Michael Lloyd

Serif team,
For God's sake, please make it possible to link (vs embed) text documents.
The Affinity Publisher team seems disinterested in supporting document collaboration.
Affinity Publisher is not a reasonable choice in most corporate environments, since reports, user guides and similar documentation requires multiple contributors, necessitating some form of collaborative capability.
As a technical writer I have worked in multiple corporate environments, currently for the US Government. In each environment I advocate using Affinity Publisher ─ since the alternative is Microsoft Word 😒.
While exploring the feasibility of using Affinity Publisher for the Government I ran into the same issue ─ the only major issue, no collaboration capability. Affinity Publisher is mature enough for collaboration to be a high priority.
 
The following is a Serif Affinity sponsored video explaining linked and embedded resources in Affinity Publisher. At 30 seconds it explains: "an advantage of using linked resources is you can utilize collaborative workflows. It allows colleges and other users to make changes to the image files separately":  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5YIUkksr4Q
With publications, collaboration needs are primarily for text, not images.
Please make Linking and Embedding work with text documents!!!
 
In June 2022 I offered the following suggestion, which is more comprehensive and complex to implement, but would also satisfy this need and may further distinguish Serif Affinity as an innovator.

That’s fine. And as someone who also needs to work collaboratively I am sharing how I do things. 

@Catshill, two things:
1) My position requires a security clearance therefore Google Docs is not an option.
2) I'm not interested in a workaround. I'm interested in a solution, consistent with Serif's claims of unprecedented collaboration, and for Affinity Publisher to include text document linking, so the application provides a level of collaboration similar to nearly all other professional desktop publishing applications.
It was not an accident that I put this suggestion under the Suggestions section in this forum.
I am not seeking assistance in working around an issue, I'm offering a suggestion that I believe will increase the application acceptance, and help in my work environment.

So if linked text documents are considered not that important then what makes linking photos so important apart from file size if embedded.

I think that the main collaborative function that V2 currently provides is the Books feature, Michael. This allows, for example, chapters of a book to be easily created by different team members, using Publisher, and the resulting .afpub files are assembled into a final publication by another member.
Other users have also asked for Linked text files, and perhaps they will come, someday. But I think there are other functions that will also be needed before Linked text files can truly be useful. For example, importing DOCX files gives you a new set of Text Styles, in many cases, which may then need to be adjusted. With a naive implementation of Linked text files, you would have major rework in the main document whenever one of the Linked files changed, and was re-imported.
So, in addition to supporting Linked text files, some significant rework on Text Syle importation would be required, too.

@Red Sands, though accessibility is important, it is not a concern for my audience and output requirements.
And as suggested by @walt.farrell, not relevant to this request.
@Red Sands, thank you for your heartfelt concern for my employment, but my supervisors disagree ─ not an issue.
Of this I couldn't disagree more. The need for Affinity Publisher to support collaborative efforts is a requirement for implementation in many environments.
Regardless of whether or not I and my supervisors are successful in getting Affinity Publisher approved, the need to focus on this request persists.
   

How is that relevant to this request?

I agree 100%, I use InDesign and have tried out Pagemaker and Quark in the past and the one thing they all have in common is that they are all first and foremost a LAYOUT program designed to work with multiple contributors, this is almost impossible to do without the ability to link all documents not just photos.

Absolutely I have posted before, I have one major project that needs DOCX tables and text to be automatically updated from other sources, so I have to stick to InDesign for the moment.
 

I absolutely agree! I have an XLS (spreadsheet) chart that was changed and now I have to re-place it and resize it to fit the overprinted text.
A real PITA. 

As someone who works with long form text, I find it frustrating that while I have the option to choose between linking or embedding images, but cannot do the same with text files.  
 
Having to re-place a text file after having made an amendment to the underlying document file is an absolute nuisance and unnecessarily time consuming.
 
Does anyone else have the same frustrations or is it just me.

Murfee,
Thank you! You're awesome!

I have not yet needed facing pages in the documents I have created and modified in Affinity Publisher.
For God sake, please save the choice of not requiring facing pages when creating a new document, so those who usually don't require facing pages won't need to turn off facing pages each time they create a new document... it's annoying.

People just need to acknowledge that they still have with V1 a perpetual license but it is now marked as legacy.
Affinity Suite 1 will continue to work on the original target operating systems with any OS update till it got marked as legacy.
Forward compatibility to new OS Updates or even OS versions can´t be guaranteed (cool if it works) and depends entirely on what Microsoft or Apple put as updates in their respective OS.

