Bhikkhu Pesala

It is indeed just a zip archive containing a few xml files and images. Although I am sure it would not be beyond the ability of any decent coder to create an import filter, this is best done by Serif as they are familiar with the file structure and know all of the different kinds of objects and styles it can contain. An imported *.stt file contains inline images, footnotes, index references, and TOC anchors.

Thanks Tony. I won't bother to test the first beta in that case.

Almost a year now since I posted the above, and we are still waiting for the first Beta. Here's hoping it has some way to import stories from PagePlus, or it will be useless to me. Rebuilding from PDF files is not viable for my publications, which are mostly for books with footnotes, contents, and indexes. The latter could soon be regenerated, but adding footnotes to a plain text stream is very time-consuming.

Colour font support would set Affinity Publisher apart from the competition. PhotoShop supports SVG Colour fonts, but not OpenType (AFAIK). Some browsers already support colour fonts.

WritePlus is just about right for this purpose. Provide support for that format within Affinity Publisher, and make a standalone application too.

I think that Serif could and should improve on importing only PDF files. For posters, menus, or greeting cards it would be fine. For books, the flow of text between pages is crucial. I don't think it would be hard to provide an import filter for WritePlus files, which contain styles, footnotes, inline graphics, and index marks. The screen shot below is of a long WritePlus *.stt file exported from one of my books, and imported into a blank new document. Reflowing the text in a new Affinity Publisher document, then adding other content like master pages, tables, calendars, freely floating graphics, etc., would be relatively simple.

When I first designed my fonts, I used the Initial Forms feature for Decorative Drop Caps. Microsoft changed the description of this feature, so although they still work in PagePlus, etc., they are enabled by default in Affinity Designer and cannot be disabled. I therefore replaced the Initial Forms with Stylistic Alternates. I tried Contextual Alternates, but that is also enabled by default. The Stylistic Sets were already in use, so I changed these to Character Variants. These are disabled by default, which is better than calt. This discussion on High-Logic refers.

About 30 seconds for a cold start here (build 28) on my system, and about 12 seconds for a warm restart. Loading one small file from last session. Specs AMD A10-6800K, 8 Gb on Win 7 64-bit

It's too late for that kind of change now. Try Babel Map — it's much better than Windows Charactermap

I reported the issue in July

I added character variants to some of my fonts such as Odana. They work fine in PagePlus X9, but not in Affinity Designer. The other OpenType features seem to be working, but Character Variant cv01 is the only set available. The feature uses a "one to many" glyph substitution. lookup CharacterVariants { sub asterisk -> [asterisk asteriskmath uni2051 uni2042 uni203B]; sub plus -> [plus uni2795 uni271A uni271B uni271C]; sub at -> [at uni260E uni260F uni2121 uni213B]; sub copyright -> [copyright uni2117 uniF000 estimated uni2139]; sub multiply -> [multiply uni2715 uni2716 uni2717 uni2718]; sub dagger -> [dagger uni2622 uni2623 uni26A1 uni2620]; sub daggerdbl -> [daggerdbl uni26A0 uni2691 uni26B0 uni26B1]; sub bullet -> [bullet uni204D uni2023 uni2767 uni2712]; sub blackcircle -> [blackcircle newmoon waxingcrescentmoon firstquartermoon waxinggibbousmoon]; sub circle -> [circle fullmoon waninggibbousmoon lastquartermoon waningcrescentmoon]; sub uni2600 -> [uni2600 sunrise uni26C5 uni2602 uni2603]; } Frame Text.afdesign

No such problem here on Windows 10 with 125% display settings.

If you're not going to listen even when the obvious is stated many times by loyal Serif users who have been using your products for decades there seems little point in porting the Affinity products to Windows. Just insist that everyone buys a Mac and concentrate your efforts on improving the Mac products. Parity of feature sets and file formats is essential for document exchange. For ease of adoption for Windows users, parity of shortcuts, GUI themes, menus, and studios is important. Most of it is already there, it doesn't take much effort to rearrange a few menus or modify shortcuts. I also doubt if it woult take much effort to provide menus sets since Personas already do this. You could have a DrawPlus Persona as the default and a Mac persona for those weird folks who use two different Operating Systems in the same office. The great strength of Serif's Plus series of products is that if one knows how to use one, e.g. PagePlus, one can pick up DrawPlus or WebPlus and be using them comfortably within hours rather than days or weeks. Users have been asking for a long time for even greater parity between the Plus series products re Quick Shapes, etc., so that it's easier to switch back and forth between products.

The Table of Contents should disappear as soon as you select a topic. Doesn't that happen for you? I think the idea is not to show the TOC at all unless you need it. That's good design, allowing all available space for reading the topic. In Windows Help files there is a button to show/hide the TOC tab. It shown by default, so you (and many other including me) never hide it, but you can if you want to concentrate on reading the topic.

If you want to sell this Windows product to Windows users, it's more important that users switching from DrawPlus are comfortable with the new app. Honestly, what proportion of Mac users do you think are going to be buying the Windows versions of the Affinity Products? Anyway, you can easily solve this dilemma by providing shortcut profile files so that users can suit themselves.