Whitedog
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Posts posted by Whitedog
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And for some of us it is about the cost. And the lack of ownership. Adobe may have found a good profit model for them. For us, not so much.
So Serif is an excellent solution. Right now it's $75 for all three apps. Even at the regular price it's a bargain. The closest Adobe comes is the Photo suite, at $10 a month. Even then you're locked in and hoping they don't raise the price.
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10 hours ago, walt.farrell said:
Yes, it can.
You are right. But when I first tried to open an RTF document, it was grayed out in the Place dialog window so I assumed it wouldn't work. I tried again, after your post, and I was able to select the document, even though it was grayed out. It placed properly. But it would not select other grayed out documents in other formats, like Word. So it's inconsistent treatment of available formats is a problem, in my mind. Other documents, such as PDFs, were not grayed out, and placed as expected.
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8 hours ago, wonderings said:
Not sure why Adobe would want to make their format open source. They are in it to make money, as all companies are. I don't see any benefit for them dumbing down the format so people can open it problem free with software they did not create.
IDML files are hit and miss in Publisher. I have a business card I thought I would try, it had a few elements in it, a placed PSD file, a placed AI file, and a place EPS file. The PSD file was screwed up in Publisher, it is a file with transparent background and some minor things done to it, but it did not open properly and would take fixing to make it usable in Publisher. There will never be a truly easy and hassle free conversion from one application to another which is why I think you need to stick with one. If your co-workers, clients, or collaborators are using Indesign the wise thing to do is use Indesign, same would go if they are using Publisher though I doubt there are many using it at the moment as it is still very new.
The governing principle here is affordability. If you have a business with enough leeway in the budget for an InDesign subscription, then fine. If you don't want or need to upgrade to macOS X 15 Catalina, also fine. You can continue to use InDesign CS6—or earlier. I use Photoshop CC and Lightroom CC because the subscription is affordable—$10 a month. There is no such bargain for InDesign, so I'm working with Publisher. Yes, it has some shortcomings, like not being able to handle MS Word files, unlike every layout program before it for the last two and a half decades and more. But for me that's not a deal breaker. If I had to use a Word file, I would place it in InDesign, export it as IDML, and open it in Publisher. A bit tedious, but doable.
A simple solution for your business card problem would be to remove the Photoshop element after you have converted the file (or even before), and then place it back. No conversion necessary. If that's the worst problem you have, you're smelling like roses. A little creative problem solving can go a long way. A more serious problem would be if it messed up your text formatting. I converted a long text document with many style sheets without trouble, though I had to wait for several Publisher updates to be able to do it. The only issue I had was the loss of my user dictionary. Of course I had no graphics to mess up. That could be different. But I haven't tried converting some of my other InDesign files that are graphics heavy. That could be problematic, but I have PDFs of them that are suitable for printing and/or publishing.
In any case, I'm in no hurry to upgrade to Catalina so I will be able to use InDesign, if I need to, for the foreseeable future. And I have time to wait for Serif to improve Publisher as well. Bear in mind that InDesign did not replace Quark EXPress and Pagemaker overnight. It took many years for InDesign to mature and become the dominant layout program it is today. Not that Publisher is likely to replace InDesign, but it has time to mature as well. And it has the same kind of graphics support, with Designer and Photo, that InDesign has with Illustrator and Photoshop. So it's not hanging out there alone like Quark EXPress. And it's not like document conversion wasn't an issue for InDesign. It never handled Quark documents perfectly. It did better with Pagemaker, for obvious reasons. The move from EXPress to InDesign was not a smooth one. So cut Publisher some slack. At the price, it's a bargain even with its flaws.
The failure of the conversion of a long form document from IDML was a deal breaker for me for a short while. But Serif resolved the issue. There's no reason to suppose that they won't solve others.
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5 hours ago, dcrosby said:
Standardization is cool. Open standards are better. So mp3, obj, html, jpg, png, css, apache, Linux etc. are great and have probably moved the creative industry forward more than any proprietary formats.
Open source is overrated. No page layout program has ever been an open standard. Though Microsoft Word came close. It was the standard text app for importing to AppleWorks, Pagemaker, Quark XPress, Indesign, and Pages—on the Mac. On the PC there are even more apps. Of course you can import or place Word documents in open source apps like Libre Office and Open Office. And there are other commercial word processors like Mellel and Scrivener. They all handle Word documents.
