Medical Officer Bones

It's just missing an option to turn off the preview. If the developers add that option users can choose to either use it or not, depending on the job.

Agreed. I expected the second coming of [pick your prophet here] after all of Serif's marketing hoopla. The hoopla did not match reality, however.

Which is why I mentioned we cannot compare them directly. Yet I do see parallels between QuarkXpress and InDesign back then, and InDesign and Affinity Publisher now. Users were not unhappy with QXP, but rather with the company and its business practices at the time. Similarly, many Adobe users are quite happy using the software, but rather frustrated with Adobe's rental business model. Quark had all the bells and whistles while InDesign was lagging behind in key areas for many years. InDesign was patently unable to compete on features with QXP for quite a while (in some areas they still can't). Publisher has a broad set of features that compares quite well with the current version of InDesign despite only being on the market for 3 years. Much better in any case than the first three/four versions of InDesign compared to QuarkXpress. And no matter back in 1991 or now in the 2020s: development takes time. It's not a matter of merely throwing more developers at a project and expect faster development, because that is not how it works in practice. This comparison I made was merely to point out these three things. And compared to how long it took the InDesign devs to implement "we can't live without X or Y feature", I am actually quite amazed how far Publisher has progressed in a mere few years. Do I think the devs should focus more on base features that have been around and in use since the beginning of DTP? Yes, I do. But I expect them to get it right in the not-so-long term. Oh, they definitely are, even if Serif wouldn't be competing intentionally.

Oh, come now. Let's be realistic, and compare Publisher's development progress with InDesign: InDesign 1: Everything new! (1991) <--> Publisher R1: Everything New! (2019) Both were products developed from scratch by companies with a deep understanding and experience developing design software. Either first release lacked footnotes or book support. But Publisher R1 offers a wide range of features that were only introduced in InDesign by version 2 ~three years later in 2022: transparency, TOC, indexes, glyphs panel, tables - to name but a few things. And MANY features that are part of Publisher R1 only became available after years and years of development later in subsequent InDesign releases: multi-page PDF placing, bullets and numbering, dynamic spelling, IDML format, multiple page sizes in a single file, primary text frame, Hunspell dictionaries, anchored objects, data merging tools, doc info fields, hyperlinks (pdf), smart guides, effects, and so on and so forth. InDesign 2 <--> Publisher R2 InDesign became somewhat usable compared to QuarkXPress three years later. Rather lacking, but it was the first release that professional users (including myself) began testing the waters with. SO MUCH was missing compared to Publisher R2. But one thing InDesign 2 had going for it: OS X was supported. QXP only supported that OS much later, and it was one reason why Mac users installed it. The InDesign developers also inexplicably removed useful features such as SVG export in 2008 with CS4, however. (Publisher has been a gods' end in this regard: I have converted quite a few InDesign publications by opening the IDML, fixing a few things, and export the pages to SVG! 🙂 ) Version R2 of Publisher is a far more mature product compared to InDesign 2, 3, or even CS2 (which was released 8 years after version 1). I am aware it is not possible to compare the development cycles of the two programs directly. Affinity Publisher started development in a time when dev tools have become easier and more efficient to develop with. But still, to state that development is lagging or slow is rather out-of-touch with the realities of complex software development. In fact, I am quite impressed with what the Affinity devs have accomplished so far with Publisher. They are far ahead of the curve compared to InDesign's development cycle. All that said, I do agree that there are a few inexplicable omissions in Publisher that seem so foundational to publishing in general that prevent myself from using it - because I simply cannot produce a press ready PDF. My personal pet peeve is the lack of 1bit bitmaps and support to output these properly in a PDF. The lack of spreads beyond two pages is another one. And reflowable epub export would be grand. Yet as it is said: Rome was not built in a day. Neither was InDesign, and the same holds true for Affinity. Even though I cannot use Publisher yet for much of my work and still rely on InDesign, I position myself as a pragmatic person. I trust these issues will be tackled and solved in the not-so-long term. I am patient. And there is no need to flip over in anger over software or what could have been. (I continued to use QuarkXPress till 6-7 years later after InDesign's first release).

First post by a new member. My feeling about this post and the OP: merely rile things up and generate negativity.

I have noticed that the majority of negative and "disappointed will not upgrade" threads since V2 was released are all started by new accounts. There seems to be a recurring pattern: focus on a single missing feature that's been requested for a longer time or on the new Windows installation method. Or undermine the new features. Quite a few also mention they will not invest in v2 further and insist they are loyal, but disappointed users. Or "I am really interested, but..." then say they cannot purchase the software until that X feature, that the Y commercial option happens to have, is added. Or they mention they will not upgrade. "It's a promising release, but we should wait it out". "Why isn't feature X implemented yet! Outrageous!". All of them are thread starters. All seem focused on one thing: focusing on generating negative feelings about V2 and the Affinity products. And all of them are created by accounts that were set up by new accounts following the V2 release. Some use older accounts that were inactive for a long time. And these accounts often respond to other complaints if that thread is not gaining enough traction. If I were the moderators, I would investigate if a concerted attack is going on to undermine the v2 release. It seems rather suspicious. I thought about listing examples, but I think that it becomes quite obvious for moderators once spotted.

I question the usefulness of the PREVIEW window (perhaps excepting the PDF format and working with multiple pages). For example, in PhotoLine the regular document view is used to render a (full) preview (optionally in real time while adjusting the values) and the scroll wheel remains usable to zoom in and out. There is no need for a dedicated preview area in the export dialog in this case. And of course in Fireworks the export function is a dedicated main view.

Software is merely a tool. If it works for you: use it. If it does not, don't. Switch to a different tool or adjust your approach. A tool or company is not something to invest emotionally in. Appreciate them for what they do: sure. Become enraged and furious? Waste of time and energy. Redirect to positive and constructive thinking and emotions instead. Walk away from your computer and hug your spouse, offspring, pet, or that beautiful tree 🙂 (unless of course a company actively takes part in the wanton destruction of our beautiful Earth and/or causes suffering. Time to become enraged and do something about it...)

CS5 and CS6 were arguably two of the best releases. Efficient, stable, and great performance. I still have those installed as well. In comparison, the current state of much of the apps is in disarray. Photoshop CC 2023 is often a trial in patience to work in. Animate is a disaster area compared to the old Flash. Most of the CC apps are slow to work with, even on solid specced machines. That said, I still rely on InDesign. I had expected to have made the switch to Publisher 2, but the critical lack of 1bit image support prevents me from doing so. Such a shame.

I do apologize. My resistance to this meme proved to be futile.

This reads as if your very happiness in life depends on a piece of software. A very mature and balanced response. I noticed you created a new account to share your deeply felt outrage with this community.

Then you are lucky and privileged: because many pre-CS6 users have had no luck at all, even when they contacted Adobe. And you are proving my point: in the classic software business model older versions would continue to run (albeit on older operating systems and hardware). In any case this is only true for legacy pre-subscription Adobe users. Current subscribed users lose access to previous versions older than 2 releases.

I find some of these complaints in regard to update costs somewhat baffling. 8 years ago the first version of Affinity Designer was released. 7 years ago Photo. 3 years ago Publisher. Throughout that time customers received free updates and upgrades, and many new users purchased the software at a reduced special offer price. I am one of those. All the free updates actually made me feel I ought to ask Serif to charge me MORE, because the cost for V1 in relation to its functionality was always greatly in favour of its feature set. In short: very inexpensive for what was on offer. V2 is a new release of Affinity. It is offered again at small cost compared to other commercial alternatives. V1 continues to run and isn't 'taken away'. There is no subscription. Unlike companies such as Adobe, older versions are not removed from the user's installation options. Serif's business model is based on the "you pay for it, you have an unlimited license" approach, which is actively abandoned by most other software companies. Yet: like it or not, Serif has to generate revenue to cover development costs. They can't forever keep leaning on bringing in new users. The Affinity devs have always stated that free updates would be available for V1.xx. They stated unequivocally that V2.XX would become a paid upgrade. Now, I understand that if a user purchased the software in the last 3 months, having to pay for a full upgrade is understandably inconvenient, and it would have been perhaps preferable for Serif to handle those cases differently. But surely enough, at SOME point Serif has to make SOME money, otherwise business becomes untenable and they'll go bankrupt. Right? Or perhaps Serif has a good reason to go down the subscription route after all: even IF you try with your best intentions to provide professional-level design software at a very affordable price level, AND offer 50% off to everyone at release time, STILL people complain about it. If I were them, the subscription business model suddenly is beginning to look quite attractive. Because there is no use in trying to please everyone anyway. PS I do agree that a grace period of 1 year or so to fix critical bugs in V1 would have been good to have and alleviate part of the complaints made.

InkScape features a quite decent bitmap autotracer, and is free.

As others here have recommended: ClipStudio Paint is one of the best options out there for sketching, drawing, and animation. I'd also suggest Krita, which is also an excellent digital drawing/painting app with quite acceptable frame-by-frame traditional animation. It is quite amazing that Krita is open source and free. And consider OpenToonz as well: a production-proven 2d animation studio that was and is used in Japanese feature animations. Futurama was produced with the help of the older Toonz version. ClipStudio Paint exports animation sequences directly to OpenToonz for combining, compositing, and mastering all scenes into a final animation. While ClipStudio's animation options are good, the app itself is not meant to combine and master multiple scenes into a longer animation production. OpenToonz is meant for this job. OpenToonz is extremely capable (on par with Toonboom advanced and even Harmony in many respects), and amazingly enough free and open source. http://opentoonz.github.io/e/

I would love to see the developers and/or moderators chime in here. It is such a basic requirement in publishing, and I wonder if this is even on the (road) map for them.

You must be doing something wrong then: the above file placed in a blank document in InDesign 2023 and exported with printer's marks results in a 480kb file - which is still smaller than your test pdf with the incorrect converted 8bit file. PS Ah, I see: you saved without compression. Choose the default compression option for monochrome images in the PDF export settings. The only reason why I asked for those settings in my original post is that I hoped it would prevent Publisher from converting the 1bit image.

@tudor Many thanks for testing! 🙂 Oh my... It seems nothing has changed in R2. Which is a major personal disappointment, since 1bit image support is absolutely essential in the PDF output and must not be converted to a different image mode - it messes up the print, of course. These are commonly used in the publishing industry since the advent of desktop publishing. Such a crying shame. Unless there is a new setting in the PDF export options that allows us to keep these untouched, to me Publisher is still unusable. So close! Books, notes, ... But as long as this is not fixed investing in the new version makes no sense to me, because I cannot use it. This is what I had hoped to see instead:

Well, quick update: [5 book management] and end/foot notes were implemented in R2. It's looking great so far, as well as the expanded book TOC support. Before I make the purchase I just need to know if 1bit images are properly supported in the PDF export.

Simply stated: 1bit images are part of the core workflow in much of my work. I do not expect Photo to support these in R2 because the developers have unequivocally stated that Photo will never support a 1bit image mode. But that is fine: I can use PhotoLine and other software for that. But it is ABSOLUTELY essential that Publisher leaves placed 1bit images alone and retains these in the PDF export. Publisher R1 is incapable of doing this. Publisher finally adds book support and with the addition of 1bit image PDF export I can finally say InDesign farewell. But only if it actually works, and I cannot find this information anywhere in the new features list. Would anyone be so kind to place the following 1bit image file in Publisher R2 and export to a PDF with these options: downsample images turned OFF allow jpeg compression turned OFF And share the PDF with us here in this thread? 2017-10-01_inktober2017_swift_by-David-Revoy.tif [image source: https://www.peppercarrot.com/en/viewer/sketchbook-src__2017-10-01_inktober2017_swift_by-David-Revoy.html]

