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Brilliant observation! I was going crazy trying to figure out how to manually enter '⌘+' in the keyboard shortcuts for all three apps, but using the + key on the numeric keypad on my full-sized Apple Aluminum keyboard works for that. Interestingly but still a bit weirdly, in APub using CMD and the keypad + key works in table cells, whereas CMD and the usual + key in the number keys row does not, so that is a bug. Just guessing but I imagine they are using key code conversion charts to detect which non-modifier keys are pressed & left out the code for the + key in the number keys row in the beta ... maybe?

Am I correct in thinking that the big problem with licensing the preflight/passthrough/whatever technology from Adobe (or callas or whoever owns it) is the per seat license cost is too high to offer it in Affinity Publisher without substantially increasing the app's purchase price?

Maybe so, but as things are now, I find it waaaay to confusing to even consider testing this in the beta. A video tutorial might help with that, but even so I have some doubts about if this implementation is the way to go.

This is weird. On U.S. English Apple keyboards, this is how the 2 keys are configured: Thus, normally '+' is entered by holding down the Shift key while tapping the "=" key, while '-' is entered just by tapping the '-' key. But in Affinity Designer & Affinity Photo, the default zoom in shortcut shows as '⌘+' (both in the View menu & in Keyboard Shortcut preferences) & works without having to hold down the Shift ('⇧') key. In Affinity Publisher beta that does not work in a table cell, so this seems to be a bug. But the really weird part is in all three apps, if I try to set the "Zoom In" shortcut manually in Keyboard Shortcut preferences to '⌘+' without holding down the Shift key, that doesn't work. I get '⌘=' instead, more or less what I would expect to be normal for U.S. English Apple keyboards. If I do hold down the Shift key, I get '⌘⇧=' and that works everywhere in all 3 apps, as does '⌘=' if I set the shortcut to that.

As @Old Bruce mentioned earlier, if you try to open an APub file in Designer or Photo, you should get a descriptive 'failed to open' message something like this one: I am not sure why you were not.

I must have reversed the shortcuts for zooming to 800% & to selection in Designer for some forgotten reason, because according to the online help for Designer they should be the same as for the other apps. I am not too concerned about that because they all can be customized, or about the three missing rotation actions in APub, since they are popup right-click contextual menu items in all three apps. What I would most like to see is the same relative menu item order within the 'show' & 'manager' groups in all 3 apps (& hopefully APub's '"Hide All Guides" added to the 1.7 versions of the others), & in the same menu positions relative to the Studio menu item. I would also like to see Photo's two separate "Clip Canvas" & "Unclip Canvas" menu items changed to a single toggling "Clip to canvas" item like in the others, even though it is on the Document menu in that app. Basically, I am in favor of anything that makes the menu item order more consistent among the three apps.

I never really compared the View menus for Affinity Designer & Affinity Photo side-by-side until I started testing the Affinity Publisher beta, but now that I have done that for all 3 apps, it seems like now, before the retail APub app & the 1.7 updates are released, would be a good time to consider making that menu's items & default keyboard shortcuts more consistent across all 3 apps. For comparison, this is what they look like side-by-side now on my Mac (with a few of my custom keyboard shortcuts included):

It is there on the Mac version as part of the status bar as well, & includes a button to toggle between master & layout pages (same as the default CMD+M shortcut). I don't see anything inherently problematic with being able to select both master & layout pages (because that can save a step when using the duplicate or trash buttons). The real problem is the selection outline obscures the grey 'current page' outline so apart from the status bar it can be overly hard to tell which is the current page. Worse, on Macs the selection outline can be any color (including the same shade of grey as the current page outline !!) because it is a system-wide setting in System Preferences (General > Highlight Color). So what I would like to see is a larger 'current page' outline that is always visible around the outside of the page icon even when it is among the selected, & please please please make it something that will provide higher contrast with the panel background than a medium grey, like nearly 100% white for the dark UI & nearly 100% black for the light UI.

Is there some reason you can't use the Color Studio panel for this? Just like in the other Affinity apps, the Opacity slider in that studio has a field next to it where you can enter the % directly.

The only place I found per user APub preference is in the ~/Library/Application Support/Affinity Publisher Beta folder. But there must be other app prefs (maybe not per user ones?) stored somewhere else because if I delete that entire folder, as you say, quite a few preferences are not reset to factory defaults. This is different from Affinity Photo & Affinity Designer, which store per user prefs at paths ~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto/Data & ~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinitydesigner/Data, respectively, & deleting those folders does restore everything to factory defaults.

Which Library folder did you delete the prefs folders from? Since they are per user preferences, the ones in your home folder's Library/Applications Support folder are the ones you would have to delete.

It may not be obvious, but there are several ways that it can. One is to navigate to the app in the Applications folder, right click & hold on its icon to get the context menu pop-up, press the Control key, & release the button over the "Open" item in that contextual menu. Another is to use the Launchpad app. My favorite is to keep the Affinity app icons in the Dock for quick access (& drag & drop opening of any supported file type). With the app icon there, you can click & hold on it until the contextual menu pops-up, press the Control key, & like with the Application folder method, release the button on the "Open" item in that menu.

Deleting added swatches works fine for me, but what does not work is deleting an entire palette I added as a document palette.

Internally, the Affinity apps always use very high precision math, around 6-8 decimal places (internally the math is binary so the decimal equivalent is approximate), which among other things makes it possible for them to support irrational numbers with a very high level of precision. The user preference just sets how many decimal places are displayed in numeric fields.

Unfortunately, dealing with color management issues is unavoidable, in large part because some apps ignore color profiles completely, some substitute a 'default' profile (which may or may not be user selectable), some hand off all color management to the OS & do nothing at the application level, & so on.

You may be thinking about Steve Jobs' public criticism of the Adobe Flash platform in his 2010 "Thoughts on Flash" open letter and/or the media attention focused on the many security updates Adobe has issued over the years to patch various of its vulnerabilities, some of them quite serious. Flash is just a small part of Adobe's software products (& Adobe itself is ending support for it in 2020) -- Apple does not, nor has it ever, discouraged the use of Adobe's other products like Photoshop, Acrobat, Illustrator, & so on.

From Latest Affinity releases on each platform by store, the most recent Mac version of Affinity Designer is 1.6.1 (or 1.6.3 PK if you got the special "product key" version). The 1.6.5 versions (if that is what you mean) are for Windows & will not work with the Mac OS.

The first time I tried the download, it stalled after a few minutes & would not resume. I eventually canceled the attempt, deleted the partial download, & tried again from a fresh start. It then downloaded quickly. I think it was a combination of canceling & deleting on my part plus a lot of luck in hitting the server when it was not overloaded on the second try that did it. Maybe that will work for you too....

Monday bump....

Thanks for all the fixes. Just wondering if the Assets CMYK fix appearing twice in the OP is an oversight or if one of them was supposed to be something else.

I just noticed my sig needs updating, but yes I am running 10.13.6 (& the current build 58 version of APub). Anyway, when I opened your filler text apub document, I noticed this in the Language > Spelling section of the Character panel: Change that to one of the English choices & see if that makes any difference.

You might also consider updating to the current High Sierra version (10.13.6).

Since it does for me, maybe resetting the app will make it work for you as well. Also, what OS version or you using? That might explain the difference.

If you change the text language to English (either UK or US) in the Character panel, your saved default filler text should work fine, or at least it does on my Mac (specs below in my sig).