JDW

Serif, for the love of Pete!, the previous posters are in tears! Please implement graphic LINKING without further delay in Affinity Designer. It's a crying shame we even have to ask for this important KEY FEATURE. Thank you.

The previous post seems to show that relying on a "printer driver" is not always a solution to print booklets in Affinity Publisher. And for those of you searching desperately in vain for the link, there was none provided. So I shall remedy that by providing it here: https://www.thekeptpromise.com/CreateBooklet/ Disclaimer: I've never used the software myself. I'm just posting the link.

It took me a while to figure out how to show details about my linked files since there is no Links palette in Publisher like there is in Adobe apps. It seems that Linked file access in Affinity Publisher is restricted to Document > Resource Manager. Fine and well, but how do I perform a Reveal in Finder command like we can easily do in Adobe apps? (In Adobe apps you can right-click on the graphic to get the Reveal in Finder command, or do the same through the Links palette.) Thanks.

Yes, and in addition to a right-click on the page's thumb, you can click on File and choose "Spread Setup" and then click on the "Margins" tab. I was merely thinking that it might have been more intuitive if Margins could have been found in the Documents menu. Even placing a command like "Spread and Margins" in the Documents menu might be easier to find for some. I am just looking at this from the perspective of those who may be familiar with InDesign. A lot of people are moving to Serif apps so as to ditch the Adobe subscription ball-and-chain, so it might be an easier transition for them if some things are similar. But so long as most people can figure it out, that's what matters most.

I've already explained everything in depth, but to refresh memories... We need a consistent Print Booklet solution within Affinity Publisher that works for everyone, including Mac users, that does NOT rely on printer drivers. :-) But perhaps you misunderstand what I meant by that sentence, so I shall explain. Currently, in order to print on a Booklet in Affinity Publisher on a modern Mac user MacOS High Sierra, you must do the following: File > Print... Click on the popup which says "Range and Scale" and choose "Document Layout" Click on the Model popup which says "Single" and choose "Booklet" (And of course set your paper size and duplex printing settings as required within the same print dialog.) Seems easy enough, right? Well, yes... sort of. The above steps are consistent and work for the Mac under High Sierra, but I expect those settings may change with the print dialog. One cannot follow precisely the same steps on Windows either. I suppose I could just join hand-in-hand with others and cry, "well, the current method works well for ME on MY computer right now, so I won't worry about other platforms or the future or a consistent UI for booklet printing that is cross platform and will never change with the OS version." But I was trying to be a bit more open-minded on the topic and therefore suggested a dedicated Print Booklet UI that would be the same for everyone and would also be familiar to those who have used InDesign. As you have noticed, there is also the issue of other binding options which InDesign offers and which are not necessarily offered in the Print Dialog's "Model" popup. But hey, it doesn't affect me so "why should I care?" right? As to PDF printing, I myself have never had the need to create a PDF in booklet form because printing firms I've used typically will take the InDesign file as is. So when I do need a PDF, I need a normal PDF that would be viewable on a website, in which case you wouldn't want it in booklet form. But my own use-case aside, Affinity Publisher does offer the ability to create a PDF in booklet form which is a boon to those who need it, and therefore Affinity Publisher is to be praised for offering that feature. And that's the thrust of what I've been writing. Even if I myself don't need a particular feature, I am pleased it exists for the benefit of others and for my own self too should I require such in the future. To end my thoughts on the matter, so long as most Publisher users can enjoy using the current printing features cross-platform, that's all that matters.

I am well aware that I can set Margins when I created a new document and then change Margins after the fact by digging down into the Master page "Spread Properties." But is there a good reason why there is no conveniently accessible "Margins" command in the Document menu? That menu would be the most logical and intuitive place to find it. InDesign has "Margins and Columns..." in their Layout men, so anyone can easily find it without brainstorming or reading a manual, and I would argue a menu command is faster to access than (1) finding the Master, (2) right-clicking on the Master, (3) and then Choosing "Spread Properties." Thanks.