I'll upvote this for Affinity Photo and Designer. Especially since Photoshop and Illustrator don't support it natively and the extension for it is very flacky. This is a chance to out shine them!

Title says it all. Google PageSpeed is recommending the use of these formats, but AP doesn't support any of them. Please, if possible, do.

That's a naive argument. Developers should always advocate for superior solutions. Apple's inability to keep up with standards is a ridiculous reason to not support those standards. Same with Microsoft and Internet Explorer when that was an issue.
Website development tools all have failover features, often put in place for browsers failing to keep up with emerging standards. First the capability is provided, demand and support follows. It's always been that way.

Developers should always advocate for superior solutions. Apple's inability to keep up with standards is a ridiculous reason to not support those standards. Same with Microsoft and Internet Explorer when that was an issue.
Website development tools all have failover features, often put in place for browsers failing to keep up with emerging standards. First the capability is provided, demand and support follows. It's always been that way.

Hi Patrick,
No need to get all excited!
We are discussing a photo editor Affinity that clearly states on their website "The standout choice for professionals".
When we are talking about image extensions like webp and someone doesn't know  what webp is and how it is implemented in webdesign fair enough. But I understand that Ben is a Affinity developer and I find it rather strange that someone like that who is working on a photo editor  is asking a question like that. When It was just someone I could understand the ignorance, but I taste irony in that question.
Why do you think webp is implemented in 3 major browsers? Because webdesigners make use of that possibility. 
Regards,
David

You could also say that all major browsers are supporting webp except for Safari! 
With all due respect! It only proves to me that you don't know what you are talking about! It would be  nice if you take suggestions from Affinity users serious! 
I show you some code of a background image in a website I created this week and this is how it's done in 2019:
<picture> <source media="(max-width: 475px) and (orientation: portrait)" type="image/webp" data-sizes="auto" srcset="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==" data-srcset=" Responsive-Images/Home/back-home/bg-Phone-webp/home-back-phone_vsimc2_c_scale%2Cw_480.webp 480w, Responsive-Images/Home/back-home/bg-Phone-webp/home-back-phone_vsimc2_c_scale%2Cw_905.webp 905w, Responsive-Images/Home/back-home/bg-Phone-webp/home-back-phone_vsimc2_c_scale%2Cw_1200.webp 1200w" class="lazyload"> <source media="(max-width: 475px) and (orientation: portrait)" data-sizes="auto" srcset="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==" data-srcset=" Responsive-Images/Home/back-home/bg-Phone-jpg/home-back-phone_vsimc2_c_scale%2Cw_480.jpg 480w, Responsive-Images/Home/back-home/bg-Phone-jpg/home-back-phone_vsimc2_c_scale%2Cw_905.jpg 905w, Responsive-Images/Home/back-home/bg-Phone-jpg/home-back-phone_vsimc2_c_scale%2Cw_1200.jpg 1200w" class="lazyload"> <source media="(min-width: 476px) and (orientation: portrait)" type="image/webp" data-sizes="auto" srcset="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==" data-srcset=" Responsive-Images/Home/back-home/bg-Tablets-webp/home-back-tablet_asvcpy_c_scale%2Cw_768.webp 768w, Responsive-Images/Home/back-home/bg-Tablets-webp/home-back-tablet_asvcpy_c_scale%2Cw_1213.webp 1213w, Responsive-Images/Home/back-home/bg-Tablets-webp/home-back-tablet_asvcpy_c_scale%2Cw_1536.webp 1536w" class="lazyload"> <source media="(min-width: 476px) and (orientation: portrait)" data-sizes="auto" srcset="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==" data-srcset=" Responsive-Images/Home/back-home/bg-Tablets-jpg/home-back-tablet_asvcpy_c_scale%2Cw_768.jpg 768w, Responsive-Images/Home/back-home/bg-Tablets-jpg/home-back-tablet_asvcpy_c_scale%2Cw_1213.jpg 1213w, Responsive-Images/Home/back-home/bg-Tablets-jpg/home-back-tablet_asvcpy_c_scale%2Cw_1536.jpg 1536w" class="lazyload"> <source media="(max-width: 4800px)" type="image/webp" data-sizes="auto" srcset="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==" data-srcset=" Responsive-Images/Home/back-home/bg-wide-webp/home-back-wide_q1epvc_c_scale%2Cw_500.webp 500w, Responsive-Images/Home/back-home/bg-wide-webp/home-back-wide_q1epvc_c_scale%2Cw_1656.webp 1656w, Responsive-Images/Home/back-home/bg-wide-webp/home-back-wide_q1epvc_c_scale%2Cw_2400.webp 2400w, Responsive-Images/Home/back-home/bg-wide-webp/home-back-wide_q1epvc_c_scale%2Cw_3007.webp 3007w, Responsive-Images/Home/back-home/bg-wide-webp/home-back-wide_q1epvc_c_scale%2Cw_3516.webp 3516w, Responsive-Images/Home/back-home/bg-wide-webp/home-back-wide_q1epvc_c_scale%2Cw_3840.webp 3840w" class="lazyload"> <img data-sizes="auto" srcset="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==" data-srcset=" Responsive-Images/Home/back-home/bg-wide-jpg/home-back-wide_q1epvc_c_scale%2Cw_500.jpg 500w, Responsive-Images/Home/back-home/bg-wide-jpg/home-back-wide_q1epvc_c_scale%2Cw_1656.jpg 1656w, Responsive-Images/Home/back-home/bg-wide-jpg/home-back-wide_q1epvc_c_scale%2Cw_2400.jpg 2400w, Responsive-Images/Home/back-home/bg-wide-jpg/home-back-wide_q1epvc_c_scale%2Cw_3007.jpg 3007w, Responsive-Images/Home/back-home/bg-wide-jpg/home-back-wide_q1epvc_c_scale%2Cw_3516.jpg 3516w, Responsive-Images/Home/back-home/bg-wide-jpg/home-back-wide_q1epvc_c_scale%2Cw_3840.jpg 3840w" class="lazyload" src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==" alt="Full Screen achtergrondfoto met woonamer, daarin een bankstel met Wil Art kussens en schilderijen aan de muur"> </picture> Regards & Have a nice day!
David

Ben, some of the developers I know personally are using webp but use a fallback to png and/or jpg for non supported browsers. The rest are waiting for universal support. 
Mike 

Hi,
Now that Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome are able to handle webp I find in incredible that it's still not implemented in Affinity Photo and Designer. Hoped that Affinity was a bit more upfront with the latest developments as they happen, but unfortunately this is not the case. Every day I'm converting images from TIFF or  jpg to webp, but with an other application. The code for webp conversion is freely available on the Google website and easily  implemented. Be smart Affinity developers! Every web developer that's up to date  with it's skills is using it today.    
Regards,
David

We use webp extensively as image resources for our Android mobile apps because it greatly reduces the apk size and thus reduces the download time of our apps. This would be a really nice feature to add.

Are there any active roadmap for adding WebP export?
Now all main browser support it natively, also Safari (since 14.x https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safari-release-notes/safari-14-release-notes ).

Agreed. Webp is a unique format in that it combines both lossy image compression combined with alpha transparency. It is a great format for 2d hand-drawn game graphics, for example, for which I use the format. PNG takes up too much file space, and the art looks just fine with a lossy compression.
Jpeg wouldn't work since it does not support transparency/alpha. On a web page often a lossy compressed image with full alpha works just as nicely as that PNG version, but hugely saves on bandwidth. To reduce a PNG file in file size, colour reduction is the only option, but it can only be taken so far before it degrades the image too much.
For example, a typical asset that would be reduced to 1024 colours with alpha transparency at ~600x600px would take up around 130KB file size after running it through a PNG optimization power tool (forget saving an optimized PNG version from Affinity Photo). Saving this same asset at full colour in a lossy webp format results in 55kb. Running the 1024 colour version as a webp version shaves off even more.
And both the alpha and colour data can be independently processed in Webp, offering a lot of optimization potential.
By now all major browsers support the file format. Only Apple obstinately refuses to do so. Webp potentially saves a lot of bandwidth, and thereby a lot of energy.
By not supporting webp export, Affinity is only shooting itself in the foot.
But all is moot anyway: Affinity still to this day does not allow the user to preview what the assets look like optimized. I can't even consider Affinity for image optimization work unless that is implemented. And quality/export control over PNG is terribly limited in Affinity as well (and to be fair in most design apps), so I use Color Quantizer (a dedicated PNG optimization tool) to perform the final optimization step. It will also export Webp.
To be entirely honest, the entire export persona in Affinity is not that useful to me in its current state. But I do confess to be a complete nitpicking asset optimization nutcase! So it is probably works just fine for the average user.