Seneca

Dear colleagues and developers,
I’d like to draw your attention to some specific issues encountered during the layout of a book, particularly in the book sectioning routine and the setting up of even and odd layouts. The aim of this feedback is to identify opportunities for improving our chaptering management.
During a recent project, the layout of a book required a change from 272 to 328 pages. After adjusting the paragraph style and line spacing, I set about sectioning the book into its twenty chapters. This resulted in the creation of 22 sections, including introductory and end pages.
Sectioning routine
Among the difficulties encountered
Interface slowness: Despite using a high-performance computer, interactions were neither instantaneous nor even fast, adding an unexpected delay to the task. Display limitations: When the number of sections exceeded the display capacity, the absence of an automatic refresh proved to be a major obstacle. Section title entry cell: The small size of this cell, coupled with the slowness of the entry, made the procedure laborious, not to say tedious. Delimiting of even and odd pages
Once sectioning was complete, another difficulty lay in differentiating even and odd-numbered pages. The absence of a built-in function with zoning delimitation forced me to use an external solution, combining Excel and Notepad++, to manually generate a sequence of even pages between pages 10 and 324, a task that proved time-consuming and error-prone. In fact, without the option of delimiting the pages concerned by even and odd pages, the Even pages and Odd pages selections in the layout window are absolutely useless.
10,12,14,16,18,20,22,24,26,28,30,32,34,36,38,40,42,44,46,48,50,52,54,56,58,60,62,64,66,68,70,72,74,76,78,80,82,84,86,88,90,92,94,96,98,100,102,104,106,108,110,112,114,116,118,120,122,124,126,128,130,132,134,136,138,140,142,144,146,148,150,152,154,156,158,160,162,164,166,168,170,172,174,176,178,180,182,184,186,188,190,192,194,196,198,200,202,204,206,208,210,212,214,216,218,220,222,224,226,228,230,232,234,236,238,240,242,244,246,248,250,252,254,256,258,260,262,264,266,268,270,272,274,276,278,280,282,284,286,288,290,292,294,296,298,300,302,304,306,308,310,312,314,316,318,320,322,324 And what a displeasing display!

It is imperative to consider improvements in this area. After all, what’s a book layout without chaptering and the associated routines for sectioning and differentiating even and odd-numbered pages? I had already mentioned this problem when version 2 was released. The time has perhaps come to rectify this ergonomic issue, which is proving to be a handicap: these seemingly simplistic tasks took me almost an hour.
Thank you for your attention and consideration. I remain at your disposal for any further discussion and clarification you may require.
All the best,

Don't you think that your sentence above is slightly insulting.
First of all, the Global Layers are being worked on. There was quite a long discussion between the Affinity team and this forum regarding how this feature is expected to work. You shouldn't find it difficult to search for that here in the forum.
Second of all, the 2.0 release is by no means done. The team is about to release version 2.1 with a host of new features and additional features will find their way into 2.2, 2.3 etc.
So, while I understand the disappointment that the Global Lagers didn't make it into 2.0, this is not the end of the road for version 2.
I'm not trying to defend Affinity here, I too would love to see Global Layers now but to say that they don't understand the importance of this is quite a stretch.

I really do…

For another possibility, perhaps an Import option like we have for Text Styles, where you can import the Custom Text Fields from another document you point to.

Apps: All
Platforms: macOS & Windows
In any of the shape tools, picture frame tools and artboard tool you can now cmd+click (macOS) or ctrl+click (Windows) to bring up a dialog to manually specify the size and other properties of the object you want to create. The new object will be created in the position that you clicked, and you have the option in the dialog to change whether that position relates to a specific corner, side or the centre of the shape being created.
For example, here I want to create a circle with 20mm diameter centred at the corner of the square. So I choose the Ellipse tool and then cmd / ctrl + click over the corner of the square. I then get the option to manually enter the size I want the circle to be, set the anchor position to be centre, and hit OK.

Each tool will remember the settings of the last time you created that shape. So in this case the next time I cmd+click with the Ellipse tool it will still be set to 20mm x 20mm anchored to centre.
Some additional notes about this feature:
When the dialog is up you can commit by clicking OK, hitting Return / Enter or clicking anywhere else on the document You can cancel by clicking Cancel or hitting Esc You can click-drag on any of the labels in these dialogs to change the values. So here you could click-drag on the "Width:" label for example. Hover + mouse roll over the values also changes them of course (along with Shift or Alt modifiers to increase / decrease steps made by a factor of 10). If you create a shape by dragging it out on your document, that will also set the W+H for the next time you cmd+click. e.g. if you drag out a rectangle at 100mm x 50mm and want to create another one you can just cmd+click and that size will be preset.

