Cineman

OK I think I follow. I can see how that would be useful. Maybe what they can do is set this up as a preference. Default behavior = what it is now if that's what most people want, option to set it to "Immeditely set up new page and flow text into it" as the default.

TOCs and TOC formatting (leaders etc) is one area where InDesign's process frustrates the hell out of me to the point I stopped using it and manually set up TOCs (which isn't much better but at least is predictable). Looks like the TOC panel in this verison of the Publisher is still a WIP (not easy to see how it works just by looking at it / trying to apply things to selected text), but this is an area where Affinity should spend a lot of time if needed to create a really robust but simple-to-use TOC system. This is an area where they can stand out and innovate IMO.

Interesting approach. Can you give an example of after setting the break, where you'd need to refer back to the other text? Usually I don't know I need or set a break until I realize the last of what I want to say isn't going to fit in the space alloted and so as soon as I set the break I go to the next page I finish off the text there. Open to new workflows but trying to understand the context of when this method would be better than just having the new page immediately set up and taking cursor focus. Also I still think adding that last shift-click makes it more mouse targeting than it should be. First you have to menu surf to find the command then back to the frame and mouse-target the link icon thing. I dunno. It's not bad the way it is per se but seems more complicated than it should be. Maybe once I understand the intent better it'll make more sense.

I didn't say we weren't in the civilized world I said it's one area we lag behind the rest of the civilized world (adoption of metric), and FWIW that applies to many many things not just computer driven layouts or documents. Also I'm not advocating for use of inches (imperial units) but against it. If you'd like a few very sound reasons why citing those 330 million people doesn't mean much, let me know and I'll send you the answers via private message. As to Picas, I don't mean to suggest it shouldn't be implemented — I have no objection — only that I'm surprised it's still used so much (apparently). Are most of you asking for Picas using that for long-form documents like books, or all forms?

Yes, that worked, however if that's what's required to make page break function, then the function itself is less useful than it should be and less familiar relative to how other apps use Page Breaks. The Page Break function should be smart enough to know that it has to create the new page and text frame, and flow the text after the cursor insertion point into the new page and frame automatically. We don't always know how many pages we're going to need or when we'll need to break up text like this. To always have to set up extra pages and frames in advance, so that we can use a Page Break, somewhat defeats the purpose of the function. At least as I've used it over the years and I suspect others.

Nope. If I do this: 1. Create new doc 2. Add text box, fill with filler text 3. Create new page 4. Place cursor somewhere in the filler text then attempt page break, the text just moves one line down the original page. I've tried other things like spanning the text box down to the next page or adding a new empty text box to the next page, but the break never does what you expect. Really the only way a Page Break makes sense as a usable feature is if you don't have to set up a bunch of other stuff first to use it, IMHO. But possibly I have a preference or setting somewhere that needs to be changed. Even there though if this function depends on settings elsewhere, it's not obvious this is the case.

Disclaimer: it is possible Affinity set this function up to work differently than any other page break function I've used, so someone correct me if I'm missing something. Expected: you create a page with one or more columns of text, you insert the cursor where you want the page break to occur, you choose Text > Insert > Page Break, and the result is a new page that starts with the text that appeared after the insertion point. What actually happens: you follow the above steps but get what appears to be a line break or maybe a section break instead. No new page is created and none of the text after the cursor is moved down to the new page. That said there are a lot of break functionalities in this menu so possibly the intent or required setup is different. I tried creating a second page first and then doing a page break but even there the text after the insertion point did not move down to the new page. I've tried some of the other break types and the thing they all have in common is there doesn't seem to be any visual indicator for what has happened other than the text moving down a few spaces.

I'll report it. Thought about doing so when i originally tested it but wasn't sure if it was user error or an actual bug. Thanks for confirming. Here's the bug report. Worst case we find out it's working but the workflow is different than what we're used to / get some guidance from Affinity on how it's supposed to work.

ePUB / Kindle / iPad Books export settings will be useful and important but I would be OK with it if they left it to v2.0 / second major release, unless they're going to have a much easier time getting all of these basics into initial release than I think. That is for release 1 they should focus on adding all the core features that allow someone to control the setup and look of a document, which are either currently half-baked or missing. A quick look at the New File dialog and an attempt to import copy from various word processor formats should give a good idea of what I mean. Then for release 2 really hammer on the import/export aspect of things. Get IDML import working, get ePUB and Kindle export working, etc. Put another way, it's making sure the first release has all the core tools we need to control the way a page looks. Then build out from there. It won't matter much what import or export options we have if it's a pain the neck to do simple design layout tasks that we can do in other apps.

Are you asking if they could make their own photo book templates and tie it to a publishing service? Seems like a "far future" possibility but honestly there are so many photo hosting and publishing services out there now it might just be better for them to partner with one, the partner provides some AP templates that show up in some future update, maybe a upload panel or something once the book is proofed. But it's not a bad idea, just a niche idea so might take a while for them to first get all the core functionalities in the app people are asking for like .doc/.docx import, INDD or IDML import, bleed controls, etc etc. Things that every professional layout app have as a core feature set should come first IMHO.

I have to work with CAD files sometimes. Royal PITA. Would never want to deal with CAD files directly in AP or AD if I could avoid it, but if I had no other choice I agree the more logical workflow is open them in Illustator or AD, convert it to a workable raster or vector (2D) format, and import that into the layout. Really though you should use the CAD app (or the engineer should) to create raster images / renderings to your specifications (camera angle, material quality / surface quality, resolution, profile, etc), rather than trying to build a conversion kludge inside AD or especially AP.

People still use Quark? I thought app died in obscurity (more or less) once InDesign reached a decent level of maturity (around version 3 maybe). I remember when 1.5 was out and people were going nuts / so excited to find any excuse they could to drop Quark because of Adobe's type engine and other reasons. They were on a pretty good roll there right up until the dev team got out-sourced. Adobe went overboard with that in several areas.

It's amazing to me picas are still this widely used and needed. Especially in places other than the US I would've thought cm and mm + points would easily be the units of choice. I'm curious (never having needed them for the documentation I publish), what is the #1 reason people need picas vs. points. Something to do with the type of document and the machine it gets printed on? PS - I hope one day the US wakes up and goes metric like the rest of the civilized world. We're not in good company in this respect, being one of three countries left on earth that don't use metric and the other two being not what you'd call "leaders" in any respect.

If you set up a new page, add a text container and set it to two columns, insert placeholder text, insert cursor at a certain point then use the page break setup above, does it split the page correctly and create a new one, or does it create no page and split only the column where the insertion point is?

It doesn't work properly yet (or at least not how I'm used to page breaks working in other apps — namely that it stops at the insertion point and adds a new page that starts with the content that follows said insertion point), but Text > Insert > Page Break is probably the intention to have exactly the function you describe. [Clearly (being new to affinity) I'm missing something here. It looks like the different break option behaviors are modified or controlled by the Flow Options section in the Paragraphs panel? Even there it doesn't seem to set up the breaks or new pages in the way I'd expect, based on usage of other apps. Then again I don't use breaks very often in InDesign, more just standard column and text flow from page to page.]

Good deal. I agree with this as unless you're already used to Affinity apps, there's a lot of stuff hidden in there that you wouldn't look for coming from Adobe. Some things need to be broken out into other areas entirely. Like Find and Replace... that panel needs to be accessible from the Edit menu because nearly every other app I know that uses this function, places it in the Edit menu. That may not be part of Apple's HUI guideliness (not sure) but it's a sort of defacto standard IMO because devs have been placing find-related functionality there for so long.

Yep. Sync lock needed both for Margin controls and Bleed controls (once added). Also page numbering. None of these things are in the New Document dialog. All need to be for first release IMO.

Agree. There are a lot of duplicate items being posted. Even when I ran searches and checked 4-5 pages worth I still ended up duplicating some suggestion because they were worded slightl different / used different terminology. Two things would be useful here from Affinity: 1. Sticky list of all features not present now but which are likely to make it into the initial release OR shortly after initial release. And from there they can remove posts that bring these topics up. People will get the drift pretty quick / I don't think people will have an issue with it. It's tough to find stuff right now. The pages scroll constantly. 2. The moderator needs to start combining some threads for features being requested a lot but not a certainty to make it in the first release.

The sooner the better. This is a nuts-and-bolts level feature for any layout app.

Right, what I'm saying though is right now they're "separate but identical" in terms of what can be selected, and the only mode is the "see every option available" mode. But on the other hand I prefer panels to modal dialogs (of which I think this first incarnation of the app has too many). Maybe the answer is a customizable Find and Replace panel where we can select the controls we want visible on the panel, possibly even saving "panel presets" depending on the workflow. So my default might show a font, font style, and font color option while yours might show a bullet style, a caps style, and a font color. What each of us finds and replaces most commonly would be different but letting us choose our default controls means none of us have to drill down (most of the time) when we use this. That's assuming eventually all the things listed can actually be found and replaced. I'm sure there are some bugs.

Disagree with the OP's premise and complaint. Most people who design long-form documents and other copy-heavy content for a living do not "word process" inside the layout application. They write the long blocks of copy in a Word Processor (or someone else is writing it and handing the copy off) and then import them into the layout flow and work with the text from there to properly style it, etc. For short-form documents (a few paragraphs to maybe 1 page worth) I don't see many limitations here at all in terms of creating the text right in Publisher. All font, spacing, alignment, column, baseline and other core controls needed to create, style, and flow text are more or less front and center and work in the standard ways. And one of the more challenging aspects of any layout program — text wrap capabilities — are shaping up to be pretty fantastic and far beyond anything I've seen in InDesign for example. Things are not perfect, but anyone with a decent amount of design training and experience should be able to use this app (today) to create sharp-looking documents. The only obvious thing that's missing in terms of copy flow is .doc / .docx import but there are ways around that for now (but they do need to fix that ASAP). It's a beta so I would expect the import/export abilities will be one of the weak spots initially, and there are more modal dialogs than I'm used to in InDesign but overall this is a capable layout application for a 1.x product.

Thanks. I was looking for this in the usual place. Two things I would say to Affinity based on this implementation: there needs to be a way to access this panel from the Edit menu. It is standard practice across many apps to put find or find-replace commands in the Edit menu. People will look for it there, not in the view menu most likely. That is to say you can leave it as a panel (and accessible with all the others in View) but should be able to invoke it from both places IMO. At least as a default. If someone wants to simplify their edit menu and remove it later so be it. Second thing is very good depth of functionality by including a lot of options via Format dialog, but I wonder if it might be better to have two format modes for that dialog — Standard and Advanced. Advanced is what's there now (i.e. all options to sift through, takes longer but more precise). Standard is simply font, font style, and maybe font size. Click advanced button to see all the rest. Also I would consider adding the same three replace options in the same dialog, in that mode. Everything doesn't have to be as InDesign does it (otherwise we remake InDesign) but I do benefit from the simplicity of having a find font function that is only the simplest font parameters and the corresponding font replace options in a pop-up menu right below it. Very quick and accurate. Put another way: most of the time I use this function not to find specific kinds of glyphs, styles, bullets but just a font that I removed wholesale from the document but a find lines or characters get left behind and spotted on review.

FWIW I always use keyboard shortcuts for undo and redo; it's far more efficient than mouse-targeting buttons and clicking when you make a few changes, undo a few, make a few different ones, undo a few, etc.

Agree. Important feature.

Bumping this for mods. Saw at least two other threads with same point about margin sync lock and adding bleeds. Maybe we can merge these into this thread since this one also contains a page number / quantity request? Get everyone talking about it in the same place (or as much as possible — only gone back about 6 pages).