stunev

Perhaps I don’t understand the Affinity business model but It seems obvious that they’re after the Adobe market, people who are fed up with paying £20 a month for In Design. In In Design, designers can take a manuscript from an author created in the likes of Word and format and style it .Once there it’s a simple matter to output to PDF for web or print or fixed and re-flowable ePub, all from the same original layout. Without all of these export options right from the start, plus opening of In Design files, Affinity Publisher will never take the professional design market away from Adobe and saying that they might do this in future isn’t good enough. Affinity seem to be taking business from Adobe with Photo and Designer, it’s a shame they can’t complete the trio of images, vectors and layout.

No - when you place items on a page in InDesign they go onto the one layer unless the user wants something different - InDesign doesn’t force layers on the user and has full control by the user to merge layers etc. I’m not seeing this in Publisher - for me the layers idea is more an image editing feature like Photoshop not a DTP feature - it’s almost like Affinity have taken the Photo snd Designer concept and applied it to DTP. At least they haven’t forced the ghastly Persona concept on us in the menu structure.

Still exploring Publisher and a couple of things that have me a bit confused. 1. I create a master page and give it margins of say10mm, I apply it to my pages but the pages retain the default 25mm 2. Every new element I add to a page creates a new layer? Is this right? I would expect this from a photo editing program but not from page layout and I can’t find a way of merging the layers, so even in a small publication you could have hundreds of layers. Perhaps I’m not understanding this one properly.

Exploring the Beta version of Publisher some more, I've found a couple of quirks. The share menu offers the option to share to Apple Aperture, why would a new program offer the option of working with a program discontinued four years ago? Also when creating a new document, we're offered the option to create for devices including iPads and iPhones which makes the lack of ePub export even less understandable.

Talk of alternative ePub creation software like Jutoh and Sigil is missing the point, yes you can use other programs to create ebooks but why would you want to start from scratch with clunky software when, using InDesign you create one beautiful layout and export for print or ePub. This is where Affinity are getting it wrong by not providing ePub export as a basic feature. I’ve said it before, this is a deal breaker.

No - ePub is not ‘minor market’ - every book publisher now produces an ebook at the same tine as the hardback snd audio book of their new publications.

Sorry Dave - as regards ePub export ‘the coming years’ just doesn’t cut it - if you’re going to be a credible alternative to InDesign this has to be a basic feature of Publisher - be under no illusion - ePub Export and InDesign Import are deal breakers.

I can’t believe that Affinity would release even a Beta version of Publisher without the ability to export to ePub. If the Beta version and testing / consultation process is to mean anything then they’ll sort this before they go any further.

A few versions back Adobe removed Story Editor from InDesign snd had to reinstate it due to public demand. I agree that we need Story Editor - it’s sometimes useful just to check the text without the distraction of the layout.

I can’t believe that Affinity would release even a Beta version of Publisher without the ability to export to ePub. If the Beta version and testing / consultation process is to mean anything then they’ll sort this before they go any further.

Congratulations on Publisher - as a long time InDesign user I immediately felt at home with the interface and features. I would love to cancel my Adobe subscription and save £20 a month but I can't think about that until 1. Publisher can import In Design files with a reasonable degree of accuracy and 2. Publisher includes ePub export.