IllusionStudio

Hi @IllusionStudio,
I'm sorry to hear you're having issues with Publisher crashing, that is really frustrating.
Do you have a sample Publisher document together with associated pdf files where this is happening that you could upload so we can take a look at what might be going on.
I've experienced similar issues with placed pdf files both displaying incorrect colours and freezing (rather than crashing) Publisher that result in having to force quit Publisher and start again.
If you'd prefer not to share your files directly in the forum you can request a Private Dropbox link from the team at Serif by replying to this post and then upload your files so the Serif team can take a look and report back regarding any issues.

We have 11 licenses of the full Adobe Creative Cloud that we planned to start converting to the Affinity Suite once Publisher was released. The PDF issue makes it a  non-contender that won't even be considered until you can place a PDF into Publisher without having to have the fonts installed locally. There isn't one work around in this thread that would even be considered. Opening in Apple Preview and saving as a jpeg? Really? Not a chance in the world. Preview can't even display a PDF correctly if it has live transparency in it. Converting text to curves/outlines. Not in this lifetime. If you convert a PDF to an image your type is not going to ever be right even if you make the image at the output resolution of 2400 dpi. First you are going to have a huge file size. Also the text will still not look as sharp as an actual text object once converting it to an image with anti-aliasing. The folks at Affinity are losing a huge segment of the print world by releasing this product with this behavior. Unfortunately we're going to have to renew again with Adobe for another year next month when our current subscription ends. Hopefully Affinity can fix this before this time next year when our contract comes due again. Other than this one issue we really liked the Affinity apps. Just a darn shame really.

Font licensing is anyway beside the point. Fonts for professional use allow embedding and there is no problem legally or technically – only in Affinity software's inability to use them as passthrough.

If a font can be embedded, it can be used via passthrough. If a font can be embedded, it can be converted to curves--it is no different than a pdf option to do so.

But display purposes are not use purposes. There is no excuse to not displaying embedded fonts properly. It's up to the user to solve their licensing, not the app. If the fonts are embedded they're there for a reason, the app shouldn't decide whether or not I have the right to see the font.

@Darie Nani my point exactly - for magazine production it rules out Affinity (Publisher/Designer and even Photo) from being used as the page layout tool... InDesign and Quark allow placement of the PDF as an image which is passed through to the postscript/pdf rendering engine therefore retaining the original font/typefaces.
 
Publisher, when placing the PDF as an image will strip out the font/typefaces... Not great!

Just so I am clear, if a client sends their ready to print ads, we cannot simply drop them in without sourcing their fonts first???

This is crazy, how do you expect users to use Affinity publisher for professional work?

 

This issue has just hit me. I was mistakenly under the impression that if I used the File > Place method of importing a PDF then embedded fonts would display correctly. I have now found to my cost that this is not the case. Note that I am not expecting to edit the PDF, for that I would expect to have to install all fonts, but I definitely need a facility to import a PDF and have it display correctly as it does in a PDF reader.

This is the solution to finally use Publisher as a real alternative to Indesign or Quark Xpress.
I produce a magazine with many ads included. I is impossible (not to mention illegal) to install all fonts that is included in the PDFs of our ad-clients to get a correct view of their content.
Unfortunately, I couldn´t do a complete program change in the past, because Publisher won´t support this feature.
 

This is the solution to finally use Publisher as a real alternative to Indesign or Quark Xpress.
I produce a magazine with many ads included. I is impossible (not to mention illegal) to install all fonts that is included in the PDFs of our ad-clients to get a correct view of their content.
Unfortunately, I couldn´t do a complete program change in the past, because Publisher won´t support this feature.
 

We work in a small print/design studio, and it's fundamental to have this feature +1

Hello everyone.
I totally agree with IllusionStudio's point of view. This function is absolutely fundamental.
I just tested this issue with the latest Publisher beta and it does not work. Publisher always interprets the pdf file and missing fonts are lost. It's really very boring.
It is urgent to propose an alternative import without interpretation of the contents of a pdf to be able to claim to compete InDesign or Xpress. And if this option was part of the three software, it would be perfect because I have already often pestered having to open a pdf in my old Photoshop to work around this problem.
I also really like Affinity products and I would be really bored if this feature was not part of Publisher when it was released.
 

Thanks for this wonderful beta.
What I miss, is a way to turn on/off showing bleeding area.
My turnaround with manual guide lines also didn´t work because the lines I only see inside the document.

Bleed preview wasn't ready in time for the public beta, but it will be added soon.