simoncox

why is it always so complicated to check the release notes.... it makes no sense

Nope, the upper left worked since that is the the home and origin of the laser. I never thought that was the problem, even after years of dealing with Postscript and image setters!
So slick to take a wood inlay file I want to make a proof of, out of LB and into Designer where I can add wood captures in Styles right into the proper areas of the design. Thanks to all for the help. Sample below.

Hello Mike,
many thanks for your information! I will be a very happy person, if you are right – and my experiences of the last over 30 years have actually grown wrong. I remember little Adobe at the times of Quark 3.1, I remember humble "Quark killer application" Indesign 2, I remember the outrageous end of unmatched Aldus Freehand, I remember "postscript *clones*" like the Hercules RIP and others, which always ailed to be not an original Adobe ...
For me there remains the question of the theme starter: Why there are no professional PDF editors/prepress PDF utilities or alternatives - except those as expensive as Acrobat Pro ...? (but also: good work justifies a decent prize!).
And I'm happy, as long Serif has the things and qualitity of their great solutions in its own hands - from starting a layout 'till the printing plate. yeah!
 
Johannes

Still no straight through PDF placement though.

Still no straight through PDF placement though.

... a mess. I like Publisher, a lot. But setting up a greyscale document is (right now) a catastrophe ... to me. But maybe I am too stupid, so here is how I start:
1. File New, Colour = Grey/8, Colour Profile = Greyscale D50.
2. Typing in some text and creating a rectangle.
3. Nice there is a Greys Palette (Swatches panel), so apply Black to the text and rectangle.
4. Export PDF for Print and opening with Acrobat Pro.
Result 1: What is meant to be BLACK is C83 M67 Y51 K95! Sending the file to a print service will end as disaster.
5. Too bad, my fault? Going back to the document having a look at the colour panel. First shown is the RGB slider with values 0,0,0.
6. So I use the CMYK slider having black only with 100%.
7. Repeat Step 4.
Result 2: What is meant to be BLACK is C74 M63 Y50 K89! Sending the file to a print service will end as disaster+1.
6. Too bad, my fault? Going back to the document having a second look at the colour panel. Picking up Greyscale from the pulldown.
7. Seriously? The value of 0 at the slider means 100% black? Value 70 means 30% black and value 0 means white? So why not.
8. Repeat Step 4.
Result 3: See Result 1.
Final conclusion: If I ever want to send a greyscale document to a print service I have to set up the document as CMYK. From my point of view this should be fixed. While you (Serif) are at it, please give "colour management" a re-design = Switching between colour spaces (spot to cmyk to rgb to spot whatever) + Iconize the colours to make it visible what colour space they are + A colour manager before export or print like in Indesign where you can define aliases for spot colours for instance or some other helpful settings. I do know this is BETA, but a stable Affinity Designer 1.65 has the same problem.

One uses the Place command from the File menu.
But note that placing a pdf is really the same as opening a pdf at this time. That is, it's not placing a pdf the same way as InDesign, QuarkXPress, etc becuase at this point in time there is not the capability to "pass the pdf through" to a new output format.

Hi,
just wanted to let you guys know how incredibly impressed I am with how Publisher is developing -- I am really happy with you adding some extra features and having a really long beta cycle rather than pushing out a software that cannot compete with others. Love the reworked master pages, the search--replace enhancements (RegEx, RegEx, RegEx!) and the new pinned objects!
It's about time that Adobe gets some competition in the pro market (there's lot's of semi-pro applications out there with tons of templates and flashy features, but nothing except Quark Xpress that can actually do what InDesign does).
Thanks for your hard work!

Hi randomjames,
Yes, we do intend to add support for embedded fonts at some point.

Now we have the first edition out is there any movement on this issue? I also publish magazines and pull advertising PDFs into the layout - want to get off Quark as soon as I can but this is a big issue.

Go to Text > Show Special Characters at the very bottom of the menu. This menu point is not available in Designer, but only in Publisher so far.