Stephen B

I would really like to hear from Affinity how they plan to do it. This is going to my third major hardware architecture transition on the Mac and especially the PPC to Intel one was horrid - everything became so bloated, slow and buggy that we used one dedicated machine for testing and didn't touch production computers for almost two years. By then it was a clean cut. Point in question: are Affinity planning to release dual apps (one app runs natively on either hardware) or will there be two versions, i.e. one native Intel and one native ARM app with the same functionality? If so, how long do you plan to support the Intel Macs with identical features and bug fixes, version per version? Depending on the answer I might update some machines to the latest Intels and try to weather out the transition period. Fact is, each of these transitions were a nightmare for many software publishers. The older and/or complex their code base was, the more difficult the transition became. I really don't envy the developers right now, and maybe for the next two or three years.

I am currently working my way through Publisher by recreating existing projects. By doing this I find I can learn quickly to adapt my old workflows to the new tool and at the same time learn about Publisher's advantages and (as of now) shortcomings. Structuring a document is there, using this structure tree (or parts of it) as PDF bookmarks seems to be missing. This and some more or less advanced options like how the PDF should appear when opened would be really appreciated. Example: I do a lot of PDFs that are usually built for high quality printing, but are first viewed on screen and often kept as an on-screen reference. PDF settings for those include "View as single page", which helps flicking though pages, and "Show bookmarks", which really helps navigating the chapters and important pages or paragraphs. As of now, these settings need to be done in my very vintage Acrobat pro, individually for each exported PDF.

Indeed. Although for me the major point will not be getting out of the MAS, but rather directly supporting the people at Serif for imagining and building great software. The ideas and momentum behind this engagement deserve that kind of direct (financial) feedback. Publisher was my first direct (paid) purchase from Serif, Photo 2 and Designer 2 will follow, iOS Versions if possible (is it?!).

You are of course right and I agree. My statement was more along the lines of "Footnotes will come to Publisher when they are done" rather than it's a trivial thing to do, and to do right. The basics needed are there, we have structure with page numbers and chapters, and we have pinnable containers that move with the paragraph they are pinned to. Building structured foot-/side-/endnotes from this is another thing altogether, I am sure.

Hello! I am Stephen, 50 years old, live in the rural south of Germany and work as a graphics designer and web developer. I really liked the approach of Serif to start an all new line of modern software without the need to carry the bloat of two decades. It worked out great with Affinity Photo (which, when it came to iOS literally sold an iPad pro plus Pencil to me), became even better with Designer and now Publisher. It is great to have choices and even greater when one of those choices actually cares about their users' needs, offers excellent support and an outstanding licensing model. Thank you and keep it up!

Thank you, Patrick! I might add, that I found a way to manufacture sidenotes for less complex, non-scientific documents: As shown in the video about pinning, where an image container was placed and linked to a paragraph one can do the same thing with a text container, minus automated numbering and endnotes. Beside that, I was an early adopter of InDesign and it was barely usable before v2 plus a number of bug fixing updates, so I am more than pleasantly surprised with the initial release of Publisher! I will continue rebuilding some older projects for comparison reasons and to find "my" setup and workflow. I have no doubt you will deliver the tools needed and wanted, as you have with Photo and Designer.

Hi all, I am new to this board but have been using Affinity Photo and Designer on both Mac and iPad from the day they were released ... and now Publisher. I looked into the beta a few times, although not in depth, and currently I try to find my way around in Publisher. I do like it, I (yet again) learn quite a few things and features, some of them just different from comparable features in Adobe- or Quark-Land, some are all new, fresh and exciting to explore. I also stumble sometimes over features or functions I would expect to work differently and some others that are (so far) missing altogether, like footnotes. That said, I need footnotes/sidenotes and advanced handling of those too! And, given the experience with Photo and Designer, I have no doubt that footnotes will come to Publisher as well as other already requested features. I believe that creating and handling footnotes in Publisher is not that hard to do for the developers since it is not fundamentally different from page numbers or chapters; the most work will be in handling the different source file formats as docx, TeX and whatever there will be. So, I am looking forward to footnotes being added - patiently, if I must.