Whitedog

Yes, but what apps support IDML? I suggested BBEdit, as I primarily use a Mac. As well, what do you consider "cruft"? Stylesheets? Layout specifications like spreads and bleeds and master pages? Well, if Serif wants to support IDML I suppose that's up to them. But the need hardly seems critical.

Right. That is why most service bureaus support multiple applications, Word, QuarkXpress, and InDesign at a minimum. InDesign may be the most commonly used layout design application among professional and semi-pro designers, eclipsing Quark, but it is far from an "industry standard." Industry standard is nothing more than a vanity plate. There are no standards organizations that pick winners and losers like that. Indeed, docx is far closer to an industry standard than indd. Of course, not too many designers work in Word, but plenty of regular users do. I would expect Serif is working on Publisher compatibility with Quark and Word as well as InDesign. It can hardly be a competent publishing app without supporting import of the most common document formats. And, it goes without saying, that RTF will/is supported.

Wow, Linux is finally heard from. That is, as far as I can see, Viva Designer is a Linux app. As for IDML, that's hardly a common text layout format. There are plenty of markup text editors that can no doubt read IDML. On the Mac the best known is BBEdit, but markup language editors seem to be proliferating these days. I don't know why you would need Publisher to handle it. Perhaps you can enlighten me on the desirability of such a feature.

The solution for any clients is to send a PDF to the contractor. Of course that is an extra step that many choose not to use. But printing a PDF on a laser printer in house is a good way to proof your color and other critical settings. If it works on the in-house (color) laser, chances are excellent it will print OK at the service bureau.

How viable Publisher may be is certainly up to debate. And for some it may never be suitable. For many others, who are tired, or cannot afford it in the first place, of paying for Adobe subscriptions, Publisher will be an attractive alternative. It's not a zero sum game. InDesign may continue to prosper while Publisher grabs it's own share of the market. However, the price differential is dramatic. Those who cannot afford InDesign CC will scoop it up. Unfortunately, InDesign CS6 is not a 64 bit app (unlike Photoshop CS6) so it will eventually become unusable—on the Mac, at least, when macOS 10.15 comes out late next year. Of course there's no law saying you have to upgrade your OS. Apple will continue to support High Sierra for another year past that and Mojave for two more years. So if you are concerned about security, you can still use InDesign CS6 through 2021. If, as is the case with many, you don't pay that much attention to security in your (Mac) OS, the horizon is effectively unlimited. Which means you can retain InDesign CS6, if you are using it, while migrating to Publisher to avoid both the obsolescence of CS6 and the cost of InDesign CC. As far as I know, there is no published deadline for 32 bit apps on Windows, so CS6 will remain usable indefinitely (correct me if I'm wrong). Still, CS6 is no longer growing, while InDesign CC and Publisher are. If your workflow is settled, this may not matter. But if you are a dynamic designer, you will need to keep up with the Jones's, so to speak, so Quark Xpress, Indesign CC or Publisher will be your primary choices going forward. Unless Adobe lowers the price of InDesign to an attractive level, as it has done with Photoshop and Lightroom, I will be migrating to Publisher. By the way, the latest beta, while it contains may fixes and improvements, does not yet include InDesign compatibility, let alone Quark. Hopefully this will come before the final release of Publisher, or that event will be overshadowed by its absence.

I would say may rather then should.

That would be Adobe Acrobat. I never got the hang of it, but no doubt service bureaus have worked it out.

InDesign CS6 works for me in El Capitan and Sierra. Haven't tested it much in High Sierra. If you're not sure about that you can clone your OS to an external drive/partition, upgrade that and test it. It's how I go about testing upgrades. But there is nothing special about Yosemite. Far from it. If you need a reason to upgrade, at the moment macOS El Capitan is the latest version to be under Apple's security umbrella, meaning Yosemite no longer gets security updates. When Mojave comes out later this month, that umbrella will move to Sierra. That said I've found Sierra to be perfectly sound—El Cap as well, for that matter. High Sierra is another matter. But in my experience there's no reason to linger in Yosemite.

You have no data on which to base the assertion that I have no data. Circular reasoning at it's worst. As it happens I know quite a few graphic design professionals (and I am one such) and they universally resent the seeming necessity of updating the OS and their established workflow apps as regularly as Apple and Adobe would have them do. Of course, for people moving into e-pub work keeping up with InDesign or Quark is essential, as well as upgrading to the operating systems that support those apps. Without e-pub capability Publisher will hold no value for these folks at all. This issue goes double for people working in a business environment where continuity is vital. New software means new problems and thus is not popular. This goes for printers as well, whose workflow is even more constrained than their customers'. You're right that there are innumerable young artists coming up. But for the time being they will be taught the traditional design apps. Schools are reluctant to adopt new, untested software because of what such changes do to their curriculum and because of the cost of adding or changing software. Serif has a solution to the cost problem, at least. But adoption by schools can be expected to be slow in the main. Now some "old dogs", presumably working on their own, have the liberty to try new things. If that suits them, there's nothing stopping them from doing so—assuming they don't actually make a living in graphic design and hence have time to spare. The very fact I am on this forum indicates that I have an interest in and may have time to spend trying out Publisher, though I, too, am a way old dog. Nevertheless, I even have the Mojave beta running on an external partition for testing purposes. In particular I am looking for an alternative to InDesign CC because InDesign CS6 is only 32bit and macOS will be sunsetting 32bit apps next year. And because InDesign CC costs $240 a year. Yuck! So I have nothing against Publisher. And I hope it will become popular in the near future, undercutting Adobe and their pricy subscription software. But I am skeptical about how soon and to what extent this may happen.

If you can export it to PDF, most printers can handle that just fine. Indeed, the ones I know prefer PDF—assuming you've proofed it properly. On the other hand, if you want the printer to be able to make adjustments, a native InDesign document is preferable.

I don't think you can separate the value of those features. They are all important and will be part of a competent version of Publisher. Though, as you say, export may take longer, if it ever happens.

These replies do not relate to my latest post. The three different Affinity apps have different issues relative to their Adobe equivalents. With Illustrator you pretty much have to start over. The same goes for Lightroom. There is no way to open there proprietary files while preserving your edits. Photoshop is a different matter. PSD is a widely accessible format that many apps can handle. And TIFFs are even more widely supported. As for how InDesign deals with other file types, it appears that I am a bit rusty. While it can't open those files directly, it can place a variety of file types, including doc and docx, PDF and RTF files, and probably others as well. So Publisher will need to be able to do the same. The ability to do so is vital for Publisher, in my opinion. Not everybody is willing to make a clean break, as is required with Illustrator and Lightroom. For those who are, good for you. But most people aren't willing to disrupt their workflow so dramatically. Even so, Adobe has dropped the price for Photoshop and Lightroom CC dramatically. Perhaps they see Serif in their rearview mirror. Illustrator, though, is apparently holding its own. On the other hand, if Publisher can enable a smooth transition from InDesign it is far more likely to be adopted quickly. The price advantage Publisher will have over InDesign, assuming Serif maintains their current price structure, will be substantial. Relative to the question of feature parity between InDesign and Publisher, of course it's unlikely to be exact. Just as InDesign isn't a clone of Quark XPress. But the work they do is largely the same, however they may go about it somewhat differently. The requirements of desktop publishing have long been established. So the marks Publisher has to reach are not new. As well, the more Publisher is like InDesign the easier it will be to learn how to us it, if you are migrating. Too much difference is a disincentive. From what I've seen Publisher is close enough. I first learned how to use PageMaker back in the day at my local junior collage. Later I took classes in Quark XPress. When InDesign came out I needed no class to learn how to use it. A few reference books was all I required. Because a page layout program was a page layout program was a page layout program. I expect the same to be the case with Publisher. And now, of course, online tutorials offer help when it's needed. The one area Publisher is likely to lag behind is e-publishing. And that's fine with me. But then I'm something of a troglodyte. Even so, it will eventually probably have to learn those skills as well. But hey, InDesign wasn't built in a day.

Sorry, I missed it for some reason. My bad.

