Colorado

What I'm trying to say is this: you cannot expect software users to act like a traditional typesetter, inserting blank metal slabs on a metal plate and manually manipulating the metal-casted letters.
Yes, it is possible to achieve good results in AffPub (no rivers, not overly stretched lines of text, spaces between words that are not disturbing, correct spaces after punctuation marks, etc., optical tracking) - but it is so f... painstakingly time consuming and boring - that you can edit like a few paragraphs. The same amount of time is enough to set up a whole book!
Seriously, one time I spent two hours defining styles, master pages and rules in Indd. It took me some time, but when it was ready - I could flow 400 pages of text and it was somehow ready for print!
When setting a book in Indd my working is more about reading and finding those odd exceptions to the set rules - than about manually correcting anything.
In AffPub, it's about difficult, chaotic and time-consuming struggle with bad-looking text paragraphs.
If any the Dev Guys(and Gals) read it ;D Please understand - you need to learn the rules of good, aesthetic typesetting before designing the algorithm. It is really crucial because many people still use Indd because the text looks better and the job is much easier! If you fix this one thing - it would be like a jewel in a crown! So many people will loose the last argument for using Indd.
In this very subject - don't consult a team of visual artists, but rather hire an old-school graphic designer.
Good luck!
 
ps. and for the .... sake, make a checkbox for removing orphaned conjunctions
 
 

Publisher is used for designing publication with text - and yet the way it put the text together is far from the rules of good graphic design (e.g. rivers with small font and hyphenation). This is a huge no-no.

I can make a leaflet for a guy selling shoes - but I would not use it for a book. The text looks like being set up by an amateur. It is very hard and time consuming to achieve greyness of text in Publisher.

In the 80s Sega wanted to dominate Nintendo. They employed Tom Kalinske and he made a list of 5 things that will make it possible: lower the price, defeat Mario, more sports, cool for teens, make fun of Nintendo.
Have you ever thought of making such list for Adobe Publisher?
1) improve typesetting algorithm - make the text look gray when squinting your eyes. Read about professional, esthetic typesetting. For example, study the Nigel French books. Introduce optical kerning and tracking, improve hyphenation.
2) introduce one-key preview mode (equivalent to pressing W)
3) make it read .indd and .idm files
4) see point 1
5) see point 1
Let's say that in my country there's 400 000 designers. If half of them buys a $35 app, you'll get $7mln. If they buy all 3 apps, it will give you $21mln. Now multiply it by 44 (the number of countries in Europe).
 
$924mln - now you see that it is worth implementing small changes the users are asking for?
People hate The-You-Know-Which products and they will be more than glad to ditch them. But now they can't because of the above...
 
 

Dev team should know the users are trying to help.
People still stick to .... software only because - as they say "text flow in AP looks like sh..."

What I'm trying to say is this: you cannot expect software users to act like a traditional typesetter, inserting blank metal slabs on a metal plate and manually manipulating the metal-casted letters.
Yes, it is possible to achieve good results in AffPub (no rivers, not overly stretched lines of text, spaces between words that are not disturbing, correct spaces after punctuation marks, etc., optical tracking) - but it is so f... painstakingly time consuming and boring - that you can edit like a few paragraphs. The same amount of time is enough to set up a whole book!
Seriously, one time I spent two hours defining styles, master pages and rules in Indd. It took me some time, but when it was ready - I could flow 400 pages of text and it was somehow ready for print!
When setting a book in Indd my working is more about reading and finding those odd exceptions to the set rules - than about manually correcting anything.
In AffPub, it's about difficult, chaotic and time-consuming struggle with bad-looking text paragraphs.
If any the Dev Guys(and Gals) read it ;D Please understand - you need to learn the rules of good, aesthetic typesetting before designing the algorithm. It is really crucial because many people still use Indd because the text looks better and the job is much easier! If you fix this one thing - it would be like a jewel in a crown! So many people will loose the last argument for using Indd.
In this very subject - don't consult a team of visual artists, but rather hire an old-school graphic designer.
Good luck!
 
ps. and for the .... sake, make a checkbox for removing orphaned conjunctions
 
 

What I'm trying to say is this: you cannot expect software users to act like a traditional typesetter, inserting blank metal slabs on a metal plate and manually manipulating the metal-casted letters.
Yes, it is possible to achieve good results in AffPub (no rivers, not overly stretched lines of text, spaces between words that are not disturbing, correct spaces after punctuation marks, etc., optical tracking) - but it is so f... painstakingly time consuming and boring - that you can edit like a few paragraphs. The same amount of time is enough to set up a whole book!
Seriously, one time I spent two hours defining styles, master pages and rules in Indd. It took me some time, but when it was ready - I could flow 400 pages of text and it was somehow ready for print!
When setting a book in Indd my working is more about reading and finding those odd exceptions to the set rules - than about manually correcting anything.
In AffPub, it's about difficult, chaotic and time-consuming struggle with bad-looking text paragraphs.
If any the Dev Guys(and Gals) read it ;D Please understand - you need to learn the rules of good, aesthetic typesetting before designing the algorithm. It is really crucial because many people still use Indd because the text looks better and the job is much easier! If you fix this one thing - it would be like a jewel in a crown! So many people will loose the last argument for using Indd.
In this very subject - don't consult a team of visual artists, but rather hire an old-school graphic designer.
Good luck!
 
ps. and for the .... sake, make a checkbox for removing orphaned conjunctions
 
 

Publisher is used for designing publication with text - and yet the way it put the text together is far from the rules of good graphic design (e.g. rivers with small font and hyphenation). This is a huge no-no.

I can make a leaflet for a guy selling shoes - but I would not use it for a book. The text looks like being set up by an amateur. It is very hard and time consuming to achieve greyness of text in Publisher.

Publisher is used for designing publication with text - and yet the way it put the text together is far from the rules of good graphic design (e.g. rivers with small font and hyphenation). This is a huge no-no.

I can make a leaflet for a guy selling shoes - but I would not use it for a book. The text looks like being set up by an amateur. It is very hard and time consuming to achieve greyness of text in Publisher.

Publisher is used for designing publication with text - and yet the way it put the text together is far from the rules of good graphic design (e.g. rivers with small font and hyphenation). This is a huge no-no.

I can make a leaflet for a guy selling shoes - but I would not use it for a book. The text looks like being set up by an amateur. It is very hard and time consuming to achieve greyness of text in Publisher.

Ok, thanks
Now, imagine you're working on a 500 pages long book. alt+ space
It is because of such small things that people still use you-know-whose products...
 

Hint-hint to the Dev Team....
Please, please improve the way brushes work, the way how they are smoothed - it is CRUCIAL for illustrators and other drawing artists. At the moment, we need to switch back to il....
Aff Designer is much more user friendly than Il... and working with bezier and nodes is a very positive experience.
If only the brushes worked OK
 
just two things:
1) better curve smoothing control (like in AI or Inkscape)
2) providing a tool that allows to smooth uneven points on a curve (like in the competitive products)
 
Thank you and good luck!