But Publisher does not. Given that most people do their writing in Word, to my mind this is a major oversight. While it can handle IDML files from InDesign, Word is not supported by Publisher. Which means Publisher is half-baked. Given that InDesign CS6 is a 32 bit app, on the Mac Mojave is the limit. I can place Word documents in InDesign and export them as IDML, but only as long as I don't upgrade to Catalina. Of course Word 2011 is also 32 bit, so if I ever do upgrade to Catalina I'll have to get a Word 360 subscription, or the standalone 360 app, which is another $150. While I'm using Mojave, I can export Word files to PDF, which Publisher does open, without style sheets, etc. A half-assed solution at best. The answer might be RTF, but though it manages most styles, it doesn't include the associated style sheets. But Publisher cannot handle RTF files either. Basically, compared to all other word processing programs, Publisher is a cripple, walking with one good leg. Granted I bought it to handle InDesign documents, but that it can do no more is, well, lamentable.
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On 5/11/2020 at 10:53 AM, wonderings said:
indd, psd, and ai are standards because Indesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop are standards. They are widely used by the majority of professionals. It makes life easier having a standard in apps. Not to say there is no room for new software like what Affinity is doing. The hope though would be if there is a change it is a change to another company like Adobe, so Publisher, Designer, and Photos would be the new standard. Life is much easier when everyone uses the same programs.
Standardization makes life easier for service bureaus, printers, etc. But lack of competition leads to high prices—such as what Quark XPress used to be and Adobe is now. Competition has its advantages, like lowering prices. This happened to Apple with Aperture. It started out at $500, with not trial period. Then Adobe released the beta version of Lightroom, and most of us never looked back. When Lightroom 1 came out it was priced at $300, cutting Aperture off at the knees. Later it went down to $150, an even better deal. Now Adobe is offering LightroomCC and PhotoshopCC as a package for $10 a month.
Unfortunately, there is not yet a discount price for InDesign. So when Publisher got IDML to work, I exported the large document I was working on in InDesign to IDML format and imported it to Publisher. The only thing I lost was the custom dictionary.
As for printing from Publisher, Designer and Photo, PDF is the standard output format for pretty much everything, whether you're using an Adobe product or something else.
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2 hours ago, Eddie Aguirre said:
In these unique times, we want to help users transitioning to and from other DTP applications. We know that many designers are having to make budget cuts, and many are moving from Adobe to Affinity. We want to help you guys move your existing work to Publisher. So, we are giving away the full version of IDMarkz for usage through the end of May 2020. This is not the freebie version that locks out the IDML export; it's the full version with all features enabled. There are no charges or signups required to take advantage of this; it's how we feel we can help during these unprecedented times.
If you are already using the freebie version of IDMarkz you can use the following license details to activate the full version to be used through May 2020:
Email Address: doingourpart@markzware.com
License ID: bf2f3a43-8466-4861-b5e6-2e0e00e4ac83
If you don't have the freebie, you can get all the information you need to get started here. Please feel free to share this with your friends and colleagues.
We'll be monitoring how this pandemic affects those in our industry, and we may extend the free usage beyond May 2020.
Sorry Windows users, I can't give a timeline, but we are actively working on a Windows version.
Thanks, indeed. This is a remarkable bit of marketing. Performing a public service while at the same time, perhaps, creating some mindshare that will sell the product in the future, past the Coronavirus scare. Kudos for thinking outside the box.
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4 hours ago, Fixx said:
Would not 200 % be close enough? It is available readily CMD 2.
No. Close enough isn't good enough.
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13 hours ago, dominik said:
Hello @Whitedog,
in the Navigator panel you can type in any zoom level you want.
Also, if you switch to the Zoom Tool you can type in any value into the box labeled 'Zoom'.
d.
Thanks. I guess it pays to know where to look. I suppose it's too soon to expect an Affinity Publisher Workbook.
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I started using aPub on my large document and, for the most part, it works fine. But unlike InDesign, it does not allow for custom zoom levels. As I am visually impaired this is a real problem for me. I was using a zoom level of 225% in InDesign. But there appears to be no way to duplicate this in aPub. In InDesign, the zoom level is a field in the tool-bar. I looked for it in aPub, but it does not appear to exist.
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Thinks for this great update. The problem I had earlier opening my long form document (over 400 pages) was solved. Publisher 1.8.1 opened the IDML file almost immediately. Not to mention it launches very quickly in mac OS 10.14 Mojave. And once I saved it in the afpub format, it reopens almost instantly. Excellent update, and I haven't even tried all the new features yet. But now that I can work on my book in Publisher, I'm sure I'll find them handy as well. As for exporting to the IDML format, I can see where that would be useful. But for now I'm a happy camper. I can move my work to the newer versions of the Mac OS without worry about compatibility. Interesting that the new integrated toolbar is only available in Mojave and above. That suggests that other new features may be linked to newer versions of the Mac OS. For now I'm avoiding Catalina because of the exclusion of 32 bit apps. But Publisher may remove at least some of my concerns on that count. Even so, I'll have to save a version of the Mac OS that still handles 32 bit. I'll need another external SSD for that job, as HDDs now seem slow in comparison.