Why would Affinity Publisher need to deal with "many printer types" seeing that InDesign's Print Booklet feature does not? Seriously. Open InDesign and a document, then choose File > Print Booklet and have a look at the dialog that appears. To your left you see the following 3 choices: Setup Preview Summary Setup shows you your printer preset (if any), Page Range you want to print, Booklet Type (2-up Saddle Stitch is most common) and related choices like Creep and Bleed, Margins, and whether or not you want blank spreads printed. That's it. To setup duplex printing requires you to click the "Print Settings..." button on that same screen, which opens the standard MacOS Printer dialog box in which you tweak your settings. So really, Print Booklet just ensures that pages print in the right order so the end result is a booklet, but all the hard work is still done by the MacOS printer driver and related dialog. If there is anything "hard" about adding a Print Booklet feature to Affinity Publisher, it is for Serif to properly replicate 2-up Saddle Stitch, 2-up Perfect Bound, 2-up Consecutive, and other binding (print order) methods. But at first they could limit that to just the most popular -- 2-up Saddle Stitch and then add others over time. So again, I don't see the addition of this critically important feature as anything that would slow down development of Affinity Publisher. And seriously, without a convenient means to print booklets, why not just use Illustrator instead for designs of 10 pages or less? (Or in the context of this forum, Affinity Designer) Illustrator or Designer give you multiple artboards/pages. It may not be as elegant as a dedicated Publisher app, but it works. Indeed, I suspect that many Affinity Designer users have done just that while waiting for Publisher. So what I am saying is that if one argues for a long and troublesome method so as to avoid forcing Serif to add a Print Booklet feature to Publisher, I could easily arguing the slightly more troublesome yet usable alternative to Publisher -- using Affinity Designer. Print Booklet is to Affinity Publisher what a duplex unit is to a laser printer. Some people may not need it, but for those who do, you wouldn't want a non-Duplex printer to mass print your 2-sided masterpieces. All said... Serif, please just add a Print Booklet feature to Affinity Publisher. If it wasn't needed, InBooklet never would have come on the scene when InDesign came out, and Adobe certainly wouldn't have spent time to add that as a standard feature when Quark bought InBooklet so as to kill it. It shouldn't be that much trouble to add it, since all the hard work is done (at least it is on a Mac) in the print dialog box. Print Booklet is merely a more convenient way to establish the proper print order of the pages in your document. Thanks.

No change whatsoever with these settings either...

My "Performance" preferences are shown in this screenshot...

I guess we have few InDesign users here who know the merits of "Print Booklet." I will admit that even Adobe was brain-dead to the need some years back (InDesign CS2 and prior) when Print Booklet was a mere 3rd party plugin called InBooklet. But the InBooklet plugin for InDesign was so popular that Adobe's competitor Quark bought the company who made the plugin so as to kill it and give Adobe a firm kick in the fanny. (Quark makes Xpress, a competitor to InDesign, and Xpress was king back in the day when it came to DTP.) Knowing how much of a needed feature it was, Adobe added "Print Booklet" to the File menu starting in InDesign CS3 and has been a critically important part of InDesign ever since. Here's a basic overview: https://helpwiki.evergreen.edu/wiki/index.php/Printing_Booklets_(Mac)_-_InDesign Various "Booklet Types" are offered by InDesign's Print Booklet feature, but "2-up Saddle Stitch" is typically the best choice when making 2-sided booklets that will be stapled in the middle. Say you create a design no B5 paper in the landscape position, creating 2 pages of content side-by-side for a total of 4 pages when considering both sides of the said B5 paper. The "2-up Saddle Stitch" setting in InDesign will properly format the pagers for direct printing to your printer, with only minor printer driver setup required, and no PDF creation required. Print that way, then take the papers from your printer, staple them in the middle, fold, and you're done. No cutting or trimming required in my experience. It's really very easy and straightforward and consistent across all platforms and printer drivers. Again, you don't need any major fiddling in your printer's dialog box when using Print Booklet. You just need to make sure you have duplex printing and typically you will choose "Short-edge binding." Once that's setup, you then check the Preview in the Print Booklet dialog and ensure your cover page and back page are correct, and then it's typically safe to print. There are lots of guides and YouTube videos on InDesign's "Print Booklet" feature. Ten minutes or so of Googling, reading and watching will make the feature abundantly clear and hopefully clarify what the same sort of feature is greatly needed for Affinity Publisher to be taken seriously. Why does this matter? Because Serif needs to woo Adobe users away from Adobe. The easier you make the transition and the more complete the feature set, the more likely it is that Adobe users currently tied to the month subscription ball-and-chain will "see the light" and make the switch. But if the transition looks too difficult or if there are major features lacking, most Adobe users would probably justify the ball-and-chain price and stick with what works for them. So I strongly suggest that Serif add a Print Booklet feature to Affinity Publisher, post haste.

We need a consistent Print Booklet solution within Affinity Publisher that works for everyone, including Mac users, that does NOT rely on printer drivers. Adobe put “Print Booklet“ in InDesign for years for good reason. So should Affinity Publisher.

Can we please do away with the annoying YouTube video that clutters up this entire thread? I also don't see how this benefits Mac users. It seems to be a roundabout "solution" via Windows printer driver?

