hi,
i'm Ian, freelance graphic designer in the UK: longtime user of Quark, more or less since they invented it in the 80s, Photoshop, and inDesign since Quark took their position for granted and started to decline. Though I think Adobe software on the whole is pretty good, I'm frustrated at how they're exploiting their more or less monopoly on professional design software, and really don't like the subscription model.
So, i've been very interested to read about the Affinity programmes, which seem like the first real alternative to Adobe in a long time. I'm especially interested in your plans for Publisher, but there doesn't seem to be much activity on the Publisher pages; in fact they're kind of hard to find.
I've appreciated Photo pitching itself at professional users of Photoshop, and hoping Publisher is going to take on InDesign in the same way.
On the Publisher forum, the last info (posted in April, I think) was that there was a planned public Beta coming early in 2016. If that's still the case, I'd imagine the design must be quite far advanced by now: can you tell us anythng about what the software will include?
My own interest is in multi-page, cmyk documents, with the kind of typographic control that InDesign can do at character and paragraph level; and hoping that you're aiming for the kind of easy back and forth between page layout and picture editing in Publisher and Photo that Adobe manages between InDesign and Photoshop. My wish list would include precise positioning of elements using x+y co-ordinates, a baseline and document grids that page elements can snap to; flexible and multiple master pages; output to high res pdf (since it will be a wee while before Publisher is standard software in printshops)...
I'd appreciate any hint of how far Publisher intends to aim at the 'professional' market: what can you tell us?