Kevin B

Hi Dan, Thanks very much for your quick reply and yes that solved it -- silly me, I didn't even see the Wrapping icons on the tool bar, I went straight up to the Text menu and also the Text Frame panel. Staring me in the face was the "Wrap Now" command on the toolbar!🤣 Your quick support is much appreciated, as always! Well, hopefully Designer will have this cool feature one day, not essential but would spice up my work there with boring manuals and datasheets. Designer opened a 42MB .dwg file with 12 billion+ elements in it (more or less!) and it went pretty quickly, and on a not-new portable computer as well. Exported a perfect .pdf file in a flash, so I'm very happy with this new feature of .dwg import. As for exporting to .dwg/.dxf as many are asking for, personally I don't need it -- they give me .dwgs to morph into something else and none of them will re-enter the CAD workflow. I don't really want Designer to morph into a CAD program with all that extra cost and complication, or, perhaps only as an optional paid side-version. On the other hand, .html export would be very handy to a good number of us, but you know that already! I wish that I could export an .svg file (from a drawing file) already packaged inside of an .html file, and with that crazy viewbox setting already sorted-out . . . . maybe in a future release. Thanks & Regards, Kevin

Hi All, I don't have exactly the same issue as above (or don't think so anyway) but there's plenty of experts here, so I figured this is a good spot to post. So, in Publisher 1 I was able to utilize text wrapping and I don't remember having any difficulty to figure it out. I just imported a file from Publisher 1 into Publisher 2.3, in addition to whacking-out the text, the text wrap disappeared and I can't apply it again. I replaced the image but that didn't do it. Text frame setting Ignore Text Wraps is not set. What puzzles me is there doesn't seem to be a button like "Set Wrapping Now" or something that clearly activates it, only a wrap configuration setting. Really, I'm not using Publisher much, I use Designer more often but I don't see that text wrapping is a feature in Designer -- is that correct? I see in the help file Text on a path but nothing specifically about wrapping a text frame around an object. Thanks for any suggestions! Kevin

Hi Dom, I just entered your RAL Classic palette into Version 2 and it's very handy again, so I want to thank you for your time to create and share it with us. I imported the .pdf version and saved it as an .affdesign file, I can keep it open for color reference while working on other files in Designer. In the swatches studio, I set it to show as a list and that makes it very simple to find and view the swatches, scrolls up and down pretty quickly and the numbers are much easier to read. I even did a test to see if there's any perceptible difference between the .pdf colors and the RAL swatch palette -- all were spot-on perfect without any difference whatsoever. So great work you did there and it saves me a lot of confusion with too many colors available in Designer's native palettes. RAL has plenty for me with simple codes, heck, maybe one day I'll add in their nice names! Cheers, Kevin

Hi Tim, Thank you for the update and I'm happy that you found the gremlin in that file, maybe it's useful as a "worst case scenario" to see how wonky a .dwg can become. That's an archived file so no big deal on how it turns out, when convenient you can send me whatever you come up with and I'll try to open it here, and yes it's bulky with lots of little objects. Thanks for the excellent support, it's much appreciated! Kind Regards, Kevin

Good Morning Gabe, Thanks for the link and the file is uploaded to Dropbox. I tried again to open with Designer 2.04 but still the same symptoms, Designer hangs on "Loading 1 document" and finally I have to close it with Windows 11 Task Manager. This isn't a working file for me so no hurry on my part. If and when you find the gremlin then let me know here just to satisfy my curiosity. My other .dwg files open quickly in Designer and I'm very happy with the new CAD fill access; converting .dwg straight to .afdesign is surely much better than passing it thru .pdf format -- excellent work by the CAD team! Thanks & Regards, Kevin

Well, I'm very happy with the Measure Tool as a new feature, sure it could be improved over time but I believe it's a decent start for a 50€ non-subscription software. The CAD import is indeed useful to me, but the more CAD tools they add in the closer we come to something like Corel Technical at 499,00 €/year -- ten times the cost of Affinity Designer in just one year. Oh, and Corel is owned by KKR via a holding company with the funny name of ALLUDO, along with a mix of other software companies. I'm sure that KKR has much more interest in making and hording money than in graphic design software and its humble users . . . . I prefer the Serif Affinity approach much more. Perhaps the solution is as@firstdefence wrote of, a CAD add-on tool named Hot Doors CADtools that the CAD-oriented Designer users could purchase as needed. Just my two cents worth! K 499,00 €/

