Uncle Jack

It is missing a lot of things that people have been asking for, so why should this be any different?
It also includes a handful of things not previously present which people had also been asking for.
They can't do everything all at once.

120 / 5 000
  Am I blind or is Publisher 2 still missing the Span / Split Columns feature that a lot of users have been asking for?

So annoying, so frustrating. The source of many mistakes.
I want to be able to use the tab key to go from one text input box to another. I want the Enter and or the Return key to cause the value I have input to be set and then I want the focus of the keyboard to be in the application window. Not the same [expletive deleted] text input box. I want the escape key to move the focus away from the text input box without the value being accepted. Reject the value, return to the previously set value and exit the text input box.
It is these little things that make me want to use some other software.

I agree that the user interface is not really well done. 
It is also not consistent. Using the tab-key to jump from one input frame to the next works sometimes but not always.
Especially bad when using colour. If you input the colour via CMYK you really can't use the tab as it jumps to all kinds of places but not to the obvious ones.

Then there are text elements. You have one tab for Zeichen (Character?) and one for typography with the ligatures etc. This would clearly be sought for in character not in a seperate window. 
The labeling in other languages – i.e. German – is sometimes downright confusing (or you could say: wrong?). 
Lists are in paragraphs not text etc.

I understand the herculean task of making such a program from scratch but with the user interface you wouldn't have to start from scratch as Fnuxus pointed out. 
There were several well designed UI already around. 

While I appreciate the difficulty of translation into different languages it is sometimes hard to find things that are labelled in an unusual way.

Is this the biggest problem of Publisher? NO – that would be the missing footnotes.
Is it an annoying one while working? Yes, repeatedly.

But, I expect it to get better over the years.

No, it is in the text styles palette, and only there. Thats my point.
Actually, it isn’t. The first page I found was this one: https://affinity.help/photo/de.lproj/index.html?page=pages/Text/paragraphs.html?title=Absatzformatierung – and there is no link to paragraph or text styles. The search option did not work. I had to use Google. 
If I have to use the manual to solve such a trivial problem, the user interface is not well designed.
I use all sorts of applications all the time. I they are well designed I can use them right away. Done right there are not so many possibilities to design software. A user interface should be self-explanatory and consistent across all sorts of applications. That’s what Macintosh is all about.

I agree that it can be a bit of an awkward route to take:
Go to Paragraph Panel; Make changes; Go to Text Styles Panel; Update Style; Go to Character Panel; Make changes; Go to Text Styles Panel; Update Style; Go to Context Bar; Make changes; Go to Text Styles Panel; Update Style; etc. etc. switching back and forth between panels/bars just to update something. A button to update the current style in the Paragraph Panel and Character Panel and Context Bar would make things a lot quicker and more convenient.
I’m fairly sure that this sort of thing came up a long while ago, around the time that Publisher was still in beta if I remember correctly.

I’ve been using publishing software for quite a while (Illustrator since version 3, PageMaker since version 4, FrameMaker since version 4, InDesign since version 4) and I consider myself an experienced user.
Since my switch to the Affinity suite I feel like a complete newbie. The user interface is not maclike and not intuitive at all. It seems as if the interface designers never had used any publishing software themselves. Every five minutes or so I observe myself thinking „I can’t use this.“ The problem with the whole Affinity suite is that it doesn’t resemble anything I have used before. OK, In understand, you folks started from scratch, but this doesn’t mean you had to dump all good human interface concepts that have been around for so long.
The problem I ran into today was this: I had imported an indd file and found my paragraph styles. So far, so good. Now I needed to change a paragraph style: I changed the setting for the selected paragraph in the palette and then wanted to change the paragraph style for all paragraphs. First I looked into the context menu and hoped to find a menu item like “adjust paragraph style to selection”. Nothing. At this time my face expression already looked as incredulous as Michael J. Fox while transforming into a werewolf. Then I looked into the palette. Places I’d expect to find such an option would be in the palette itself (like in InDesign or Apple Pages) or in the paragraph styles’s submenu (like in Word). Nothing.
Then I searched the internet and found out that I have to go to the menubar. That is bad interface design. A good interface design offers multiple ways to accomplish something. That you offer this option neither in the context menu nor in the palette is unbelievable.

No, it's Affinity's biggest oversight yet!

+1 for this feature for me as well.
I am totally new to Affinity, but this is a must-feature for me since I use this feature so much in indesign documents I would be looking to migrate over.

I’m going on two years since I first posted to this thread and I still use indesign for any serious projects, only because of this. 

Yes, without Span Columns Publisher is worthless for many people. I bought it so far only to support the company, but I still use InDesign because this feature is missing.

