Seneca

The reason why you notice lots of posts in these forums mentioning Adobe products is… the fact that the 80lb gorilla snuffed out most of the competition (more on it later), which means there's not much in the way of choice. Yes, I know, there is F/OSS, but its technical limitations and sometimes subpar UX (and that is a hill I'm going to die and rot on, sorry… I've now studied enough UX to find and explain faults even in the relatively user-friendly offerings by Serif and those by Adobe, and I completely understand why F/OSS in the creative industries still hasn't taken off, save for Blender and other notable exceptions) pretty much push people either into those nice, prosumer offerings on the Mac App Store, or to Adobe subscriptions, especially if they've worked with the latter in school (as is so often the case, hence Canva's push into that market).
People don't assume anything; Serif's swagger, and straight up copying of the former Adobe Creative Suite Design Standard product matrix (minus the professional PDF editor, sadly), and now the new and aforementioned post-Canva acquisition free licensing for education markets, solidify that position. It's not a perception, it's a fact.
And let's be fair, Affinity gets users maybe 90% of the way there, but it's those 10% of functionality that it doesn't yet cover, that make Adobe a true “jack of all trades”, which make all the difference. Many of the people you see here either need those extra 10% or anticipate they or their students (as is my case) may need them.
About the only thing most agree(d) on (and I say agreed, because we'll soon see an influx of Canva users who may be very content with their subscriptions) was that they wanted to own their own software, full stop. Again, there are very practical reasons for that, it's not just basic daily economics or a matter of principle (which it also is, of course).
While I agree with you on the market being big enough for everyone, there was ZERO competition against the former “Adobe Creative Suite Design Standard” suite/combo as a whole… But there was, and still is, proper competition when it comes to each of its individual components, albeit less integrated. One could feasibly purchase a perpetual Corel Draw Graphics Suite license, plonk down some extra on one for QuarkXPress, and boom, there you have it, a fully professional pipeline, with no subscriptions. A very expensive and less integrated one, for sure, but a very capable one nonetheless. And, indeed, analogous of what we used in the pre-Creative suite days… I was personally trained in Photoshop, Freehand *and* QuarkXPress, and that was the combo I used for the first two years of my bachelor, only to jump ship to Illustrator – which I still don't enjoy using as much as I did using Freehand, to this day – because of the infamous Macromedia acquisition and to InDesign because, yeah, truth be told, it was always miles ahead of Quark in terms of not just platform support – Quark really shot themselves on the foot with their belated transition to what was then called Mac OS X, oof – but also on UX and features.
Did we get greedy with the advent of Affinity…? Perhaps. But you have to appreciate that it's highly frustrating to see it get all the way to 90% there and then… just remain indefinitely “meh” and effectively incomplete for a lot of users, because the powers-that-be had to pay the bills and realised the only way to do so was to invest in new, sexy features for illustrators (which, as I've said before, are well covered by other tools) rather than tick all the unsexy boxes for classic vector design and DTP. Hence all the incessant comparisons! Of course, Adobe is also catering to those digital-first or even digital-only illustrators, even in Illustrator (ha! It's finally rising up to its name), but that's the thing: there are other tools besides Illustrator and Affinity Designer that also do, and likely do an even better job than either, because they're not jacks-of-all-trades.
As for DTP and print production workflows… the only integrated packages now are Adobe's and Serif's, period. They are, effectively, rivals (and now, with Canva's backing, if Affinity is to thrive as a product under its wing, even more so), and while I can also see code and UX as a quasi-artistic endeavour and as much as I appreciate your “Kumbaya” stance regarding software, at the end of the day they are tools (for artists, yes), not artistic creations in and of themselves. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and do I have to remind you that Adobe eats Serif-sized companies for breakfast? And that whenever Adobe does that and just discontinues products, peoples' livelihoods are affected? And that the same happening at the hands of Canva would make zero difference in that outcome?

This is probably a bug.
However, in general, it's considered bad typography to leave text so close to the numbers.
InDesign and Publisher have a way to define a standoff between the text and the numbers.
Publisher accomplishes this by setting the Right Indent and Last Line Outdent Paragraph Options.
A possible bug I discovered quite a some time ago is that if the line just fits in with the page number Publisher will try to leave it alone, irrespective of the stand off defined in the paragraph style.
I've included a small sample file and a short video demonstrating it.
TOC Length of Entries.afpub

TOC.mov    

This is probably a bug.
However, in general, it's considered bad typography to leave text so close to the numbers.
InDesign and Publisher have a way to define a standoff between the text and the numbers.
Publisher accomplishes this by setting the Right Indent and Last Line Outdent Paragraph Options.
A possible bug I discovered quite a some time ago is that if the line just fits in with the page number Publisher will try to leave it alone, irrespective of the stand off defined in the paragraph style.
I've included a small sample file and a short video demonstrating it.
TOC Length of Entries.afpub

TOC.mov    

I think you've stumbled onto the difference between a preset and a style.
A preset gets copied into the thing that uses it so the link between them is not maintained - if you apply a preset to a cross-reference, that cross-reference takes on a copy of the preset when it is created; it is not the same as a genuine style which maintains a link so that multiple instances can be updated in one place.
Sadly, the Affinity products blur the line a bit in that they have object "Styles" (via the Style panel) which are not styles at all, but are in fact presets, exhibiting the same sort of behavior - they are copied to the objects and no link back to them is kept.
In my opinion, presets in general are inappropriate for most of these things (including both of these), and I would have much preferred that Serif had implemented proper styles instead (particularly object styles, as QuarkXPress offers for example), but sadly that is not what they have done here.

