Colin_Fredericks

I realize that Serif sometimes ditches features they don't feel are worth continuing, and migrating documents has always been troublesome that way, so I have used the glitzy features sparingly for publications, but consider this:  cross-referencing is not a glitzy feature that can be ditched -- it's an essential element of writing itself.  The biggest point of automated tools is to avoid making users go crazy with trying to keep up with changes -- like page numbers and cross-referencing to those pages whenever our documents change.
I just went through a full migration of a book to Affinity Publisher before I realized that the cross-referencing is ...(I'm rolling my eyeballs here) ... absent where I need it.  I need to cross-reference to headers within chapters, illustrations, etc. -- at a finer level than sections.  PagePlus did it, and I quote:  "PagePlus allows you to cross-reference to headings and achored text, tables, pictures, or diagrams...numbered paragraphs, footnotes/endnotes, and next/previous frames..."  At least that much needs to exist in Affinity Publisher, and I can't help but wonder what else is missing!?  Forgive me if I'm feeling beguiled -- I just suffer from "expectations."
The section manager is iffy, anyway.  It's not tied to a point in the text.  So when I add text to front matter that uses small Roman numerals and it pushes out the start of next section, the next section's Arabic page numbering starts inside the front matter instead of at Chapter 1, and when I subtract text that moves the next section back, Chapter 1 starts with a small Roman numeral.  If there are a lot of sections with different numbering schemes, the Section Manager can be a tedious chore to maintain.  Frankly, I don't like the tediousness of maintaining even a few, over and over and over again.  In fact, I'm likely to forget to do it "one last time" as I get to a hard publishing deadline, and end up looking bad.
I have to agree with Andrea Borsic at the head of this topic: "While the applications are snappy, the GUI well organized, and a pleasure to use, I cannot consider using Publisher for serious projects."  Snappy GUIs are secondary to supporting the essentials that writers require, which must be present to take a Publishing product seriously.  This is a serious problem that I hope Affinity Publisher developers will take seriously with high priority.  In the meantime, I guess it's a mere toy -- I shall endeavor to keep my expectations low, and use something else for serious work.

Update: Installing the static fonts did indeed work. @AlfredThank you for the fix.
Overall this was incredibly frustrating. Seriously, I probably spent 8 hours over the past 3 days trying to figure this out - an entire work day wasted. I should charge companies my consulting rate before I try to document their bugs. I'd be a thousandaire.

I think something should be done. Hopefully variable fonts compatibility will be added some time in the future (there are several feature requests for it). In the interim, it would probably be better if Affinity would just not load those fonts. But I don't know if that is a reasonable possibility from the programming side.

Variable fonts can’t currently be used in the Affinity apps. If that’s what you installed, you need to uninstall it/them and install the fonts from the ‘static’ folder instead.

Update: Installing the static fonts did indeed work. @AlfredThank you for the fix.
Overall this was incredibly frustrating. Seriously, I probably spent 8 hours over the past 3 days trying to figure this out - an entire work day wasted. I should charge companies my consulting rate before I try to document their bugs. I'd be a thousandaire.

I like the Affinity Publisher concept, and already worked on a few brochures and documents. All seems good, but I can't seem to find the word count function.
Has it been forgotten, or I just simply can't find it?

I've found that having object styles available makes it easier for me to place graphics faster, as I can set a standard text wrap and apply it quickly. I've also used it to create standardized sidebars with simple designs when I don't want to create new graphics for all of them.
I've also found a few other features that other folks suggested that I also liked (e.g. book files), so I've been using the "Like" button to indicate agreement rather than posting my own thread or adding more posts to theirs. Not sure if that's the right way to go about this, but hopefully the admins will be able to see that.
Thanks for your hard work!

I've found that having object styles available makes it easier for me to place graphics faster, as I can set a standard text wrap and apply it quickly. I've also used it to create standardized sidebars with simple designs when I don't want to create new graphics for all of them.
I've also found a few other features that other folks suggested that I also liked (e.g. book files), so I've been using the "Like" button to indicate agreement rather than posting my own thread or adding more posts to theirs. Not sure if that's the right way to go about this, but hopefully the admins will be able to see that.
Thanks for your hard work!

Yet another +1 for IDML export.
I am currently, as in right now, today, in the position of having created a file in Affinity Publisher and needing to entirely rebuild it in InDesign for a colleague. It's not a complex file. Honestly, all I need are the paragraph styles and character styles. But there's just no way to do it right now, which means creating things in Affinity has become a pain point for my operation.

Hi,
I think this has not been asked as of yet (at least, I can't find it when searching). Probably, most of us are interested in IDML import, since the most urgent thing is transitioning from ID to APublisher.
However, I think that the ability of exporting IDML is still very important in a professional context.
1) Most of the professional publishing sector will be based on ID for years, and being able to transfer our files to a larger workgroup is very important to have our work accepted.
2) Computer aided translation tools are usually compatible with IDML files (and I can confirm they can be perfectly compatibile with ID). Translating our work will probably mean that the translators will ask us an IDML file.
So, I hope to see this implemented in a near future version.
Paolo
 

I've found that having object styles available makes it easier for me to place graphics faster, as I can set a standard text wrap and apply it quickly. I've also used it to create standardized sidebars with simple designs when I don't want to create new graphics for all of them.
I've also found a few other features that other folks suggested that I also liked (e.g. book files), so I've been using the "Like" button to indicate agreement rather than posting my own thread or adding more posts to theirs. Not sure if that's the right way to go about this, but hopefully the admins will be able to see that.
Thanks for your hard work!

Can we have EPUB export please?

I've found that having object styles available makes it easier for me to place graphics faster, as I can set a standard text wrap and apply it quickly. I've also used it to create standardized sidebars with simple designs when I don't want to create new graphics for all of them.
I've also found a few other features that other folks suggested that I also liked (e.g. book files), so I've been using the "Like" button to indicate agreement rather than posting my own thread or adding more posts to theirs. Not sure if that's the right way to go about this, but hopefully the admins will be able to see that.
Thanks for your hard work!

I've created a booklet using Publisher 1.7.1 by assembling text from several sources direct into Publisher, and then tweaking the result. So the text in Publisher is now the only "master."
I now want also to create a Kindle version, with flowing text. I have PagePlus X9, Sigil, Libre Office, and various Amazon tools. If possible, I do not want to install / buy yet more software.
Recently, I've published other books from PagePlus X9 in flowing ePub3, then used Amazon's tools to convert into Kindle formats. This has worked well: Amazon has reported no problems.
Questions:
What is the best way to convert a Publisher document into a flowing Kindle eBook? What is the best way to extract the story text from a Publisher document, for use elsewhere? Do I really have to recreate this document in PagePlus X9 (or another program) before exporting it as a flowing ePub? Are there other tools which would make any of this easier?

+1 for both cross references and book files. Massive time savers when working with large documents. 
 

As a long time User of Adobe InDesign CC, I am very impressed with Affinity Publisher.   We are looking for alternatives to Adobe products and their high priced ripoff subscriptions.
Affinity does practically everything InDesign CC can do and some things better, except for 2 things, which we need.
1.  Cross Reference feature for assigning Figure numbers to images.
2.  Books - the ability to compile sections into a combined book.
Maybe these features exist, and I don't know how to use them?
Or will these features be added in the future?
Thanks,
Bob M 

The lack of cross references (unless I have overlooked the addition of it) is a real road block to me. I would like to finally start using APub for more than testing and playing around. But the lack of that feature still makes me have to fall back on Word or other software atm.

Cross references are a must. Forward and backward references are necessary to refer to automatically insert figure and page numbers.
But we also need footnotes and endnotes. The anchor point for the forward-backward references also needs to be placeable in footnotes and endnotes.
Basically, Publisher is useless for book publishing without these features, except for the most simplistic books.
Books are, in fact, the only thing I keep InDesign around for. But for Publisher to be used as a robust book-editing solution, we probably need more, such as the ability to combine publisher files together into a single book with all page numbering and cross references intact and working. Or perhaps Affinity has better ideas for how this could be handled. InDesign's book system can be rather fragile.

Yes, please, please add cross-references. Any technical document needs these. I'd like to migrate from PagePlus but can't do so when this isn't fixed.

I second this!
Please give us X-references.

Apart from the absence of object styles, this is the number 1 feature that keeps me from switching to Publisher. Please add it soon.

I would like to inform you that these features missing in Affinity Publisher are a big problem for me. I started editing 18 printed books in which the cross-reference function would be of great help. There are up to 100 such references per book. Some of them are references that refer to previous volumes. So there is an example of the sentence in Vol 7 "... as I mentioned in Vol 2, Lesson 5.2, page 42, ..." This example therefore requires a reference between two different afpub files. In my opinion, this should be possible. Such a reference has been possible for years in Excel, for example. These 18 books are also published as e-books. At the moment I am still creating all e-books "by hand". That means I create xhtml, opf and ncx files manually in a text editor. Also with an index (of about 10 pages in the printed version).
Example of this printed version (created on Affinity Publisher): https://www.amazon.fr/Cerveau-son-fonctionnement-Psychosyntérèse-U-M/dp/1695360907/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_fr_FR=ÅMÅŽÕÑ&dchild=1&keywords=Le+Cerveau+et+son+fonctionnement+I&qid=1595160754&quartzVehicle=77-946&replacementKeywords=le+cerveau+et+son+fonctionnement&sr=8-1
I also have the general impression that the current version of Affinity Publisher is not suitable for long technical documents. Of the 18 books mentioned above, which represent a course in psychology and neurology, each volume has about 120 pages. If someone wants to write a technical book with several hundred pages, which contains a lot of diagrams and figures, as well as a detailed index, I have the impression that AP is too slow.
I understand that you don't want to talk publicly about your plans. But I can't wait very long because I have to edit the books mentioned. What do you think I should do? Test Adobe FramMaker?

@thomaso
Thank you for taking the time to do this. However, perhaps we aren't referring to the same things. The examples you've provided demonstrate that Affinity Publisher indeed handles links or hyperlinks in a variety of ways: page, anchor, URL, file, and email. Hyperlink interactivity is indeed very useful.
I should have been a little clearer though. What I refer to as cross referencing is more old school, not involving interactivity that indeed you've demonstrated Publisher can handle.
To me, cross referencing is used (and still especially useful, even in these days of electronic publishing and document interactivity) in text to refer the reader to other sections, figures, chapters, appendices, etc. of interest. Here are some examples:
- Refer back to section 3.4 "System Operation" for more information.
- Figure 43 on the next page illustrates this concept in action.
- Full system specifications are found in Appendix B on page 343.
Not all technical documentation is always available in electronic form. Sometimes paper copies still dominate.
Cross referencing is referred to by this name in FrameMaker, InDesign, and even Microsoft Word, all of which also offer hyperlink capabilities similar to Publisher and what you've demonstrated with your two examples. 
 
Can text anchors be used to repeat, rather than link? By this, I mean, can you add an anchor to say the heading text "Appendix B" and then somewhere earlier in the document body text "call" that anchor to be repeated (the refer to "Appendix B" part of my earlier example?).
 
The Publisher workarounds I've seen proposed are similar to what is described here:
But really, this workaround isn't as simple, quick, nor intuitive as what is seen in Publisher's competition.
That is, unless I've just missed this capability as I continue to evaluate the full suite.

That's a complete show stopper for me. Can you please be more detailed, when referencing will be available. In the meanwhile I have to stick with MS word, as I#m using a lot of figures I refere within the text. Also numbering the figures based on the sections would be nice.
In the example below the bold text shows the reference and the italic text where it links to. So when you click on the 1 of "section 1" it whill refere you to "Section 1: some blabla".
When you click on "Figure 1-1" it will jump to "Figure 1-1: A nice graph". The numbering is done automatically. So if I delete "---graph--- Figure 1-1: A nice graph" then it should update "Figure 1-2: Another nice graph in section 1" to be "Figure 1-1: Another nice graph in section 1".
Example:
Section 1: some blabla
see Figure 1-1 below:
---- graph ---
Figure 1-1: A nice graph in section 1
---- graph ---
Figure 1-2: Another nice graph in section 1
Section 2. some more blabla
see Figure 1-1 in section 1 and Figure 2-1 below:
---- graph ----
Figure 2-1: another nice graph

» Text > Interactive > Insert Hyperlink.... «
This creates – as it says – a hyperlink to the anchor. This is not a printable reference to the anchor text – you have to create a text, select it and place a hyperlink. This is handy in a pdf viewed on screen. In a printed book it is anoying to see, that there is a reference which I have to find by myself (no page no., not sure that the naming is the same). Therefore this method is useless for "living references" that show the current content of e.g. a headline or the text included in the anchor. Which is the required solution for documents lager than 10 pages (magazine, manual, …).
I am expect version 2 to offer this.