It's worth noting that InDesign cannot open Word docs directly. I used an old version of Pages to open my (old) long document from AppleWorks. Then I exported the document to MS Word. After which I cut and pasted it into InDesign. What amazed me is that my style sheets survived the process more or less in tack. The issue might be for Publisher to do as well, recognizing InDesign style sheets and page layouts when text is cut and pasted from one to the other (and Word docs too). Actually opening InDesign and Word documents may be a bridge too far. Another reason I'm interested in Publisher is that InDesign CS6 is 32bit only, if you can believe it. Whereas Photoshop CS6 is 64bit—and cannot be run in 32bit mode, as Photoshop CS5 can. The whole CS6 suite is equally schizophrenic, including numerous 32 and 64bit apps. The next version of the macOS after 10.14 Mojave will be 64 bit only. The Mojave beta throws up a warning the first time you launch a 32 bit app that it is not optimized for 10.14. macOS 10.15 won't be out till late next year, and even then no one will be compelled to upgrade their OS, but the handwriting is on the wall. InDesign CS6 is approaching EOL. So, $50 for a standalone version of Publisher, as opposed to $20 a month for an InDesign CC subscription, is a no brainer. I looked at the online demos for Publisher and it is impressive. As well, the learning curve will apparently not be too steep. One note of caution—and I'll post this as well on the features request forum—is that Apple's Pages now has a new and improved way to link text boxes. For a long time it lacked text box linking. Apple cut it out way back when. Well, in the latest version of Pages text box linking is back with a vengeance. Instead of the traditional lines linking boxes, which can get tedious to use to say the least, Pages now links text boxes by the numbers, with different threads with different color tabs so you can easily tell what you are linking to. You can change the numbers to move boxes around and even change thread colors. This may be one of the greatest innovations in desktop publishing in years. IMO Serif would do well to sit up and take notice of this new approach. Who knows if Adobe will. And, at this point, who cares.

Wow. Live and learn. If Google does the job I can understand, sort of, why the native site search had not been improved. Given Affinity's low prices I guess I can live with a little inconvenience.

There does not appear to be a thread on this topic yet so I'll start one. Apple's Pages now has a new and improved way to link text boxes. For a long time it lacked text box linking. Apple cut it out way back when. Well, in the latest version text box linking is back with a vengeance. Instead of the traditional lines linking boxes, which can get tedious to use to say the least, Pages now links text boxes by the numbers, with different threads with different color tabs so you can easily tell what you are linking to. You can change the numbers to move boxes around and even change thread colors. This may be one of the greatest innovations in desktop publishing in years. IMO Serif would do well to sit up and take notice of this new approach.

The quote was from firstdefence. As far as I can see your name was not mentioned in connection with it. Rather just the opposite. The problem is, and has always been, how to find the forum you're interested in. I created my own topic because I couldn't find this one. I was eventually directed here by another user. What the site needs is a decent search function. I looked for one before I started posting about InDesign compatibility. Fortunately, for me, h_d read my thread and posted a link. Though he talks about searching and I could find no way to do so. If there is a search function, it's well hidden. You know, like not at the top of every page where it belongs. That said, once I got here I found this thread to be a robust one and that it is monitored by dedicated users like Patrick Conner, who apparently knows what's happening on the ground, so to speak. h_d also directed me to the beta forums where I found a discussion on InDesign compatibility. Chris_K, a staff moderator, reassured concerned users like me that InDesign compatibility is in the works: It's worth noting that InDesign cannot open Word docs directly. I used an old version of Pages to open my (old) long document from AppleWorks. Then I exported the document to MS Word. After which I cut and pasted it into InDesign. What amazed me is that my style sheets survived the process more or less in tack. The issue might be for Publisher to do as well, recognizing InDesign style sheets and page layouts when text is cut and pasted from one to the other (and Word docs too). Actually opening InDesign and Word documents may be a bridge too far. Another reason I'm interested in Publisher is that InDesign CS6 is 32bit only, if you can believe it. Whereas Photoshop CS6 is 64bit—and cannot be run in 32bit mode, as Photoshop CS5 can. The whole CS6 suite is equally schizophrenic, including numerous 32 and 64bit apps. The next version of the macOS after 10.14 Mojave will be 64 bit only. The Mojave beta throws up a warning the first time you launch a 32 bit app that it is not optimized for 10.14. macOS 10.15 won't be out till late next year, and even then no one will be compelled to upgrade their OS, but the handwriting is on the wall. InDesign CS6 is approaching EOL. So, $50 for a standalone version of Publisher, as opposed to $20 a month for an InDesign CC subscription, is a no brainer. As I said, I looked at the online demos for Publisher and it is impressive. As well, the learning curve will apparently not be too steep. One note of caution—and I'll post this as well on the features request forum, is that Apple's Pages now has a new and improved way to link text boxes. For a long time it lacked text box linking. Apple cut it out way back when. Well, in the latest version text box linking is back with a vengeance. Instead of the traditional lines linking boxes, which can get tedious to use to say the least, Pages now links text boxes by the numbers, with different threads with different color tabs so you can easily tell what you are linking to. You can change the numbers to move boxes around and even change thread colors. This may be one of the greatest innovations in desktop publishing in years. IMO Serif would do well to sit up and take notice of this new approach. Who knows if Adobe will. And, at this point, who cares. By the way, I found the Search icon at the top of these pages. Don't know why I didn't see it before. Sorry for the scolds.

Using h_d's link I found the InDesign thread on the forums. I'm far from the only one concerned about InDesign import. It appears they are working on it.

Exactly. A PDF won't include your styles sheets and edits from InDesign. PDFs are generally part of a proof and print workflow. Without the ability to import InDesign documents more or less intact, Publisher will be dead in the water. If you can't migrate from InDesign, Publisher is useless as an InDesign alternative. Once it can handle InDesign docs, then Katy bar the door. Why to you think Adobe offers their Photo Package, including Lightroom and Photoshop, so inexpensively? Obviously they are feeling the heat. It will be interesting to see if InDesign comes down in price once Publisher is cutting their water. If you need InDesign's e-publishing features no doubt you hope so. Otherwise, Publisher looks great. If you have not done so already, take a look at their online tutorials. They cover Publisher pretty thoroughly.

Thanks for the update. There does not appear to be a good search function, or any search function, on the forums so I missed that info. Be looking for the update.

I appear to have confused the name of the product. Affinity has a new product out in beta, Affinity Publisher for Desktop. I downloaded it and tried it out on some InDesign documents. They were grayed out. Perhaps I could cut and past some text to see what is transferred, but this is not practical for a long form document I've been working on in InDesign CS6. InDesign CC is prohibitively expensive, requiring a $20 a month subscription. I expect Affinity Publisher to be priced comparably with their other products so it is an appealing alternative. I checked out all their online tutorials and it is already quite capable. It's compatibility with the other Affinity products has not yet been implemented, but that's not an issue for me as I am not using them. Compatibility with InDesign is my issue.

Affinity Desktop appears to have the same problem that Affinity Photo Does: Compatibility. It will not open an Adobe Indesign document, just as Affinity Photo can't handle Adobe Lightroom documents. With Lightroom the problem is that metadata for processed photos is not transferable do to differences in the tool set. So it would seem that with Affinity Desktop, InDesign styles and formatting are not transferable. This is remarkable because InDesign can import Microsoft word styles quite well. It makes migration from InDesign to Affinity Desktop impractical if not impossible. That's unfortunate because Affinity Desktop seems to be an excellent program.

If you think that's bad, try processing the same image in Photoshop. PSDs can be much larger that TIFs. Of course if you've got even a modest budget a CC subscription to Adobe's Photography suite, including Lightroom and Photoshop, will cost only $10 a month. But my budget is less than modest, unfortunately, which is why I was looking at Affinity Photo again. Adobe has ceased offering the standalone version of Lightroom upgrades so, because I have a considerable equity in my Lightroom catalog, I will be marooned in version 6.

Unfortunately I'm not looking to export from Affinity to Lightroom, rather just the opposite. Which I cannot really do without loosing the edits I make in Lightroom. That is to say, Affinity Photo will not preserve the sidecar files or the Lightroom catalog metadata. On the other hand, Affinity Photo is a great substitute for Photoshop. Unfortunately, I don't use Photoshop much any more.