PaoloT

Lo and behold! See what has been added to Affinity version 2.3. Alt text (for screen reader accessibility) can now be added to images and objects in a PDF file. Looks like we have to wait longer for ePUB export.
https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/whats-new/
Tags Panel for adding alt text to images and objects
The new Tags Panel in Affinity Publisher allows you to add alt text to any image or object when exported to PDF for accessibility purposes. To use, just open the Tags Panel from the Window menu, select the image or object you want to add alt text to, and add your description in the box.
Alt Text Source
As well as adding your own custom description to any object, you can also choose to scrape the alt text from the Title, Description or Headline meta data which may be embedded within the image in question.
Mark as Decoration
You also have the option to ‘Mark as Decoration’. This means no image description will be exported or used by screen readers as the item is purely there for decorative purposes rather than important to the understanding of the document. Marking as a decoration is primarily used to positively tag an image as not needing a description, so it’s not flagged in preflight.
Preflight
Options have also been added in preflight to make it easy to check your document for any missing alt text should you wish. When creating or editing a profile, you will see a new section for alt text. Here you can choose whether you want preflight to return a warning if images, placed documents or vector objects do not have alt text added (or marked as decoration).
Export
There is now a new ‘Tagged PDF’ option in the advanced section of PDF export. This is required to be checked if you wish to export your PDF, including any tags you have added.

From today's newsletter: "The Tags Panel in Affinity Publisher 2.3 is just the start of a series of improvements we’re making to PDF accessibility. Upcoming updates will provide support for reading order, heading tags and other document structure tools that will further enhance your PDFs."
How AWESOME is that? Thanks, Serif team!

The comparison between those photobook websites and Affinity Publisher is what you came up with in your initial post. People are just picking up on it. So, to be clear: What you're saying is that Adobe InDesign is as easy to use as, say, Pixum? Or Blurb? I very much doubt so, and I think that comparison is unfair towards both InDesign and Publisher. Put an inexperienced user in front of an empty InDesign page and see how far they can get. I've done it sometimes, just as an experiment, at the beginning of InDesign courses at university. The overall result is that people are just completely lost if you deny them any guidance. The same is probably true for Affinity Publisher. But I think what's happening here is that you confuse intuitiveness with the fact that you just know how to use the software.

I read this passage this morning in my "Daily Stoic" email which seems to apply here:
"... the question is whether you're willing to be taught. Life is constantly speaking to you. The world is always trying to teach you. But do you hear it? Are you open to it?
Epictetus said we can't learn that which we think we already know. Zeno reminds us that conceit is the impediment to growth and change. If you're not willing to be taught, you cannot learn."
https://dailystoic.com/are-you-willing-to-be-taught/

I just have to butt in here, because I can't resist.
I have used Publisher to prepare in the neighborhood of 15 POD books (At least. There could be more. I stopped counting because it is so easy to use my templates). I will admit right off that they are novels, not photo books or manuals or anything else. The interiors match what the Big 5 produce. How do I know that? Because I copied their formatting, and my books match, exactly. I defy anyone to tell me they don't look "professional". (As to content, I leave that to my tens of thousands of readers to decide.)
I will admit that Publisher was a bit of a bear to use right out of the box. However, despite my hateful attitude towards video learning, I sat down, bit bullets, dodged others, and watched until my eyes bled out. After using the eraser end of a pencil to poke them, I had a usable print book template that I now have tweaked to my satisfaction.
Was it easy? No. Did it pay off? Yes. I might suggest that if you're in a hurry, use another solution. If you feel the need to "get something up there quick", use another product. Publisher isn't "easy" to learn. Once you have it down, there will be no stopping you. On the other hand, if you're looking for an overnight solution, you might use something "easier" that you're more familiar with.

I used indesign without any problem would you say that indesign is not pro ?
nearly all Affinity users went from Adobe , but Affinity is nearly like  the Gimp ,  cheap but a mess to use

Why "of course"? – I used to use APub to produce a phonebook for work!

as I said the manual should be used only for details or very special features, if it is impossible to create a simple book directly without any manual then the software  is not good
 

3 months to achieve the learning curve !!! use pixum  it  takes one hour

I bought Publisher in June (or early July) after the 30 day trial. I published my first book less than 3 months later - a highly illustrated manual, btw.
Outside of asking a few questions here, with excellent help, and watching a few videos I didn't read a manual. I felt it was highly intuitive.
 
 

reading manual means that it is not intuitive at all, even for indesign I could  manage it at once without any manual
no template means  it sucks much more than I thought 
 
thanks

You should go play somewhere else, I asked a question and if anyone knows the answer thanks
apparently it's not you
You should have a nice glass of wine and calm down. ?
bye

Please do not put words in my mouth! thank you
OK, so problem solved, issue closed.

I am trying to create a phonebook with affinity publish V2 on Mac ,  have already done a few books with pixum , Saal-digital, blurb, they are all intuitive and easy to use
If I try a photobook with affinity it is a mess to use, where is the cover ?  where are the pages  ? how can I add directly 100 pages ?
how  can it be less intuitive to use 
is there any A3 book template to download ?
thanks

I would appriceate it if numbers like 10.000 or 2,54 (10,000 / 2.54 if you're anglopnone) would not break at the dot or comma at the end of a line in Publisher.

