, money-making work with InDesign. Sad. Apple was doing the same thing with its MacBook Pros, designing for engineers rather than end-users. They finally started taking end-user comments/suggestions/complaints seriously and the result was the brilliant and praised 16" MacBook Pro. Let's hope Affinity follows Apple's example.

Hey everyone. I create and edit multiple ads for print each month. When I am away from my computer, I would like to be able to work on the ads on Designer for iPad. However, I have many more fonts on my desktop than the iPad and always seem to run into issues with missing fonts. This prevents me from using the iPad like I would like to. Is there a solution to this that I have missed? Thanks!

It's clearly not a priority feature for the team to add. People have been asking for it and pointing out its necessity for basic magazine and newspaper work for a long time now. Several people have pointed out that it's the one lacking feature that keeps them from moving from InDesign. Still no change. Like me, if you need this feature — as many do — you will have to stick to InDesign. Sad.

It's funny, the importance of key features like Span Columns that are vital to everyday users, seem to be obtuse to programmers. Then, when users point out the need for these key features, programmers seem to get their back up and refuse to put them in on some kind of "principle." The late, lamented, Corel Ventura Publisher had the span columns feature back in the 1990s. SMH Because of this lack of one basic feature, I am still using Adobe InDesign. I also don't use Adobe Illustrator because of 2 simple feature quirks: 1) You can't align strokes on text to the outside, meaning that you always have to have strokes impeding in on the text. That is insane. I use this technique quite a bit for super-imposing text on noisy backgrounds. Yes, there are kludgy workarounds, but users shouldn't have to figure something like this out. Yet, AI programmers refuse to implement this basic feature. Nothing but sheer stubbornness can explain it after all these years. 2) And this second one is the worst of the two: When selecting objects in AI, EVERYTHING your cursor touches is selected, including the background. That's insane. When you do many projects, as I do, you reuse elements rather than recreating them each time. You want to quickly select just a particular group of elements without selecting everything else, With Illustrator this is impossible. AI users have complained bitterly about this for DECADES, yet, there is still no option just to select those things INSIDE a selection box. Again, nothing but sheer stubbornness or hubris on the part of programmers can explain it after all these years. It is the single biggest reason I use Affinity Designer, rather than AI. That said, I hope that Affinity programmers don't fall into the same, "we know better" arrogance as the Adobe programmers. No "span columns" is one of those worrisome things.

Corel Draw (Now for Mac as well as Windows) has had this feature since the 1990s. It would also be great to see dimensioning tools in AD (like 1" equals 1'). They are great for laying out rooms or landscaping.

Has Span Columns been added yet? It is a BASIC feature without which AP is not useable.

I print to a web press (Goss) and use Affinity Designer to compose elements that are exported to PDF/4 and then imported to Adobe InDesign (Affinity Publisher needs a span columns option to even begin to work for me). However, the cover colors are always significantly off screen to print. Designer seems to display the RGB values even when the document is set up as CMYK? Want to see the simulated CMYK gamut instead of the RGB on screen. Then I can calibrate the screen from there. Is there a setting I'm missing?