wonderings

Adobe and Affinity are very different in how they work. You can download the apps but they are not licenses by Microsoft or Apple, that is treated like an in app purchase. Affinity is not activated this way and they would need to change their apps and probably back end to allow for activation through your Affinity account like Adobe does. A draw back of this could be limited amount of installs. Adobe CC can be used on 2 machines total. Right now I could install my Affinity apps on every Mac I own (4) and it is controlled through the Apple App store.

Works fine for me with the Mac App store. Have Design, Photos, and Publisher on my work 5K iMac as well as my MacBook Pro.

Would be really nice if you could have the option to install a new version without deleting the old. Not sure how that would be possible in the Mac App Store but should be doable if getting the latest updates direct from Affinity. Indesign offers that with new version updates. I think at the stage Affinity is in each update has more risk then Adobe products. Gives a level of protection to the user and allows testing without losing what was already working fine before the update.

Not sure export to IDML makes much sense. The only value I see of importing IDML files is converting jobs from Indesign to Publisher. There will be issues, files will not import perfectly so you are getting a good start but will have to check every file to make sure it imports correctly. Now why would you want to repeat this with an export to Indesign? You will have to check again the file in Indesign to make sure everything stays the same. Sounds like a lot of tedious and unneeded work. One way makes sense converting to new software, the ability to go back and forth between Indesign and Publisher sounds like a real headache. Any printer you send files to should be fine with print ready PDF's. In fact I would say most prefer it.

Pretty sure it is all automated and not someone sitting there manually de-autherizing demo's of their software. For what Affinity has done the software is incredibly cheap. Maybe you should just drop the few dollars and buy it rather then try and get free work done on demo software.

Out of curiosity has anyone tried this with jpegs or similar files? Same result or will it place those files in no problem in large numbers as they are not exactly editable files like a vector file would be. Or would it be like 2,000 photoshop files open and the format does not matter as Publisher is not linking files like Indesign does?

Might help giving more details. Where did you buy it from? Is this from the Apple App store or directly from the Affinity website? What OS, what browser?

Maybe I am reading the OP question wrong, but this is not 150 publisher files but 150 placed files in Publisher.

I wonder if it is because those linked files are viewed as editable elements and not placed/linked files like you would have in Indesign. I wonder if Illustrator would have a similar limit if you tried to open 150 .ai files at once. Could this be another issue stemming from not allowing you to simply place an image/pdf/vector without the need to edit it?

The latest version of Photoshop gives you a dialogue box giving you options for what colour space you want to use. It does not detect what the file natively is. If there is any text in the PDF I would avoid opening and resaving in photoshop, massive quality loss of text as it is no longer a font or vector.

Personally I would not be placing PDF's into Publisher at this time. Too many issues with fonts as it wants to make it editable and there is no pass through option to avoid it. If you are dead set on using Publisher then you could outline all the fonts in PDF if you have Acrobat Pro. All text will be vector so no loss of quality and images and other vector objects are left untouched.

You can use preflight and it will show you what images are not CMYK. Personally I do not work with RGB images. When I get them I convert them to CMYK which gives you a more accurate view of what you will get when it comes time to print. If the client is not happy with the colour then, you can adjust the CMYK file to get something possible in that colour space.

Personally use FontExplore Pro, prefer it over Suitcase though it has been years since I used Suitcase. With Indesign packaged files I find I do not need or use FontExplorer much anymore. I am anal about packaging files so all fonts and everything necessary is there and Indesign sees the fonts in the "Document fonts" folder and does not need activating.

As much as I would like to see the direction they are heading I am sure they do not make it public because all it would really do is have people complain or give their ideas on where it should go... I know I would. I think the logical steps forward is to fix PDF import so a PDF can be placed without it changing and then add Data merge. Other way around seems backwards to me as many people who work in print are doing data merges on customer created PDF's.

Designer shows up under Updates in the app store. Publisher and Photo do not show up under updates. If I navigate to the apps in the store it has "install" as an option which updates. It is very annoying as I would not know there is an update unless I go searching for the apps individually in the app store.

