MikeTO

That's a fair approach and means you won't encounter the Update Index bug. I use multiple masters for every single page and for my index pages I apply the same 2-column master as I use on most body pages. I do this to ensure that the page numbers match those on regular pages if I ever change the design.

I think Rocketdrive raises a fair point. Studios are panels, windows that float above a document and in which changes are applied immediately. Selecting another object will reflect its values in all open panels. Rocketdrive is pointing out that some Affinity panels aren't studios which is confusing. Text Wrap, Baseline Grid, Resource Manager, and others are panels which can't be docked. There is no difference between these panels and studios, they just happen to have close/minimize controls and a redundant Close button. It's confusing that Text Wrap is not a panel and Pinning is a panel given how related these functions are. And yes, Text Wrap could have been designed in a more compact fashion for a window that can be left open permanently. Affinity apps also have another type of window of which Picture Frame Properties is an example. This is really just a popup button but it displays an oversize and more complex window that a typical popup button. Picture Frame Properties would be much more useful as a studio or as a non-studio panel because I challenge you to use Publisher on a 13" laptop screen and not have Picture Frame Properties appear on top of the picture, making it difficult to see the effect of your changes. I prefer to work on a small screen but I'm constantly having to shift the document after clicking Picture Frame Properties. Fortunately, I can do that by dragging on the touchpad while the Properties popup is still open. One last point on the Studio panels - there are different widths even for panels which are on the same side by default. For example, Pages, Index, and Find/Replace are all docked on the left by default in non-separated mode but Pages is much narrower than the other two. Again because I'm on a small screen, I keep the left-side panel as narrow as possible. This means my document view port narrows when I choose Find or Index. I would prefer Find and Index to be as narrow as Pages and they could be, there's no reason they have to be that wide.

I didn't mean inserting the index into the text frame on a master page, but into the text frame that is part of the master page layer on a regular page. The Update Index button only works on text frames that are directly on the page and not on a master page layer. It's a strange bug.

I think you should first try Paragraph > Spacing > Leading before using Character > Positioning and Transform > Leading Override. The former changes the leading (line spacing) for all lines of a paragraph while the latter is intended for small amounts of text. While you could theoretically use Leading Override for multiple paragraphs of text, that's not the intended use of the feature.

Do you mean the Glyph Browser panel? I don't think it much panels which panel because there is an art to docking panels in the Affinity apps. I'm sure somebody could explain it better but there's a trick to it and while it's obvious in hindsight, it's not immediately obvious at first. When dragging the floating panel over the docked panels you may see a blue-shaded box (at least it's blue on my system) - if you see that it means it's going to create a new row of panels on that side which is not what you said you want. Wait until your new tab is directly over the row of existing tabs and the blue box should disappear and will instead insert itself into the row of tabs. I've uploaded a short screen recording showing the blue box and then the eventual insertion into the existing row of tabs. Screen Recording 2021-10-05 at 10.33.29 AM.mov

I don't know if this is your issue but there's a known bug with Update Index - if the text frame containing the index is on a master page, Update Index does not work, you have to select and delete the index text and then re-add the index. However, there's a workaround, you can update the index from Preflight which is way more convenient so there's no reason to ever use the Update Index button anyway. Deleting the index will not delete the index marks. When you open the Index panel there are no marks listed? Note that if you open a large document and immediately open the Index panel there will be no marks listed, it takes a while to generate the list and populate the panel. On my machine and with my large document, and doing nothing after opening the file, it takes 12 seconds. If you have some index marks you should be able to insert a new index. If you don't have any index marks, what happens when you add a few and then try to add a new index? There are a few bugs with the index feature - the update index bug I already mentioned, style override doesn't work properly, and there's a space issue, but I'm using the index feature heavily and manually deleted and re-added the index over a hundred times before I discovered the preflight workaround. If there's a bug where an index is deleted but Publisher still thinks there is an index which prevents you from adding a new one, that's entirely possible but if that's true I don't see why your index marks would have disappeared at the same time. I wonder if the index is still present but is hidden so you can't find it. If it's possible to share the document that would be helpful. If you can't share publicly then please ask Serif for a private upload link so they can review your file.

You're right. I was referring to reclaiming unused space in memory prior to saving but I should have been more clear.