Hi,
My enthusiasm is very limited. When will cross-column text formatting be installed?
As it looks like this will not be implemented in the next 1.9 update - although it has been requested many times here in the forum. Your "Publisher" is therefore still no alternative for InDesign for me.

I'd like to add my request for Para Style to include the option to span all columns in the frame.
I suggest this is essential for structured consistent page layouts.

Span columns - I'm in!

@Clayton King
Even MS Word can do it.
I produce a regular magazine in Word. In preparation for an intended future progression to Publisher I switched the latest Word version to 2 columns.
In MS Word, if you do Insert/Section Break/Continuous it achieves the effect that I would like to see in Publisher (which previous posters have been calling Span Columns).
It starts a new left-hand column and balances the text in the columns above it, so that the new article/story fills the page from that point down, across multiple columns. 
Then if you add or remove content from before the section break, the columns above the break rebalance as necessary.
 
 

I realize that everyone has a wish list, but spanning columns is not a wish-it's a requirement. Creating a separate frame for a heading (for example), linking that frame to one that follows creates text flow nightmares. 
As others have mentioned, much older programs handled this well. I was a beta testers years ago for Ventura and  Aldus, both of which had this feature. Requiring additional text frames is not only cumbersome and costs layout time, measurements are infinitely more difficult to calculate with regard to lead, spacing and such. 

An important feature indeed!

Yep. Spanning columns (and some other gotta have or else features) seems a funny line-in-the-sand function. Like you, I've been around long enough that building these by hand was how it was done. I can think of a few others areas that are a deciding factor for me, but spanning columns isn't even a consideration for that list.
🤣

I do appreciate everyone's concern with column spanning. I'd love to have that ability as well. Started using it in InDesign when it was introduced. Continued to use it when I switched to QuarkXpress when it seemed InDesign 5.5 would not be functioning too much longer. I've been a designer long enough that spanning would never be a deciding factor of whether or not to use certain software. Yes, I miss it not being in Publisher but it will come along at some point. For now, I will do what I always did. Separate text frames. Might be a little more work but if faced with having to pay Adobe or use Publisher (which is so well integrated with Designer and Photo) I'll take Publisher every time, no offense to QuarkXpress.

Or when you choose to count that the launch of APu was announced for 2015 … well, for the so called “most powerful publishing software” this feature is missed too long!

I'm among the list of people who have been requesting this feature, but for the sake of fairness, I wish to note that total number of years is a little less than two, since the first public beta was released at the end of August 2018, when this thread was started. Or if you choose to count by when the Publisher was first available for purchase, then it would be just over one year (released June 2019). "How many years" makes it seem longer than it has been.

Hi, I'm new to Publisher, but this REALLY needs text spanning in columns.
I'm a little disheartened to flick through these forums and see how many years this feature has been requested.
I produce a couple of product catalogues a year and bought Publisher (along with Designer) as a way of escaping the costs and rolling monthly commitment to Adobe.
I've just started my first 'conversion' catalogue with Publisher (using imported IDML file) and had to abandon it for InDesign.
Every product has a pricing grid with a spanned headline. Luckily, I've only spent an hour but i'm gutted not able to use this.
Maybe when I get time I can start again from the ground up and work round this, but this is something I would consider key, especially as Affinity are obviously targeting Adobes customer base.
 

Span and split please. It's essential.

Having resumed work on a large manuscript, and continuing to fight this battle, I also noticed something else that gets in the way of easily using separate frames for spanned headings. 
If the single column frame (for the heading) is less than 1" in height, the arrow at the bottom right to link the frame doesn't show up. So if you have a long document and are dynamically creating frames, you have to drag one for headings that is much too large, link it, go to the next one. Change the size of the first, etc., etc.
This is not efficient time use and certainly not effective workflow.
I really like Affinity products. There are some quirks which I've begun working through, but overall they are good products. However, having spent a few years obtaining my Adobe Certification, I know the difference between a "nice to have" function and something that fits into a daily workflow.  Spanned column text is one such thing.
As another user indicated, the other amazing feature the (literally) first version of Ventura had was multi-line hanging indents in the form of a zero line feed paragraph attributes. That's too much, apparently, to ask of anyone because no current application that I know of (Quark, InDesign, MS Publisher, MS Word, etc.) has this ability. 
But spanned column text? It's fairly standard among the more robust publishing apps.
 

We're a publication production house itching to escape the Adobe ecosystem.  Really, really, really looking forward to the day when Affinity Publisher offers "span columns" option as a feature.  Until it does, Publisher is just not a viable option for a production shop.