Lagarto

I just created a Publisher document on Mojave (16GB RAM) placing a plain text file that created with autoflow 2,991 pages, and I am sorry to say that it was not poor, it was horrible. And I do not think it is a bug, or a question about resources, I can use other apps on the same computer for these kinds of tasks without any issues.

I just created a Publisher document on Mojave (16GB RAM) placing a plain text file that created with autoflow 2,991 pages, and I am sorry to say that it was not poor, it was horrible. And I do not think it is a bug, or a question about resources, I can use other apps on the same computer for these kinds of tasks without any issues.

Thoroughly testing options/results and reporting same isn't being pedantic. 
At least not to me. I enjoy reading your thoroughness even if I don't respond. Well, I guess like here I might respond in an offhand, off topic manner...

I examined my own tests a bit more, because as I now ran the same tests with OP's image, I could not reproduce the "Nearest neighbor" producing aliased (pure black) and "Bilinear" producing grays. The image was exported aliased with both methods. (Which means that the problem was possibly illusory and just caused by Preview's antialiasing applied for PDF content.)
I placed my own test image on the same page with OP's and re-ran the test, and could reproduce gray pixels appearing in my image but not in the OP's, and found at that OP's image was tagged as "Black" and my image as "CMYK" (even if only with K ink) in Acrobat Pro prepress info. Both images however are 8-bit grayscale.
I finally found out the reason: I had used the Vector Crop Tool on my image, and that causes the image color space to turn from gray to CMYK, and bilinear / nearest neighbor does have effect on such images.
 
Here are PDF exports showing the OP's image uncropped and cropped and exported using bilinear and nearest neighbor, the former showing antialiasing in the cropped image, and the latter keeping also the cropped image as aliased.
dark120_bilinear_780dpi.pdf
dark120_nearestneighbor_780dpi.pdf
UPDATE: I have tested the effect on original CMYK images (ones saved in CMYK format and placed in the publication), and Resample (Bilinear) export method does not seem to have antialiasing effect with CMYK images in general (though I only tested CMYK files with four-color black and kinds of CMYK files with CMY channels empty and all data in K channel), so this really seems to be a problem that is only related to the Vector Crop Tool. So, in the end, many false alarms and much fuss about a relatively restricted issue, but still useful information as it cleared some worries related to missing support for monochromes, and using grayscale bitmaps in place of them.

I see. I just tested using a regular rectangle or Picture Frame for cropping and they do not show this behavior, so the Vector Crop Tool is one that should be avoided at least in print jobs.

You're welcome, but please note the mistake I made in assuming that the critical setting for producing aliased lineart would have been disallowing JPG compression, when in fact it is the chosen "Resample" method. With these kinds of images, it needs to be "Nearest Neighbor", so this setting has effect even when the source images have the required amount of pixels and one would expect that the existing image is "saved" so that as little as possible is lost of its nature and quality. This is the burden of assuming that things behave similarly in Affinity apps as they do in Adobe apps. In InDesign "Do not downsample" makes resampling method irrelevant (it can only be selected if downsampling is allowed, so whatever method is used to "save" the image, will not cause problems), but not so in Affinity apps.
Please note that if you produced your print file using "Nearest Neighbor", this does have effect on the images that you wish to be antialiased, so please check and create a corrected version of these pages if necessary. 

It seems that the thing that made a difference in visual outlook was NOT allowing or disallowing the JPG compression, but the kind of resampling method chosen. I had chosen the (non-default) "Nearest Neighbor" method "just to be sure", but had erroneously assumed that when downsampling is disabled this setting would not be critical, but it is. The compression method (lossy JPG or implied lossless ZIP, if JPG is not allowed) would have significance with a continuous tone image but not with these kinds of images. 
So the critical setting for getting 8-bit line art exported without losing anything of the original is using "Nearest Neighbor" resample method. One would expect that the correct method is automatically chosen so that there will be no quality loss (so when basically just packing -- as no downsampling is allowed --  a hard edged mere K100 pixels containing lineart no gray tones would be produced), but this does not happen. I have not tested the effect of other methods but the default Bilinear does produce grayscales, as shown in the screenshot of my post. 
The export settings should really be documented somewhere!

You're welcome. The actual steps to take are much dependent on whether you can/wish to use ready-made patterns, or if you need to draw ones (not necessarily seamlessly repeatable) yourself. If the former, there can be usability or availability problems (as vector patterns are not directly supported in Affinity Designer), but if bitmap patters are ok (e.g. printwise and for accuracy) then Designer is quite a capable tool in creation of these kinds of graphics. Its drawing tools, especially if and when connected with Photo are also versatile and easy to use, if this kind of approach is needed.
This thread itself might also be helpful because it involves a kind of a learning process, so it shows how something elementary (applying bitmap pattern fills with Fill Tool) can be made more effective by using the Appearance Panel and Styles. For all these three features there are probably tutorials and videos available to get started, and you can always ask the forum!    

hey guys, thanks so much for the help and comments, especially Lagarto  🤘😑🤘    a great forum.
 
i was able to beef up the dpi, and now i know preview doesn't allow for a clear view in extreme close up (used Adobe acrobat to check) thx anon 2.
files sent to Amazon. will see how things turn out on THEIR end   
 
i'll shout out the program again and the benefits of the forum on my instagram 'my story' later...
https://www.instagram.com/adamarcher11/
 
do you guys work for the company? how can i thank you back?  can i click anything to give good reviews? 
 
thx again for all the help, screenshots and guidance. 
Adam 
 
 

I opened the PDF export made by Affinity Publisher in Photoshop and placed it on top of the original TIFF, and did the Difference Blend, and the images appear to be identical:

So if one sees the trouble of producing a monochrome-like 8-bit grayscale from Photo, it seems that Affinity Publisher does not ruin it (provided that you use correct export settings)!

If I place your image on an A4 portrait page, the placed ppi value of the image would be about 1200ppi. I exported at 1200dpi, disallowed downsampling and JPG compression EDIT: and most importantly, chose "Nearest neighbor" resample setting), and get this:

aliased_1200.pdf
It should stay sharpedged at lower resolution, as well, but 1200ppi is pretty standard for monochrome art. It does make pretty large pdf files, though, because compression cannot be used, and these are actually 8-bit images!
UPDATE: I used these settings:

It seems the max DPI value for export is 1024 (I entered 1200dpi but the app changes it to 1024).
Here is an export at 600dpi. Its size is oddly(?) exactly the same as that of the 1200dpi so obviously some packing is done, after all.
aliased_600.pdf 
UPDATE2: Yes, it uses lossless (ZIP) compression:

I just tested this on macOS (Mojave), and Preview also does not let zoom in as close when viewing a PDF (created at 1200 as long as Affinity Publisher allows that on macOS) as it does when viewing a TIFF file. Note too that if you place a PDF in an Affinity Publisher document, it will get blurred if you zoom in close enough, but if you open the same document, it will not. So you could use your Affinity app to some extent to check the quality of your PDF exports instead of using Preview (but then again could not trust what you see fully because when an Affinity app opens it, it also rerenders it...)
Adobe Acrobat Reader might let you zoom in closer and more realistically than Preview. 
UPDATE: Yes, it does, this is the max closeup (6400%) of the PDF exported from Affinity Publisher:

But isn't Mike's advise still valid? Export (at least the affected pages) at the resolution of the source (600dpi if your bitmaps are 600dpi, or higher if their placed dpi value is higher) and disallow downsampling. Because monochrome is not supported even images handled by thresholding or monochrome dithering and saved as grayscales will get gray tones in export if downsampling is allowed. The only way I have achieved aliased output (just pure K100 edges) from Affinity apps is outputting at high enough dpi value and disallowing downsampling. 
Can you post any of the source images (even just a part of it that gets antialiased) on the forum so that we could run some tests.
UPDATE: Note that you must also disable JPG compression for the pages where you want to have fully aliased (=non-antialiased)  output
This is how it looks out in Publisher:

 
a) Default output using PDF/X1a:2003 (300dpi allowing downsampling and jpg compression):

 
b) At 705dpi disallowing downsampling but allowing jpg compression:

c) At 705dpi disallowing downsampling AND jpg compression:

UPDATE: In fact, the crucial setting for producing hard edges as in point c) above, is using "Nearest Neighbor" resample method. This setting has bearing even if downsampling is not allowed, even in this example where the placed ppi value of the image was same as the defined dpi setting for the export. 
 

I think the frequency separation filter in combination with a coloured brush, selections and pixel layers would be a better option, this will retain some of the images textures. I used a watercolour brush to give a bit of texture to the paint. To retain more of the underlying texture in the original layer change the pixel layers blend mode to Average. this gives a more subtle matting effect, you can duplicate the pixel layers to get a stronger matting effect and also darken the colour a bit.

I had a testrun using Designer to create what I suppose is a typical stratigraphic column, to see what it takes to create these kinds of graphics (based on pattern fills) in Designer.
Here is the graph that I used as the model:

---and here is what I created:

 
Since Designer does not support tables, the underlying grid needs to be drawn manually and the text needs to be created as separate text boxes. This probably is not a problem because these kinds of table-like constructions can easily get too complex to be handled as table cells. (And Affinity kind of tables that are available in Publisher, are not advanced enough to allow these kinds of tables so the grid should be drawn manually anyway.)  
As mentioned in this thread, vector based patterns are not supported in Designer and this might be a problem in case you wish or need to use ready-made assets, as they seem to be mostly vector-based and made for apps like Adobe illustrator and Inkscape. I used the bitmap versions of US lithologic patterns (available on Daven Quinn's Github pages) with separate shapes for background colors and this worked well. If you want or need to draw patterns manually, the drawing tools of Designer are advanced enough to allow you to create pattern-like graphics yourself, and the Fill Tool's bitmap fill option allows to use any bitmap based images as repeating, movable, rotatable and scalable graphics to cover any shape you draw.
If you can use ready made bitmap patterns, I noticed a few useful things when working with them:

1) The sediment shapes were created as separate rectangles that were converted to curves and then the separating irregular border lines were shaped and aligned. Before starting to add patterns, a copy of this structure was created so that the original structure can be used for background coloring, and patters applied to copied shapes. 
2) As already mentioned above, if you create assets of bitmap patterns, they need to be applied (with Fill Tool) as bitmap fills on a vector shape. e.g. squares. Then you can drag an asset on the document, as shown here, select the desired pattern, press Ctrl/Cmd + C to copy it on the Clipboard, then select the target shape and press Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + V (or Edit > Paste Style) to have the selected pattern applied to the target object.
3) It is useful to merge (Layer > Geometry > Merge Curves) the shapes that share the same pattern, this way you can adjust (rotate, scale, move, colorize) the pattern simultaneously for all objects where it is applied. One thing worth noting is that when a bitmap pattern is initially applied, it is streched accoring to the object area it is applied. To force unstreched wrapping you need to use the Fill Tool and select a shape with a pattern fill and double click a scaling handle. (BTW: There is a mysterious tip on the status bar that hints that it would be possible to reset to 1:1 scaling for a bitmap fill by applying double click + right mouse button when using the interactive Fill Tool control handles, but I do not even understand how this kind of thing can be done on Windows where right mouse button shows the context menu; the idea of using simultaneous left + right clicks is horrible UI design that I have not seen anywhere else: why not create a toolbar button or menu command if there are no free modifiers left; just double clickingt the handles however restores original undistorted proportions and that is helpful.)
Hopefully this is effective enough to let you use Designer for creating stratigraphic columns. It is not as effective as using Illustrator for these kinds of tasks (as you do not have more versatile, sharper and better print-controllable vector patterns, or such features as the Shape Builder Tool which helps to define fillable areas from areas just separated with a single border line), but probably workable with at least relatively simple constructions.    

Solved it!  Yay!
The problem, as one of you genii observed,  was that I had two versions of the typeface loaded.  I thought that they were the same family but wondered why they appeared separately.  So I uninstalled one family and job's a good 'un.
Thanks very much everybody for rallying round.  It is much appreciated!

Have you tried copy pasting a squared parenthese in the Find box to see if the glyph can be searched? (In InDesign replaced glyphs are typically shown with a marker that still has the codepoint of the non-existing glyph so that it can be replaced, but I cannot check now how this is done in Publisher). On the other hand, it may be that an equation is composed in a way where replacing a single glyph breaks the composition so that spacing needs to be readjusted. This may become a very tedious job.
If there are lots of these kinds of equations, one possibility would be converting all text to curves using Adobe Acrobat Pro, Ghostscript, or macOS Preview Print to PS feature. This way you could take the equations from the version where fonts have been converted to curves (and discarding everything else), and discard the equations from the version with text that is used as the main document. 

I don’t think you can do this with the Transform Panel alone, without doing some manual arithmetic.
However, you can use the Alignment Handles in the Move Tool to do this very easily.
See attached video.
2020-05-31 12-15-39.mp4

In Affinity, the sin() and cos() functions expect an argument in degrees and the y-axis is inverted.
the x expression: += cos(215)*10 mm
the y expression: -= sin(215)*10 mm
The units (mm in this case) being required in these expressions smells like a bug since if we enter "+= -8.1915*10" (without the double quotes) then the document units are assumed, and I'm sure I reported it a couple of years ago.

Btw, switching to the Fill Tool temporarily is the best work around as this way the nodes are not shown but you still get the blue outlines... EDIT: And you can also continue selecting and deselecting with the Fill Tool.

Btw, switching to the Fill Tool temporarily is the best work around as this way the nodes are not shown but you still get the blue outlines... EDIT: And you can also continue selecting and deselecting with the Fill Tool.

Just tested creating an object style using a rectangle where bitmap pattern and a color fill as an underlying appearance fill was applied, and it works really nicely. The pattern is not distorted as the style is applied, and the style can be applied simply by a click (unlike an asset where I need to copy paste the style after having placed a copy of asset). It would be nice to have proper previews for object styles but at least they can be renamed, shown as lists and arranged in categories so quite useful.

Perhaps it was not clear enough in OP's screenshot, but this was meant:
 
There is really no proper workaround, as if text objects are selected, as here, merging the objects would convert text to curves, and creating a compound would make them invisible unless using outline view mode. So switching temporarily to Node Tool would at least allow seeing what is selected and make additional selections. 

I can see why you considered tables [Publisher] as an option...but it would work just as well in a series of stacked rectangles. 
I forgot to mention setting the objects as symbols..I used these a lot to build repeating patterns for brushes...you could use this where patterns repeat in rectangles!

Thanks for feedback, very good advise for improvements! 
I have to recheck, it might related to having patterns as assets.
I started creating this with Publisher (because of first trying whether tables could be useful), but now that I opened it with Designer, Appearance Panel is definitety a way to make this ore effectively and with less overall clutter!
Object styles are totally unexamined area for me so far, sounds very promising!