wonderings

Are you saying you never use Windows? If so why are you ready to buy Affinity apps if you have never demoed them?

Seems like you are trying to re-invent the wheel. This may be fine for images but missing the font end of things. This seems like a step back as if you are going to send this to someone else to work on you are now going to have to pull fonts and add them manually. Packing makes this simple and is not a hardship while keeping things organized and having everything you need in one folder.

Isn't that just a sort of packaged folder? Packaging puts all the links and fonts in the one folder. So when you transfer to another person you just send the whole folder which has everything they need. Sounds like you are just trying to do packaging a little differently or I am just not getting what you are wanting and how it is different then packaging.

The price for the Adobe is pretty much the same as pre subscription days. Of course it does not allow you to skip a version, I used to upgrade every 2 versions unless a customer came in and I needed the latest version. That being said the Adobe CC is a lot for your money, considering the amount of pro level apps you are getting for a reasonable amount of money if you are making your living with the software. They have also removed a lot of headaches dealing with a large user base using different versions of the software and not playing nice with each other. Now everyone has the same version and you never need to ask if you need to down save your file as a lower version.... save for a few hold outs. I am assuming you are using Adobe CS5 as that is 32 bit software and Catalina is 64 bit only. I am holding onto Mojave for a while as I have some 32 bit apps I use regularly that have no 64 bit upgrade and would have me purchasing and learning new software.

Not sure I understand what you are asking here. The whole point of packaging a file is to put everything together needed for the project. This saves hunting around and ensures you have everything you need, fonts and placed images. Having it auto search and find resources is only half the battle as you still have to deal with fonts. It would be nice to have packaged Publisher files able to use fonts that have been packaged with the project like you can with Indesign. So many headaches gone not needing to activate fonts from customers files now when they come in.

Adobe is an international company and has offices all over the world https://www.adobe.com/about-adobe/contact/offices.html We are not talking a mom and pop shop here, this is a billion dollar company.

Well you do know that going in if you look at the nitty gritty details, which of course no one does, I know I certainly would not, but it is there. It does seem a bit "old fashioned" in the software world I agree but not unreasonable especially for very inexpensive yet powerful software.

Yikes, not something I have ever thought of before as I would not think this would ever be an issue. Do some companies try and claim what you create with their software theirs?

I think companies support companies that will help them make profits. I seriously doubt Adobe would not work with Linux simply because it is European. Things are not as personal as that, it really is just business.

They do listen to their users, they are just not doing what you want. This is a business and they owe nothing to anyone. Now with that said it is good for business to have a good relationship with your users obviously. In this case I would say they just do not have the resources to support a 3rd (4th counting iOS) OS for a very small user base. There is a reason Adobe is not on Linux, they are a company with money and resources to spare and they have opted out after market research. This does not mean it will never happen but it is not at a place yet where they think they will make any money (my assumption). I believe the same is for Serif, they are a much much much smaller company with a product still in V1. It is being refined and they are still adding features to V1 and not saving them for a V2 release, which I think in many cases would have been warranted. They have been very generous in my opinion with these feature rich updates. Not sure what Steam being on Linux has to do with Affinity. Didn't Steam drop one of the major distros of Linux as well last year?

I am lost here, why would you want to buy it on Steam when there are 3 valid and simple options out there. Mac App Store, Windows App Store and direct from Serif. Is the only reason to see how much time you have spent using the software? Pretty bizarre I think, not sure why that is important and if it really is there are plenty of time clock options out there that you can start up every time you open up the apps.

there are 2 lengthy threads regarding Affinity on Linux already which probably answer the idea of this thread. I think porting over to Linux is not the great hurdle that they are unwilling to take, it is support and another OS to be testing and supporting with for a limited market. Even with high demand from Linux user it is still a very small user base. Linux has a smaller user base as is, and a smaller percentage of those users who would be using Affinity itself. I do think capitalism finds a way in the end. If there is money to be made someone is going to do it, just might not be in the time frame people want. I remember the early days of OS X and how sparse it was for applications that were common and readily available on Windows. Took years of development and growth to get to where we are now.

is this a European thing? I have never come across .joboptions or even heard of it. What is the purpose of this format?

I do not think porting is the real issue, it is everything that comes after with supporting another OS. Windows and Mac have a huge user base, Linux is smaller and even smaller would be the creatives using a version of Linux.

I can certainly see the convenience in that, great idea! My current method in Indesign is to create a swatch of the CMYK makeup which in turns gives you a slider for that swatch. Can you do the same thing in the Affinity apps? I found the way colour was handled to be very annoying and unintuitive and thus do not use the apps much save to test a few things now and then.