As for the download, I didn't do mine until I got the e-mail from Serif announcing the 1.8.1 updates. The auto update in the older version of Publisher worked fine for me. But then, I was using Serif's server, not Apple's. I try to avoid the App Store for larger, more complex programs, like Publisher and Lightroom. YMMV.
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On 11/14/2019 at 1:50 AM, Patrick Connor said:
I don’t know how many of you have noticed but beta testing of 1.8.0 is well underway on the public beta forums, and yesterday we have released a new Affinity Publisher 1.8.0 beta which includes IDML Import and Excel import.
We would really appreciate you looking at the Affinity Publisher Beta and try using it on copies of your files, whether Excel or IDML are important to you or not.
The 1.8.0 builds are in links at the top of these forum posts
From the release notes there are some IDML and Excel features that have no equivalent in Affinity Publisher yet, and so are not yet supported.
From the release notes
This version imports short IDML documents just fine. But when I try to import a multipage book I'm working on, of more than 400 pages, Publisher crashes. I suppose I could import sections of the book and then paste the pages in. But I won't go to the trouble until IDML support haas matured. At least they're making progress. I'm glad this app isn't sold by subscription. That would be a real waste of money. I bought it at an early adopter discount. We'll have to see if they get us again when a substantial update/upgrade arrives—you know, with full IDML support, for instance. Right now I think they're working on building market share; they've got a holiday sale going on.
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34 minutes ago, BLKay said:
The 9.99 a month is doable for me. But that is only Photoshop so far. why? not sure. I know it is by far their most used software so like everything in life, demand. Yet... supply isn't part of this. No packaging, no CD, DVD, no manuals, no shipping, no retail store to pay.
Actually, for $9.99 you can get Lightroom Classic and Lightroom (for mobile) plus Photoshop with the Photography package. Maybe you don't use Lightroom, but many of us do and find this to be a bargain. Adding InDesign for another $5.00 would be a good deal in my book.
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On 6/26/2019 at 5:15 PM, dannymontani said:
Sorry to say this program is going to be dead without the ability to open InDesign files. The only way it will survive is brand new users out in the universe. Money not spent well. I'm sure we will pay for the option....way out in the future. Damn it.
You should read a little more. This thread has dedicated over 20 pages to the discussion. Opening indd files is impractical, if not impossible. The file type facility we are waiting for is idml, which is an output format from InDesign that enables files to be opened by third-party apps, like Publisher. We are told that that capability is coming, but not release date has been offered.
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5 hours ago, Moon12 said:
If indd or idml: This is almost the same.
But this is wonderful news for the publisher and the company and the users!
Indd and idml are not 'almost the same." While I admit I've confused the two in the past, the fact is that indd and idml are significantly different formats. It is, for all practical purposes, impossible for a third-party app to open indd files, which are in a proprietary Adobe format. IDML, on the other hand, is a conversion format that InDesign can produce so that third party apps can open InDesign documents. It is this latter capability that we have been talking about and waiting for. Unfortunately, the release version of Publisher does not yet have this capability. Needless to say, I am disappointed. And Serif has not yet informed us when it will be added. So, though I bought the release version of Publisher at the pre-release price, I will have to continue to use InDesign CS 6. Fortunately I am still running macOS 10.12, Sierra, so that won't be a problem. Sooner or later, though....
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On 6/15/2019 at 5:51 AM, GunnarRoxen said:
I forgot to mention I already preordered Affinity Publisher as I'm confident it will get there - I'm just excited!
I received the notice to download the release version of Affinity Publisher. I likewise preordered it. The download link was a bit elusive, but I found it in My Account. I'm wondering, though, does this version include IDML import? You know, that feature that people have been going on about for 19 pages on this blog? Hope so.
Guess not. I tried to import an IDML file and it was not recognized. I tried to open the file, with the same result. I'm disappointed, to say the least. Publisher will be of little use to me without IDML support. I paid for the initial release version, in part because the price was reduced, but with the hope they had included the much requested IDML support. Failing that, it is my hope that they will include it soon. Some news on that front would be useful. How long will we have to wait? Without IDML support, Publisher will languish in my Applications folder. And I will continue to use InDesign CS6. This will suffice for some time because I have no intention of upgrading to macOS 10.15 Catalina—where use of 32bit apps will be discontinued—for a good long while yet. Meanwhile, if Serif expects to sell many copies of Publisher, they'd better get going with implementing IDML import. It's clearly the most requested feature.