I could see lots of different verticals each looking for specific personas in time, where tools specific to their needs and workflows are readily available (gaming, film, architecture, landscaping, etc).
The problem is that implementing these each as separate personas would really bloat the overall UX of all of the apps. I’d much rather see vertical specific tools implemented as installable plug-ins, extensions, scripts, etc when the SDK is available.
Bonus points if it would be possible to implement an entirely new persona via a plug-in or extension. Enabling those users that require it to install it, and also creating an ecosystem where 3rd parties could create extensions for the Affinity apps catering to specific verticals.

Yes, I'm thinking also beyond testing and typical bugs there are potentially areas that might need different approaches for the "We didn't think of that" type of use cases. Things that might require changes in the API. Good to have a preview early enough to sort those things out.

Also, has Affinity considered how Scripting might need an extended Beta or be part of more than one beta cycle? I can envision with such a complex feature set that there is going to be far more feedback and initial issues than a typical feature release. It seems that it would likely be beneficial if an extended preview is available in some form to iterate on before finalizing.

Hello @CM0,
obviously this is for Tim and the team to answer but from what I understand the UI controls are going to be part of the release.

Hello @CM0,
obviously this is for Tim and the team to answer but from what I understand the UI controls are going to be part of the release.

Hello @CM0,
obviously this is for Tim and the team to answer but from what I understand the UI controls are going to be part of the release.

Hi @Seneca,
I don't really have anything specific to say other than the team is still smashing out APIs! We've also had to go back and do some of the less interesting "that can wait" tasks, such as dealing with shut down properly e.g. you start running a script and then decide to shut down the app halfway through its execution - we need to make sure things like asynchronous ops are properly aborted / synchronous waits end gracefully.  We've also been re-evaluating the high level JS layers to make sure they were intuitive and usable. We went hell for leather to get bits of the app exposed, but didn't do them in a particularly good way e.g. this kind of sucks:
let clrData = new RGBA8(0, 0, 255); let clr = new Colour(clrData); and should be something much more concise like:
let clr = RGB(0, 0, 255);  

We are pleased to announce Affinity Designer 2, Affinity Photo 2 and Affinity Publisher 2 are now all updated to version 2.4.2 (for all existing customers on all platforms).
Here is the changelog for the whole suite
And here are the release notes for each application including how to access the update
Affinity Designer 2.4.2 for Windows               ( Microsoft Store and Affinity Store [as sandboxed MSIX and unsandboxed MSI/EXE] ) Affinity Designer 2.4.2 for macOS                  ( Mac App Store and Affinity Store ) Affinity Designer 2.4.2 for iOS                        ( Apple iPad Store )
  Affinity Photo 2.4.2 for Windows                    ( Microsoft Store and Affinity Store [as sandboxed MSIX and unsandboxed MSI/EXE] ) Affinity Photo 2.4.2 for macOS                       ( Mac App Store and Affinity Store )  Affinity Photo 2.4.2 for iOS                             ( Apple iPad Store ) 
  Affinity Publisher 2.4.2 for Windows              ( Microsoft Store and Affinity Store [as sandboxed MSIX and unsandboxed MSI/EXE] ) Affinity Publisher 2.4.2 for macOS                 ( Mac App Store and Affinity Store ) Affinity Publisher 2.4.2 for iOS                       ( Apple iPad Store )  Please follow this thread here to get notified when any new releases are made.

It's been a year since this progress report was posted by Tim. I wonder whether we could have another one soon. 🙂

Hi All,
We have just made a build available of a 2.4.2 beta live - version 2.4.2.2371 - This was created to address issues found after the release of 2.4.0 & 2.4.1  This is now available to you on auto update (now or very soon).
The fix list for this build is here 
We have decided against implementing the macOS help change in this beta cycle, so the installed macOS help has been reinstated 

Likewise, when a panel is in a group, double-clicking on its name will minimize the entire group. Single-click on any panel name to expand it.

I hope you are aware that double-clicking on a panel's name will minimise that panel.

I hope you are aware that double-clicking on a panel's name will minimise that panel.

I hope you are aware that double-clicking on a panel's name will minimise that panel.

It's been a year since this progress report was posted by Tim. I wonder whether we could have another one soon. 🙂

It's been a year since this progress report was posted by Tim. I wonder whether we could have another one soon. 🙂

It's been a year since this progress report was posted by Tim. I wonder whether we could have another one soon. 🙂

It's been a year since this progress report was posted by Tim. I wonder whether we could have another one soon. 🙂

It's been a year since this progress report was posted by Tim. I wonder whether we could have another one soon. 🙂

It's been a year since this progress report was posted by Tim. I wonder whether we could have another one soon. 🙂

Thanks @Patrick Connor and @Ash for your professional responses. Really appreciate your contributions and clear explanations here on the forum. Although I, like obviously several others here and on other channels, have a difficult time in believing corporate ways after take overs (by multiple experiences) and only believe it when it's a few years later, it's of no use to stay negative (for nobody. That's just a waste of energy) and it's best to give it the benefit of the doubt and just go with the flow.
 
Thanks a lot for taking the time to respond thoroughly. It shows that you are involved and that's really something. It's also well appreciated that you didn't sensure this thread and kept it open. At least as far as possible for what I can see. As that sometimes must be hard for you I can imagine.
Let's hope everything works out well for everybody here and this turned out to be just a bump in the grand scheme of things   (Which it probably is anyway, as are most things in life! haha 😀) and turned out to be groth in the end everybody is happy with!