This problem, though I think they call it a feature, has been around since the beta before release. It makes the program completely unusable for anything with PDF placements in my opinion as I could never trust it and who knows what could be missed when looking it over to find its problems. If you have Acrobat Pro you could outline all fonts which should then in turn let you place the file safely in Publisher and keep the outlined text vector. In Acrobat Pro (latest release) you go to "Print Production" and in there "Preflight" Select "Convert Fonts to Outline". You can overwrite the original file or resave. Once this is done you have a PDF with no fonts and again should have no issues (where fonts are concerned) when placing in Publisher. Personally not something I would do for a job but if you are set on using Publisher in its current state it will get you through.

The plugins for Suitcase Fusion and other apps are generally for auto activation from the software. So if you were to open a job in Indesign and the font was not activated Suitcase would then activate automatically. You can still activate the font manually from Suitcase and have it work in all software without plugins, just not auto activation.

The big question here is why? Publisher is not presentation software and Powerpoint is not page layout despite how many files I get sent to me made in Powerpoint. If you really want to design for Powerpoint you could make your page in Publisher the correct aspect ration, think standard is still 1024 x 768. Design your pages and export as PDF and just plop them in Powerpoint. Of course you cannot do any custom transitions for text elements or images, but again that is why you should set up in Powerpoint if you need that.

This would be a big mistake for Affinity to focus on imposition at this stage of the game. I used to do manual imposition in Indesign and Quark years ago, but those days are over. If you are using any digital press from Canon, Ricoh, Xerox, Konica with a Fiery RIP you have basic book imposition options built in. Now if you mean something like step and repeat, then yes I would agree that should be there... if it is not there. I do not use the software a whole lot, but still would not be a big must have feature over others that need adding and resolving. There are options out there for imposition in Acrobat as well as stand alone imposition. If you are doing it enough it might be worth looking at Imposition Studio Pro. They have 2 versions a Digital and Offset. Not badly priced for pretty powerful imposition software. I was my main imposition software till our company merged with another and they use a different system.

I agree mail merge is needed but not before the PDF import is fixed. Much of the data merge I do is on top of supplied PDF's. I can in no way shape or form trust Publisher with any PDF in its current state. If I was going to have an order it would be PDF import with NO attempts at editing the PDF then data merge capabilities. That along with preflight would make it a much more usable and pro like app.

I copied text from icladius supplied file. I pasted that text in a new document no region settings set (English Canadian). In the screen shot his text is on the bottom, I retyped his text in a new text box above. You can see that my re-typed text is fine, but his is not. Used the same font and size. There nothing peculiar that I can see in comparing the two, all seems identical Screen Shot 2020-03-04 at 3.30.00 PM by B P, on Flickr

If it was working fine before the update can you go and restore via a Time Machine backup (if you have one) and get on with business knowing it all worked then? When updates come out I never delete the previous version till I am comfortable with the latest release as this issues pop up with new features. Worst time to do updates are when you are in the middle of a job. Good luck, feel your pain, been there before and learned my lesson.

This is the number 1 reason I do not use it other then testing and like you why I cannot recommend Publisher. Part of page layout and design is using customer PDF's and not always have access the fonts and really not needing the fonts as the PDF itself is not being edited. This has been an issue since the BETA but many seem to think of it as a feature having a PDF editor in their page layout software. I do not want Indesign to edit my PDF's and I certainly don't want Publisher. I would think this would be more handy in Designer if they are going to edit PDF's anywhere. Hopefully this becomes a priority as it is a foundational feature for the program in my opinion.

I opened the Publisher file and get the same thing. I am in Canada and only have Canadian English selected, and never use anything else save for the odd time when typing in French. I think this is a settings issue in your document. Not sure what it could be but when I copy and past some of the text into a new Publisher document it still underlines words in red. If I type the same text above it, the exact same way it finds no issue with the spelling. When right clicking on word it gives no options for what it thinks it should be. Wast this text copied in from somewhere else? Not sure why that would matter but this is very bizarre

That would probably be my end with Apple if they did that.