Yes, Publisher does that. And changes are visualized in real time while changes are made to word spacing, which speeds up the typographical design stage 🙂 Framemaker's modal dialogs look and feel old-fashioned in comparison. Spelling checking is nicely implemented via the Preflight panel. Additional dictionaries for different languages (excepting Chinese, Japanese, and Russian) may be downloaded from LibreOffice or OpenOffice and installed. Grammar checking is unsupported. Check my comments further below regarding my thoughts on Affinity and long documents. Nah, not possible in the current incarnation. See comments below again. Nope, not possible or supported. Of course it is possible to use a third-party math editor to create vector files for import and placing in Publisher. Even LibreOffice has a decent math editor built-in nowadays. Or use a free math editor such as https://sourceforge.net/projects/eqtype/ This is THE achilles' heel of Publisher for this type of work. Aside from a number of other rather essential missing features, I will not touch Publisher for ANY longer text-heavy document creation, because it just is a terrible idea to manage all chapters, sections, indexes, TOCs, etc. in one master document workflow. Not good. And therefore, in my book (pun intended ) Publisher is ill-equipped to even attempt a long structured document project. There are other glaring missing features that are deemed 'somewhat' essential: not possible to insert either foot notes or end notes. obviously missing: text styles management across chapters, sections, etc. text variables: does not compute! text editor (with longer texts spanning an entire chapter, editing text in text frames is at a minimum daunting and cumbersome, at most unusable. 1bit images remain unsupported and cannot be placed or exported without conversion to RGB. This is absolutely problematic and unacceptable in academic writing, CAD publications, and technical manual production environments. (Greyscale images are problematic as well with PDF export). Conditional text? Forget about it. Support for non-western languages typesetting such as Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, etc? Nope. Collaboration is also problematic, since the entire document would have to be managed in one huge file. At least with FrameMaker, InDesign, and Sphinx it is possible to utilize a Git (Github/Gitlab) workflow. And Adobe also provides in InDesign collaboration tools for larger projects and the publishing industry (also third-party support for various collaboration tools if you Google for it). In any case, Publisher R1 is wholly inadequate to fit in a long document workflow. Let's hope R2 does better. InDesign version 1 and 2 were lacking as well, and now it would be acceptable to use it for this type of document project. I prefer Sphinx with restructuredtext (markdown) or just plain old LibreOffice for technical writing & documentation. But that doesn't mean I am not open and hopeful to see Publisher take a stab at these and FrameMaker. Very curious to see if some of the above caveats have had any attention given by the devs tomorrow.

@EganSolo if you are talking about highly structured long documentation, such as manuals, text books, academic type setting and loads of 1bit bitmaps as they are used in these type of more technical documents: the simple answer is NO, definitely not. Even InDesign cannot compete with FrameMaker if highly structured and organized documentation with multi-platform publishing options is the goal. Let alone Publisher. I'd almost say it is preferable to work with Sphinx instead if you are looking to avoid FrameMaker. Almost.

Same with placed 1bit tiff files. Those are silently converted to 8bit RGB files, which is a critical issue. And it does not matter working in CMYK document colour mode or whichever PDF output settings. Let's hope R2 fixes this! Looking forward to tomorrow's presentation. I expect this to be solved in the next version.

That is not a solution. Nor a workable workaround. Not with comic work. The devs have stated they will never support a 1bit image mode in Photo, but as far as I am aware they never said they would not allow placing 1bit image files in Publisher for PDF export.

There is only one thing that Publisher lacks that prevents me from using it for my work. It is my only wish for R2. Place a 1bit tiff image. Export it to PDF without Publisher converting that image to RGB. It should leave it alone. I've given up on 1bit image support in Photo, but please allow for 1bit images to be used and exported AS-IS to a PDF with the background transparent - overprinting the black. That's all. 🙂