PaoloT

While professionals will never use templates ("Sir, isn't this that you are trying to sell me the same template I have in my word processor?!?"), I think that templates will help Serif monetize by having a product that can also serve people with more everyday needed. The program would still be too complicate for beginners, but a simplified layout of tools would hide any complexity. Paolo

I moved from FrameMaker 9 to InDesign (CS5.5, then CS6) years ago. The book feature is much better, since it allows instant synchronization between chapters (I remember I had to import styles in each document with FM, but maybe this changed later). Inter-chapter cross-references are working fine, but they are a bit fragile (change something, and you may have to create them again). In general, I've been very happy to move to ID from FM. And I make >1000 pages technical books. Yet, I still remember with love the old FrameMaker for Mac, a program that seemed tailored on me. Should APub become a mix of InDesign (powerful page layout) and FrameMaker Mac (ease of editing mostly text-based documents), I would be more than happy. Paolo

I'm not in front of the Mac, but aren't nested styles at the beginning of a paragraph already there? Paolo

Since Serif is working on the Publisher workbook, testing it against a complex publication, and considered the speed at which they have been progressing during these few years, I bet APub 2.0 will be ready for production, and will be within one year. Paolo

While I second the request for adding GREP styles, some of the requests in this thread (more related to Nested than GREP styles) seems to me to already be satisfied by the Initial Words part of the paragraph style design. You can't search for text strings, but you can tell AP that you must apply a particular character style to all text at the beginning of a paragraph, up to a punctuation sign (or any other symbol). So, you easily do the very common "Caution!" or "Note:" emphasis. Paolo

Did the recent versions of Pages miss much, compared to iBooks Authors, in developing eBooks? Paolo

Actually, I’m not thinking to an import feature from FrameMaker (a program that should now have only a bunch of institutional users). I'm thinking to a "FrameMaker mode", where graphics is made lighter, and text is the focus. Paolo

I don't know if this can be an alternative to the request of a plain text editor, but I'll try. I've long used and loved FrameMaker (on Mac; the Win version has been a torture), for documents where text was predominant, compared to graphics. FrameMaker gave the impression of working in a wordprocessor, while having the full power of a layout program. Hidden codes could be seen in the text flow by unhiding them. Tags were always shown in the window border. Maybe the solution could be a "light" mode, where you focus on text, and graphics is grayed out. Not the same as a plain text editor, but maybe it can work as well, while you continue working on the actual layout. Paolo

I find importing styles useful, to preserve most of the original text. An easy workaround to prevent this to happen, is to open the original text into a text editor that can save in plain text format. Then, it will be easy to import text with no styles applied. Paolo

Absolutely needed, for me. I have many images in my works, and all graphic/text objects have to have the same style. Text runaround, alignment, fill and border. Paolo

It would be great if these algorithms were part of APub, and could automatically fix Chinese punctuation while waiting for a more complete implementation! Paolo

Unless we seal all borders and stop exchanging goods and ideas between different countries, there will always be odd people dealing with languages different from the one of their native village. Hence the need for tools with which one can communicate in several different languages (and directions). Paolo

This is pure pencil virtuosity! Bravo! Paolo

While charts are in Illustrator and not in InDesign, I find them fitting Publisher better. Usually, charts are accompanying written text and tables. The fact they are in Illustrator is probably because they were developed when InDesign tables where still in a very early development stage. Paolo

It is a 72 dpi image, but it is treated by APub as a 300 dpi one. Apart for the information box reported by @walt.farrell here above. Paolo