PaoloT

Apps: Designer and Publisher (+ some changes to the existing feature in Photo)
Platforms: Windows and macOS
We have now added the States panel to Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher which previously only existed in Affinity Photo. Layer states allows you to either:
Capture the current visibility states of your layers across your document Create queries based on various criteria to use to make a selection or toggle visibility of layers This feature is particularly useful to manage different variations of your work. As an example, one of the social ad campaigns for our recent Black Friday promotion was created in Affinity Designer across multiple artboards. Each artboard had 4 variants for English, Japanese, German and French language.

 
Previously if you wanted to toggle between the English and French version for example you would need to toggle the visibility of the appropriate layers on each artboard separately - not particularly workable when you have many artboards / spreads. The new states panel gives you a new way to work with designs like this. 

In this case I could set up a query with criteria which captures all my Japanese layers. From the states panel click "New Query" at the bottom, I called the query "JA" and set up my criteria to be "All Art Text and Frame Text layers that have a layer name which ends in JA" as below:


Because on each artboard we had used the consistent naming convention that all Japanese text has a layer name ending in JA, all English text has a layer name ending in EN, etc. it made it easy to then set up 4 queries for each of the languages. We could alternatively have used a convention like all French variants are tagged yellow, English tagged Red, etc. 
So now to switch from English to Japanese across all artboards I can just turn off everything that fulfils my EN query, and turn on everything which fulfils my JP query using the visibility on/off buttons next to the queries in the states panel - so in two clicks end up with the below:

 
While this example is only including text, of course I may have had different imagery for each locale and could have included those in the same queries to still have one button to toggle text and images of each language on and off. Also, as it's set up a query like this, should I add additional Japanese specific layers to any of the artboards and name them ending in "...JA" my JA query will automatically pick them up.
In Publisher the same principles apply giving the ability to globally toggle different layers on and off across all spreads in your document which match the criteria you have specified. While building complex expressions is easy, you may also find you wish to have a query for something simple like "Layer Type is Images" giving you an instant way to turn all images on and off across your whole document.
Additional Notes
As well as toggling visibility of queries there is an additional button to make a selection of all layers which fulfil the criteria specified in the query. This is also a new function not previously available in Affinity Photo. For those who used the States panel in Affinity Photo you will notice we have changed the name of what were previously called "Smart States" to "Queries". This reason for this is in the future we anticipate adding a new feature to this which would be better described as a Smart State (this will be something you can build from multiple queries). This will be something which we add in a future update. There is other new functionality we plan to bring to this in the future - namely ability to create presets and some level of integration with export options - but again that will be something for a future update.
 

Hi All,
I’m pleased to say that we have just be pushed 2.3.1 (2212) to beta and plan a full 2.3.1 release next week (if nothing new & significant is found). There are only a limited number of fixes as detailed in my post here. 
We think it's important to address a few high customer impact bugs quickly in a 2.3.1 release, in a fast/stable manner.
The release of 2.4.0 with improvements and features and many other fixes will likely take a while to be "release ready" (need a longer beta testing cycle due to having more significant code changes). We have been internally testing 2.4.0 and so @Serif Info Bot has been posting about fixes found in 2.4.0.xxxx, and those fixes will be appearing in the next release cycle, not 2.3.1
With that in mind we will be starting 2.4.0 beta very shortly (hopefully in just a couple of weeks). Looking forward to seeing you all on here for that!
Thanks again,
Patrick Connor

The question is: How is this defined? 
Usually, press-ready does not imply that you have to make the imposition yourself, since it will depend on various factors you don't master. It's more common to ask for single pages with bleed, and the imposition will be done by the printer. 
See these specs for example:
https://support.bookbaby.com/hc/en-us/articles/360042283214-What-is-a-print-ready-or-press-ready-file-

And this is a hard hyphen: "—".
("Hey! This is a forum for families!")
 

They set up a special spam folder for me after I began complaining to them about their inclusion of Emojis. 
This is a hyphen -.
This is a "soft" hyphen ~, see how it is bendy.

QXP 2024 can now export to .idml
Viva Designer can import/open .indd files, and keeps up with changes to the format. The more complicated a design, there will be issues, but it will open.
Neither, like APub, deal with all .idml properties in a 1:1 faithful way with InDesign. Some do better with a particular .idml file than the others and vica versa.

Bar and QR codes is the sort of thing I expect will be relatively easy to do as a plugin, or even script, once the scripting and plugin features are available. Calendars too. 

Just reposting this v1 feature request in the v2 feedback forum.
Would be good to know if implementing this feature is even possible, I assume the inner software architecture doesn't allow it (only bitmaps) and it might only be possible with a hacky and unstable implementation, but if you can confirm it at least we can close the question with a definite answer.
Here's the v1 thread: 
 

In the meantime, Inkscape is a nice compliment to Designer & Publisher in that it can create bar/QR codes and also vectorize. This kind of content can be copied and pasted between desktop apps easily

XLSX is already supported. XLS is unlikely.
Yes, the Table support needs more work.

Hi @Eric Designer 2023, welcome to the forums!
In general it is best to limit a thread here to one feature, and to at least try to search the forums for existing threads making the same request before starting a new one.  These things are specified in the guidelines for posting to this area of the forum.
Many of the things you are asking for have already been discussed in the past and there are existing threads on these topics; a few highlights and comments:
 
We have basically been told that Serif does hope to implement this at some point, but they are not content with the solutions they currently could use, so it may be some time before this appears as they want to develop something better for when it does come out.
 
Unlikely to happen due to the proprietary/undocumented nature of these formats.
 
Serif has been adverse to adding any 3D features to the Affinity apps and this has often been lumped in with those (correctly or not).
 
There are multiple threads where people are begging for this; indications are that it will come eventually.
 
This has also been requested multiple times; I don't remember Serif specifically commenting on how likely this is to happen, but given the plethora of 3rd-party tools which are inexpensively available (in some cases free) which can easily generate these and export them in a form that can be used within the Affinity apps, I would imagine it to have a relatively low priority compared to various other features which have been requested which would not be so easily done outside the apps.
 
I vaguely remember seeing that even PSD text objects are not fully supported because they are not as well-understood (possibly proprietary/undocumented) as other types of layers?  I would imagine that to be true of the effects also...
 
Some PhotoShop plugins are supported.  An SDK for native ones is already under development (see the "Scripting" thread pinned at the top of the forum, in which both a scripting API and a native SDK for compiled add-ons are being discussed together).
 
INDD is proprietary and undocumented and its internal format is known to change between releases, so support for that is extremely unlikely.  IDML is currently supported for import only.  Note that this is also true of QuarkXPress: it can import IDML, not INDD, and likewise does not currently support exporting IDML.
 
I can't imagine them implementing XLS support at this point.  I could see XLSX but tables in general need a lot of work in Publisher and there are probably bigger fish to fry than XLSX import support (ex. a table in Publisher cannot currently span multiple pages).
 
Limited imposition functionality is currently integrated into the Print dialog, but is curiously not available for "proper" professional PDF export (which has been pointed out and complained about many times in other threads).  Extending existing imposition features to the Export dialog for PDF would be more than welcome and I too would love to see that happen.  A few other options could likely be added within reason, but more complete imposition functionality is likely better in the domain of a dedicated application designed for the purpose.
 
A preflight inspector for already-exported PDF files is likely best handled using a separate dedicated application.  There are already pre-export preflight features available in Publisher, but they are not included in the other two applications, and I would not expect that to change in the near future as it was obviously a conscious decision on the part of Serif to limit them to that one application.
Note however that Photo and Designer files can easily be opened in Publisher to perform any needed preflight work.

Well overall the lack of actual UI design resources (ADe assets etc.) is one of the first aspects to name here, meaning if you are going to build some actual macOS/Windows/iOS/Android etc. prototyping UI you mostly have to build first widget resources and all the like yourself for it (which is a time consuming task). Another also important one is, that certain specialized and dedicated UI/UX apps, do offer overall much more usability comfort in this domain regard, do offer also faster and quicker turnarounds and additional prototype based animation demoing ... etc.
Strictly speaking, ADe is just a graphics program that can also be abused for UI/UX designs, but its focus is not primarily on these things. Similar to creating your presentation slides with ADe instead of using more predestined applications such as Powerpoint or Keynote etc. for such tasks.
 

I appreciate your viewpoint, but you must realize that none of those functionalities you mentioned are absolutely necessary for UI design. I don't utilize them in either Figma or Sketch! Granted, on the rare occasion, when I'm away from the office and collaborating with colleagues, it comes into play. But you get what I'm driving at. In fact, multi-collaboration is possible with Affinity using this tool. Let me know if you want an invitation.

Hi SusB, this is that community. This forum is intended for asking questions about how to use Publisher, not just to report problems.
You'll find a full description of using leading and a baseline grid in the free manual I've shared in the forum - the link is in my signature.
But in a nutshell, if you want to use a baseline grid (which is a great idea), set the leading to the same as the baseline grid. e.g., if you're using 10 pt type with a 12 pt baseline grid, then set the leading to "Exactly" and 12 pt.
Cheers

Publisher can open IDML files but it cannot export files into IDML. It is a one way street, InDesign > Publisher and stop. No going back.
via DeepL.com
 
Publisher peut ouvrir des fichiers IDML mais ne peut pas exporter des fichiers en IDML. C'est une voie à sens unique, InDesign > Publisher et stop. Pas de retour en arrière possible.

My secret wish is that more Natural Intelligence is being seated in front of computer displays.  

There are a number of users who have found some of them quite exciting

Ignoring AI, the improvements in 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3 have been uninspiring over the time frame over which they were released.

I've expressed my desire for IDML export elsewhere, but I'll reiterate here. Even if all the features I need are implemented in Publisher, not being able to interconnect with InDesign will exclude it from my workflow.
It has been objected that a team must use the same tool. In my experience, this is not a universal truth. For example, in my career I've been using FreeHand and Illustrator, while my colleagues have been using Illustrator or CorelDRAW (apparently, the preferred drawing tool for technical designers). I often receive and send DOCX files, just to discover that the originals have been made with Apple Pages or LibreOffice.
My current workflow requires exchange between my InDesign files and the translators' CAT programs (not the same: each one uses a different one…). These want an INDD or IDML file, or an XML file if available, whatever the originating program. The page layout program can be used by the most scrupulous ones to fix some details that may go lost in the conversion.
However, there is someone who wants InDesign files. I could simply convince them to switch to Publisher, if it wasn't for the fact that they are higher in hierarchy than me. I guess this is a typical situation: an army of freelancers that would feel at home with Publisher, but are forced by a top-manager to use the "industry standard" solution.
In my part of the world (generally called the Occident or the West) the jobs landscape is quickly changing from a relation between a company and its employees, and one where a company hires freelancers. This is the perfect scenario for something like the Affinity Suite. If only it could connect with the old "industry standard"…
Adobe has already hidden the IDML specs document. It should mean that they wouldn't be too happy, if IDML export from Publisher does happen.
Paolo
 

This is really a desktop publishing (layout) app, not a word processor. There are missing features indeed, particularly as we still are still on the very first release, but it would be helpful to manage our expectations with an understanding of what Publisher is, and word processor isn't it.
(This is a side note, not intended as a comment on the validity of the feature request in the thread.)

The lack of idml export is a definite deal breaker for me and many others in terms of the whole Affinity suite, unfortunately. I purchased the ipad version fairly recently to get a feel for the Affinity suite. And it appears at first sight to be extremely powerful and flexible. However that said, I cannot start thinking about transitioning fully without the ability to move and share layouts into Indesign. You can export to PSD from within Photo and SVG from Designer.  And I understand you can import idml files from indesign files into Publisher. But so far not the other way, so it seems obvious that this feature has been deliberated turned off, which is a shame. I understand that Adobe may not allow idml to be used by its competitors long term, if loads of users jump ship, but if they if they do currently it would be great to see this feature. 

Dear Affinity team!
Can we get an official statement if the IDML (InDesign markup language) file format will ever be supported for export from Publisher?
'Ever' like in the next few years...
I assume you are aware why this is important in a mixed team with Adobe products. It's great to be able to import from InDesign, but as of now it's a one way ticked. Not being able to export from Publisher to InDesign means the whole team might be forced to use the Affinity suite, if just one member decides to use Publisher. That often results in the decision to not use Publisher at all.
It would be desirable to leave the choice to the user, of course.
In my book, the Affinity suite in the meantime is on par or superior to the equivalent Adobe programs (disregarded any cloud AI features etc.), but it's super hard to convince our office superiors to switch.
If roundtripping would be possible, the matter would be a very different one.
Even if IDML might not be fully feature complete compared to the .indd or .afpub formats, it is feature rich enough to work as a common ground. It surely would for our needs.
It has been asked before, I know, but I could not find any definite answer to your company policy in this regard.
Thanks a lot!

What you're suggesting is a fairly standard way of working for most photographers who then print using the ICC.  But there are other workflows which many photographers may view as fringe, but which are fairly standard in the publishing industry.  In my case, I want to soft-proof using the ICC, but in a way that shows me what the output will look like if I don't print using the ICC.  In PS you o this by enabling the preserve numbers soft-proofing option.  There are valid uses for this approach, which is why PS includes it.  Can't be done in AP at present.
I also find soft-proofing via a layer to be a risky approach, rather than using a view mode.  I've done something like this in PS in the past, since some ICCs can be simulated via a curve, and there's a risk of leaving the layer enabled when you don't want it.  Operator error, sure, but it's always going to be a risk with this approach.

I am sorry. I don't understand halve of what you are saying. Especially why you wouldn't just generate an .icc profile by calibrating your printer (with the desired paper) and use this profile for softproofing.

I can and I do use Affinity to produce color managed output on a daily basis.
This made my income for about  the last 25 years mainly with Adobe products but the last 5 years mainly with Affinity products.
I use a fully calibrated workflow in the same manner I did with Adobe products. No HDR yet.
My two main outputs are files for Web in sRGB and Print in ISO-coatedv2/3
Input sources sRGB eciRGB AdobeRGB P3 and more.
Making CMYK-PDFs with embedded wide gamut RGB images for printers with larger color space works.
 
There are some inconveniences though:
Softproofing with a layer doesn’t make much sense. It should be a view setting.
There has to be a way to preprint-check PDF-files. I still do that with Acrobat Pro. 
And more ...