Jose Alvarez

SQL is a domain-specific language that does not really belong in a comparison with the others.  It is like comparing the popularity of apples, oranges and Japanese.  That alone likely skews the results to the point of being less meaningful than a proper comparison.
Ignoring that I do find it to be a sad reflection on the state of our culture that so many programmers today tend to favor some of the worst programming languages in existence that none of the more reasonable ones (except SQL which again doesn't really fit with the others) even make it into the lists.  People are in so much of a hurry to produce fast sloppy coding with cryptic syntax that no one is taking the time to produce solid, readable code.

You must not apologize, we understand the current circunstances.
Thanks, Dan, and Happy new year!!

Wow. I feel sorry for poor Adobe.
Having to deal with some intractable, heartless, quasi-monopoly which affects their daily business ... that has got to be frustrating.
🤣

From the article mentioned by @Alex M,
Edit: From the article mentioned by @LondonSquirrel 
Industry reaction:
Simon Eccles, Printweek contributor and technical expert
“I’ve been using Adobe products since Illustrator 88,... more blather...
“Our very wonderful all-British Serif Software (subject of an early Best of British feature) still has Pantone libraries in its Affinity range, which compete with Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator.”

So I was watching some communities in reddit lately and this came up
 
It is not a big deal for me because I haven't used pantone like, never in my work flow, but I know a lot of people who need consistency in printing care a ton about pantone colors, even the simulated ones in our programs of work.
So what affinity will do with the pantones?

Hello again. I've noticed that in Designer 1.7.2 that I'm now using, graphic styles are still static as described above in the original post, greatly limiting their usefulness and confusing the user as they the graphic styles don't work at all like the text styles. Does anyone know if there are any plans on implementing dynamic graphic styles any time soon in Designer?

I agree, styles at present are almost useless - they really need to work as you describe.
Also the ability to stack styles would be a huge improvement… ie apply  "My Dotted Outer Stroke with a Shadow" style, plus "My Super Shiny Red Gradient" style to the same object (with later styles over-riding those earlier in the list) just as happens with CSS styles for example.

I'm using Affinity Designer 1.6.1 on macOS and this is one of the most important features I'm missing doing UI work:
Being able to create an object style (say "Button outline", or "Info panel style") and apply it to all relevant such objects. Then, critically being able to CHANGE the style (adjust the stroke for example) and have all objects with the style applied to them update. Currently it seems I can create and apply styles, but I can't change them which to me removes 80% of the usefulness of having styles.
Incidentally, text styles in Affinity Designer work fine and just the way I would expect them as described above, so it's surprising and a little confusing the object styles do not. Perhaps this indicates that similar object styles are on the roadmap (somewhere I can't find?) but the developers just haven't gotten around to it yet?

Yup, not having proper object styles, that can be updated, just like text styles, is really painful. Current "styles" palette is pretty much useless.

Absolutely needed, for me. I have many images in my works, and all graphic/text objects have to have the same style. Text runaround, alignment, fill and border.
Paolo
 

Would be great to have some sort of style functionality for any objects (images, vector) inside Publisher. For example one could assign a style for a specific frame to image frames, and when the applied style would be changed all image frames would be updated accordingly in the whole document.
AFAIK at the moment all elements are hard-formatted, except texts, right? This takes muuuuuch time, when updating a larger document with a different layout style.

Yes. I thought about it later after I posted and you are right. If the styles work that would get it done.

I agree. But if you can create a style with them, you can apply it in data merge without problems, I think.
Ah, ok, thanks!

Those are OpenType features which may or may not be included in the font.
Not the same thing.
The Case functions in the Text > Capitalization menu are all missing from text styles.
For situations like this those are needed.

But those case functions actually change the characters.
OpenType features only change what glyph is displayed.
I guess always applying Title Case to the same text should come out the same.
Maybe what is also needed is the ability to apply the case functions on the data merge.

Just so I am clear, do you want the options from the Text Menu's Capitalization part to be available in the Paragraph Style panel?

I doubt I would ever use it but fine, I'll support that request.

Hi all
Yes, I have seen a request like this, but the solution seems a bit unreal for me.
It doens't really matter if Serif implemented the feature in Text/Capitalization like an action or whatever, or how other brands have implemented it. That really matters is that isn't logic (for me, of course) that a text format option can (and must) be applied by hand but not by paragraph style. In the end, all formatting is an action, isn't it?
I every year format some dietaries, and I have created various python scripts to generate the fields that I'll add using data merge (sometimes not only texts but images). In Indesign I only need to use paragraph styles to format all the texts (some in all caps, others in title case, whatever client whishes). In Publisher I must generate the texts almost in final format, so I must create one file to every client (or more, if client wants to see more options, and clients ALWAYS want to see more options), or revise EVERY PAGE in EVERY DOCUMENT to apply some text formats manually.
Not very efficient, isn't?. And in this world time is never enough (actually is always missing). And this is only one of the lot of possible examples that you must use this feature.
So I must continue to use 2 programs when I want to use only 1, because Publisher Data Merge is better than in Indesign (at least it supports double-page spreads, not like the Adobe application).
Someone thinks like me? I think yes  If so, I look forward to your support in this post.
Greetings from Spain,
Jose

Python please.

My renewal time for Adobe CC is due next month and yet again I find myself having to shell out again simply because Affinity Publisher does not offer multi-page layouts beyond two pages. This is such an integral part of my work and many many other judging by the previous comments. I've been through all three packages (Publisher, Designer and Photo) and they offer absolutely everything I need that would allow me to jump ship from Adobe to Affinity but the lack of multi-page layouts prevents this. I've heard about workarounds by setting page sizes to encapsulate the size of a required multi-page layout but when it comes to exporting and distributing pdfs via the web, clients demand they are able to view and print pages separately which the above workaround would prevent. No offence intended but the omission of this feature is simply short-sighted especially when its clear from forum comments that it so desired by designers. I do hope you will include this feature in a near future upgrade.

Hi mate!
I had the same confusion.
Like moderator Gabe answers me,
 
Hi @Jose Alvarez,
Sorry for the delayed reply. 
 You may be confused by the fact you can only preview one data source at once and previewing one will hide the other. If you turn off all previews you will see the field placeholders. The preview works that way because that's what will happen for the output. You can only merge a page with one source at once. Merging 2 different sources is not an option. 
Maybe the window should only show the file chosen to merge.

The multiple sources feature is designed for switching between alternatives (eg a small test and larger production data source) or for merging different page ranges in a document with different data sources (eg a catalog where each chapter has a different template page and a different data source file).
It's not currently possible to use more than one data source to merge a single output page, I'm not convinced that's desirable, it certainly would create a lot of complications regarding advancing the merge index and running out of records.
@jdo if you could explain your use-case more fully perhaps I can suggest a way to make it work.

One more vote to Python.
Despite the fact I'm a Indesign scripter long time ago, I think Python is a more powerful, cross platform language. Not JS for WINDOWS and AS for OSX, one ring to rule them all 
Greetings from Spain!

1995 has called and wants its workaround back!
In other words:
+3 for multi-page spreads

👍 We are brothers in arms  

New user of Affinity Serif here!
2º year student on an Illustration course on an Art School. It's the second month of the course, and the teacher (who is teaching us using Adobe InDesign, so then each alumn gets to work on the software they choose) already asked us to do some work with this feature (multi-page spread).
I think it's reasonably to think that this is a must-have feature.
Greetings from Spain!

Oh, yes, my fault, I worked styles on table definition.
I will try again later.