Hi Tim, Thanks for your quick reply, much appreciated. I agree it must be a bad file, I found on the Autodesk website some sample .dwg files and they all open correctly. I don't want to bother the support team as this isn't a working file for me, I'm sure they have plenty to do already. I don't see any recent forum posts about opening .dwg files, so Designer 2.03 must have solved the problem and that's good enough for me. Or, if they want to research what gremlin is causing Designer to hang, then I can send them a copy, just keep it in-house and yes a private upload link to send it. Thanks & Regards, Kevin

Hi Tim, I've upgraded to V2 Universal license so using Designer 2.03, but I still have the above situation with one specific .dwg file. It opens in Autocad TrueView 2023 but takes time, TrueView reports that it had to be recovered and errors were repaired and an element deleted, so it has/had something strange in it. After the TrueView repair it still wouldn't open in Designer, just hangs on Loading 1 document. Also, I see that it was created with AutoCAD 2011 so a bit old when the final revision was published in January 2020. My other .dwg and .dxf files open properly. It's not a problem for my work right now so no urgency, perhaps your devs could take a look at it to see what gremlin is hidden inside. I would have to send it to you privately. Hello Dampsquid -- have had luck opening your CAD files with Designer 2.03? Thanks for your assistance, much appreciated! Kevin

Hi Jose, Welcome to the Affinity forum, here you'll find some very helpful users and many with Adobe experience like you have, seem to be lots of refugees from that world. I'm still at semi-newbie stage but maybe one of my previous posts will add to what Cooner and Prophet replied above, and I believe that their feedback is correct: With version 2 I'm going to dive back into Affinity deeper, I just purchased the Universal License before the discount expired. I used the Studio Link feature a bit and found it very useful, in a Publisher document I could include large CAD drawings and edit them handily with the Designer Persona. Good Luck! Kevin

Hi Nathan, So would this possible issue fix include the anchor ordering in the anchors panel? I was hoping that version 2 would solve this but it hasn't. I really need to be able to control the order of anchors instead of always being alphabetic. Otherwise it's just too mind-boggling trying to make sense of the document structure with them out of order of their real position. Even if the final PDF does put them in the correct order as they are on the pages. Thanks, Kevin

Hi Tim, I will do as you instructed and thanks for your assistance. Regards, Kevin

Hi Designer 2 Users, I have a .dwg file created in 2020 that opens properly in DWG TrueView 2023, but Designer 2 just hangs forever trying to open it. Some other .dwgs that I have open properly in Designer 2, but many just hang with the status reading Loading document 1 and nothing happens other than the cooling fan spinning-up to high speed. Any suggestions are appreciated, thanks in advance. Kevin

Hi SubTric, Your question of "Probably worth me asking if there is away to have anchors in the anchor pane display in a remotely sensible order as well?" I wish there was a manner to put them in the same sensible order as they are on the pages, but it appears to be impossible and is a real impediment to creating a larger PDF document with lots of bookmarks. I haven't seen any sign that Affinity is going to sort this out, unfortunately. I hope they can solve your anchors problem, but seems the moderator went quiet on you. Regards, Kevin

Hi Lukc666 and Stokerg, I'm still new to Affinity Publisher, but issue #2 has been a headache to me as well. Yes, the bookmarks in the published PDF will be in the correct order according to where the anchors really are placed . . . . but the bugger is that in the Anchors panel they are simply listed in Alphanumerical order, so logically out of their real order. Only manner to put Anchors in a visual order in the panel is with leading numbers, but you don't want those in every bookmark name, would be a hassle to clean them out after every publish. There have been plenty of complaints about this annoyance but who knows when Affinity will fix it, for us it makes AP impractical for any long structured publication, although fine for short ones that don't need bookmarks. I suppose that AP was not designed for long publications, but it has plenty of other benefits for us so we'll stick with it and I'm sure it will progress over time. We evaluated CorelDraw but were scared away by their new owners KKR and a pricey subscription plan that together has angered lots of their users. I searched for "Affinity" on the CorelDraw user forum and discovered that plenty of their long-time users are evaluating or already using a Serif software! We decided not to jump in to that unknown future, and Adobe we won't touch in any manner. We use PDF-XChange Editor instead of Acrobat and are very happy with it. I hope the above is useful to you! Regards, Kevin

