Ralph

The concept of a 'standard tool' is one which has pervaded this thread from the beginning, if not perhaps so clearly expressed as such. Some of us have called it 'the basics', but however we express it, footnotes have always been a standard part of a DTP package. It's one of those features that are taken for granted. For months after I had bought Ap, I blamed myself for not being able to find the footnotes module: it simply could not, could not - not be there! Like @Granddaddy, I have been writing long documents for decades, starting on IBM360's. From the time when the fonts list was limited to pica (+ a few), footnotes were just THERE. They had to be, because the bulk of documents came from universities where attribution of sources was (and still is) paramount. Now it is as though the Arial font had been omitted from the fonts list. If it had been omitted, would there have been claims that "you can't do everything at once" or "if Serif waited till everything was available, we 'd still be waiting" or "different people have different priorities" or .... ? Alternatively Serif could have chosen to leave the option to flow between frames until a later date - but they didn't do either of these things, because they formed part of the standard (taken for granted) DTP package. I just do not understand.

There's a balance to be achieved between disc and RAM. The less RAM you have, the more pages (of memory) have to be saved and interchanged on the disc while you are editing. And the RAM available to your Affinity application is what is left over after all the Windows files. Hence, if you have 4Gb RAM, you might have 1Gb for Affinity. With 8GB, (almost) all the extra 4Gb becomes available, to give you 5Gb for Affinity. If you buy an 8Gb PC, you will be no better off than with your current setup. 16Gb of RAM should show a marked improvement. However, the limiting factor for speed is probably the read/write time to the disc. The SSD should show a BIG improvement over SATA. But the space available to Affinity follows the same rules - you have to take away the space used by Windows etc. etc. etc. The professionals on this forum (I'm not) seem to find that multi-gigabyte afphoto files are common, with several copies open at the same time as you edit layers. These will soon occupy a substantial part of your 128Gb. Several projects running at the same time will put your space under pressure. If you can, go for 500Gb, or at least 256Gb. One Drive - well, in my part of the world, Office 365 has been 'offline' three times in the past month. I wouldn't want to trust my working files to One Drive! Follow Carl123 !! There is one other issue - compatibility between the motherboard and the operating system. I don't know the PC you mention, but Carl123 thinks it might be rather old. Motherboards and operating systems fit together like a jigsaw puzzle and the shape of the pieces change over time. I have a 2013 motherboard and it 'clunks' increasingly as Windows updates are piled onboard. It works, but there are times when it slows down the process. (I have an Intel i7, 16Gb RAM, 1Tb SDD). IMHO, the closer you can get to the advice coming from the experts, the better chance you will have to being happy with your purchase.

I think the key point is a definition of the basis on which functions were selected for early implementation - or delay. As many contributors have said (most recently Pyanepsion), footnotes (et al) have been around for decades. It is this fact that makes it so surprising that they were not in the first round of functionality of APub (thank you Albert!). Selecting functions by personal choice is guaranteed to cause conflict, confusion and delay. But, in the beginning, there must have been a comprehensive & rational structure to the logical design of APub.. In the event, there are some functions that are not implemented which I would LOVE to have. I accept I might be a minority audience - I'll wait. There are others that represent actions I cannot imagine in my dreams - I forget they exist and marvel at the skills of forum responders. Then there are the basics, in use (once devised) in every newsheet, magazine, booklet, book, text book, training manual .... I have ever written (since the 1970's). Footnotes fall into this group. The absence of any of the components of this group of functions is really irritating. Platitudes excusing their absence don't help. I haven't seen a single one in the forum which I haven't used myself at some time or other. 🙂 Bottom line (as I said the last time I made my last comment) is that I guess it is too late to influence action. Just regret opportunities lost.

Hi @walt.farrell I agree with everything you say! Especially the bit about it being easier to start from scratch than amend. Or maybe it's especially about not being able to satisfy everyone all the time. My argument is with the criteria that have been used to select the priority list, now made all the more galling because I know that the list is not going to fundamentally change whatever anybody says (please prove me wrong again!). My contention was/is that if all the functions of all the DTP & WP packages going back to the IBM360 were listed and counted, there are a few from the top of that list which Serif have yet to address and many which don't appear on the list which have amazing functionality in Affinity. To overwork the car analogy, "sequinned boot liners" will not appear on many (sic!) specifications, but "seats" will be on every one. Why, then would I build a car with no seats and artistic boots? Everything you say is equally relevant to seats and boots. That's not about "personal most important features" but "industry standard" - and again, I agree with what you say. In the early days I had hoped that Serif might respond to the volume of concerns but I think we are too far down the line for that. It's more a matter, now, of letting off steam as PPX9 becomes an increasingly 'legacy' package and I see the possibility of having to revert to InDesign. So it's probably time I shut up with one final exhortation to Serif to address these key issues asap!

OK - maybe not pre-dating Maxwell but certainly around when he launched Pergamon Press! I don't even mind being considered senile - I'm headed that way🙂 But @walt.farrell, you seem to be arguing that we must not learn from experience. Certainly there are people who take 20 years to gain a year's worth of useful experience. There are others who gain 20 years worth in a year and I'll bet Serif have employed a few of these latter for a few years. I would have thought 20+ years of maintaining PP would have proved a pretty good foundation - but it seems to have been thrown away. I am not diminishing the problems of starting with new code, but if I can take a program in one language and translate it into another, so can less intellectually stunted people. NO - I just don't get it. I am also slightly disagreeing with @MJWHM. It's not the bells & whistles that have been left off this model of the car. It's not as serious as the transmission, or as insignificant as the air conditioning (might get a Canadian reaction to that!) ... but how about the seats? We can drive the car without seats but only a selective minority of drivers are likely enjoy it. Of course, if they have never experienced seats they might see alloy wheels as more important. They may think that seating should be delayed until thermostatically controlled eco-heating is available on all 5 seats. Maybe delayed further until it be installed in all 7 seats of the SUV model and use so little power that it can be left on all night ........... Me - I'd be happy with something to protect my rear end from the inadequate suspension, delayed by sewing sequins on the boot mat 🙂 🙂 Bottom line is, though, much time has gone by, the Affinity trio is the best all around package available, the company is a delight to deal with and perhaps the end(s) are in sight. Maybe they will arrive before Microsoft throws a spanner into Windows which blocks PPX9.

I think the problem here is "eventually". I have been a Serif customer for many, many, years and always found them great to deal with. I want Affinity to succeed. However, I am convinced that their priorities list became skewed in the early days towards to the exciting in preference to the basic. I must have published well over 100 text books over the years and I still don't recognise some of the features included in AP, AD, or APh. That is, I don't recognise even the name! That's great - I'm limited, others are brighter/more adventurous .... I don't mind being left behind. BUT, having been around since before Robert Maxwell, there are features I do recognise and too many of these appear in the forum under the heading "tearing my hair out". These are features which I have used since before the invention of 'Desk Top Publishing'. These are the features which, as the man says, are not checked as available because they MUST be there! Or, as in the old car salesman's joke: " You've got alloy wheel trims, surely you don't want an engine as well, sir". My frustration was/is multiplied by both the outstanding qualities of PagePlus and the inability of Affinity to load PagePlus files as editable text. I can't even use PagePlus as backup (please, lord, do not scratch my backup PPX9 CD!) until Affinity is ready. I don't believe these omissions can be rationally justified. I'm 100% with you @MJWHM

But I don't WANT really clever functions: as a "hobbyist" I want the basics without which I can't produce a book. I appreciate Patrick Connor saying that they are working on it. But I am left with the lingering concern that the scarce resources are being diverted to create more, very clever, features. Features which are nice, but which aren't crucial to the creation of a publication. How long have Serif been working on Publisher? - well, I'm going to assume it includes the entire time they have been developing PagePlus. So quite a long time. Development staff? - the functions that are being requested are basic and may well have been covered in degree syllabuses (or is it 'syllabii'?). Finally, it's difficult being so critical - their business model (as seen by a user) is laudable, their admin excellent and their determination to listen to feedback almost unique.

PUBLISHER - to me, that means building chapters out of text & tables, graphics and images then stitching them together in any order and generating Tables of Contents, Indexes, References (Footnotes) and finally a BOOK. That doesn't require clever text and object manipulation - that's what Designer is for. It doesn't require clever image manipulation - that's what Photo is for. It does, I submit, require fairly sophisticated means of importing text & tables from a range of source applications, a means of laying out these objects (such as Fit Text to Frame), building Chapters, Tables of Contents, Indexes, References (Footnotes) and finally producing a BOOK. This book must be capable of being exported in an equally sophisticated range of formats. It does not require pen tools, object manipulation, photo editing tools - though I'm not saying they are not on my "nice to have" list. So how do we score Publisher out of ten? How do we score PagePlusX9 out of ten?

This is getting boring😐 ..... "LIKE PAGEPLUSX9"😀 DUH!

Thanks Lagarto - I've just spent an hour trying to find the Envelope command in Designer. I couldn't believe it wasn't there somewhere. You have restored my faith in me 😬

MJWHM - we appear to have similar approaches. I share your disappointment, maybe exaggerated because PPX9 was so good that I expected AP to start where it finished. I have twice tried to transfer to AP but hit basic brick walls and reverted to PP. In each case AP has failed on a universal function which I hadn't checked because it so obviously had to be there (ASSUMING makes ASSES of ME and YOU😐). I wonder why Serif can't reverse engineer the code from PP - is it a licensing problem? Likewise, why does the list of import file formats ignore PP? I feel its like Microsoft saying that WORD2010 cannot read WORD2007 file formats. It just wouldn't be acceptable. And there is so much which is so good ..... I'm one frustrated bunny with a raft of InDesign & PP manuals/books with nowhere to go, and a potential perfect long-term home if if simply did the basics.

I contributed to this thread about 100 (sic!) pages ago. Like so many others I simply do not understand why such basic functions have been left out. I might feel better if Serif had some sort of explanation. Together the Apps include a huge range of features, many esoteric, many using concepts that I didn't even know existed. I read the daily questions and am amazed at the intellectual prowess shown by the respondents. I wonder how they ever FOUND the function, never mind understood it and found a use for it.. I've been using DTP software for decades and am still way behind in my understanding of the possibilities of the Affinity apps. So, yes, lots of praise and incredulity. But I don't understand why Serif hasn't prioritised something as basic as Footnotes/Endnotes nearer the top of the list. As 'sfriedberg' says, there are lots of "must have" topics in the forum and a roadmap can be counter-productive. But that's not the point. It is why Footnotes are so far down the road. I'm feeling that putting Footnotes way way way down the priority list is a bit like says "we'll deal with files of more than 50K in Phase xx" (where xx is a large number!). Or "you can only use the pica font until next year but you do have 14 different ways of aligning it to a baseline grid". In mathematical terms, the Apps solve complex (imaginary) equations - but occasionally can't deal with (x+1)(x-1) Please somebody explain !!!

Wash my mouth out - but this is one area where Microsoft Office's Quick Access Toolbar has got it right. LOTS of icons and lots of personalisation. If I have this right, that is what Andy is asking for - and I (and lots of others) are 100% with him. But let's not get personal😯

Absolutely! I have a 250pp book with the usual mix of file formats linked to the pages in 10 separate files. It was produced in InDesign. Now in its tenth edition, indexing and -reindexing is easy because multiple files can be 'booked' and a composite ToC and Index can be created. Not unlike PagePlus😬 I can't see how to do that in Publisher. If somebody can show me how, I will be able to make good use of the remaining Lockdown period 🙂

Ditto and Ditto to Jowday too!

Sorry fellas - as a veteran (got my first microcomputer in mid-1970s) PC user I sometimes (actually quite often these days) forget there is another OS - Bananas?, Pears? ........ Apple! I get particularly forgetful when the conversation appears to be about Mirrors? ... Windows! So apologies for my ignorance of the opposition.

You're welcome, Nick. Maybe another couple of points worth noting (which means that I have learned the hard way and through the help of the forum) are that: 99% of the commands are synchronised across the three Apps. (Publisher, Designer, Photo) - which makes it particularly galling when you hit the 1% which isn't sync'd🤬 sometimes there is an industry standard way of doing something, common for decades across all platforms, and Serif decide to create a new one.😠. Don't tear out too much hair.

Hi Nick, You will find that there is very little you can't do with Affinity ... it's just that it has its own way of doing it 😐. It has a huge user base of very expert people who Serif seem determined to satisfy. Thus, whilst another App might be able to (say) Save As a short list of formats, Affinity has another stack of sub-formats under each format and 'Save As' doesn't cut it. This can leave simpletons like me, who just want to save a PNG somewhat discombobulated! As a casual user of about 3 years, I am still finding Affinity commands which seem to have been deliberately hidden: such as 'Export' instead of 'Save As'. It's worth persevering and keep using the forums - but, as Gary says, do change your forum name.

Re-installation fixed it. I hadn't mentally registered that one clicked the Field NAME and not Field VALUE - thanks for that. But I had been clicking on NAME as well as VALUE on the basis that the more clicks one makes the better the chance of a reaction😀

Hi Walt, Nope - not for me! With the Text>Insert approach, I have (in the time since posting) discovered that everything works except the <more> option. This loads the Fields panel - which doesn't work. So I can insert page numbers, dates etc. but not File names or Paths. The View>Studio approach loads the Frames panel - where nothing works! The world won't end, but it would be nice to know if others are having the same trouble. The fact that there have been no replies to your post of June 19 suggests I might have a special feature😬

I've just tried to insert a Field for the first time. I assume it was working for you, Walt, last year? Neither View>Studio>Field> double click nor Text>Insert>.. are working. I'm using Publisher 1.8.3.641

Sometimes the brilliant can be the enemy of the good. I am bowled over by some of the ideas ... but, for starters, I would be happy with a simple Footnote. That is , tag a word and create a footnote frame on the same page. If editing moves the tagged word onto another page, the Footnote frame also moves to that page. Or have I not understood the difficulty of creating such an option? OK it would be nice to have a simple Endnote as well!

GarryP asks the right questions about the meaning of BASIC but I think Serif are already there - it's just that one or two tiny links in the chain are missing. I have been using Serif software for a decade or two and have always found the same problem in the training material - a few minor, perhaps trivial, yet utterly essential procedures are left out. The tough stuff is always well presented, perhaps because the author recognises it as 'tough'. Some of the trivial is omitted, perhaps because it is 'obvious'; perhaps it takes up space/time which is "needed" to explain the intricacies of something really clever. There is a lot of clever stuff in the Affinity range! The YouTube tutorials are likewise, in my opinion, 99.9% excellent, but occasionally I get the feeling that the presenter doesn't want to insult the intelligence of the audience - and the mouse flicks across a control which is henceforth unknown and undiscoverable to the beginner. The entire tutorial from that point onwards becomes pointless! Believe me, beginners' intelligences cannot be insulted😁 I have always sensed that Serif's User Testing is done by people who are conversant with the material - and have been guilty of saying this to Serif over the previously-mentioned decades! User Testing, axiomatically I suggest, needs to be done by people like Moshooter who are NEW to the software.

Exactly, wonderings!!! - YES, JUST "PLACE" THE F******G THING. What gets me is the fact that AfPub's predecessor did the job perfectly. In fact, so well does it do it that I have been avoiding investigating of AfPub for a year or more. Serif's claim that "the best way to import WORD is to create a PDF and open that in AfPub" has somewhat misled me into believing that "if it didn't work it must be me"🤔 I should have known better having experienced some of its other foibles. On the other hand, AfPub el al do a lot of things very well, especially the more esoteric stuff - and with so many options! Corresponding with you guys is really helpful. Anyway, it's all good practise while we are locked down.

That's really helpful Wonderings, and saves me a load of effort. You have also confirmed my "gut feel" about WORD and my decision (which I re-affirm about every six months as I find a new "feature" in Publisher that defies my logic) to stick to InDesign & PPX9 for production material and AfPub for practise. Shame - I have a 200 page book about to go into its tenth edition which I had been hoping to transfer from InDesign to AfPub. KEEP SAFE EVERYONE