A lot of talk in this thread, but I do NOT see an EASY SOLUTION that seems to work well for everyone. "File > Print Booklet..." in InDesign works perfectly and has since the days when that feature was but a mere plugin. Indeed, without that feature I would say InDesign is useless. As such, I would not use Affinity Publisher without a dedicated, easy-to-use feature that is similar to Print Booklet. I hope Serif is reading this thread. I've not see a single post by them in this thread, so perhaps they don't care? Seriously, a missing Print Booklet feature is a showstopper in my booklet. Thanks.

I just downloaded 1.7.0.145 and tested. No improvement to the lag issue. It happens on most tools, including the Artistic Text Tool . Select that tool, then click and drag on your page. You see a letter A being drawn with a blue outline and black fill. The fill lags behind the blue outline as you drag to make it bigger and smaller. I'm not suggesting this is a showstopper bug, but it looks very tacky and tarnishes the feel of your otherwise excellent app. If you cannot fix this, then I suggest you add a preference setting to turn off object fill or content display (i.e., "draw outline only"), which is what InDesign does. I'm not saying InDesign is better. I am just saying that the lag may bother some people so you should try to fix it and if you can't then allow us to disable the root cause of the problem (realtime display of the fill/content). Thanks.

It's very noticeable. If it wasn't, I would never have mentioned it. No need to just take my word for it. I created a screencast for you here (unlisted on YouTube):

Understood. Thanks.

You're right. The Move tool solves the problem. Even so, I'd love to see the CMD key enable easier text box selection for click-and-drag while the text tool is still selected. That would be easier than having to slick on the very edge of the box.

Affinity Photo can open Photoshop PSD files, but Affinity Designer cannot open Illustrator AI files that do not have PDF content. So I wonder if they really could open raw InDesign formats. Where there's a will there's always a way. But is there a will? We shall see!

I can confirm Affinity Publisher does NOT import InDesign files now. It would be quite amazing and a big juicy worm in that sea of Adobe-worshipping fish if Publisher could accomplish that feat! The only thing I see that Publisher can do though is import PDFs (single or multi-page).

Using the Vector Crop Tool is nice, but it would be nicer if I could invoke that cropping functionality by way of a mere key press. For example, let's say I have the Move Tool (black arrow) selected and there is an Ellipse object on the page. If you click-and-drag that Ellipse you move it around on the page. And if you press Option and click-and-drag, you get a copy, as expected. But I also see that you get a copy when pressing the Command key too, which is uncommon. I would suggest you use the Command key to instead invoke Vector Crop. You need not use Command to copy an object since Option already serves that purpose. Thanks.

In Affinity Designer, I can easily move a text box simply by clicking once, holding down my mouse and dragging. Not so with Affinity Publisher. When I try that, it merely puts the cursor inside to edit text! Yes, I am aware I can move text objects in Publisher by clicking precisely on the box edge, but that's not easy sometimes. If you deliberately put that selection behavior in Publisher for a good reason, then regardless of that reason I would suggest you allow me to press-and-hold the Command key so I can click-and-drag text boxes with ease (without putting the cursor inside the text box for editing). This applies to Table Text as well. Thanks.

I just downloaded Publisher and am testing it on my late 2015 5K iMac (top end model with all the BTO bells and whistles). When I click any of the blue tools (Rectangle, Ellipse, Rounded Rectangle, or Triangle) and then proceed to click and draw to sketch the object on the page, the gray fill of the object being draw lags behind my arrow cursor while it is being drawn. For example, as I draw out to the right to expand its size, there's a white gap between the gray fill and the object edges at right. And as I draw left and inward to shrink its size, the gray fill overflows the right edges of the object. If you sketch the object very, very slowly, there are no issues with the gray fill of your object being drawn. But if you sketch your object quickly (which is normal speed for me), you will see the problem with the fill very clearly. Is this by design or a bug? Not a big issue perhaps, but I mention it since the app is still in Beta.

Sure you “can.” It’s all a matter of will. Besides, you already broke your own rule by telling us about linked files in the first place because it is still an unreleased feature!!! Just because other companies refuse to divulge details about upcoming features doesn’t mean you have to. I assure you that the world will not suddenly end because you talked in more detail about “linked files“ in more detail with in this forum. I doubt that even 100 people would even see it in this thread anyway. Providing extra tidbits of information to loyal fans of your software always works out to be a good thing, not a bad thing. But simply saying that linked files are a “forthcoming feature“ really isn’t a useful tidbit in that it something we already know.

Thank you for the guidance. Problem solved! (And thanks to toltec below too.)

I guess I need to read the documentation when I have more time because I don't understand what you mean. For truly, when I have the Preferences dialog open and the Shortcuts showing, the only way to access "Miscellaneous" is to click the popup in the upper left and choose Miscellaneous, which presents me with 6 buttons that say "Reset Fills, Reset Brushes, etc." Again, I need to read the documentation because I don't follow. Specifically, there is no "Set Fill in Black and White." Here is all I see: