Cineman

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.

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).

Posted inclusion of Margin sync lock and Bleed + sync lock in a request as well. Seen it at least one other thread too. Hopefully they get to this prior to the release. Seems like the type of features they should be able to add relatively easily.

I put the same thing in a different request about ways to improve the New Document dialog. Margin sync lock + bleed settings with sync lock were 1 and 1a.

Yep. Should be a single key available by default that hides every type of visual aid or guide that is not a part of the content. Tap key a second time to bring back the working view. I use this constantly and would be pretty frustating to have to replace it with multiple menu options and shortcuts. Please set up a global / catch-all setting for this.

I agree this would be useful, epsecially in a find-and-replace context where you want to find lingering characters, punctuation, other items of a specific font that are left over from a previous font that has been changed everywhere else. Basically "find every character that is still using this font and weight and replace it with this font and weight (or neighboring font and weight).

Agree. This would be a useful addition.

For consistency, I think display of the text wrap controls should be the same as the wrap outline editor. The icons and functions should appear across the same area at the top of the screen when the button is clicked. Alternatively, offer them as a sidebar panel group in a future relase (all the wrap functions). My main concern is two-fold: 1) InDesign users expect to find them in panels. This isn't a "rule" necessarily but... 2)... it's confusing then when you search elsewhere and find them tied to not one UI modality but two (modal dialog for one set, options bar for the other). Pick one method of displaying these functions / group them so that there is one spot users are returning to with the mouse, etc. And BTW, the Wrap Outline Edit functionalities? WOW. What an awesome idea. A lot of deep funtionality there so lots to learn / a little daunting but that is a fantastic idea. I will use that all the freaking time. Thank you Affinity!

Hi. The following basic functionalities are definitely needed prior to release / would be obvious oversights IMO: 1. Set the number of pages in the document. 2. Under Include Margins, add a "sync lock" widget so changing one value changes them all. 3. Add Page Bleed section, have it behave same as margins including a sync lock. One thing I really like: all the International Paper presets. InDesign doesn't do this by default. Retrieve margin from printer also a cool concept but haven't tested it yet.

Been scanning through last dozen or so pages to catch up; looks like no additional sneak-peaks since December but hopefully we'll get a beta in the next couple months. As someone who uses InDesign on a regular basis to make a living, it's a little disappointing that INDD / IDML import wasn't a "Release 1 feature," but I understand it's a complex undertaking to get it right. I'm not even sure Adobe has gotten it right yet. It's obvious release 1 is more about setting a foundation for the future than grabbing InDesign converts to the cause, and that's OK. Can grab the coverts later when it's a more stable, full-featured app. InDesign today is a good document layout and design application, with a set of features that's already about as deep as it needs to be. Certainly miles ahead of Quark or PageMaker in their best days. Where it falls short (aside from Adobe's stupid licensing scheme) is performance and stability with larger documents, and ease-of-use when it comes to simple things like renumbering text across multiple pages or sections, and having a dictionary system that isn't dumb as a brick. Too many visits to InDesign Secrets to find an obscure workaround to things that shouldn't require workarounds. But I'm OK sticking with it for another year+ until AP is a more mature product. However for the second major release, there is no justification for me — and I would guess for many others — to buy Publisher until such time as we can open INDD or IDML files with it, and reliably work with the content in those files to re-save as AP format. PDF import won't cut it because — unless Serif can work some magic I can't currently foresee — all the text flow information, paragraph and character style information, object editability, etc is lost. Put another way: PDF is basically a "low IQ" container format. Doesn't really matter what app you're using, working backward from a rendered PDF to get back to a "live source document" type setup, is a PITA. I wouldn't even contemplate that workflow, I'd just wait until there was proper InDesign import available. Beyond that I think most of what I'd look for is already planned for 1.0? Something akin to master pages Simple TOC creation and style editing (another area where InDesign is needlessly complex) Robust pagination and sectioning options with easy access to change same Standard vector toolset for creating custom paths and shapes that can define content flow + graphic clipping Robust Stroke / Gradient / Fill / Transparency options Round-trip editing (right-click graphic, go to app, edit, save come back, change is shown) PSD, TIFF, AI, native Photo files, native Designer files Intelligent text flow and text wrap options Robust character and paragraph editing / style setup options (including robust kerning, support for all major font types, etc) Easy options for changing default bullet and numbering (and their style options), anywhere on any page. Robust find-replace (by selection, page, document) Robust font replacement / automation Intelligent dictionary that actually learns WTF I tell it to learn more than 50% of the time. Strong PDF export options for print and web browsers That would be a pretty good start. Anything past that is gravy for my workflow. Things I can wait for: Robust table support Very long document support (as in 100s of pages) Automation stuff Things I couldn't care less about: Converting print design documents into web pages or iPad books. If I need to build web pages I use the right tool, ditto iPad books. Turning Publisher into an Illustration program / with similar toolset so you don't have to go into an illy program (bad idea) probably others i can't think of

I should add that Hitfilm is not a replacement for After Effects either based on what I've read. It appears to be (more or less) a hybrid between a Final Cut Pro X type editor and Motion, with a few extras like Mocha tracking. A jack of all trades but master of none. With those apps, much of the ability to customize effects and other aspects has been swapped for a cleaner UI and ease of use. If you're newer to video and trying to crank out nice looking productions periodically, FCP X + Motion or HitFilm are probably more than enough. If you're trying to build effects from scratch into a video stream, to maximize realism and render quality, probably not the way to go. Premiere Pro and After Effects would be a better choice for 2D / 2.5D work. That said if you're chiefly an illustrator / graphic designer and use AD, and only occasionally do video work, AND one of those other two solutions supports native .af files, then I wouldn't think twice about skipping After Effects.

While ultimately the artist is the biggest factor and I begrudge no one their favorite tools, Motion is in no way, shape or form comparable to After Effects in terms of the scope of effects and animations it can create, the ecosystem of plugins available, or overall power. That said AE is going through some growing pains right now as the various display engines and other technologies are re-written over a multi-cycle period (getting close to the end though — all that's missing is multi-threading now). The reason I came to this forum is that I find Illustator to be mostly an inscrutable mess of an application. It's very powerful but slow in places and differicult to learn. Also their system of layers and lack of history management sucks. That being said, the ability to import native, layered AI files and artboards into AE and then be able to quickly animate individual elements in a composition, is really important to motion designers. AFAICT there is no current workflow within Affinity Designer that would allow this, and as their people have noted the AI export thing isn't going to happen because Adobe closely controls that file format. Exporting to SVG or other "multiple files per composition" workarounds would be a giant PITA / time suck for most designers. EPS is also not a valid workaround as it lacks transparency support, color blend support and other stuff that is supported by the modern AI format. It's been long ago abandoned by many artists for a reason. The other solution (After Effects accepting .af files) is no more likely than AI export because frankly Adobe doesn't want to provide a solution for a competing product. Sucks because Affinity Designer is a much more intuitive looking program than AI and nearly as powerful in many areas. For what I do it would be perfect but unfortunately no solution in sight. If your primary workflow involves After Effects, I would not recommend Affinity Designer unless Adobe miraculously agrees to support the native format.