Hi All,
We have just begun rolling out a new beta build - version number 2.2.0.1931 - which should become available to you on auto-update over the next hour
Three new features are included in this build:
Object creation data entry Move tool data entry OCIO v2 support added And some other feature improvements which are worth drawing your attention to:
Find and Replace now includes the additional scope options of 'Section" and 'Page' 'Hide Effects" and "Greyscale' view mode options are now available as optional toolbar buttons. Additionally these view modes (as well as all other Designer view mode options previously only available in Designer) have now been added to Publisher. You can now both insert anchors and link to them from data merge fields. There are also a lot of fixes which have gone in since the last build which will be listed on the bug fix list post .
Important: PDF Password feature
While this build does include many fixes for PDF password, we have decided to drop this feature from 2.2. The feature is still available in this build, but will be removed in the next one. For that reason we're going to hide the feature thread and ask that no more reports are made on this feature. 
Apologies if this causes some disappointment, but we feel we need a little more time to solve some of the problems being reported. We certainly anticipate this will be available again at the start of the 2.3 beta and that it can make the 2.3 release.
Thanks,
Ash

I thought about similar things in the past regarding Preflight's Text Patterns and I came to a conclusion that being able to add your own GREP patters to the Preflight Panel would solve all these these and other potential issues not listed here.

I'd like that but I still think these basic patterns should be added since not everybody is proficient at things like grep.

Its not the stock sites. Its how DESIGNER opens them. 
EPS files open in INKSCAPE , ILLUSTRATOR fine. not DESINGER.
Gary
 

I'm not sure I should even ask for a sample EPS nevermind thegary providing a licensed one  
I've just exported an EPS from Illustrator with a gradient using the default EPS export settings and it opens in Affinity with a Layer and a Curve layer nested underneath which is expected.
I'm not sure what to include in the Illustrator export to make the EPS open as an Image Layer. If I could get a sample I would be happy to query it with the developers. I am entertaining this simply because thegary claims Inkscape can open them without issue and I wonder if there's something we can actually do.

Possibly, though you can activate guide visibility, via the menu or via a keyboard shortcut and drag new guides onto the canvas with the Guides dialog window open and clicking the 'add new horizontal or vertical guide' buttons effectively achieves the same thing. If you don't have any guides set then the addition of a checkbox isn't really going to add anything as there will be no guides to see...
Not opposed to the idea, just wondering how much value it adds but agree, having one would make it consistent with the Grid settings dialog window...

Hi @Seneca,
Thanks for your report! I can confirm that I've been able to replicate this issue on macOS and have reported it to our developers to be fixed.
I hope this helps

I’d prefer a visual cue, but maybe that’s just me!

Hello @philipt18,
I hope I'm not misunderstanding you but you can do it already.
Just right-mouse click on the number in a footnote, select Notes -> Go to Note Reference from the menu that appears and the cursor will move to the end of the footnote number in the text.
 

Hello @philipt18,
I hope I'm not misunderstanding you but you can do it already.
Just right-mouse click on the number in a footnote, select Notes -> Go to Note Reference from the menu that appears and the cursor will move to the end of the footnote number in the text.
 

Hello @v_kyr,
You are getting slightly unreasonable here. The team has stated, in numerous posts, that because the APIs are going to be the same for both C and JavaScript that they will keep the documentation in one place. There will be a lot of people for whom JavaScript will be the most important part and they will not regard this as garbage. They will concentrate on the JavaScript part and you can concentrate on the C based APIs. And they lived happily ever after. 🙂

I would respectfully suggest to read (again) page 17 of this thread before jumping into any conclusions.
 

Apps: Affinity Publisher
Platforms: All
On the Index panel, you'll find new options that provide increased control over the presentation of index entries.
In addition to being able to customise the words that precede cross-references within an index, five new options are available: After Topic, Between Items, Between Ranges, Before Refs, and After Ref.
Here's the Index panel, on which we've customised each separator's text.

In several cases, we've included spaces as well as visible characters. In fact, that's all the After Topic box contains.
Here's how our custom text looks in our publication's index.

Inserting special characters
Commonly used special characters are easily inserted into your custom separator text. On desktop, click the arrow at the left of the box. On iPad, tap the Insert icon at the top left of the on-screen keyboard.

Special characters can also be inserted using your operating system's feature for typing emoji and symbols, or by copying and pasting.

@SenecaI can see why you would like  to specify a range for a cross reference but i feel that would be too much work to fit into this cycle. It would be a USP for this feature

I see the issue with point 8 now and have logged an issue for that

Thanks @walt.farrell,
that works because each field is separately accessing each page independently, which I have had that working initially.
I was hoping that I would be able to combine that into one preset like the one below.
references2.afpub
but I don't think this is possible at the moment.
What the Affinity Team might consider is to allow combining saved presets into more complicated presets.
For example having saved presets below: 
Begin Span
End Span
We could then combine them like:
Begin Span – End Span.
But ideally, we should be able to do it all in one preset.

Apps: Publisher and Designer
Platforms: macOS and Windows
From the select menu you will find a new option of "Select All on Current Layer" with a default shortcut of shift-cmd-A on macOS and shift-ctrl-A on Windows.
This was requested as a quick way to achieve the same result of unchecking "edit all layers" in layers panel and doing Select All. A good example would be if you want to select everything on an artboard, you can now just click on the artboard label and hit shift-cmd-A.

