First off: thank you for Publisher! I’ve been waiting for this and it’s been great to take a crack at building stuff. Secondly: apologies for the thoughts below. As I learned with Designer, there’s probably a way to do half of this stuff, I just haven’t been able to find it yet.
Layout
Guides - I’m not seeing a way to specify the exact placement of guides. It seems like this should be in the dynamic menu bar (the section that gives you font information when you click on a text box) or the Transform tab. I could be missing it.
I Need the ability to lay out columns from a page level. A mode where I can set margins and page columns and see them updated in real time is a must. I’ve closed 98% of my Affinity Pub projects over this missing so far.
The ability to quickly change document units. I can do this in InDesign by right-clicking on the rulers. The ability to switch from Inches to Picas (thanks for adding those!) and such would be huge.
Typography
The mixed text styles window is kind of driving me crazy. The ability to have separate character styles and paragraph styles, and to be able to sort them in folders and such would make this more usable usable.
I’m not sure how I feel about “show samples” being on by default. My palette felt really chaotic until I discovered that. I could see it maybe being beneficial.
Picture Frames/Images
The ability to drag-and-drop images into picture frames.
Along those same lines, a “Paste Into” ability for these frames.
Some controls for the images inside frames such as “fit to frame” “fit frame to content” “fill frame (proportionally)”
Misc
Preview for ctrl-W is ok. I’m glad it was added, but I REALLY need it as W. I’m completely used to this from InDesign, and it doesn’t seem like “W” is currently occupying any sort of role.
The ability to add hyperlinks to text. It sounds like this is on the roadmap and is more difficult than anticipated. Holding out for this.
InDesign has a hyperlinks palette. I use this for interactive PDFs and my resume. Right now, only properly formatted URLs are rendered, but I
I'm just another voice amidst a sea of them, pining for a way to import InDesign files (although I know that's being worked on).
I’m a little unclear on how Publisher documents are actually handled. With InDesign, you’re able to design a whole document, and link out to content (images, vectors, etc.) you want to place inside, which keeps the file size quite low. At the end you can export a package that has your original file, fonts, images, a PDF, etc. When I place an image in Publisher, is it being linked? Embedded? Am I going to end up with a ton of huge Publisher files?