We can't know exactly how Affinity works but typically with apps like this if you delete a paragraph of text or an image and then save (not save as), the space that was taken up by that paragraph or image is still part of the file even though there's nothing there. Eventually the current state of the document gets large enough that some background housekeeping occurs and the unused space is reclaimed, both in memory and in the file if you choose save. But when you choose Save As, it does a clean save without any wasted space in there, triggering the process of reclaiming unused space.

Not strange. Save As always does a fresh save without any baggage, it will give you the smallest possible file, while Save may have gaps in it because space hasn't been optimized.

Are you using macOS? If so, option+K is reserved by macOS for typing special characters like most option shortcuts and even though Publisher will allow you to set it, it won't work. Try using Command+K or some other Command shortcut.

I tested it again and found there's another condition required to trigger this bug. It may be Mac only but I don't have Windows to test it. 1. If Font UI Size in Preferences is set to Large, change it to Default. 2. Turn Separated mode on if it's off. 3. If the Context Bar is visible, hide it. 4. Ensure the toolbar is not immediately below the menu bar. If the toolbar is snapped immediately under the menu bar there will be no glitch so pull it down a bit, the distance is irrelevant. 5. Show the Context Bar. 6. Take a screenshot of the left side of the Context bar and paste it into Photo. 7. Change the Font UI Size to Large in Preferences. Change it back to Default. 8. Take another screenshot of the Context bar and paste it into Photo. Compare the two screenshots as I explained earlier. 1. If Font UI Size in Preferences is set to Large, change it to Default. 2. Turn Separated mode on if it's off. 3. If the Context Bar isn't visible, show it. 4. Take a screenshot of the left side of the Context bar and paste it into Photo. 5. Change the Font UI Size to Large in Preferences. Change it back to Default. 6. Take another screenshot of the Context bar and paste it into Photo. Compare the two screenshots as I've done below. The Before screenshot is on the left while the After is on the right, overlaid on top of the Before. Notice that the icons are not centered vertically in the context bar in the Before shot, there is less space above than below. When you switch to Large and back to Default there is now more space above than below, it's the opposite of before. And the separator line is now gone. Toggling the Context Bar on and off will reset it to the initial appearance, there is no need to quit the app to reset it. Here's another very minor UI glitch with the toolbar. Turn Text + Icons on and then change Font UI Size to Large - the Status control will be a couple of pixels below all of the other controls. I still can't duplicate the original problem though.

I don't know the answer but this reminds me of a UI glitch in the Affinity apps which could be related. Here are the steps to reproduce it: 1. If Font UI Size in Preferences is set to Large, change it to Default. 2. Turn Separated mode on if it's off. 3. If the Context Bar isn't visible, show it. 4. Take a screenshot of the left side of the Context bar and paste it into Photo. 5. Change the Font UI Size to Large in Preferences. Change it back to Default. 6. Take another screenshot of the Context bar and paste it into Photo. Compare the two screenshots as I've done below. The Before screenshot is on the left while the After is on the right, overlaid on top of the Before. Notice that the icons are not centered vertically in the context bar in the Before shot, there is less space above than below. When you switch to Large and back to Default there is now more space above than below, it's the opposite of before. And the separator line is now gone. Toggling the Context Bar on and off will reset it to the initial appearance, there is no need to quit the app to reset it.

Alternatively, the Check for Updates command could exist even in the App Store version. But when you choose the command it would open a friendly little dialog informing you that you'd purchased it from the App Store.

I believe Affinity's dark mode scheme is similar to Adobe so if you're finding Affinity's use of dark grey to indicated both selected controls and inactive windows, they both work this way. Selected controls should appear depressed which is done by darkening the grey. The inactive windows' title bars should be darker than the active window title bar. This is standard. The difficult thing is in recent years the 3D shading has been minimized so UIs are becoming a bit less obvious. Light mode is better in some ways - it has light grey, medium grey, and blue so the UI makes a bit more sense while Dark mode has just dark grey and very dark grey. I prefer Dark mode though.

I recommend investing 15 minutes and going through every shortcut in Preferences. I deleted the shortcut for every command I don't use regularly. Some of the text shortcuts were annoying, I'd hit them and inadvertently modify kerning or something like that and not know what keys I'd pressed. I eliminated about three quarters of the shortcuts and now have my own custom slate. It was worth the effort.

I have a Logitech MX Anywhere 3 for Mac mouse. The software lets you assign any mouse control to any key combination and so on. It has presets for Photoshop but this didn't require Adobe's assistance nor would it require Serif's assistance - it's entirely up to Logitech to determine which apps they want to add custom shortcuts to out of the box. But it doesn't matter, the whole point of the software is that you can assign it to whatever you want. You don't need Serif to do anything for you. I deleted the software and am using the mouse "raw" with Apple's system preferences. It works perfectly in the Affinity apps and there's nothing I would want to change. I've used a couple of dozen mice over the years and this is the best one I've ever used, I highly recommend it if you like small mice or need one that works on a rough surface - I use it on the arm of my armchair. It also lets you pair with up to 3 devices so I use it with my iPad Pro, too.

Thanks guys for the help, it wouldn't have occurred to me to do it that way. Publisher handles indents differently than I'm used to and I see I didn't play around with it enough. Cheers

Sorry, I don't have a book to recommend to you - I figured it out on my own but although my skills are rusty I've previously published complex books and I have a lot of experience with page layout apps. I believe there are some tutorial videos but I haven't checked those out. Others may be able to offer better advice on finding tutorials.

That's a good idea, thanks!

I think you should report this as a bug in the bug forum, it's definitely a bug. Coincidentally I was playing around with indices and tabs today, trying to create an index like this: I wanted to insert an index mark with a tab stop in it so I entered "Apples\tA-3" as the index mark hoping the \t would be converted to a tab since the Index feature uses that to separate page numbers from index entries. But no luck, it rendered as \t so as far as I can see there's no way to create a 3-column index with an additional reference. I want to use this for map coordinates, so that readers can find both the page and map location when using the index. I guess I'll have to just put the map coordinates in parentheses but that would be less elegant. But my point was I gave the index feature a good workout today and I believe Lagarto's workaround is the only way to do what you want. However, it's an excellent workaround and for a 1-minute investment you'll get the results you want.

If you're doing a simple book like a novel, just google Adobe InDesign book templates because they can be opened in Publisher. If you're doing a complex book I recommend creating your own template. Some of the complex features used in books differ between InDesign and Publisher and you'll get better results building your own template. But building your own template is the best way to learn Publisher. If you just download a template you won't understand things like using inline graphics with a baseline grid. Plus IMO most online templates aren't all that great and if you aren't an expert on the app you won't know how to fix them. It is a lot of work but it's a good investment of time.

I believe the default style Numbered 1 should be set with Alignment = left rather than right. It is defined as Right as shown below: But the default settings will give you left aligned numbers due to the interplay between the Tabstop and Left Indent settings so shouldn't Alignment be set to Left so the style definition matches the result it achieves and to avoid confusion for new users? More importantly, Adobe InDesign provides four controls for number positioning which makes it easy to create right-aligned numbers: In Publisher we have just two controls, and you have to go to Paragraph Spacing for the other two controls you need: This works well for simple lists but I think it means you can't combine right-aligned numbered lists with hanging indents aligned to the tabstop. I might be wrong about this but I believe that's why Adobe added the two additional controls. Creating right-aligned numbers in Publisher works as long as the text doesn't wrap to the next line. This test document illustrates the issue. Test.afpub Am I missing something or is this a limitation of Publisher's implementation of numbering? Regardless, I suggest adding some copy to the Help page for new users to create right-aligned numbers since it's not particularly obvious and the Help page doesn't explain it. Perhaps something along these lines: To create right-aligned numbers, set Alignment to Right and Tabstop to the distance from the column edge where you want the text following the number to appear. You must also set Left Indent and First Line Indent (in Paragraph Spacing) to matching values greater than the width of the widest number expected in your list. The numbers will not appear right aligned if you set Left Indent and First Line Indent too low, but if you set them too high, the numbers will be indented more from the left edge of the column than necessary.

When you choose Export PDF are you choosing All Pages from the Area list?

If you purchased directly from Serif, you can download the update manually from https://store.serif.com/en-gb/update/macos/publisher/1/. If you purchased from the App Store you could go there to update it.

They're both right. Your dad's friend is right because you might need to know how to use Illustrator to get certain jobs. Your art teacher is right because Affinity Designer can do the same thing and is a lot more affordable for you. But if you learn one you'll be able to use the other - the apps have differences but once you've learned one illustration program you'll be able to figure out the other easily enough. So I encourage you to buy Affinity Designer knowing that the skills you acquire will be transferable to Illustrator should a future job require it. I've hired a number of designers over the years and I've never cared too much which tools they knew, I cared what design skills they had. I'm not saying all hiring managers will be like this but I see nothing wrong starting with Affinity Designer. Plus we wouldn't be here if we didn't prefer it.