PatrickOfLondon

Likewise. I can understand why Serif / Affinity discontinued Page Plus X9 while they were hoping that Affinity Publisher would replace it in the market, but as AP still has not done so in certain functional areas, why not offer PP X9 as an old and unsupported but still viable alternative for certain types of user. When it became a legacy product it was on sale for about £20. Sell it at the same price as Affinity Publisher if you are fearful of taking too much away from Affinity Publisher sales — but at least offer it, while it still does the things that Affinity Publisher cannot do.

I just have to say, whenever I read someone praising PagePlus like this, I just have to echo the sentiment. Affinity Publisher still cannot match it for the three characteristics you mentioned.

Your point is well made and well understood.
But at least the modern motorcycle still has a braking system, just like the old bicycle did – and probably an even more effective one...
it hasn't completely thrown away its braking system, in the process of becoming "new".
Anyway, that's enough moaning from a nostalgic PPX9 user. Let's hope November 9th brings enough benefits and features to keep (most) people happy.
☺️

Your point is well made and well understood.
But at least the modern motorcycle still has a braking system, just like the old bicycle did – and probably an even more effective one...
it hasn't completely thrown away its braking system, in the process of becoming "new".
Anyway, that's enough moaning from a nostalgic PPX9 user. Let's hope November 9th brings enough benefits and features to keep (most) people happy.
☺️

I had PagePlus from a very early iteration, and it usually did what I wanted. But there is a significant difference - the facilities that existed in the most recent version of PP had gone through development by Serif and therefore one might reasonably hope that the ideas and methods might make it easier to adopt them in any new software. The actual programming may be different, but the logic for a particular feature must be the same, surely? If we know that the way to do a particular job is t adjust x or y then it should be  transferable skill. I think the problem has been or is that the company may think that the only significant form of publication is either magazine-style or e-publication. I hope I am wrong, but in truth I have lost a lot of my faith in them and I have backed them since before 2008 (as far back as my emails go).
 

Exactly the same place as me. Having tried to get to grips with Affinity Publisher, I have returned to and remained with PagePlus for the very reasons you eloquently describe.

Sadly, I can readily empathise with those sentiments, particularly about intuitiveness, and the subtle difference between (a) how a user might think of approaching something, and (b) how software might make it possible to achieve it, if indeed it does at all. Everyone has his or her own individual experience and expectations of using software. For some people, no doubt Affinity Publisher meets their needs excellently. My own experience echoes MJWHM’s.
In my case, wanting to produce relatively uncomplicated documents, I came to Serif PagePlus, around 10 years ago, from Microsoft Publisher. In making that transition, I found the learning curve very steep and arduous, but in the end, it was worth it, because I found PagePlus so much richer in features and fine control over layout; and once you got used to it, it did feel reasonably intuitive.
So it was that I came to Affinity Publisher from PagePlus. I wish I could say the same things about my experience of that transition, but regrettably, I can’t.
I had expected a gentler and more gradual learning curve because the products were from the same company. But it has been neither particularly gentle nor particularly gradual, and much of the time it doesn’t seem worth continuing down the path, because to me, it seems so much more difficult or time-consuming to achieve what I want to do than it is in PagePlus.
I bought all three Affinity products because I wanted – and still want – to support a small, ambitious, innovative, British company, and also (of course) because I like the price and the purchase model, rather than a subscription model.
Affinity Photo is something I use frequently: I find it good value and effective, even if sometimes lacking something in intuitiveness. But for publications, I always still turn to PagePlus, and leave Affinity Publisher alone, gathering electronic dust. I do appreciate that this is a case of sticking to what you know rather than moving to a new place; but change can be good, if it makes life better. However, attempting to make the move from the predecessor to the newcomer doesn’t feel worthwhile, to me, for my purposes; not yet, anyway, and surely not for as long as footnotes and endnotes are missing.
How one fixes “intuitiveness” is an elusive concept, especially at this stage of the product’s development. But one continues to hope that fixing footnotes and endnotes, by making them available, might not be too far down the road, now.

I regard this thread as a platform that was established for people to record their surprise and discontent with the omission from Affinity Publisher of footnote and endnote features, and to ask whether they would be included eventually.
That degree of surprise and discontent, and that question, has already been registered many times by various contributors to the thread, and Serif / Affinity have responded by indicating that they are well aware of these sentiments, and that they will in due course be including the features in the product.
With that in mind, to me it is nugatory to keep on making the same fundamental point — "the product doesn't have these features, and we wish it did" — over and over again, from however many different angles.
I don't view the thread as a platform for parading my personality, or making personalised accusations about people "hiding behind other people's backs", or "suggesting some kind of censorship", or "dodging the question", or for creating the basis of "a coffee table book". For those who may wish so to use the thread, I will leave it to them to use their time in that way.
 
 
 
 
 
 

I admit my post was more terse than normal: it so happens I was writing from my phone, whereas I almost always write from a keyboard where I tend to be much more verbose.
Certainly I do not wish to “censor” anyone’s opinion. However, it is my opinion that we are getting to a point where not a whole lot is being served by further stating how much footnotes are needed, and what a shame it was that they were not included. It won’t change the past (to state the obvious), and as we already know that Serif is working on footnotes, it doesn’t seem that further comments will advance our cause any further.
Instead, my opinion is that it simple pushes back the posts that talk about the current status as we know it. New users pop on, usually won’t read every page (and who can blame them?), and see nothing but frustration on the last page, when it would be more helpful to see those posts indicating that even though footnotes are not here yet, they are on the way. So that is why I periodically remind that footnotes are on the way. Sometimes in the past, I have cited the posts from Serif that serve as the source of my claims, but after awhile—especially if I am typing from my thumbs—I just get lazy. I guess it may help to repost the latest official statements:
[The underline in the above quote was added by me, not by Patrick, to draw attention to the most pertinent point.]
 

I didn't infer any insinuation of "censorship" in garretm30's observations. I read them as merely a gently humorous reminder that the absence of the features in question, footnotes and endnotes, is already well known and well debated in this forum, so that continually making the same point in different ways becomes an arguably futile activity.
We all want Affinity Publisher to have the widest possible collection of features (and many of us continue to wish, currently in vain, that it could at least match the full set of features that PagePlus provided). We know, because Serif / Affinity have already told us on more than one occasion, that footnotes and endnotes will come along eventually. My present estimation is that "eventually" means in version 2.x.
Until then, when I need footnotes and endnotes, I will use a different product.

I didn't infer any insinuation of "censorship" in garretm30's observations. I read them as merely a gently humorous reminder that the absence of the features in question, footnotes and endnotes, is already well known and well debated in this forum, so that continually making the same point in different ways becomes an arguably futile activity.
We all want Affinity Publisher to have the widest possible collection of features (and many of us continue to wish, currently in vain, that it could at least match the full set of features that PagePlus provided). We know, because Serif / Affinity have already told us on more than one occasion, that footnotes and endnotes will come along eventually. My present estimation is that "eventually" means in version 2.x.
Until then, when I need footnotes and endnotes, I will use a different product.

... and to be boringly repetitive, the Serif package (PagePlus) that Affinity Publisher has replaced (for the benefit of Newbies!!), does it all extremely well.
Beautifully expressed Inspired Earth

Purely to extend the comparison...

garrettm30, thank you for this, reminding everyone that Serif / Affinity are already very well aware of the need for these features, and are going to introduce them, when they are confident that they are ready.

I had wanted to post the same point here yesterday, but couldn't find it — after having searched in vain for the phrase, as I mistakenly recalled it, "it will be worth the wait".

@Jim Slade Most of those features are things I normally would not expect to find in a typical word processor but rather in a quality layout app, which is of course what Publisher is aiming to be. Especially your very first item in your list is something I have been hankering for in Publisher for some time. But compared to word processors, such as the “king” MS Word, Publisher already does better work at justification, even though it is still on a line-by-line basis. Justification in word processors such as Word and Apple Pages is usually very simple: they also are line-by-line, but handle justification by inter-word spacing alone. Publisher has them beat by also allowing adjustments by letter spacing, not to mention the ability to tweak the values for both kinds of spacing. I have not really used any of the other word processors, but I never expect quality layout from them in the first place.
But as you suspected, this is getting quite off topic. But on the other hand, what more can we really say about footnotes than has already been said?
And on that note, to the newcomers to this thread, you may not be aware that we have already been told by Serif that footnotes are in development. Some of the recent discussion about how important footnotes are suggests to me that some of the participants in this thread were not yet aware of that fact. We do not need to convince Serif how important footnotes are, because they recognize it already, and are doing something about it.
Here are a couple of the relevant posts from earlier pages (and there are yet others besides):
 
[The underline in the above quote was added by me, not by Patrick, to draw attention to the most pertinent point.]
 

garrettm30, thank you for this, reminding everyone that Serif / Affinity are already very well aware of the need for these features, and are going to introduce them, when they are confident that they are ready.

I had wanted to post the same point here yesterday, but couldn't find it — after having searched in vain for the phrase, as I mistakenly recalled it, "it will be worth the wait".

I cannot see to which particular 'lots' you are referring, but put that aside.
Your own post is perhaps the result of so-called flaming. You may wish, for example, to edit out the casual racism, which adds nothing to a reasoned discussion.
The suggestion that people should not be 'bitching here' (also unnecessarily abusive) perhaps fails to accept the fundamental logic of the forum concept. They exist precisely so that people can express their views and in a forum provided by a service supplier this is in order to allow that supplier to feel the needs of his/her users. Some may not feel the need to use such elements as footnotes and/or endnotes, but clearly others do. I am not 'bitching here' because I have nothing better to do with my time. I have been using Serif products for so long that I cannot find the earliest use - certainly well before 2007 .
I am concerned that a firm, for which I have had nothing but admiration hitherto, has released into the market functional but half-baked products. I could accept that if they were still clearly identified as beta products, and the products they are intended to replace were still made available and supported. Perhaps the necessary expertise has been lost.
I want Serif to be effective and receptive to the needs of its existing user base as well as moving onwards and upwards. I want to be able to use Affinity products with the ease that I use their predecessors but this is not yet possible. 
And as the title for this particular thread is specifically about Footnotes/Endnotes, this is the right (and intended) place to push for action, surely? It was May when I first joined in: around the same time we were assured "Serif are currently in the process of implementing this. It needs to be done carefully, not just thrown in, and we do always have the issue of programming resources." Seven months is quite a long wait. My immediate requirement is ended, but for others it is ongoing.
And that is not to mention the question of finding a way to import PagePlus files .... And no, importing PDFs is not the answer before anyone suggests it. But this is not the place for that discussion.

100% agreed — and reminiscent of over a year ago...
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/65541-footnotesendnotes/&do=findComment&comment=536959
 

Yet, the fact remains that I can not use Affinity Publisher, (purchased for this project) to finish and publish my project and will continue to use the software I started with. I am a big supporter of Serif and have all their software before Affinity and will continue to wait, hope and monitor this discussion.

Patrick, just saw yours.... no more from me on PPX9.
 

Some more material that might, hopefully, help someone, somewhere.
The image attached was produced from the spreadsheet also attached, both of which seek to explain.
 

Page and Section field numbering tests 2019-06-24.afpub
Affinity Publisher Page numbering and Sections.xlsx

I can certainly appreciate the frustration, from people who need footnotes and endnotes, about their non-availability in Affinity Publisher at present.
I'd really like to see these features too.
However, I feel confident that they will appear, in the not-too-distant future, in an incremental version along the way. And there are alternative products I can use, if I absolutely must have endnotes and footnotes right now.
I'd like to add my thanks to all at Affinity / Serif for offering the marketplace this choice of products, at their price-point, alongside currently perhaps more feature-rich, but certainly much more expensive products from other companies.  Given that AfPub is currently on sale for a one-off price of 3.9 months' worth of a single-app Adobe subscription, I'm personally very happy with the value I'm getting at present, and hope to see enhancements in the future of the kind we've seen in the other Affinity products' evolution since launch.

Thanks to all for comments and contributions, and to MickRose for a solution.
If this could possibly, in a future release, become a one-click "feather" operation, that would be nice..... 

Thank you Alfred, for unearthing the not-quite-so-missing Affinity Cat.

In which case, I think there's a correction required to the Help entry for Cat, which says the Alt key is used.... but it's the Shift key that's required, instead.
 
Hoping a separator tool-tip will make it into the release version (for which things are now looking very good), or an early update to that.

The Cat Tool isn’t missing from the Shapes flyout, it’s (deliberately) hidden! To display this particular ‘Easter egg’, hold down the Shift key when you click on the tiny triangle.
I agree that the separator is crying out for a tooltip.