Hi Walt, Ahhhhh, OK, now I see how it works, great explanation you gave me, heck I never even noticed the new tab that opened. I came to the word "tab" and thought, "tab, what tab"? . . . . silly me, didn't even see it! This is what I didn't fully realize, I was thinking that once a file was imported/placed into Publisher, it was treated like any other object on the page -- now I see the important difference. Now that I understand the functionality here I really do like it, will be very useful because I'm brining in large CAD-to-PDF files, converted to .afdesign files, and then embedded or linked. Easily going to Designer to use it's full power will be very useful. The Publisher help manual should explain this better, seems it doesn't say any more than "Use Studio Link with Personas and you'll be happy"! Well, now I am after you explained it to me -- thanks again Walt for your quick assistance! Affinity should contract you and a few of the other all-stars to beef up their user manual, it's not bad but does seem that a lot of topics could use improved explanations. There's a lot of functionality in the Affinity apps at 55 euro each, seems to me the full suite is a bargain compared to the competition. Kind Regards, Kevin

Hi Pšenda and Walt, I'm confused (yes, again!) with Publisher and the use of, or switching to and from, the Designer Persona, I haven't bought Photo yet but will soon, I'm beginning to need it. So, I have a small vector graphic (company logo) on a Publisher page, I hit the Designer Persona icon and seem to have the normal Designer interface. To edit an object on this graphic, I double-click it and bang it seems that I've returned to Publisher's interface, the Publisher Persona icon seems to be high-lighted, and here I can make an edit. Now I become even more confused, the Save option is grey and Publisher Persona icon is not active. Seems that all I can do is hit Close, which takes me back to the Designer Persona, it's icon appears to be high-lighted. Now I can hit the Publisher icon and return to that mode . . . except that I see only the page that holds the graphic, no other pages appear on the Pages panel. I'm stumped as to what to do so I close this file, and POOOFF like magic, I have all of the pages available. I'm doing something screwy in this process, or is it really supposed to go like this? I then tried Edit in Designer, that fired up the program and I made an edit. After editing, neither Save nor Edit in Publisher are available so I close the file, that leads me to the Designer interface again but here I can select the Publisher Persona, and all pages are available. During the tests above I'm using embedded objects, I tried linked earlier but got into a round-and-round mess between editing inside of Publisher and editing outside, seems the changes will go both directions but it was too confusing. My projects won't be so long so file size shouldn't be a problem, for now anyway. Thanks for your assistance! Kind Regards, Kevin

Hi DMcG, Thanks very much for posting your RAL palette, that's what I'm looking for, basic colors that I can select quickly. I'm not experienced with colors and don't need them overly precise or complicated; my clients aren't interested in that, just standard traditional colors . . . . but those seem difficult to find these days. Similar to text and paragraph styles, I need a simple mode so I can concentrate on content. I've installed the RAL palette file and have a few questions about it, below: 1) On the main page there are hue groups, and each group opens to an all hues sub-page. Here the colors are ordered neatly and clearly to me, but the imported palette seems more chaotic, or I'm not interpreting it properly. I wonder if the Affinity palette could be organized more clearly in groups, I suppose not. 2) Are all the hues on sub-pages included in the imported palette? I find them on a spot-check, but just looks like the Affinity palette is lacking the same quantity of colors . . . or it's a visual trick on my eyes! 3) What are the pros and cons of RAL compared to Pantone that's included in Affinity? For me, there's way to many Pantone palettes and colors -- it's completely overwhelming to me -- heck, I can't even find a basic navy blue in that mess. 4) How did you turn the RAL color palette into an Affinity palette file, you did it manually? Simply curious, if it's top secret then don't tell me! Thanks & Regards, Kevin

Hello MNH, Happy new year and are you still here in the forum? I'm suffering the same problem as you did above a year ago, and wondering if you have any new tricks that you can share? I haven't seen any mention of anchors and bookmark export in the AF Publisher updates, and doing some testing shows me the same functionality. Yes numbering is the only manner I see (still) to control the order, but it's awkward to number every page and the alternative is some manual PDF bookmark editing of the final deliverable. Anchors and bookmarks are, as you wrote, a challenge and limits AF Publisher's usefulness for longer structured publications. Thanks and Regards, Kevin