Apps: Publisher
Platforms: macOS and Windows
You can now include URLs, file locations, email addresses and anchors (anchors new in build 1931) in your data merge dataset and use those fields to create an active link in your merged result.

As an example you could have a data set like this:

And then set up a data merge layout like below, using those fields:

Once you have done that you can now select the <Twitter Handle> field and Insert Hyperlink. You will now see when you insert a hyperlink in a data merge document you will get an additional option to take the URL from a data merge field, which will activate a drop down to select which field you want the URL to come from. In this case I want to set the URL to be set to the "Twitter Handle Link" field:

You can also do the same with a link type of email and set that to = the <email address> field.
So then when you generate the merged result the hyperlinks will dynamically generated to be correct for the record in question. So for example clicking on the @Joe link will take you to https://twitter.com/joe.

 
Anchors
You can also choose a data merge field link to an anchor in your document. Additionally you can also now create anchors from your data. This gives powerful options enabling you to have links from one record to another. e.g. You could have a record set like this:

Then insert an Anchor = <Record Anchor> and also create a hyperlink which links to <link to Anchor>, so in this case you could have a link in record 1 which links to record 5, 2 to 6, etc. and then record 5 linking back to record 1, etc.
Insert Anchor dialog now has option to create from a data merge field

 
Hyperlinks to Anchors can also now be created from data merge fields

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Apps: Affinity Publisher
Platforms: All
The ability to insert cross-references from one part of a document to another—for example, "For more information, see page 24"—has been added to Affinity Publisher.
Cross-references are managed on the Cross-References Panel (Window > References > Cross-References).

To insert a cross-reference, create an insertion point in a text object, and then click 'Insert Cross-Reference' (the circled plus symbol) at the lower-right of the panel. Inserting a cross-reference is also available from the right click menu when you are editing text. On the resulting dialog:
- Select the cross-reference's target, which can be an existing anchor, paragraph or index marker.
- Specify the text to be displayed by the cross-reference.
- Optionally, apply formatting and limit the amount of quoted text displayed by any field you've inserted into the display text.

Selecting a target
Use the upper part of the dialog to select a target. Choose the target's type (Anchor, Paragraph, or Index Marker) and then select the required target in the list below.
If too many targets are listed, use the Filter text and Filter style options to limit what's listed based on target text and/or paragraph style.
Specifying what a cross-reference displays
The Text option specifies what your cross-reference will display This can be a simple attribute of the target, such as its page number or quoted text, or you can enter complete phrasing into the box, e.g. "For further information, see 'Deciduous varieties' on page 264".
Click the downward-pointing arrow at the field's upper-left corner to insert an attribute of the target or a commonly used special character.

Using presets
Phrases can be saved as presets for use across all your documents. Presets also ensure your cross-references adhere to a publication's style guides.
Fields in cross-references are automatically hyperlinked to their target when you export to PDF.
Limiting quoted text
Character style and other formatting options in the lower part of the dialog become available when the insertion point is immediately before or after a field, or when a text selection encompasses a field. (If more than one field is selected, the formatting options affect only the first one.)
The Page Number, Above/Below and List/Note Number fields display the corresponding attribute's value in full. All other fields display text that might be lengthy, such as a full paragraph. Use the 'Limit displayed length' option to restrict them to a sensible amount of text.
Quoted text can be limited to a number of words or the first instance of an 'end character', whichever occurs soonest. You can also choose whether to include an ellipsis or encountered end character in your cross-reference.
More about the Cross-References panel
When you insert a cross-reference to a paragraph, Affinity Publisher creates an anchor at the paragraph's start and uses that as the target. You can rename the anchor, if you wish, via the Anchors Panel.
The Source Spread option allows you to narrow the scope of cross-references listed on the panel, e.g. to the current spread or a specific spread.
With the insertion point at a cross-reference or target in document text, options at the foot of the panel allow you to instantly focus the document view on its counterpart.
Finally, changes to a document may result in out-of-date values in cross-references. For example, changing pagination, section names, or paragraph text at a target. The foot of the panel also includes options to update them individually or all at once.
We would love you to try out this new feature. Let us know what you think of it, or if you encounter any bugs or unexpected results.

Apps: Publisher
Platforms: All
There is now a new option to go to your previously viewed spread in Affinity Publisher. So, for example, if you are on page 30 and then go to page 400 to edit something, clicking on previously viewed spread will jump you back to page 30 (and hitting again will jump back to page 400 – so you can switch between the two pages quickly).
You can find this option in the Document menu (Previously Viewed Page) for which you could optionally set a keyboard shortcut for as well as using the new button with the rest of the page navigation options in the bottom left of the UI as highlighted with arrow below:

 
On the iPad version you can find this option at the bottom of the view menu: