Portals Between

Others here have requested more robust Book features, which I agree with. There is a need to go beyond just the magazine format and perfect binding. As a bookbinder using hand-stitched signature units, I also need control of the number of pages in a folded signature unit when printing. The "Book" option in the Print dialog box makes provisions for only 4 pages per signature unit. We need minimal options for 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32 signature page unit configurations. Others may need more, But these are the signature units I use the most based on paper weight specifications.

I totally agree with this! It seems Affinity Publisher is building an app to be a great UI layout designer and brochure layout software. Nice and useful direction, but, print and digital publishers need more from a publishing app. Being able to control the number of pages in signature units goes a long way in the Print Book option. I think this is a basic request as well as eBook export. Those 2 basic features would position AP for a competitive option over other industry publishing apps.

I have said this in another posting. As an American bookbinder, I prefer metric over inch-based measurements for more accuracy and less effort when constructing book structures. But as a typographer, points+picas is a must. Picas are not exclusively an American requirement. Didot, a French type designer in the 1700s invented the points/pica measurement as a typographic standard. Didot designed stunning and classic font families still used today. This is not about what countries use what measurements in publishing but to what purpose the measurements are used for accuracy and expediency. There are 12 points to 1 pica, 6 picas to an inch or 72 points to an inch - or going by Didot's 1pica measure = 4.512 mm. To deal with accurate typographic control with the least effort, PICAs are an absolute must whether in the US or Europe. And yes there are 3 different point/pica measure systems and Postscript tries to compensate in the digital world.

As a bookbinder in the US, I prefer metric over inches/feet as it is the most efficient and quicker measurement for fine binding of books. As a typographer, metric does not cut it - NOR does inches/feet. Points/Picas describe font measurement in Europe and US. In fact, Didot a French type designer from the 1700s was the first to establish the point/pica system to produce some of the finest typographic families in the world. For type, it is the most efficient and quickest measurement whether in the US or Europe. It is not just an "American" system and it is not an outdated system. It is a system with a specific purpose and it should be included for any designer concerned with accuracy paired with expedience.

Another request for Pica measurement, PLEASE!!!!

As a bookbinder in the US, I prefer metric over inches/feet as it is the most efficient and quicker measurement for fine binding of books. As a typographer, metric does not cut it - NOR does inches/feet. Points/Picas describe font measurement in Europe and US. In fact, Didot a French type designer from the 1700s was the first to establish the point/pica system to produce some of the finest typographic families in the world. For type, it is the most efficient and quickest measurement whether in the US or Europe. It is not just an "American" system and it is not an outdated system. It is a system with a specific purpose and it should be included for any designer concerned with accuracy paired with expedience.

As a bookbinder in the US, I prefer metric over inches/feet as it is the most efficient and quicker measurement for fine binding of books. As a typographer, metric does not cut it - NOR does inches/feet. Points/Picas describe font measurement in Europe and US. In fact, Didot a French type designer from the 1700s was the first to establish the point/pica system to produce some of the finest typographic families in the world. For type, it is the most efficient and quickest measurement whether in the US or Europe. It is not just an "American" system and it is not an outdated system. It is a system with a specific purpose and it should be included for any designer concerned with accuracy paired with expedience.

As a bookbinder in the US, I prefer metric over inches/feet as it is the most efficient and quicker measurement for fine binding of books. As a typographer, metric does not cut it - NOR does inches/feet. Points/Picas describe font measurement in Europe and US. In fact, Didot a French type designer from the 1700s was the first to establish the point/pica system to produce some of the finest typographic families in the world. For type, it is the most efficient and quickest measurement whether in the US or Europe. It is not just an "American" system and it is not an outdated system. It is a system with a specific purpose and it should be included for any designer concerned with accuracy paired with expedience.

I have said this in another posting. As an American bookbinder, I prefer metric over inch-based measurements for more accuracy and less effort when constructing book structures. But as a typographer, points+picas is a must. Picas are not exclusively an American requirement. Didot, a French type designer in the 1700s invented the points/pica measurement as a typographic standard. Didot designed stunning and classic font families still used today. This is not about what countries use what measurements in publishing but to what purpose the measurements are used for accuracy and expediency. There are 12 points to 1 pica, 6 picas to an inch or 72 points to an inch - or going by Didot's 1pica measure = 4.512 mm. To deal with accurate typographic control with the least effort, PICAs are an absolute must whether in the US or Europe. And yes there are 3 different point/pica measure systems and Postscript tries to compensate in the digital world.

As a bookbinder in the US, I prefer metric over inches/feet as it is the most efficient and quicker measurement for fine binding of books. As a typographer, metric does not cut it - NOR does inches/feet. Points/Picas describe font measurement in Europe and US. In fact, Didot a French type designer from the 1700s was the first to establish the point/pica system to produce some of the finest typographic families in the world. For type, it is the most efficient and quickest measurement whether in the US or Europe. It is not just an "American" system and it is not an outdated system. It is a system with a specific purpose and it should be included for any designer concerned with accuracy paired with expedience.

Even the German software people who produced ICalamus until just recently included picas as a measurement option.    And so many of us who have published several books haven't really moved on either.  We would just be thrilled to have the measurements we have used for everything we have already done in units that match.  Like much in the current world, it might be a losing fight, but that is not to say that it will be an improvement.   

As a bookbinder in the US, I prefer metric over inches/feet as it is the most efficient and quicker measurement for fine binding of books. As a typographer, metric does not cut it - NOR does inches/feet. Points/Picas describe font measurement in Europe and US. In fact, Didot a French type designer from the 1700s was the first to establish the point/pica system to produce some of the finest typographic families in the world. For type, it is the most efficient and quickest measurement whether in the US or Europe. It is not just an "American" system and it is not an outdated system. It is a system with a specific purpose and it should be included for any designer concerned with accuracy paired with expedience.

But Serif does support points which is a subdivision of picas. It's absurd to just support half of a system. It's like doing all of your finances in cents and doing away with dollars. We still need dollars since buying expensive items would be too difficult if you had to buy your next house or car only using cents. We need both dollars and cents. We need both points and picas.

cm and mm are not compatible with picas. Points are subdivisions of Picas so don't need to deal with the complexity of needing to convert to different systems.

In the same way that you get complex fractions when converting inches trying to fit mm or cm into a Picas give you these numbers with long uneven decimal points. Using points gives you a pretty even 12 points per pica.

Here is a good video showing several examples on how the units convert. You can see that points and sometimes Picas are nice even numbers where with inches you need to deal with fractions which makes things unnecessarily complex. Looks like points converts nicely to pixels too but I wonder if 72dpi is still relevant in the age of high res monitors?
 

Oh my...  I really hope that wasn't me (a while back and I've forgotten) 
Anyway I have made a request last week for this lack of support to be reconsidered. 

As someone who's done dozens of books in all formats, print and digital, using InDesign, I'll add my remarks to this book publishing discussion.
1. Writing as chapters versus the book in one file. With ID I write (or layout for other publishers) the entire book as one document but break the chapters into separate text-frame flows. Initially, as I do the layout, adding graphics, I have an excess of pages in each set of frames. That way, adding a graphic to chapter one has no impact on the pagination for chapter 21. It's also necessary to do that to get ID to do endnotes right. I will be blunt. I will flat-out not use or recommend an publishing app that forcing me to do editing, proofing, and layout in chapter-length segments. I don't thing that is going to be a problem with Affinity Publisher. But I know that if it becomes little more than a brochure-making app, it won't sell.
I can give an illustration why I feel so strongly. Suppose some word in an entire book needs changing. That is a very common problem. With that entire book handled by ID, I simply do a document-length search and replace (rather than a story-length one). I typically could do that in less than a minute. With each chapter in a separate document, I might need to do a dozen or more searches and take perhaps 15-20 minutes. I won't put up with that nor will I put up with some complicated process to create and merge contents, an index, or pages into a PDF. I want the book to be in and managed as one document. Again, I don't think that'll be an issue with AP.
2. Printed book v. ebook. ID lets me create multiple versions of a book from one master document. That means a print-ready PDF, along with reflowable and fixed-layout epubs. (I handle Kindle editions by sending Amazon a reflowable epub for conversion.) That seems to work well enough. Again, I will be blunt. The books I write and edit myself and those I do for other publishers are revised and updated up until the day they go off to be printed. I am not going to klutz with any workflow that means I have to do that editing in one app for the print version and another for the digital version. I am not anal retentive. I won't put myself through all the niggling, detail-mongering that maintaining two versions requires. And why should I? ID can manage to output multiple formats from one source. Any other app that I might adopt or recommend must do the same. 
3. PDF as input text. My response to any mention of that is, "are you insane?" PDF means "Page Description Format." That means it has already determined how a page is formatted, so why would I want to import it into a page layout program? I use page layout apps to take unformatted or poorly formatted text from Word and other sources, turning it into something that's appealing. I do not want any prior attempt at laying that text out to intrude. It only gets in the way. I already spent quite a bit of time trying to get rid of extraneous Word formatting. And yeah, I realize that in a lot of businesses, all they have is a PDF they want to tweak. They want to be able to import that, ignoring how ugly it may look, and make that tweak. That's fine for them. I just don't want to make that my work flow.
I hope I don't sound too negative. Given my work, I'll continue to use ID and may even continue to use it for all the books I layout. I am well past ID's initially steep learning curve. But as a writer, I would love to have a powerful page layout app that I could recommend to independent writers, one that doesn't have as steep a learning curve as ID or ID's inflated, $240-a-year subscription cost.
--Michael W. Perry, Inkling Books
 
 
 
 

Yes, while I am by no means a pro myself, I have studied it just enough to know that here in the US the majority of the professional publishing world works in terms of picas and points as is being requested here.
It will be very difficult to get the program to be taken seriously in US professional circles without that option.

At last!! Thank you for Publisher!
My first thought was how do I import my indesign files? At the moment there is no 'Import' button and 'Open' an indesign file shows a greyed out 'filename.indd'. Hmmm?? But because I always create a pdf from my indd files, I found I could 'Open' the 'filename.pdf' with no problem other than it opens as pages not facing pages. I then clicked the 'Document Setup' tab and changed the 'Layout' to 'Facing Pages' and I now have my indesign page saved as 'filename.afpub'.
Good news!

I totally agree with this! It seems Affinity Publisher is building an app to be a great UI layout designer and brochure layout software. Nice and useful direction, but, print and digital publishers need more from a publishing app. Being able to control the number of pages in signature units goes a long way in the Print Book option. I think this is a basic request as well as eBook export. Those 2 basic features would position AP for a competitive option over other industry publishing apps.

I totally agree with this! It seems Affinity Publisher is building an app to be a great UI layout designer and brochure layout software. Nice and useful direction, but, print and digital publishers need more from a publishing app. Being able to control the number of pages in signature units goes a long way in the Print Book option. I think this is a basic request as well as eBook export. Those 2 basic features would position AP for a competitive option over other industry publishing apps.

I totally agree! Points are to picas as inches are to feet. I can't imagine having one without the other!

I totally agree with this! It seems Affinity Publisher is building an app to be a great UI layout designer and brochure layout software. Nice and useful direction, but, print and digital publishers need more from a publishing app. Being able to control the number of pages in signature units goes a long way in the Print Book option. I think this is a basic request as well as eBook export. Those 2 basic features would position AP for a competitive option over other industry publishing apps.

I wasn't expecting to see designer with master pages.. no ebook export... a lot of self publishers out there could benefit from what page plus offered with this modern approach... just looks like a graphics package.  I can design my flyers, etc in Designer, so i don't need this product unless it allows a full blown publication.  PDF export gets slammed for ebooks, better to have the epub export format.   They shouldn't have retired PagePlus if they're not going build on that with a fresh modern approach.