Hi Patrick The new forum looks great so congrats on getting it up and running. What could be handy is the date of posts made more prominent, and add the year as well. I search a topic, sort the results by date, but have no indication of how old the posts are, not even the year of them. Also some manner to show what software version the poster is using, if it's an old version then I might want to skip reading that post. Overall it's a very useful forum with some dedicated and supportive users that jump in with good feedback for us newbie users. Like Walt Farrell above, he knows the software very well and always jumps in to assist. I know the majority of users are serious in their field because many are ex Adobe clients looking for an alternative, they own or recently owned InDesign and seem to be using Affinity software successfully. Glad that I didn't go that route and found your company instead! Also, I see very few hard-core complainers and flaming arrow launchers here -- that's a big relief. Heck, how can anybody complain about a viable InDesign replacement, new and regularly being improved, from an established software house, that costs only 55 euros and no subscription is required? When the AfPub iPad version is ready for sale I'll be one of the first to buy it! Thanks and keep up the great work at Affinity! Kind Regards, Kevin

Hi Garry, Wow that's impressive what you created and published all with Affinity software. I'll take a closer look soon and send any observations, I'm no expert for sure so I hope that more experienced users jump in too. An attractive and smooth TOC and PDF bookmarks to multiple levels, that's what I need but I'm still a bit worried about them in Publisher, there have been issues with them but perhaps all sorted by now. Did you run into PDF bookmark problems that still haven't been fixed by the developers? Yours are all created simply from paragraph heading levels or you manually created anchors to generate bookmarks? I'll give Canny Vectors a shot and get back to you soon, hopefully others will chime in soon with feedback for you. Kind Regards, Kevin

Hi Frank, I agree with you, bookmarks should be a lot better, something basic to a PDF document more than a handful of pages. When first available they seemed to work well for me but later I realized things weren't right with the same issues that others have posted here. Well, AP is a new-ish product and the price is very affordable so not a crisis for us, we took a different approach for larger PDF manuals but I would like to see this improved in AP one day. I'm very happy with it creating short un-structured documents, it's so smooth to use and allows a basic user like me to be very satisfied with the output. Also kept me from being sucked in to Adobe World, from which I had escaped earlier by dumping Acrobat and buying PDF-XChange Editor! Regards, Kevin

Hello ProDesigner, Hey, you must have read my post, "Confused by Styles" -- I'm in the same boat as a few others it looks like. Yes, having a handy default set of preferred styles would be handy, and one that is available in new documents, but seems that's not possible. I imported a Word docx page full of examples of the included styles from the Normal template, but that was messy. I might try again to see if I can create a Publisher default by copying their attributes, but they're very different animals and not sure if it's really practical. Seems like Publisher should have two styles modes, an Advanced (the setup now) and a Simple mode more like Word or anything quick and clear to grasp. Anyway, I'll keep monitoring here for any new tricks for a low-level user like me. Regards, Kevin

Hi Walt, Thanks for your reply and good information, much appreciated. I should apologize for not reading the post from AdamW well, and yes I should keep that in mind. My initial work will just arrange the chapter headings and TOC, with anchors for bookmarks, but the real content will go in later when the retail version is available. If the transition doesn't go well then not a crisis, I can recreate it in the retail version and then we'll start to add content. So now I'm wondering when the retail version will be out, this we don't know but I won't let it slow me down. I already enjoy using Publisher, I'm crawling through it slowly with the help file open, just scratching the surface so far -- it's like a combined WYSIWYG and word processor, performs both processes beautifully. Please let me know if you hear a rumor about the release date of the retail version, and thanks again for your assistance. Best Regards, Kevin

Hi All, I'm using the beta and having success with it, especially important to me are the anchors that create PDF bookmarks. So, if I use the beta to create a real project, will that project (.afpub file) be usable in the future when the retail version is released? That is, the retail version would import and open it correctly, and I could continue on working with it? I imagine so but want to verify before going too far. Thanks and Regards, Kevin

Hello AmDivVal and Catshill, Thanks for the above info AmDivVal I'll look closely at it soon, Current Formatting window will be useful, I checked again and can't find anything in AfPub Help on that window, so you're discovering virgin help information! Catshill, yes the Publisher text styles seem convoluted to me, I'm a newbie so I'll have to learn it enough to work and just ignore the oddities, I was hoping for a "Simple Mode" but it doesn't exist, unfortunately. Anyway, keep reading the above advice from some very helpful forum members and I'm sure that we'll both figure it out eventually! Old Bruce, thanks again for your helpful feedback, I'm going to look at that strategy closely, maybe that combined with understanding the Formatting window will do the trick. A question: how do you write such an informative message even before your first cup of coffee? A truly dedicated Af Pub trooper you are! I'll submit some more thoughts soon after compiling all of the above, and Catshill just jump into it as I'm sure you'll come up with a trick or two to understanding the text styles. Kind Regards, Kevin