mycroft

Your tutorials are great. This is a request that you create an additional tutorial video. Read on please.
I suggest you create a tutorial on how to import book-length text (50,000 to 100,000 words) into Affinity Publisher. Talk about the various source formats that can / should be used (e.g., PDF, TXT, RFT) and the various benefits of each. Talk about how best to import text while still retaining the formats and styles from the source text (or, if that is not possible, make clear what is / is not possible). Talk about what you should already have set up in your Affinity Publisher document before you import text. Talk about the pros and cons of importing text via File > Place, copy-paste, or other methods.
I find that importing a small amount of text (a few paragraphs) is pretty straightforward. But importing and formatting a large amount of text is cumbersome. So maybe I'm just doing something wrong. I think it would be better to watch a tutorial on this rather than ask a bunch of individual questions in the forum.
Thank you.

Yes it is. And now, reading the tool-tip, I see purple outline mentioned. I clearly misunderstood what the setting meant. Thank you, thank you. I now remember checking that box.
 

Yes it is. And now, reading the tool-tip, I see purple outline mentioned. I clearly misunderstood what the setting meant. Thank you, thank you. I now remember checking that box.
 

Check your Snapping settings (via the horseshoe magnet on the toolbar). I suspect you have ‘Show snapping candidates’ toggled on.

You're welcome.

mycroft: You can organise your Tools however you want by selecting the menu “View → Customise Tools…” and then dragging things around. You can change the number of columns at the bottom of the pop-up if you don’t want to have just one vertical line, and that also gives you the stroke/fill colour selector (which appears when you close the pop-up, but I think there’s an option somewhere to change that, but can’t remember where).

Thank goodness a pro showed up. I got to learn something too!

I am an absolute newbie in drawing digitally (though not drawing physically). I set myself what I thought would be a simple beginner, teach-myself project using Designer. Your tutorials seem to start with an  assumption of more basic knowledge (or jargon) than I have. I think my issue is a basic misunderstanding of  layers, or deciding or managing the sequence of actions. Sorry to feel so stupid, but I am missing the "logic" of the process. [Maybe what is needed is a video tutorial at this level of (mis)understanding and decision-making.]
 My project: I want to draw some simple rectangular shapes and add text within each that I can center vertically and horizontally in each rectangle. I would like a different fill color in each rectangle, and different stroke-width outlines to my rectangles. I would then like to connect my rectangles with lines of different stroke widths and/or colors. (Result, sort of like a simple mind-map.)
I'm fine with drawing, shaping corners, and filling the rectangles. Then I go astray. Adding text makes the rectangles disappear. Changing the color changes the color of the text. I cannot automatically align the text in the rectangles. I assume that my issues have to do with managing the layers in the layers panel, but maybe the text-alignment issues do not. Adding a text layer seems to make my "rectangle" layer disappear from the layers panel. I cannot seem to figure out what where it went. Should I add my text in the same layer as the original rectangle instead of its own layer? if so, how do I do this without making the fill and/or rectangle disappear? Art text? makes the text path curve around the shape of the rectangle, or something unexpected like that. (I still lose the color of the fill.) Text box? How do I fit it in the rectangle or not lose the fill color?  How do I use the opacity sliders for the layers? For example, setting the opacity to 0 in the text layer simply makes the text gray and disappear, not let that layer show the rectangle's color and shape behind it show through, etc. When, or why, do I add new layer?
Could someone kindly start me off with a very basic, step-by-step beginner's workflow to practice with to achieve my result? Or explain the logic behind sequencing the various processes to achieve my result? Such as: 
Step 1. select rectangle tool at left, draw and shape rectangle.
Step 2. color fill rectangle? or should I add text and align?
Step 3. set stroke around rectangle
Step 4. add new layer????  select text tool and type text???    etc., etc.
 

I've been at this stuff for a long time but only sporadically, so for all intents and purposes I'm a beginner.
I'll give you a method that will get you started and perhaps more knowledgeable users will jump in with a better idea.
AFAIK there's no way to format a text box to define fill, stroke etc. It's just a container for text. Off the top of my head the only way to achieve what you're after (formatted text on a formatted rectangle) is:
1. Draw and format your rectangle as before.
2. Select the text tool, click on the artboard and drag out a rectangle roughly the same size as the one you created.
3. Type your text in the text box, format as you like e.g. selecting center placement horizontally and vertically, size, text colour etc.
4. Notice that this operation has created a new text layer in your layers list tab in the "right studio" i.e. that tabbed section to the right of the screen.
5. With the move tool, select the text box and drag it so that it overlays your coloured rectangle.
6. Drag the edges of the text box so that it matches up with the rectangle beneath (or is centered therein or whatever relationship you'd like).
7. With the move tool, click and drag a selection that captures both boxes. That is, e.g. place the move tool outside the upper left corner of the rectangles, click and drag until it's past the lower right corner. You should now have both text box and rectangle selected. If you have the layers tab open you will see that both layers are selected.
8. You should see a "group" button on the tool bar, or you can go to the Layer menu and select "Group".
Henceforth the text box and underlying rectangle can be selected and moved as one.
If you double-click the object you'll be editing the text layer.
If you select the object, then select only the coloured rectangle layer in the layers tab, you'll be able to edit its parameters. There are probably also keyboard shortcuts enabling one to select the next layer down, dunno about this.
Worst case you can always select the grouped object and ungroup temporarily if you need to make a lot of changes to the underlying rectangle.
Also note you can grab the side handles and corner handles of the selected object and resize the frame/rectangle without altering the text size, or grab the extra handle off the lower right corner (there's an official name for this of course) and drag to resize and reshape the object in a manner that re-scales the content (text) at the same time. Pretty cool.
I'll see if I can attach a little, ugly example file here.
TextOverRectangle.afdesign

In addition to the advice above, my attached video shows some basic techniques you can use to draw what I think you’re asking for. (I didn’t practice what I did in the video in order to show the sorts of things that can happen so you can see how I rectified some ‘issues’ I didn’t want.)
There are many others methods and functionalities you can use but the ‘best’ one(s) will very much depend on your precise requirements.
Try playing around with the techniques I’ve shown in the video to get yourself comfortable with the basics and then get back to us when you need more details on specific areas.
Note: To edit the text – where I have done so in the video – you need to double-click it once the text layer is selected.
2020-08-16_09-39-38.mp4

LaTeX is very special software. If you are happy with it continue using it by all means. MS Word is not fit to produce printed matter.
At the moment, if aim is to design in Publisher a simple book there is nothing to stop creating a 500 page book. Autoflow will typeset it in no time. Styling the text takes some time, but there is nothing in other competing apps to make it quicker either. Further refinement in tools is needed of course as designs grow more complicated but everything is doable with long documents even now. It just takes some manual work.

I have problems using master pages
There is a menu way to "show master pages" However it is always greyed out
I want to create a master page that I can then choose to use in a new file
Questions
1) Is there a way to produce a template file?
2) How do I import a Master page of my choice into a new file

I did my normal method for walking through software:
Opened a doc from scratch and worked to create a finished document without looking at a manual. Disclaimer: I have worked a lot in Designer and Photo so I am familiar with the programs.
Here are my two cents:
1. Creating a new doc, margins, master pages: All very easy and intuitive except Page numbers. While I was able to get page numbers to appear in the master pages, to get the numbering to offset by a particular number of pages was daunting.  

2. Performance: Not a single task slowed and every movement such as dragging around objects and text blocks was VERY smooth. Nice!
3. Did quite a few text blocks before I realized I was using the wrong text tool. I like the artistic text tool but it is WAY too similar in look on the toolbar. 
4. Tabs (once I used the correct text tool) were very easy and intuitive and I love the text ruler. Could it be the default to have the ruler showing? I had to choose it in the view menu to see it.
 5. Center objects tool: Extremely helpful but if you are in facing pages it puts the object in the center of two pages joined, not in the middle of the page you are working on. The ruler also displays the entire two facing pages instead of starting from zero for the next page. I had to get rid of facing pages to get the ruler and center tool to behave as I wished.
5. Layers that are not document wide but change from page to page: Brilliant! This is a huge time saver. Each page felt like its own separate designer file. Love it!
6. Printing: The scale pull down menu is strange. Why would you not want print to fit as the default? Also colors printed poorly compared to printing the same file in Swift Publisher. My designer created tiff files looked gorgeous on the screen, even close up, but printed in low resolution. This problem would be a deal killer for me. Hope it is just a Beta glitch.

7. Love how text is handled, especially the typography window, and styles seem intuitive. Never found the "create style from selection" part of the program.
Great job! Looking forward to seeing the final product. 
 

I'm new to desktop publishing but now Publisher is available I really want to learn. I know Affinity have their tutorials, but they assume a level of DTP experience I think. Anyone know of any good fundamental DTP teaching courses....I have used Pages but hate it - like many of you I've been waiting for Publisher for a long time - so want to learn properly rather than hack myself around.
Cheers! 

It would be great if there was a visual alert to images that have placed ppi below the document setup level. So - I've set my document at 300ppi (because that's the resolution the document will be output at) if an image is placed, and then scaled up so its placed ppi drops to below 300, a dot appears on it's frame like with overflowed text.
I think this would solve a lot of the criticism of resource manager being a dialog box. The main reason I want to see that in Studio is to quickly know I'm not enlarging images beyond their resolution.
By the way - it should be ppi not dpi - dpi refers to printed dots - while it's on your screen they're still pixels: pixels per inch.

I just figured out the nice index feature and already reached it limits.
I am writing a book containing people and places. I want an index for the people and one for the places.
What now ?
Okay I know it is a bit early to ask for features but maybe I just misunderstand the functionality of the "add topic" , what is that for ?

The ‘Alice’ placeholder text dates from way back in Serif’s DTP history. It’s probably at least as old as the ‘Elvis has left the building’ audio file.

As single pages should be default (this is a request) and As spreads a user option (as it is seldom needed).

Thank you Walt, for your precise instructions. I think you have opened the door for how this works. I appreciate your help so much. Elegant.

I have a long text document in linked text frames. I have added figures I want to number and caption and be able to list in a Table/List of Figures. I want to group the captions with the Figures, and wrap the original continuous text around these groups of (figure(s) + caption(s). 
Attempts to add a Text box or frame for the caption breaks the continuous text, adding the caption content to the original text. How do I achieve my desired result? I guess I mean a box of editable unrelated text within existing text, that will travel with (or be grouped with) its image, not the original text. I seem to be missing something I should be doing. 

I'm a longtime Serif Page Plus user. I downloaded and looked at this and it's beautiful. But I see no support for footnotes, and I don't see the multi-document pagination into book files yet, so this is far from ready.
I have done multi-chapter books in PagePlus with over 1,000 footnotes and I have never had a crash.
Keep up the great great work, but please bear in mind that the original Serif product's greatest strength was the ability to manage long documents with footnotes. Only Ventura Publisher and Framemaker really had these features, and Serif did it right with Page Plus -- I migrated my press's entire catalog into Serif Page Plus. I hope to see the new Affinity Product excel.

Hi Stefanoc, smac1314,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
The dev teams are already aware of these issues/lack of functionality regarding masters. There should be more improvements coming in future updates/versions to address this.

I come from a background in layout and illustration of college science textbooks, before Desktop Publishing existed. I have never used InDesign, Quark, etc., so discussions of their features, terminology, or usages do not mean much to me, nor do I have much idea how my needs might be met by a DTP.  Most seem to be overpriced or over-featured for my list of basic wishes. I am hoping that AfPub is trying to be the so-far-missing program between a user like myself and the expensive world of InDesign.
My basic needs are listed below. Will I be able to meet them with AfPub when it is fully released? For example, I love the two-page, accurately margined and paginated spread, and the indexing. Will the rest be there? My needs seem, to me, to be a basic set for a DTP,  but are they?
I want to produce what will eventually be a number of long (open-ended 100+ pp.) text documents. I want them to be rather profusely illustrated with captioned, numbered Figures, Charts, Maps, etc., probably at least one such per page, more likely more. 
The documents are, however, primarily text, so I need the text to be easily editable, and the text linkages to be continuous, at least through each section or chapter. Not sure how text boxes would work for this.
I want the illustrations to be grouped with their captions, and not to interrupt the flow of the basic text. I want to control the flow of uninterrupted text around the illustrations. I am trying to present information, not “artiness.” The illustrations are also intended to present information, not artiness.
I want to be able to control the scaling and/or proportions of the illustrations as I import them. Importing from Photo and Designer seems good, and I look forward to that.  
I want to be able to generate TOC,  and Tables/Lists of Figures, charts, maps, etc. automatically.
i want to be able to control pagination, so that I will be able to stitch together various parts as I work on them. I need to work on parts or sections out of order, so some dynamic numbering is important.
I want to have indexing. 
I want text styling for the various levels of body, captions, headings, and so forth. I want to be able to create the styles easily, and for them to be conveniently displayed for quick usage.
I want running headers/footers, controlled by assigned heading levels in the text.
I want an outline, dynamically created by headings, for organization and navigation.
i want to be able to produce footnotes or endnotes, and possibly to cross-reference material. Perhaps a bibliography.
i want to be able to lock (and unlock) finished portions so that their layout will be undisturbed by later editing in the document. 
I want to be able to create a new document based on these elements in a finished document, so that I will not have to recreate all the styles, page layout, etc. A template, or other ability to call out the formatting and styles of an existing document in a new document.
i see elements of my needs all throughout what I have seen in AfPub, but somehow the basic process of creating a continuous, illustrated, long text document seems missing to me. Or am I missing something that is there, or going to be there, and I am simply waiting on a manual to guide me into it? So far, I see elegant brochures, but not my usage; but if so, why is a feature such as indexing already available?
Will AfPub work for me?

Wondering about a procedure for adding captions in an illustrated text piece (not a brochure).
Text presumably to be created by linked text frames in a facing-pages document. It is a continued, relatively long story. I want to add a number of captioned illustrations laid out within this text. How do I add captions, some of which might be lengthy? In separate text frames?  Does this break the original text frame linkages? Can a caption be grouped or linked with the image so that when or if the image is moved, the caption goes with it? I want to use a different text style to differentiate caption text from body text. How can I dynamically number captions so that I can create a Table of Figures or Table of Charts or Table of Maps that includes Figure #, Chart #, Map # with its title in addition to a TOC?

Is there a way to use headings as an outline tool to organize long documents?