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On 5/10/2019 at 2:32 AM, AdrianB said:
Since support for IDML is coming, but not .indd, I looked into the possibility to export all my old .indd files to IDML. This is generally useful for future-proofing anyway, since I won't be able to run my old version of InDesign (CS5) forever.
I'm happy to report that this script was really good, it did everything I was hoping for. There was some trial and error and some issues (I have to delete batch_convert.txt for every run) to get there but eventually I got it to search folders and subfolders for any .indd file and export it as IDML, and it worked.
Thanks for the links. I read some of the referenced text to get an idea how the script works, then the how to install scripts page to figure that out. I downloaded the script and installed it, as per instructions. This will come in handy when the time comes to convert my InDesign files to IDML. Of course, this script will do so much more. Quite an ingenious piece of work. Given how many people will need to convert their files for use with Publisher, when it can handle IDML, this script will need to be more broadly described, and referenced. Look forward to further enquiries.
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16 hours ago, MikeW said:
The comments never made it into the compiled code. I would have fired anyone working for me that didn't properly comment code (and did once). It is hard to follow someone's code if there is ever a need to without commenting.
Too bad I didn't work for you, or someone like you. I was fired because I took too long to write code—because I included comments. I commented my code so I could follow what I was doing. I was also directed on another job to figure out where the flaw was in a batch of code that was not commented. There was no one in the shop who could tell me what it was even supposed to do so I had to outline it to figure it out. I was too slow there, as well. My boss was an idiot who thought I should somehow know, by osmosis I guess.
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4 minutes ago, MikeW said:
And on the other hand, I once handed over the code for an insurance company application that effects most people in the western world. About 4 years later, the code returned for me to fix. It was slow and bloated with what amounted to spaghetti code—it wound its way through existing code so much and wasn't commented at all. It took me 3 months to untangle it, rewrite it, remove code, etc. I was particularly happy to have removed over 100,000 lines of actual code and add functionality in the process.
Sometimes size does matter. It just depends on what/where the "size" comes from.
Back in the day (when I had to do my own keypunch from my code sheets), taking the time to comment my code was frowned upon, even though I was taught that commenting was a "best practice." The real world didn't line up well with what I learned in school. Quick and dirty was the accepted meme.
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5 minutes ago, Wosven said:
As already said, there's some "Common Files" folder and some other for the CC suite, and you shouldn't compare only with the app's folder file. Size doesn't matter here.
I rememeber being really proud of writing 10 lines of code that could do the same as my previous PHP page of 50 or 100 lines (can't remember exactly)… Those 10 lines with an advanced function were so slow to process that I keep them as example and revert back to my previous code doing the same in less than a second! If I had only compare files's size, I would have kept the slow code, not for efficiency but for aesthetic
Good points. I wasn't making an accusation, merely asking a question. Your example is not indicative of all code, by the way, but just one instance—though I imagine others could be found where more code was better code. I also suspect that the slow processing had to do with calls to external code libraries, which take inherently longer to load and process.
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9 hours ago, Uwe367 said:
On my System (Win 10 Home) it´s 688 MB and so ist 300 MB larger than the other Software but that does not matter for me in times in which HDD´s and SSD´s can store several treabytes. There are 688 MB only a drop in the ocean.
In my opinion is that publisher works well and stable and for a beta this software works very well. Maybe it will be smaller if the final release comes out.
But back to topic.
Will IDML Support be added and ... When?I should have mentioned that I'm using macOS 10.12, Sierra. The size of the app doesn't matter in relation to my 1TB Fusion drive. I just wonder about the efficiency of the code in so large an app, which does not yet even have feature parity with InDesign.
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14 minutes ago, ChrisBorry said:
For the very very Last Time:
- CS5.5 works in the latest Mac/Mojave.
- Partition your disk and install High Sierra to be on the safe side.
- Try to install CS5.5
I have illustrator but still I do all my illustrator-work in Indesign. For me that works. So for your needs, you wouldn’t need the whole package. (However Adobe seems to coerce one into renting the whole lot.)
If you absolutely need to go to CC, look out for education version. (Adopt a kid in the neighbourhood, it’s cheaper. Or take a temporary job as volunteer to teach in primary school )
In general, going back to 1985 isn’t fair. Even simple text files from that period loose their formatting when eventually opened.
