nwhit

Yes, you can select English, but it does not allow a change between US and UK English, which is very important document to document for multi-national companies. As per Dave's post above, they are using the Mac's built-in dictionary, but on the Mac you can select your language and enable others. But there does not appear to be a way to do that from within APub. Wouldn't be very practical to switch the Mac over to UK English just to work on an APub document, but then need to switch back every time you did an email or worked in any other app. Really needs to be selectable within APub and apply to/stick with individual docs. As per my previous post, right now it appears that the dictionary is tied to whatever was selected within the OS when the document was created. That wouldn't be usable under most working conditions.

I did find out that by selecting the text or cells, I can change the vertical alignment. And I did (finally) find it when editing a Table Style. But in doing this, I noticed that when I have created a table style, then imported it into another doc, the imported one does not update if you edit the original. Be nice to have that choice to save having to update every doc that uses that table style.

I see that but for a table it is greyed out, plus how do I add that to a Text Style? I don't see that option in the Edit Style panel.

Been playing with tables but simply cannot find where you can set the table text to align to the Top/Middle/Bottom of the cells. Kinda required for tables, but I must be blind. Even looked at the Styles editing panels and can't see it anywhere. Does anyone know where it is? Thanks.

On importing PDF's created in InDesign, I tried that right away on a typical 4-6 page publication. Unfortunately, it really screwed up many of the text blocks by merging several of them together from far away places on the page. Would require a good deal of work to recreate the numerous text blocks, recreate the flows, etc. We, likewise, really desire ID import. We're stuck on ID CS5 and have never desired to go on Adobe's subscription program. We have tonnes of routinely used documents for clients in ID files that we are always updating. If we had to rebuild/recreate every one of those, our clients would not be willing to pay us for that. We would be stuck doing a bulk of our work in ID. Thus it is important for us to be able to import and get better fidelity than I got trying a couple ID PDF's so far. Thanks.

I agree that the Table Format/Styles needs some work. I've been playing with the format panel and for the life of me cannot get it to do any "normal" table formatting such as header rows, etc. Seems there should be included some fairly standard table styles available as a starter, then it should be easy to modify those to a style that could be saved in used in other related corporate documents. The way it is right now appears to require far too much work (and guessing) to get just a fairly simple, but styled table. The current interface is just non-intuitive as far as setting up a savable table style. Thanks.

Interestingly, in playing with the Sample document (Affinity Brochure), it is using a UK dictionary for spell check. But in a new document I created, it is using American English. And I can't see how to specify which one I want for the document.

On the Mac, I have both UK and US English available in the System Prefs, with US set as default. But when in APub in the Character panel, the drop-down for languages only shows English. How then do I switch back and forth? Do I need to change the entire computer, then APub? If that's the case, it would be much, much better if we could keep the entire computer system on our main language for all other apps, but change just APub when working on UK projects. Thanks.

Did you add some Filler Text in the Prefs?

On the Bleed issue, I think I found it. Strange place for it and not real handy. View/View Mode/Clip to Canvas. Has a shortcut of \

+1

Curious on the Dictionaries for languages/spell checking if you will have both a British English as well as American? While our company is in the US, we do a lot of work in the UK, so do need to be able to spell check for each. Thanks.

Aha! I see that the Crop tool does, indeed allow the image frame to be "cropped" in APub. Odd way to do it, but it appears to work. Select image, select crop tool, crop the frame. then using the select tool, double-click to move/slide the image to reframe.

+1

Yes, absolutely need to be able to easily resize the frame to crop images.

A key difference is/was that Adobe had already bought what was a very mature (at the time) PageMaker from Aldus (as well as FreeHand). During the transition, many of us kept on using PageMaker until InDesign caught up. But we always had a translator to go back and open PageMaker docs in InDesign for quite some time. Our work was not hugely interrupted nor did we face an issue where what we were doing and creating in PageMaker would be "lost" later when moving to the newer InDesign. Many of us weren't thrilled at the time about having to eventually move to ID, but at least Adobe did a somewhat reasonable job of helping the transition of PM files to ID. Thus we have to hope that Affinity can/will be able to offer a similar path. We will have to eventually be able to bring our legacy files into their Publisher app, and sooner would obviously be better for a more rapid adoption of the new app. Just like many apps can open, read and save-as Word documents in word processing, ID files are critical to many pro designers and shops.

