Loquos

I have been on a Mac (at home) since childhood. My father worked as a computer IT (back when discs were the size of pizzas) for DuPont and always came home complaining about all of the problems with Microsoft, Dell, etc. So I've learned to navigate Apple-friendly software alternatives since I was about 8 years old. (I started on Graphic Converter AGES ago!)
As the majority of my paid work is creating layouts and wrangling text, I would have preferred to 'story board' something of this experimental nature, before assembling. This way I can set myself a sort of guide for how many total pages I want to aim to end up with, what each chapter should contain, and what each page in a chapter should contain (more or less). I find it always easier to edit down text. I'd start laying out each chapter by blocking/framing, adding the essential images, charts, etc. And then add the primary text - if there's too much text for a particular space, I edit down OR consider adding a 2-4 pages to the chapter.
For layouts and design, I prefer to plan, then do. But I recognize everyone works a bit differently. Since this is your own project, and not client work, I say do what works best for you!
I agree the 'book' feature would be the best way to tackle this from a layout perspective - but as we don't know yet whether this will be included once Publisher is released from beta, at this stage I'd recommend keeping it all together.
The biggest thing I've laid out so far on Publisher beta is a 20 page 'newsletter/magazine' for a client. It worked quite well (even better once they fixed the master page bug) and I'm already planning to continue with doing this project in Publisher each issue, ready to throw my cash at Affinity as soon as they release the paid version.
I have one other annual client project that's 100+ pages and 8 beefy 'chapters' to wrangle, which is currently in InDesign and uses their 'book' feature. Though, the more I think of it, the only reason I made it a book in the first place was because ID was soooo clunky on my older Mac once you got past 25 pages or so that it was a total headache every time I had to open and work on that one massive file. Maybe Publisher (like Designer & Photo) will handle these same tasks smoother, and not having a 'book' feature when they release it from beta won't hinder my ability to cut the Adobe cord completely. 
Still would be nice, especially if a client comes back with a request to completely rearrange chapter orders!

Is there any reason you're doing this directly in Publisher first? I would think basic text files (LibraOffice, Word, etc.) would be the best for writing, editing, and circulating chapters of a book. Publisher is more for final layout, I would think. Unless your book includes a lot of images you want proofed at the same time?
If the are already individually saved in Publisher, as it's still in Beta, I think your best bet of merging would be to open all of the individual files, and then copy/paste into a comprehensive file? Since there is currently no 'book' feature. Then the rest (TOC and indexing) can all be done in the one file.
Otherwise, if you're not in a hurry, I'd suggest waiting and hope they implement a 'book' feature so you don't have to go through that tedious work.

Is there any reason you're doing this directly in Publisher first? I would think basic text files (LibraOffice, Word, etc.) would be the best for writing, editing, and circulating chapters of a book. Publisher is more for final layout, I would think. Unless your book includes a lot of images you want proofed at the same time?
If the are already individually saved in Publisher, as it's still in Beta, I think your best bet of merging would be to open all of the individual files, and then copy/paste into a comprehensive file? Since there is currently no 'book' feature. Then the rest (TOC and indexing) can all be done in the one file.
Otherwise, if you're not in a hurry, I'd suggest waiting and hope they implement a 'book' feature so you don't have to go through that tedious work.

The InDesign feature I use most—weirdly—is the INDB book feature, where InDesign creates a container file of sorts to hold a pile of individual InD files that make up an entire book, as well as manage their page numbers. Being able to manage chapters individually is vastly easier than working on a 300+ page single file. Would love to see this implemented—or something like it. 

Thank you!    Every so often, computers have a way of making their humans feel like total idiots.   The computers are usually right.   Guess we humans operate on too many things other than 1’s and 0’s!!     I hope you like Publisher as much as I do!

Are there any plans to create an auto-index feature? I swear ID can do this - but all I see in the Publisher Beta is the tedious 'insert index marker' by hand, page by page, for each and every topic you want to index. Surely when you're laying out a reference book or other large publication, there's a more automated way to do this then searching for each instance of a word and then inserting a marker?
Or, like Table of Contents, could there be a way to have words with special formatting automatically flagged to be included in the index?
As it is, indexing currently feels incredibly clunky and incomplete. I do realize this is still in Beta though, so curiosity prompts me to ask if polishing up the index feature is something slated for future releases?

On a positive note, I found the TOC very easy to set up, format, and create - quickly and effectively. Great job!

After poking around thoroughly in Publisher, I did not see one feature that I find incredibly handy in ID - creating 'books'. I saw another thread where someone suggested using Publisher's 'Sections' as a way to handle longer documents, though I'm not sure this is the way to go and keep the program running smoothly.
ID handles books by creating a 'container' into which you can add or remove other ID files as 'sections' - allowing you to rearrange each as needed, add/remove pages inside each and automatically updating page numbers as you shift things around. You can even tell the 'book' that all section's styles should be children of 1 master style, allowing you to only have to update a style once to populate it across all sections.
There is a longish publication I work on each year that I find easiest to wrangle by creating it as a 'book' instead of a 100+ page file. I'm not 100% sure I'd want to attempt this same publication in Publisher without some way to better manage these sections.
I'm not saying Affinity should recreate what Adobe has done - I am suggesting they could add this feature and have it work even better than Adobe's does. :-)
 

Are there any plans to create an auto-index feature? I swear ID can do this - but all I see in the Publisher Beta is the tedious 'insert index marker' by hand, page by page, for each and every topic you want to index. Surely when you're laying out a reference book or other large publication, there's a more automated way to do this then searching for each instance of a word and then inserting a marker?
Or, like Table of Contents, could there be a way to have words with special formatting automatically flagged to be included in the index?
As it is, indexing currently feels incredibly clunky and incomplete. I do realize this is still in Beta though, so curiosity prompts me to ask if polishing up the index feature is something slated for future releases?

On a positive note, I found the TOC very easy to set up, format, and create - quickly and effectively. Great job!

After poking around thoroughly in Publisher, I did not see one feature that I find incredibly handy in ID - creating 'books'. I saw another thread where someone suggested using Publisher's 'Sections' as a way to handle longer documents, though I'm not sure this is the way to go and keep the program running smoothly.
ID handles books by creating a 'container' into which you can add or remove other ID files as 'sections' - allowing you to rearrange each as needed, add/remove pages inside each and automatically updating page numbers as you shift things around. You can even tell the 'book' that all section's styles should be children of 1 master style, allowing you to only have to update a style once to populate it across all sections.
There is a longish publication I work on each year that I find easiest to wrangle by creating it as a 'book' instead of a 100+ page file. I'm not 100% sure I'd want to attempt this same publication in Publisher without some way to better manage these sections.
I'm not saying Affinity should recreate what Adobe has done - I am suggesting they could add this feature and have it work even better than Adobe's does. :-)
 

Hello, one more vote for "data merge" tool like in InDesign. I use this function mostly for designing business cards and small catalogs, labels for boxes etc ... Everything, that have same desing and elements, that change always on same places and can be read frome some kind of database.

I use the data merge tool daily to create QR-codes in a batch or load data into a pdf. I think this is not present in the beta build?

Any chance there will be a Caption feature in Publisher? Preferably one that works better than InDesign does!
Essentially, you'd set up a paragraph style for photo captions, then right click an image and tell it to insert the caption (either static or live).
Even more awesome would be if there was a better way to automatically say how it should line up (with the bottom edge of the caption level with the bottom edge of the photo, etc.) and to expand (up/down or sideways) to allow for the amount of text in the caption.
Attaching IDs current settings for this feature, though only for clarification on what I'm talking about. :-)

Let’s hope the Developers have an answers for this.
Best regards!

This is where having the columns set up in the Master page would make a whole lot more sense. Not a text frame, but simple column guides, as I originally posted above.
In this way they should function as guides, and thus objects should snap to them just as they should to other design elements.

Currently, the best work around is to set up actual guides on your Master were you gutters would be (doing the math to make sure everything works out) and then your objects should automatically snap to them, regardless of having a text frame in place or not.

Important to note that you can also have more than one Master page. So if you have standard margins, but have a spread in your layout that deviates from this, you can always create a separate master to apply to only those pages. Or even as ID does where you can link up Master pages - so that your primary Master page contains the thematic elements that exist in the entire spread, and then those child master pages can add additional elements. If something needs to change in the theme, you edit the primary Master page and ALL of the child master pages are updated.
If you happed to set margins up this way, then they should update as well. When you're working with 100+ page publications, these sorts of tools are incredibly essential for workflow.

Any chance there will be a Caption feature in Publisher? Preferably one that works better than InDesign does!
Essentially, you'd set up a paragraph style for photo captions, then right click an image and tell it to insert the caption (either static or live).
Even more awesome would be if there was a better way to automatically say how it should line up (with the bottom edge of the caption level with the bottom edge of the photo, etc.) and to expand (up/down or sideways) to allow for the amount of text in the caption.
Attaching IDs current settings for this feature, though only for clarification on what I'm talking about. :-)

Important to note that you can also have more than one Master page. So if you have standard margins, but have a spread in your layout that deviates from this, you can always create a separate master to apply to only those pages. Or even as ID does where you can link up Master pages - so that your primary Master page contains the thematic elements that exist in the entire spread, and then those child master pages can add additional elements. If something needs to change in the theme, you edit the primary Master page and ALL of the child master pages are updated.
If you happed to set margins up this way, then they should update as well. When you're working with 100+ page publications, these sorts of tools are incredibly essential for workflow.

Why a master page (or master pages) isn't created in a layout application when a new document is created is beyond my ability to rationalize the thinking behind this choice. If someone doesn't desire using the master page then they don't need to.
If a master page was created automatically at document creation, then it seems a no-brainer to have it actually control the document margins and if someone later desires to alter margins they can do so on the master page(s) and it would simply apply to the document. The facility is present in the UI already and so other than how margins would automatically be applied to all pages using the altered master page(s) programmatically, the UI is there to do so.
So yes, please do consider this choice. 

Sorry for the delay in replying. We are still deciding how master page margins should affect the document pages and where the UI should live for this. Please be aware this is still being considered by the developers.

Yes - PLEASE implement something like the OP is suggesting. Text columns are NOT what I need - I need LAYOUT columns - in the background. Pretty please, with brown sugar on it. A grid system is no substitute for the ease with which one can do this in InDesign, and it's a really basic need (heck...Quark had it back in the dark ages...).

I think Publisher's big thing is in the multipage layout - I would not want to do massive 30+ page layouts in Designer! Publisher in this respect is like Designer on steroids.
As someone who is currently having to fork over money for a monthly subscription so I can handle 100+ page layouts with InDesign, I'd be happy to pay for Publisher - once it's fully launched! :-)

What we are trying to achieve is a page-level grid system ("guides" in Publisher) that is independent of specific text or graphic objects placed on the page.
The problem with a text-frame based guide model is that in many instances you need to align non-text items to the grid system. Images, graphic elements, marginalia, etc. 
As with Indesign, there are some instances where a multi-column text box is useful. But there should 100% be a page-level grid/guide setting that allows the configuration of a user-defined number of columns with a user-defined gutter width, set within the margins of the page. Otherwise something as simple as a standard 12-column magazine grid becomes incredibly inefficient to set up or alter.

I would assume that "align with top of margin" would be looking at my page margins I set up - not the printer margins of the paper. If you look at the screenshot with the orange header, the baseline grid (in green) is aligned with the top of the margin. Using these same settings in Publisher (purple header) accomplishes nothing. The baseline grid (in green) goes all the way to the top of the page. I did not tell it to align with top of spread - I told it to align with top of margin, so one would think it would align with the margin of the page (the blue guide).
Attached is what I have to nerf to get the result I want. It's like it's not recognizing the margins I've set.

I think Publisher's big thing is in the multipage layout - I would not want to do massive 30+ page layouts in Designer! Publisher in this respect is like Designer on steroids.
As someone who is currently having to fork over money for a monthly subscription so I can handle 100+ page layouts with InDesign, I'd be happy to pay for Publisher - once it's fully launched! :-)

When setting up a layout grid in my Master pages, it's super handy to be able to say "Make my margins this size, and within the remaining working space, separate into X columns with a gutter of Y". I've attached the setup and window in InDesign as an example (orange) to compare to Publisher (purple).
In Publisher, it's currently only possible to set margins - everything else I have to set up manually with the Guide Manager. Any chance the ability to set columns & gutters as part of the margins settings will be future feature?