malebron

Thanks for the clear answer. Unfortunately this means that although AP works well for original creators, occasional users like me who rely on available 3rd party templates may be shut out. And of course we are the users who can least justify an Adobe subscription. A 3rd party conversion tool might help, but your explanation seems to preclude this. I will request IDML format from MagCloud, but doubt the additional effort would be worth it for them. (and even then, the AP import may still fall short)

For anyone who finds this thread later: I did download the trial. There is no difference importing IDML for my project. It's still unusable in Affinity Publisher 2. (It's based on a template from MagCloud, a subsidiary of leading on-demand book publisher, Blurb). MagCloud published updated (2022) versions of their templates, but INDD format only. My ID version is too old to open these, so I will continue using this to update my old docs for now. When/if Affinity has INDD import I will revisit.

@Patrick Connor Thank you.

@nwhitWell, I'm glad it works for you. I only have one use case and I wasted countless hours trying to get this file to import properly last year (not to mention the time of many kind people on this forum), and as you know, the definition of madness is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results. If it this part of the software hasn't been changed why would I spend even another minute? On the other hand if Serif tells me "oh, yeah, we made a bunch of changes there"... Hence the question. A non-sarcastic response from someone at Serif would be helpful and warmly welcomed.

To be clear, I'm only talking about Publisher, and the new features are not relevant to me. If IDML import in V2 is potentially better than V1, I'll check it out. If the developers didn't touch that (which sounds like may be the case) I don't want to waste my time. Thanks!

IDML should have been sufficient for my needs. It just didn't translate correctly. I want to know if the code was moved untouched from V1, or if anyone has worked on it to fix/improve (in which case I'd check it out).

For publisher V2, has any work been done on Adobe InDesign file compatibility? I bought Publisher last year in the hope of moving my annual calendar off ID, but it was unable to import my project correctly and despite much help and various ideas here on the forum, it was simpler and quicker to just go back to Adobe.

The publisher Magcloud updates their template each year. The 2022 calendar template is now available. This is great for beginners, but unfortunately (per the thread above) there is an issue with Publisher not importing this template for editing in the same way InDesign does. It's also critical for final publishing that the edited template, when exported, is identical to the output from ID. I'm not yet sure this is the case as I was forced to revert to ID to create my calendar last year. I'll be looking into AP again for my 2023 calendar, but unless resolved, Affinity's inability to import the template file correctly to allow portrait editing is a showstopper.

Not my job. I'm just a dumb user. If this is important to their desired customers the product team should prioritize it. Of course, they may have different priorities or different target customers. Again, user here - not a programmer.

Thanks. I guess it depends on the product goals. If they want to attract dissatisfied ID users, they should put a high priority on their IDML import function giving users the same experience as importing into ID. Even new APub users are likely to find ID templates and files they might want to use, and this rotation thing may not be the only anomaly.

@thomasoThat's very interesting. Thanks for the detective work! As an inexperienced user, I just see the file as expected and edit accordingly. I don't have to think about rotation since that's done for me automatically. Sure, I can make my own APub template going forward, but that makes it very difficult to cut/paste months from previous calendars, or take advantage of new templates from MagCloud. It would be so much easier if APub opened files the same way as Id. I can't be the only person dealing with this. Would you consider this a bug or a feature request? (and how do I make that request?)

Thanks @thomaso, That explains the settings not coming over. In ID no rotation is required. The file opens up correctly oriented for editing. All the page sizes, bleeds, colors and file options are taken care of. You are correct that I can figure them out for APub, but that will take time. As you see in the screenshot, ID displays the spreads with facing pages vertically, one above the other. Cover page on top. Export to pdf generates the individual pages (side-on, in portrait orientation), ready to upload to MC. (All by default. No expertise required on my part!) I agree that their template is clunky, but I have used it for many years and each month/day configuration comes around more often than you'd expect. Did you know that many of the months in 2022 share the same days of the week as 2016? For those I just open up my 2016 calendar and cut/paste. Super-fast! Also I think they make a new template each year, but I guess 2022 was not up yet when I looked. I usually edit a previous one of mine.

Appreciate all your inputs, but because I had a deadline I made my calendar changes with ID again this year. APub looks like a great ID replacement for my needs, but since it's IDML import does not present the document for simple editing in the same way as ID, I'm going to need a whole lot more time to learn the tool and match all the parameters manually. I believe the template also contains a pdf export preset for Magcloud but if so, those settings don't seem to be picked up automatically (eg it exports spreads, not pages by default). I'm sure I can work all this stuff out, but it's far from the plug-and-play replacement I was hoping for. I'll take another look at your template @Komatös. The biggest issue I see is that when I export to pdf I only see spreads and there's no option for pages. Once I figure out how to create an identical PDF to the one ID creates, I'll be confident to switch.

@thomasoI did, in fact, rotate the view, not the contents (although I tried that, with the same results as you) The template is Magcloud's - my calendar is based on it but heavily edited. I can happily replace any content - I use the template primarily to ensure I have the correct parameters and format they require to print the same as prior calendars. I'm concerned that if I start from scratch some setting will be wrong (I am a photographer, not a desktop publisher!) Updates: 1) If I edit the text in rotated view all is well. New text is entered in the old (unrotated) orientation. (that IS confusing!) 2) After further testing I think I may be able to export the template from APub to create a similar pdf as InDesign does. It appears the default is to export spreads rather than pages. (I happened to be watching a beginners tutorial and luckily noticed this option). I need to test further, but it definitely looks more similar.

I really appreciate your work @Komatös, but the proof is in the pudding, as they say. I exported your reworked template to pdf in Publisher, and compared it to the original template exported to pdf from InDesign - after all, this is is the file I must upload to Magcloud for publishing and which they expect to conform to their guidelines for the product. Unfortunately the resulting pdf from Publisher is totally different, so I'm sure it will either not be acceptable to Magcloud and/or create a different printed result. I also tried exporting the original template (after IDML import ) from Publisher - and again the result was quite different to that from InDesign, so it looks like I don't have I have a Publisher solution at this time. By the way, I'm using InDesign CS6, and imported exactly the same IDML file as I imported into Publisher.