Jennymac

I also bought PagePlus to have all functionallity that Publisher and Designer doesn't have yet, considering the price is very good. It's an amazing software. Nevertheless I found a big bug in PagePlus that is important to me (I work with printed forms, invoices, etc.). If you use the arrows to move a line using a nudge distance of 1mm, after 38 keystrokes the distance is altered by 0,01mm: 1, 2, 3,..., 38, 39,001
It is a big lack if you need presition. I tried changing the units to inches and it works ok, but I need to work in mm.
Sadly PagePlus has not more updates

Hi Jennymac. Thank you for your answer. You can configure the nudge distance in Options/Snapping.
I've tried to do what you say but when I open again the file, the position of the line (or shape) still remains in 40.001 (the 0.001 appears on 40th keystroke, not in 39th.).
Anyway, PagePlus is a great software and I'll keep using it to things like color separation, imposition, data merge and other things Publisher has not implemented yet.

Would you be willing to try it?  It is only $19.99 for the full app.  Either 64-bit or 32-bit.  You can generate Kindle Ebooks with it (not just static but interactive ones, (just Google the Kindle Plugin for Page Plus 9,) and so much more. 
It is the best $20 I have ever spent.  It isn't anything like Microsoft Publisher, and it really is more like a true DTP application.  You can do layers and graphic editing (I love their Cutout Studio).  It will let you work with EPS and SVG files, and import and edit pdf files, as well.   It also has pdf form creation functionality.  It isn't InDesign, but it offers almost as much, and a few more bells and whistles.  I love their autoflow feature for inserting large amounts of graphic files with just the push of a button.  You can link your text boxes, do intricate page sizes, N-up....  Different master pages, also different layouts in a publication.  Crop marks and imposition as well. Plus merge. AND it comes with Avery label templates, which I didn't find in InDesign. 
I had to do a very complicated layout for miniaturizing a book, which took me forever to figure out.  (I bind books and wanted to make a perfect replica of a full size book.)  Scanning the book wasn't the problem.  Printing front and back on miniature pages and making sure the right pages are printing front and back, and then setting up my crop marks for cutting.  That was my problem.  It was very tricky.  Once I got my foundation file set up, I could do a 218-page book in under 30 minutes.  I couldn't have done it so easily without their stellar asset manager.  After all the pages were cut and folded and ready to be bound, it was absolutely perfect.  
Here is the link to purchase it...  https://www.serif.com/en-us/
I don't think they have it for Mac, if you are on Mac.  Which you probably are.  But if you can swing this, please try it.   Thanks so much for your feedback.  I appreciate it that you took the time to read my post and respond.
 

I quite agree, Pageplus went through so many upgrades to where it is now, I think its a great program, and I still use it today. Is the new Affinity Publisher based around pageplus the early years, so with that in mind, will it be a good few years before Publisher can come close to the pageplus x9 standard? I'm all for new software and I think the new Publisher looks lovely but doesn't seem in my opinion to have the same user easability (is that a word?).
Whats the hook to jump over to Publisher from pageplus?
Trevor

"Feel" is a good key in this matter – even technical software always is emotional, too. I totally agree with your thoughts (which also include the desire for "nothing should change"). The 'problem' is not initiated by Serif but more by first machines up to nowadays people's speed – which demands changes in all sorts of things to survive in the competition of life.
We don't need to run away from wild animals anymore, so the population increased. As consequency we create new stress to create enough food for all people on earth. Reduced: Safety > food > money > work > changes > emotions. The same happens, on a smaller scale, with software, for instance to me: Pagemaker > Freehand > Quark > InDesign > AFPublisher.
It just would not make sense if Pagemaker's programmers were still trying to update the code for today's hardware. Or it would be very expensive. Just as it would be very luxurious to drive a 1959 car in 2019 and keep it running simply because the design was so beautiful.
http://www.savethesounds.info/

What @fde101 and @jmwellborn said!  Development of APub obviously still has quite a way to go, but I think it’s shaping up quite nicely for a first release.

If you will spend some time with Publisher I will bet that you will learn to love it.   It is in Beta, but when it is ready for purchase, I predict it will hit the world like a rocket.   As for me, I bought Affinity Designer three days ago, fiddled around with it and made a Christmas card design this afternoon, saved it, exported it as a .jpeg image, imported the image into Affinity Photo, fiddled some more and cropped it, saved it as an .afphoto image, and tomorrow it will be opened in Affinity Publisher for the text.    Smoooooooth.     And I have the design skills of a flea.   They just thought of everything I might want to do and made it possible.   

Thank you so much for explaining this to me.  I knew there had to be a good reason.  This changes my perspective greatly; however, can they not write Publisher to be a close imitation to PPX9?  I have been playing around with the beta version and so far I find myself working in PPX9.  How do you feel about Publisher? 

PPX9, like all of the versions of PagePlus that came before it over the course of nearly thirty years, is heavily dependent upon functions which are built into Windows, and PP documents can only be opened in PagePlus. The Affinity apps were written from scratch and designed from the outset to be ‘platform agnostic’, with code for the core functionality being shared across all supported platforms, and any Affinity version 1.7 document can be opened in any Affinity version 1.7 app on Mac, Windows or iPad.

This is an entirely new program, with a vision of its own.  They are just getting started.

Hi Jennymac,
Shift-click the small triangle on the (almost) bottom right side of the text frame. Note this doesn't work if you used the Text ▸ Insert Filler Text command from the menu since it only fills the current/existing text frame (plus any linked text frames if there's any).