Suffice it to say that InDesign is and has been the predominant software for the creation of professionally printed documents and their associated PDF derivatives for various uses. Ever since PageMaker and then InDesign, this is the most-used "creation" software by professional shops. While there are many others (and I've used and taught most of the biggies over the years like Quark and FrameMaker), professional media creation shops still mostly use InDesign to create documents for offset printing and pdf versions of that print job; and print shops will most often have it as well if it is desired to have them open and adjust a file. Therefore, as per my earlier post, we as a creative and media production shop have thousands of client documents/files already created in InDesign. It would be essential to be able to open and convert them in the new A-Pub. If that cannot be done, about 60-80% of our client work could not be done in the new app since the clients are not going to be willing to have us recreate existing documents (but needing updates, etc.) at their expense. And we sure aren't going to do it at our expense! As I said in my earlier post, for Affinity it's a matter of a slow rollout versus a faster rollout. If media production shops cannot use it to integrate into their InDesign workflow for clients until much later versions, then it will only be used for a "new" job or messing around. But even then, why create a client's job in a totally new format if that's not supported at other agencies, clients and print shops? In the pro world, you really do need to be able to share editable files and currently InDesign is the one most have/use. I would love to adopt Affinity Pub. It looks good in the preview video and we do like AP and AD. But we need to be able to correctly open InDesign files in order to actually use the new app for more than playing around. That's just business.

The upgrades to Mac AP and AD as of March 1. The "news" is this thread and the preview video in the first post.

While noticing today's new upgrades for AP and AD, I stumbled across this news and the video. Sounds great! While I oftentimes hate to admit it, I started out on PageMaker 1.0 with the then brand new LaserWriter ($6k+) and Mac SE. I not only used virtually all early DTP/graphics software and new iterations for many of my companies (including a media production company), I also taught the software during its several-year rollout. Also evangelized and set-up numerous ad agencies, media producers, newspapers, printers and university "commercial art" departments in the "new" electronic publishing and graphics methods and equipment/software. Over the years, I used and taught most of the popular software packages. Some good, many terrible. I came from the "manual" world, so understood what was really needed for day-to-day production versus flashy features. My 2¢ on the new A-Publisher is that I hope it can correctly open recent InDesign documents (we've stayed pre-cloud). While I saw one poster who wondered why anyone wanted to open an old document, the reality of media production has been and still is the ability to use the thousands of client files we store to either update materials, specifications, pics, etc., or to use an old publication/document as the basis for a totally "new" design -- but a "new" design that uses much of the old design as its basis. Just how it is for commercial design/publication work. And clients most often aren't willing to simply abandon otherwise good publications. Many just don't spend money for total from-scrartch redo's. Thus recycling is critical to a normal workflow. If accurate import of InDesign (notice that I didn't ask for import of PageMaker docs???? ;-D ) is not available or working well, it would terribly slow down the adoption of this new software. Just can't spend client's money rebuilding hundreds and hundreds of previously created work. There are many other "base" features that are important in DTP, but I assume Affinity has studied ID for quite some time. But it doesn't hurt to verify with people who make their living with this software every day for many, many years what are "nice to have" versus "critical". Could mean the difference between rapid adoption versus a multi-year roll-out. I'll keep my eyes and ears open to see how this all shapes up. Very encouraging. While our staff still occasionally curse and swear at things that can't be done in AP and AD, overall have been very pleased. So that bodes well for Publisher!

Well, here we are at v1.6.6 and into Feb 2018 -- still no sticky prefs/settings. Really a bummer. When we process 500-1,000 pics a day, really causes a lot of extra keystrokes/clicks/time/work. Love AP overall, but this seems like such a minor, minor thing to fix. And I do recall someone from Affinity promising that it was going to be fixed/added in v1.6. Sadly, our clients end up paying for the extra time/work. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE -- again! Please fix this for all of us who really use your great app! While it might seem like an insignificant thing, it is a HUGE thing when you do a lot of repetitive work in the app.

I agree on this. We were promised sticky settings for a wide variety of things in 1.6, but did not get them. Still cannot have settings for cropping, output presets, tool hardness, color swatches, etc., etc. stay/stick. EACH of us have prefs for many of these things based on our type of work and work flow, yet we waste time constantly having to reset things all over the place. And just trying to remember some of the settings each time is almost impossible, so we end up with varying settings each time we have to rest what is the "default". And so many of the defaults simply make no sense. Photo cropping is most often constrained to the original ratio and most want a darkened surround to preview the crop. Yet we cannot set that as a default! And color swatches for many, many people should have a default of colors, not greys. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE! Let people set their own prefs for these things by making them sticky like in most all other apps. We need to be able to set things for our workflow and be able to quit the app and still keep our most used settings. We were promised this here in this forum by Affinity and I am very disappointed that we did not get it.

No, installed just fine for me. (macOS 10.12.6)

I have the same question: How can I buy a gift copy of the Windoze version for someone? Really hoping there is a solution as I would like this young person to be able to get started with this software.

Currently in AP when you try to close a window/file that hasn't been saved, it gives you a pop-up to Save, etc. However, it does not then complete the Close of the window/file. You have to do a new Close command. Normal behavior in all other apps is the do the Save, then complete the close. Really slows down a workflow as is.

SOLVED! Stumbled across the Layer/New Live Filter/Depth of Field Filter. This is, essentially, the typical and common blur vignette, but also has the option for the "Tiny Town"/Tilt-Shift effect. IMPORTANT: Took me a while to figure out why I was getting a white border around my picture after applying the filter. Apparently you need to check the Preserve Alpha option in the adjustment pane. Not covered in the Help, but found a reference to it in the forum.