Richard786

A couple of Mods on this thread, presumably Affinity staff (?), in this thread have said there are no immediate plans for this feature. But now that I look at their comments more closely, I see they said this quite a while ago.

+1 from me on this one. Very surprised to learn it's not on the "to do" list for Pub.

Does saving the spreadsheet as a PDF and then opening (not importing) the PDF in Pub work? It did for me once, but the table was quite small, about four columns by eight rows, as I recall. If it does, you can then copy and paste the table into your layout and restyle it as required.

I've not noticed that myself, Jeremy, but once I've got everything into Pub I tend not to go back to the InDesign file. Would it help to re-assign text in the "new" style to the "old" one (or vice versa) and then delete the duplicate style from the styles pallet?

I am a Styles fiend and set them up for just about every document I do, but then I'll use the Eyedropper to quickly apply them around longer journals - particularly when I want to apply a Character Style on top of a Paragraph Style. I view them as two complimentary tools to allow me to complete the same process. I must say though that I am very impressed that Styles come through on IDML imports - a huge time saver.

Thanks for your reply Garry and apologies for my delay in replying. It does help, but it seems Pub sometimes "converts" a picture frame with a placed Photoshop image into an image on its own volition. Things are better in 1.8 but it can still happen sometimes. This happens even if the "prefer linked" option is used. I need to keep digging down in the layers pallet to get to the image within the frame or sometimes I'll just delete it, draw a new picture frame and re-place the image into it. I'll also often make a copy of a photoshop, flatten it to a jpeg and then insert that instead as that usually gives a more predictable result. It would be nice if Pub treated all types of placed images, jpeg, tiff, photoshop or PDF (not strictly an image format, I know) the same way - or gave the user the choice to convert an image within a picture frame to an image of its own right when the image is first placed into the programme..

I got hit with this at the weekend when try to display a few "linked" pages from a PDF in a Pub file and ended up with a huge file on a shared cloud-based drive with only limited storage space. It's the little things like this that can make Publisher frustrating to use: it's fine for my smaller clients but not yet something I can use for the "heavy lifting" in my day job. Roll on 1.8....

With this being a Feedback forum, it strikes me that it's sometimes easy for these boards to read like "here's everything I think is wrong about Publisher" all the time. So messages like this from Jacques are important to remember that a set of affordable suite of graphics packages are finally on the market and being continually developed. So the above gets a +1 from me.

Thanks Bruce. Now you've pointed it out, I remember seeing the tip in an Affinity video a while ago. As I recall, it was suggested for when an online publication was being planned but the penny didn't drop that it could also be used for Printer's Pairs. Thanks again - issue solved.

Has this been introduced yet ? If not, it's a +1 from me. I went looking for this feature at the weekend when I needed to set up a document as two double-page spreads and was surprised to find it wasn't there (or at least if it was, I couldn't find it). I realise that it can be worked around quite simply by topping and tailing the document with blank single pages and just exporting the centre 4 pages to PDF as spreads, but it is a lot neater just to have the 4 pages on their own.

+1

I too have problems with large PDF files from Pub which I then need to optimise in Acrobat. The same type of files, usining the same type of imges gave much smaller PDF sizes in InDesign. It seems odd that a straightforward preset to optimise the files for printing can't be added to the Export menu. Surely all Affinity need to do is look at what is happening on the Abobe presets and then add them to their own software?

Thanks larsh - a little confession;I am actually partially sighted which means I sometime miss things that are glaringly obvious like what you have pointed out. Sadly, my Document Setup is set to CMYK/8, so it's not that which is causing the huge PDFs.

Where in Publisher do I change from RGB/16 to CMYK/8? I've looked for the setting but can't find it. I too get huge PDFs when exporting PDFX-4 from Pub, which I normally have to optimise for size in Acrobat.

I know there is a command to match a frame’s dimensions to the object within it, but is there also a command to resize a text frame so it is only as deep as the text it contains? I’ve looked but I can’t find one.

I’m finding Publisher’s frame behaviour a little confusing at time. Sometime when I draw a frame and place a graphic or photo within it. I can move the object within the frame around independently of the frame, I.E.: when the object is moved partly outside the frame, the boundaries of the frame mask it. This is wjat I would expect it to do. However, sometimes when I place an object within a frame it seems to lock itself to the frame’s boundaries. The object and frame move as one and if I pull in the edge of the frame, the object within it will start to distort rather than keeping its size and being masked by the edge of the frame. I’ve used the layers panel to make sure I select the object and not the frame layer just above it, but this doesn’t seem to make any difference. Often, all I can do is draw a fresh frame, place a fresh object within it and then everything behaves itself as I would expect. Does anyone know why this is happening and how I can keep the movement and of the object and frame independent of each other?

It was all the Publisher files I opened, regardless of size. However, I'm pleased to say everything is back to normal today! I had updated the software the day previously, so maybe it was taking some time to sort itself out?

Anyone else experiencing severe slow-down in Publisher recently? It's pretty much fallen off a cliff for me today. Even just changing CMYK co-ordinates brings up a 2-minute wait with the spinning beachball of death.

+1 for some kind of printed/PDF workbook/manual. Like Juergen, I just find it easier to learn from a printed page (amd I'm from the scalpel and glue era too). As I've said before, what would be best (for me, at least) is a "Publisher for InDesign Users" guide - it's hard to break the old habits.

It would be a nice feature to have and, if possible, would boost Publisher's user base substantially, but I see no reason why Affinity should prioritise making a propriety product from another company compatible with their own. PDF compatibility is a bit different as it is so widely used across the print industry, Affinity would ignore it at their peril. Personally, I'd much rather see Affinity getting the issues with layers, multi-page layouts, inserting with bleeds, etc sorted out first. But this question keeps cropping up.

+1

True, but that doesn't help when documents are being worked on cross-platform, as I'm currently doing.

Why not suggest your client purchases a copy of Publisher? At fifty quid a throw, it's hardly going to break the bank. Or offer to purchase a copy for them (add £50.00 on to your next job ). You could also ask if a press-compatible PDF would be acceptable. Often, all a customer wants to do is copy a bit of text (it's amazing how many people don't know you can do this from a native PDF) or get their hands on a particular picture. AFAIK, Publisher has never been sold as an InDesign converter, so I see no reason why Affinity should incorporate this feature with any urgency. Personally, I would prefer it of they spent their time sorting out things like the rather confusing layers system, being able to import with bleed, etc, thus making Pub a better stand-alone tool for page layouts in its own right.

Another thing about Publisher layers that I discovered at the weekend is that it's very easy to accidentally nest a layer within another layer when youchange the stacking order. Perhaps Affinity should just bite the bullet and copy the way layers work in Creative Cloud - the current system is quite fiddly.

I would add a +1 to this. Coming from Creative Suite, the differences in Layers between the two systems is very confusing - and I use a lot of Layers in my work. It seems Affinity products create a Layer for the frame and then another Layer beneath it for whatever's within the frame. And the fact that Layers are not global across the whole document is another bugbear. What we really need, and Affinity could never do this for obvious reasons, is a video tutorial along the lines of "Here's how to do something in InDesign - and here's how you get exactly the same effect in Publisher". Like I say, Affinity could never release such a video (they'd be sued by Adobe), but maybe some enterprising third party could...