jmwellborn

I think the key phrase here is "somewhere on the evolutionary path." Affinity Publisher will no doubt have its own evolutionary path, but it will not necessarily evolve along the same path as any other app, particularly existing ones that started life long ago.
Personally, I don't think it should. Too many apps try to be all things to all people, & in so doing become bloated monsters that discourage creative 'outside the box' thinking, consume way more resources than necessary, & constantly add features few people will use that exist largely to convince users they need to buy upgrades or never ending subscriptions to get them.
I much prefer the approach Serif has taken with Affinity -- offer 'lean & mean' apps they can sell at very reasonable prices without having to resort to subscriptions to keep the doors open, & avoid adding "me too" features unless most users would actually use them and that can be done without compromising performance/responsiveness or overly complicating/cluttering the UI.

Thanks to everyone for the interesting thoughts.
Given that somewhere on the evolutionary path of PagePlus X9, someone at Serif thought the row-and-column-oriented, multipage view was a useful option and made it available, I hope a similar feature will make its way into the final release of Affinity Publisher, too.
I just think it's convenient to be able to choose between viewing modes -- including options to view pages arranged either sideways-then-down, or vertically-down-only -- as you can in most other page-viewing environments, as in Adobe Acrobat or Microsoft Word.
Fully aware that this is a beta -- but I suppose that's what beta versions are for: to flush out ideas, provoke discussion, and generate improvements for the eventual release.
Serif/Affinity: you are doing a fantastic job with this; thank you, well done, and keep going!
Best wishes to all.

Fair question.
Some history: I've been using Macs since the first one was available. When Charles Simonyi's Word was first released for the Mac, I used it, quite happily. I stayed with Word until version 5.1 (this was in the early '90s). Then Microsoft simply discarded that product and offered its so-called "version 6." In disgust I discarded Microsoft: not only its word-processor but everything. I found alternatives and never went back. (In those days, before Windows 95 swamped the software market, there were still a number of decent alternatives on the Mac side.) Similarly, when Adobe released Photoshop and later InDesign I used both products, quite happily. You can maybe guess when I discarded Adobe, never to return.
When Apple released Pages and Numbers, I used both, and still use both, quite happily. (Luckily my days of giving stand-up presentations are mostly over, but if they weren't I'd be a satisfied Keynote user as well.) Meanwhile I've been using BBEdit for various tasks since Rich Siegel first made it available at no charge (this also was in the early '90s).
So that's a bit of background.
You ask why I'm writing this particular book directly in Publisher. Answer: It's a bit of an experiment. The book is about 50% "primary text" and 50% images, charts, call-outs, and marginalia of various kinds. What I find is that the positioning of all these items on the page affects the text I want to write. If I were to write the text separately without thinking about what appears next to it on the page, I'd be writing a different (and inferior) book.
I suppose I could use a separate writing tool and then assemble collages on paper to see what's what — but I stopped doing that somewhere in the '80s.
 
So far, I've written only a few chapters; eventually there will be many. Each one is relatively short. While preparing each chapter, obviously I've kept to a sort of "master format" that's common to all chapters. If I have to copy/paste all files into one, or "add them up" in some other Affinity-designed way, there should not be any conflicts.
Yes, a "book" feature would be grand. (Honestly I'm still a little shocked that it wasn't built in from Day Zero.)
Thanks much for your comment. Additional advice would be more than welcome.
 

The Affinity Publisher beta is currently also mentioned on one of the Welcome screen panels in both Affinity Designer & Affinity Photo; & has been featured on the new https://affinityspotlight.com web site.

Like the one shown on this page?   

Thank you for the kind words.
May you and yours also have a Happy New Year!
Mike

I suggest to look at the History Studio if you are not familiar with it. At the top there is a slider that lets you slide through all changes. It gives a visual feedback that might help to identify which undo step you are looking for.
Affinity Designer has an even more advanced history feature that let's you select multiple future versions. I could think this will be included in APub at some point, too.
d.

Automatically preventing runts isn't necessarily a good idea anyway. The issue isn't always that there is a single word but this single word's syllable count. For instance, I would be less likely to deal with the word accessibility than the word access. These decisions cannot be made by a check box or other type of entry box in the UI.
It is easy enough to, while paging a document, make decisions as to whether one should micro-track narrower/tighter the entire paragraph or use kerning in order to push more words into that last line or to pull that last word up into the body of the paragraph. Only a human can make that judgment. That human can see the context of how the pages balance and this would be incredibly difficult for a machine to do.
My 2 cents...

You could do that but they are intended to be used while you are at the computer, working through the projects in the chapters.
Basically, they adopt a "learn by doing" methodology, not unlike you might find in a classroom.

You could try the help files that are included with each application? This is the first place to start learning any application. 
If that doesn’t work for you, why not try some of the official video tutorials? You can find them on the official affinity site. Here is the link: https://affinity.serif.com/
If that doesn’t work for you, try google.
I’ve created some clickable links for you here (just in case you’re having any problems).
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=affinity+designer+tutorial&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-gb&client=safari
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=affinity+photo+tutorial&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-gb&client=safari
Merry Christmas

I log onto the web site and whether I like it or not the local currency is displayed and then come to buy the books only then do I find out they cannot be shipped here. You deliver and sell the software what is the point without the guide which seems absolutely necessary to learn about it and why is this not even available through Apple. I will be making a similar complaint to Apple that the guide is an integral part of the software and without it makes it difficult to use. Perhaps they should withdraw it from their Itunes store and is it really BEYOND the scope of Serif to supply the book even through a local bookshop in an ENGLISH speaking country? Seems so. Stop making excuses and make it available. Expect a post on Apple recommending AGAINST buying the software as Serif cannot even supply the book in any form to support the software.

Amazon USA ONLY have second hand and at prices TWICE the normal price as a consequence. There is also some doubt as to whether they are the latest editions as Serif do not advise the date of publishing nor whether they have any updates. In a digital world Serif seems to be stuck in the past albeit it would be lovely to have the original book but it's impossible. Await my review on Apple posts.
 
How is the UK open for business?

You do not need the workbooks to learn how the Affinity apps work. The the built-in help system is a good place to start learning about it, as are the ever growing number of official video tutorials. There are also many other video tutorials on YouTube created by users, & free & low cost online video courses of instruction from Udemy & others like this one.

My last work for nail studio. Plan/printed
Logo design
Windowshop design
namecard design
 

That is their meaning in Publisher. Widow and Orphan control applies at the tops and bottoms of columns. They are part of the text flow settings that may move text into the next column. They are not part of H&J and do not change line-end decisions.
Currently we don't do whole-paragraph justification. The closest we have to controlling runts is in the hyphenation section. The hyphenation zone can be different at the end of a paragraph; a larger zone will be less likely to hyphenate the last word of a paragraph.

What about the coffee mug, or the sofa? The mug most likely has fingerprints of the suspect, the sofa may have DNA evidence.

A classic mistake, you forgot to get rid of the poisoned wine glass, dead persons fingerprints are all over it

Carl123, I got rid of the dead body, I told the guy to leave the photo and I dimmed the lights, I don't think anyone noticed so keep it under your hat, mums the word!   "The Wolf"
DSC01273 Tweaked.afphoto Saved with history so you can jog back and forth in the history panel.

Just unscrew the lights from the wall.
Good luck getting rid of the belly (I'd recommend diet and exercise)
PS The dead body on the sofa is still visible, I did my best to disguise it but you might want to remove it before the Police get there
 
 

before and after -- these are the more advanced edits, however there are other new basic edited pics on my Fb page; photos by ian browne -- or Flickr
how does it look with the original pasted onto edited photo?
What is better ; one photo per thread or several as here?
Pana Fz300 
Questions welcome 

Grass in front of the river water


The same tree
 


 

Processed with Affinity Photo to remove modern fences and other structures

I am so much hoping publisher is becoming great.
I just gave up on Quark Xpress and despite everything I tried against it have to go with Adobe CC now, because QX lacks so much in behaviour and GUI it is a shame. But me hope lies with affinity publisher. If this gets to a usable state, I will instantly bury CC.

Not a bad thought, @jmwellborn, and one I had in mind, too.
No real need to write down the numbers and add them to the index manually, by the way. When you click on an entry in the result list you you'll be positioned to the word. Hitting Ctrl+Shift+Alt+[ will then add an index mark and let you specify the values or click on OK to accept the defaults. (One could choose a less cumbersome shortcut, of course.)

Hi,
The context menu for a topic in the Index Panel includes a ‘Find in Document...’ command which should list occurrences of the topic in the document. Specific occurrences can then be included or excluded from the index. Note the ‘Find in Document’ command includes some word stemming support, so for instance a search for ‘find’ would turn up ‘find’, ‘finding’ etc.

Learning curve.  So many good things!   But definitely worth it.   And it gets easier and easier as you work with it more and more.    Once the commercial Publisher is available, they will undoubtedly have an excellent Help section, if Photo and Designer can be used as examples.    Meanwhile, use the Beta with caution, and export a PDF for anything you wish to keep -- just in case.   Soon you may find yourself waking up in the middle of the night, thinking "h'm'm, I could make an Asset out of that" or "bet a Symbol would solve the problem!"  or "wouldn't an offset in the text frame look nifty?"  or etc.    And there are always the forums, with so many really helpful people!!