Good catch. I had the spelling language set in the Character pane, but auto-hyphenation off in the Paragraph one. The result is indeed a lot different. This is with the default paragraph spacing values, tracking set at -15%, hyphenation and optical alignment turned on (again, ID on the left and AfPub on the right). I'm also attaching the file.
The result in AfPub looks of excellent quality. Rivers are nearly non-existant.

 
Paolo
paragraph and line formatting.afpub.zip
 
 

Got the new version! Reading now! Thank you for all the hard work!
Paolo
 

New version! I have uploaded a new version of this unofficial Publisher manual to the first post of this thread. In addition to being updated for the changes in Publisher 2.3, this version covers character and paragraph formatting, text styles, and all the other text-related features. It is 120 pages longer than the original version.
Although it's written for Publisher, most of the text features are the same for Designer or Photo so you may find it useful for the other Affinity applications, too.
Cheers
 

I hope the 2.4 version supports, at last!, footnotes in IDML import.

And the failure to remember to print anything other spreads is equally annoying.

In Publisher, I keep mistakenly printing dozens of pages because the number of copies to print is maintained across documents. I'll print 5 copies of a 1 page document, then go to print 1 copy of a 10 page document and print 50 pages by mistake.
Eventually I'll learn (sometimes I remember to check) but this seems like a very unforgiving setting. When I'm in a hurry I keep screwing up. I've probably wasted a hundred sheets at this point. It's a much smaller deal to hit print twice than it is to print tons of extra stuff by mistake. 

Hi All,
I’m pleased to say that we will be pushing 2.3 live to retail this morning. The beta versions were updated yesterday to the same build (2.3.0.2165) as detailed in Patrick’s post here. This means the beta versions are in effect exactly the same as the retail versions we will push so you can keep them installed if you wish. 
As always it’s been a pleasure working with you all on this release and cannot thank you enough for all the bug reports and other feedback you have given. I mentioned at the start of this beta we are working towards a shorter cadence between updates to help us release improvements and bug fixes sooner - and I hope you agree this has worked very well.
With that in mind we will be starting 2.4 beta very shortly (hopefully in just a couple of weeks). Looking forward to seeing you all on here for that!
Thanks again,
Ash

Good catch. I had the spelling language set in the Character pane, but auto-hyphenation off in the Paragraph one. The result is indeed a lot different. This is with the default paragraph spacing values, tracking set at -15%, hyphenation and optical alignment turned on (again, ID on the left and AfPub on the right). I'm also attaching the file.
The result in AfPub looks of excellent quality. Rivers are nearly non-existant.

 
Paolo
paragraph and line formatting.afpub.zip
 
 

That misrepresents what I said. I did not say or intend to imply using a particular philosophy instead of design rules. I merely gave the order of preference I follow in which approach I will use in a given situation to achieve a given output according to design rules. The quality of the end result is always (or nearly always, time- and deadline-permitting) still the end goal. The philosophy is merely the guide toward which approach I work with first. When one approach doesn’t work, move on to the next, and so on. This is the workflow that works best to me.
I get that not everyone likes multiline composers or glyph scaling, but there are a lot of people that do. I don’t think we are arguing that it should be forced on everyone else. Like all feature requests, this thread is a request for the people who perceive a need in this area.
You have a unique idea of fun, but I certainly won’t disparage you in that. Different things appeal to different people, no doubt. My preference is that I am not coming to Publisher because I am looking for extra work. There are still plenty things that are more fun about layout that need my attention than micromanaging justification (my opinion; I’m not judging what other people find “fun”).
Here is the bottom-line reality for me: I have been using Publisher more than InDesign lately, and I spend significantly longer working with text in Publisher than I do in similar documents in InDesign, mostly because I am spending a long time working on managing justification line by line.
One might ask why I even use Publisher instead of InDesign when I have access to both and InDesign works for me much faster. I think that is a fair question, and my answer is simply that I am with Publisher more as a matter of principle with an eye toward the future. I feel like I am more aligned with what Serif wants to accomplish and with how they go about doing that than I am with Adobe. For example, I like that I can take part in these forums and that Serif listens. I don’t know if this is accurate or fair, but I don’t feel that Adobe cares at all what I think. I believe Publisher has a bright future, even though there are some things that are not ideal. I can be patient: I know that this is not the only thing yet to accomplish—it’s not even the only thing among my own wish list. I am just suggesting that it should be a focus at some point, not necessarily right away. I would be delighted if it were right away, but I can be realistic. I don’t really want to leave the kind of posts that suggest Publisher is terrible because this is already 2021 and it does not have the feature I want. I don’t think those posts are either fair or helpful.
Now I will say this. If Serif kindly but honestly said that they have no intention to ever work on better automatic justification, then I would have to admit that it never will be the software I am looking for and find something that is. In truth, if they truly felt that way, it would probably be better for me if they actually said it, so that I would not spend my time in Publisher or taking part in a forum for something that wouldn’t work out. But if, as I understand to be the case, that it just takes time because there is still so much to be accomplished, and that they continue making progress as they have been so far, then I am having fun being along for the ride.

Not to negate the request for some sort of multiline composer (which has been a long-time desire of mine for Publisher), but in the interest of being accurate, it seems you do not have hyphenation configured to allow hyphens in Publisher, whereas I see multiple hyphens in the InDesign specimens. Notice that the worst lines in the Publisher examples are followed by very long words. Allowing hyphens would greatly improve the results you get in Publisher.
It might also be interesting to turn off hyphens in InDesign and see how it compares to Publisher without hyphens. In theory InDesign ought to do better than Publisher on average in such a case, especially with such long lines to work with.