Richard S
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Everything posted by Richard S
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Thanks. Although I also publish webpages, I've never tried converting them to eBooks; probably because I started publishing eBooks only after getting Serif PagePlus. In fact I needed also to copy/paste text to update some of my webpages while creating these books. I've also updated Sigil, but chose not to use it this time. PagePlus (or Affinity Publisher) are way over the top for producing simple eBooks; especially the flowing ePubs I prefer. But, when you have a hammer... I needed to publish this project as a printed booklet, as a Kindle eBook, and on webpages: I value flexible import & export options from programs, to avoid the need for recreating text. Also, some of my text and images were originally created decades ago using long lost tools: I value programs which can export material in "industry standard" formats so that the material can be imported into other or newer programs. BTW. For similar reasons, I do not use Amazon Kindle's DRM: I prefer to trust people who buy my books and not to leave the material "locked" within one company's software. There is some "leakage," some of it via "sharing" websites, but probably to people who would never have paid for a copy.
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Thanks everyone. I have now published a Kindle version as well as a printed version. My method was roundabout and probably not ideal, but used the tools I'm familiar with. It also seems to produce cleaner ePub encoding: Prepared the printed version using Affinity Publisher, exported this as PDF-x1a, sent it to the online printing service: Printed version looks good. Tried copy/paste of text from Affinity Publisher and from Adobe Reader, but found that the resulting unformatted text needed too much work. Imported the PDF-x1a into Serif PagePlus X9, in "flow" mode. This resulted in a separate "story" for each page, and put each page number into a separate story. Used "Edit Story" in PagePlus X9 to export each text story as a separate RTF file. Then re-assembled these using LibreOffice to produce a clean .ODT master file. In PagePlus X9, created a new iPad mini document, inserted the .ODT text file. Inserted the images. Tweaked & cleaned the text and formatting. "Published" the document from PagePlus X9 as a Flowing ePub3, adding a hyperlinked ToC. Previewed this using MS Edge. Made changes, then repeated this... Uploaded the ePub3 to Amazon KDP, uploaded the cover image, previewed the converted result using Amazon's online previewer, also downloaded the converted .mobi file and checked this using Amazon's offline Kindle Previewer software. The Amazon KDP service happily accepted the flowing ePub3 file created using PagePlus X9. I clicked the final "submit" button at about 10pm... by the early hours next morning, my new book was live for sale on Amazon Kindle. I have also exported the final text using "edit story" in PagePlus X9 as an RTF file, to update my master text file in LibreOffice. Serif PagePlus X9 can also publish documents as ePub2 or as .MOBI files, reliably. But I now prefer to use the newer features provided by Amazon's newer tools. Obviously I would like Affinity Publisher (very soon) to provide: A. Text export feature. Even just a basic feature; ideally something like PagePlus's "edit story" / WritePlus feature. B. ePub export mode. For creating eBooks directly, or more likely in a format which is compatible with eBook creation services & programs. BTW. I have much to learn about how to publicise & market Kindle eBooks.
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Thanks everyone for your help. For my final checks, I had to export "all pages" as PDF, then check through the zoomed-in PDF while making corrections in Affinity Publisher, then re-export and re-check and make more corrections... then re-export and... I also wanted a flowing ePub3 version for uploading to Amazon Kindle. Sorry to say that working with Serif PagePlus X9 was far easier than with (this first version of) Serif Affinity Publisher.
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No problem. It is listed in the online help in Windows versions, so perhaps one day...?
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That's what I've just done for my final... final... check. But even at this late stage, I've had to return to AP, make corrections, then re-export the PDF. Sadly, MAC only at present; not available on Windows. Agreed. Thanks to everyone for tips & advice. Hopefully, future versions will (soon) make this easier?
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Thanks, as a temporary work-around, I took your suggestion and "un-ticked" the facing pages option. This seemed to work OK, although I do not know whether Affinity is clever enough to compensate for the central gutter or "creep" in folded brochures? If so, presumably I'll lose those features? But a warning: Changing this option does mess up the master pages: Unticking the "facing pages" option seems to split a double-page master page into two separate single master pages, which are then attached to alternate pages. Sensible. However, "re-ticking" the "facing pages" option does not recombine the split master pages or apply what appears be a double-page master page to the whole left-right spread. Perhaps reasonable, but annoying. I discovered this when I later tried to add page numbers: Although the settings looked OK on the double-page master page, they actually displayed only on left-hand pages. So I had to delete my master pages and create replacements.
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Yes, and I'm hoping that the suite will only get better. Nice the way that Serif keeps each program in step, during upgrades. But as someone who seldom studies the instructions... until afterwards... I have suffered from some "corrections" made to Affinity Photo for its version 1.7: I had established a useful workflow which apparently relied on some of the Photo tools having specific faults or behaviours... which Serif has now corrected.
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Thanks for those links. Yes, there is considerable overlap between the simpler end of DTP, and today's every more flexible word-processing programs. Three of my reasons for using Publisher for this simple project: To help learn this new program (learning by doing) In the hopes that its PDF output will work better with commercial printing services Because I have it! When I started using DTP, and later even with original versions of Serif PagePlus, they were "paste-up" programs... an electronic equivalent of a physical pasteboard: All text etc. had to be imported, rather than written directly within the layout program. At the same time, word-processing programs such as Word 5.5 for DOS did not provide WYSIWYG editing; only viewing. But we can now do simple word-processing in DTP programs... and simple publishing in word-processing programs. But for my way of doing final checks & tweaks, I need to see the exact layout of the text etc.; and have the ability to make small corrections or adjustments. At the moment, Publisher is making this difficult.
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Story editor - mandatory
Richard S replied to Jowday's topic in Feedback for Affinity Publisher V1 on Desktop
Very much agree. -
Ah, we're Mac's poor relation? I accept that there may be some differences between the Mac & Windows versions and some rough edges, particularly in this first release. But sometimes feel that I'm fighting against this program.
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Thanks, yes. However Publisher's Help claims that left and right panels can be hidden independently: Perhaps Serif is planning that for later? While doing my final checks and tweaks, I need access to some of the tools, in order to make corrections (before I forget them). But I don't really need to see eg. the "Pages" panel. I prefer to do these checks and tweaks within Publisher, rather than while viewing a fixed PDF version.
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Thanks. Does ticking / unticking the "facing pages" option affect text layout, image placement or flow in any way? With "facing pages" not ticked, I do get the single vertical stream of pages I want. But as I am performing the final checks & tweaks before sending the document for printing, I do need everything to be exactly as in the final version. If I had an image which extended across eg. the centre spread, presumably that would go wrong if "facing pages" was not ticked?
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Thanks, but I think that still tries to display my pages as double-page spreads, rather than as a single vertical column of individual pages. My publication is a very simple 16-sided A5 folded brochure, which consists mostly of text. It doesn't really need the power of a DTP program such as Affinity Publisher, but that is the tool I have (and am trying to learn). Thanks for the suggestion to use keyboard shortcuts: I will try to learn a few, but mostly use the ordinary mouse interface. The "Navigator" panel might also help, but is more fiddly than the simple vertical scrolling I'm after. To read the text comfortably, I need to use at least 200% zoom. It would be nice to have a simple way to hide the Left or Right Studio panels during previewing, but that doesn't yet seem to be available on my Windows version. I have attached a screenshot showing my simple document, at 200% zoom.
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The commercial printer I'm using, has heard about Affinity Publisher and assumes it is comparable to the Adobe program. :-) But does not yet have direct experience. I was surprised that they actually prefer a newer colour profile for their paper: FOGRA52 instead of FOGRA39.
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Thanks. See my feature suggestion thread: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/94579-how-to-publish-pdf-as-separate-pages-improve-help/
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Thanks. Good idea: All the (cheap) commercial printers I've examined, seem to want each page to be separate within the PDF file; otherwise they apparently need to do extra work separating the pages.
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Thanks for moving this thread. Perhaps after it became "lost" because the forum timed me out just as I clicked "submit," :-( ...and it then re-appeared in the wrong section? ...Or perhaps it was just my mistake?
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Could this please be made clearer in Affinity Publisher's "help" or even on the PDF dialogues? I needed to create a multi-page A5 folded brochure. My commercial printing service wanted the PDF to contain "separate pages" rather than "spreads." As someone who is new to commercial printing, it was not obvious how to translate the language of the printer's requirements into language used by Affinity. To clarify: Affinity's "All Spreads" PDF exports eg. facing pages of a booklet as double-page spreads; but how they are viewed... ie. not arranged for printing. Affinity's "All Pages" PDF exports eg. facing pages of a booklet as a series of single pages, in consecutive order. Unlike PagePlus, Affinity Publisher does not appear to have a mode which exports pages arranged to suit printing. See also: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/94177-export-pdf-as-an-a5-booklet/&tab=comments#comment-501002
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Is conversion to Kindle formats still useful? Amazon seems to prefer people to use Amazon's own newer tools rather than the Amazon Kindlegen plugin. Amazon's own tools seem to be kept more up to date and to offer extra facilities such as better font handling. Personally, I would appreciate a way to publish / export from Affinity Publisher in a file format which is compatible with importing into services such as Amazon Kindle. From Serif PagePlus, I normally use ePub3, for flowing text. (PagePlus can use the Amazon Kindlegen plugin, but I've stopped using that mode; preferring to use Amazon's newer offline or online conversion tools.)
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Could this please be made clearer in Affinity Publisher's "help" or even on the PDF dialogues? My commercial printing service wanted the PDF to contain "separate pages" rather than "spreads." As someone who is new to commercial printing, it was not obvious how to translate the language of the printer's requirements into language used by Affinity. To clarify: Affinity's "All Spreads" PDF exports eg. facing pages of a booklet as double-page spreads; but as viewed... ie. not arranged for printing. Affinity's "All Pages" PDF exports eg. facing pages of a booklet as a series of single pages, in consecutive order.
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At present, Publisher does not seem to offer different preview modes; all documents must be viewed as "spreads" in their final layout. But this makes it harder to perform a final check of the text and contents. Please consider providing alternative preview / viewing modes (like PagePlus does); particularly the ability to view all pages as a single vertical stream. This would allow the user to zoom in enough to read / check the text and then to progress through the pages of a booklet by simply scrolling vertically... rather than having to zig-zag: down... up... across... down... in order to read facing pages. Checking and performing the final tweaks to a multi-page booklet would be made very much more convenient.
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Thanks, but I thought that car advert had always to be glossy...? When I was looking for a car, many manufacturers offered their brochures as downloadable PDF files. But these were very frustrating to read: They were the PDF as sent to the printing company, sometimes even including crop marks etc. So were not designed for easy reading on a screen: I had to keep zooming in in order to read text, then scroll / pan looking for the next page. Many government leaflets suffer from the same problem: The downloadable PDF is designed for sending to the printer; not for easy reading on screen. </rant> For my type of booklets & books which have very simple formatting, it sounds as if it will be more sensible to: Extract the text from Publisher using copy / paste Clean up this text Keep this as the "master" copy Rebuild the booklet / book in other software which is able to export in ePub / Kindle formats I hope that Affinity Publisher does have suitable features, one day. BTW. Pasting the text into Libre Office Writer can also preserve spaced between paragraphs. However, I had wanted to remove all formatting initially, so that nothing was left lurking in the text. Previously I've has problems with "split styles" where the styling code tags change within words.
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Thanks again. I had been hoping just to follow in other people's footsteps, but perhaps I'll have to investigate Calibre again myself. (I used it a few years ago, when it was rather different.) Producing well-formatted eBooks is rather like the problem of producing webpages when all web browsers were different and worked to different standards: With the ePub output from PagePlus, I have used a code editor to inspect the output coding, line by line, in order to understand & overcome problems: A badly encoded eBook may well work OK with some eReaders & eReading software, but fail badly with others. If I did use the PDF / Calibre route, I'd need to repeat that laborious line-by-line examination of the output encoding. I realise that Publisher is currently aimed at people designing for glossy print publications. Elsewhere, you'll see the serious glitch I've reported with its PDF (for Web) output. I am hoping gradually to replace my Serif PagePlus. Already I mostly use Affinity Photo instead of Serif PhotoPlus, although I'm not yet confident with some of the tools which greatly changed in version 1.7. I've not yet made friends with Affinity Designer: For a recent task, I had to revert to using a mixture of Serif DrawPlus and Inkscape... simply to change some text on SVG maps. Also, the PNG output seemed disappointing. Perhaps partly because I'm writing about the history of a site spanning a couple of thousand years, I expect to reuse my old material in new projects, and to publish it in different ways: eg. Print, eBooks, audio files, websites, etc. etc. Much of the material for this current booklet, including the main diagram, is from the 1980s; extended and updated where necessary. BTW. My initial attempts to copy / paste from Publisher did not go well: The pasted text had no spaces between paragraphs, so was hard to read. I also discovered that different parts of my booklet had slightly different paragraph styles, but that unlike in PagePlus, Publisher does not seem to provide an easy way to select all paragraphs which use a particular style so that they can all be changed to the correct style. I have much still to learn.
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Thanks again. It looks as if I'll have to use tedious repeated copy / paste to extract my text from Publisher, and then rebuild the document from scratch using a different tool. Disappointing. Perhaps there's a reason why the example in Affinity's tutorial videos is just a glossy leaflet advertising a car?
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Export as PDF - Faulty Text Ligatures in MS Edge Browser
Richard S replied to Richard S's topic in V1 Bugs found on Windows
Certainly looks like a significant problem. I used to do complete start-to-finish mini projects while testing Beta software, but did not have time for this Publisher. :-(