I do not understand how a pro can get stuck with CS4.
best regards,
Over and Out
cb
CS 4 has a (relatively) simple workflow. I know a pro who uses it regularly—because it's familiar. He also has CS 6 for more complex issues, like handling more recent RAW files. But CS 4 does most of what he needs to do. And he's in no hurry to upgrade his OS, despite my warnings about security issues. I wouldn't put him on Mojave in any case. Too many problems. Real substantive changes, like APSF.
So, yes, pros get stuck in ruts, just like anyone else. Change is challenging and for some people it represents totally unnecessary hassles, not to mention expense. I use CS 4 to run my Epson scanner software, which has not been updated for 64 bit apps, like Photoshop beyond CS 4. But I also have CS 6 and Photoshop CC, with Lightroom in Adobe's photography package. InDesign, however, has not been discounted, which is why Publisher is appealing.
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7 hours ago, MikeW said:
They, Serif, likely will never open INDD files directly. It would be a moving target as Adobe changes the file specs often.
Serif might be able to create a routine that can go a long way around the INDD issue. But I doubt it would be worth the hassle. Best to plan on a script or plug-in that can open ID files and create a package with them which can also create the IDML automatically. There are free scripts (I've posted one such link) that can simply walk through a folder structure. Set it to work over a weekend or two.
Mike
Where have you posted the link? This forum is 14 pages long now. Finding your link would be like finding a needle in a haystack.
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17 minutes ago, Mike Lewis said:
Well, here I sit running Adobe CS4 on my 2014 Mac running OS 10.10. Illustrator works, but only with warnings at startup, and I must be very careful about how I open and save files. (The file dialogs don't remember last location, and if I pick folder from the "Recently Used" list, 75% of the time I crash the program. Which sucks during an initial Save As...) Photoshop seems to hold up well, and I can't say I've had any problems with InDesign either. Yep, I've got some pretty great mileage out of CS4 since we bought it in early 2010.
I remember learning Quark at college (and used it until about 2004), as at the time that was the industry standard... When I first tried InDesign, I wasn't so sure about it, and I wasn't impressed with importing Quark files, but I eventually got over it.
My problem is that I need to upgrade my OS by demands of other unrelated software that I use. (CS4 starts breaking on 10.11, from what I've read.) At one time, the thought of getting CS6 might have been a possibility... but how long will that last me before I'm faced with the same challenge again? A year? Two? Maybe three if I'm lucky? I need to be looking forward, but a subscription model is not in the interest of my company. So, goodbye Adobe... I am an in-house designer for a company very much not in the Graphic Design industry. I like to pay for my software once and squeeze functionality out of it to the extent possible before I have to face the budget committee and ask for another upgrade—or—present all the great reasons and new features that are needed to justify it. We are faced with paying thousands of dollars for our CAD software every few years, and rightly so since that is what really makes us money around here.
I'm excited to take Publisher for a spin. I had the company purchase Affinity Photo and Designer last month, and am starting to use those on a regular basis as my Photoshop and Illustrator replacements. I hope to do the same for Publisher, but it will be a tougher pill to swallow if it takes a lot of work to convert many of our company documents—currently in InDesign format—over to the Affinity format. Several of these are in-house books and manuals ranging from 60 to 200 pages. Even if the import isn't perfect (like it was back in the day from Quark to InDesign), or if I need to use some intermediary format like IDML... as long as I can get most of the styles and formatting imported, I can tweak and clean up the rest.
My $0.02.I have the same issue, on a smaller scale. I have CS6, but InDesign and Dreamweaver are still 32 bit apps, so they will not work in the next iteration of macOS, which only supports 64 bit apps, like Photoshop and Lightroom. You can get an affordable subscription for Photoshop and Lightroom CC, at $20 a month. But there's no discount for InDesign, so I'll have to move on eventually. Quark is too expensive, compared to what we can reasonably expect to pay for Publisher. So I am hoping they have IDML import when the final release comes out, though Serif haven't confirmed if they will. They have only said that they delayed the release to work on some features that many people have requested, but that's all rather vague. So we will have to wait and see. Without IDML import Publisher will not be the InDesign replacement we hope it to be.
[IDML Implemented] How can I open Indesign (indd and idml) Files in Publisher?
in Feedback for Affinity Publisher V1 on Desktop
Posted
You'll soon have to migrate to Mojave if you still want to get software and security updates. Still, Mojave supports most 32 bit apps, just like High Sierra. I skipped High Sierra because it was buggy for me. Apparently it's not giving you any trouble. You're right, you don't have to move to Catalina, and I won't be doing so for quite a while yet. Even then I'll keep a copy of Sierra around, as I do now, for some apps that don't work well in Mojave—and won't work at all in Catalina.