MJWHM

Old Bruce asks about the algorithm, and I cannot answer that. What I can say is that PagePlus, which this replaces, had (has) the facility to provide both footnotes and endnotes. If such a thing was possible a decade or so back, can t be really difficult? I honestly don't know. Peter Falkenberg Brown asks for understanding, but as Naulis Jakke has indicated, the catalyst for this rising in the consciousness is the pre-order deal being offered for the handbook. If you claim that "You’ll learn everything from the necessary core skills, right up to the most powerful tools and techniques…" it suggests that a standard tool is going to be covered. "Learn everything there is to know about working with Affinity Publisher" is a bold claim as well. But the statement "the Affinity Publisher Workbook combines the vast knowledge of our own in-house experts with exciting contributions from leading designers, publishers and other creatives to help you really make the most of the app" is bound to fan the flames. I asked about the version covered by the book and received the answer "Our workbooks are not version dependent and will be relevant no matter which version number of the apps you are currently running." I would expect the footnotes and endnotes to be enthusiastically highlighted if they were in the version now in beta testing, but they are not, which does not bode well. I must commend the person who responded for the speed of the response. I just do not understand the apparent lack of action on this matter.

I cannot see to which particular 'lots' you are referring, but put that aside. Your own post is perhaps the result of so-called flaming. You may wish, for example, to edit out the casual racism, which adds nothing to a reasoned discussion. The suggestion that people should not be 'bitching here' (also unnecessarily abusive) perhaps fails to accept the fundamental logic of the forum concept. They exist precisely so that people can express their views and in a forum provided by a service supplier this is in order to allow that supplier to feel the needs of his/her users. Some may not feel the need to use such elements as footnotes and/or endnotes, but clearly others do. I am not 'bitching here' because I have nothing better to do with my time. I have been using Serif products for so long that I cannot find the earliest use - certainly well before 2007 . I am concerned that a firm, for which I have had nothing but admiration hitherto, has released into the market functional but half-baked products. I could accept that if they were still clearly identified as beta products, and the products they are intended to replace were still made available and supported. Perhaps the necessary expertise has been lost. I want Serif to be effective and receptive to the needs of its existing user base as well as moving onwards and upwards. I want to be able to use Affinity products with the ease that I use their predecessors but this is not yet possible. And as the title for this particular thread is specifically about Footnotes/Endnotes, this is the right (and intended) place to push for action, surely? It was May when I first joined in: around the same time we were assured "Serif are currently in the process of implementing this. It needs to be done carefully, not just thrown in, and we do always have the issue of programming resources." Seven months is quite a long wait. My immediate requirement is ended, but for others it is ongoing. And that is not to mention the question of finding a way to import PagePlus files .... And no, importing PDFs is not the answer before anyone suggests it. But this is not the place for that discussion.

I have watched with interest the conversation. It does seem to me to be moving forward - not at all. The official response seems to have failed to grasp the simple logic that if the program is sold as a professional DTP program, it is reasonable for buyers (especially long-standing Serifomanes) to expect it to be capable of performing as a professional DTP program. It is not significantly different from a glorified word processor currently, except for the cross-program functionality which seems to be the be-all and end-all of Affinity - which is of course doubtless the reason for the name. I have just published my latest 350-page book using Serif PagePlus, which was put out to pasture far earlier than it should have been, and frankly knocks spots off the young pretender. I have been a longterm user of PagePlus, and still find it does things I had not realized were available. It is a truly world-class program. The only issue I had was that the resolution of grouped images when output to PDF were showing as 150DPI, despite being 300+. They were apparently at the required resolution, but in full Adobe Acrobat were showing incorrectly. Affinity, in whatever form, has a way to go yet. Photoshop is simpler to use than AffPhot, and is there any real need for a designer program to mesh in with Publisher? I did, in case it is thought to be sour grapes, try to do what I wanted to do in AffPub, but it was just not up to it, despite some good points (none of which surpasses PagePlus. It is a little like the Emperor's new clothes. A mistake has been made, but admitting it and at least restoring the older programs until it is remedied, seems beyond the mindset of whoever is running Serif. It is very sad.

Sadly, there is no sign of a footnotes (or endnotes) system arriving unless it is in the new version due to come - but it does not seem to be featured in the Beta version mentioned above. I also am not a professional designer, although I publish stuff professionally. While there are some decent things in APub it is still a long way from the complex techniques of PagePlus9 - and even earlier PagePlus versions. I have been trying to create stuff in APub, but on the whole it does not seem to be as functional as PP9 unless you are seriously into the other Affinity stuff. My own tendency is to use the program which works, which is sometimes an Affinity version (APhot is good, for example, for lighting but often it is not the best for my work - Photoshop Elements or Corel Paintshop Pro is). There used to (and still is not, in my view) an affordable program to touch PagePlus9. The issue really is that Serif jumped the gun by dropping PagePlus too soon. I suspect that there may be a face-saving problem as a result. Either that, or they have lost the people who understood PP9 and the pther Serif products. Just about to publish another book with something like 360 pages including hundreds of images and a good number of footnotes. I may have succeeded with some of it in Apub, but I am not confident and I certainly could not have done the footnotes and made them move with text or pagination changes. I am trying to give APub a chance, so I am experimenting with simple publications, but so far the endnote/footnote thing is a serious obstacle for my sort of work. If you are producing comics, or novels, or even simple picture books, fine, but not for 'academic' works. Even comics can be done simpler with other programs. It is not clear to me who Serif is targetting with this software, but i suspect they are more interested in a slice of the apple pie than in those who have remained loyal for decades. I used to regularly get calls from Nottingham asking me if I wanted something they were promoting, but that has also disappeared. Sic transit gloria mundi....

I'm not sure I believe what I am reading. When a car manufacturer produces a new car they don't say 'well forget all the bells and whistles people are used to'. They ensure that they are incorporated - and continue to provide spare parts etc for previously sold cars for quite some time. Who says 'we have made 27 years worth of progress, but we will abandon much that we learned and start from scratch, intending to add stuff later? I don't see that the sharing of code is relevant. It is the sharing of key and standard components that matters. The code does not need to be the same, any more than the solutions to a problem in one vehicle are identical to those in another. If something is not present, it is by definition an omission. It may be an aspiration, but it unquestionably an omission.

Nobody has been around since before Robert Maxwell, surely! But this may be the point. In days of yore our age would have been credited with giving seen as evidence of wisdom. Today it is all-too-often seen as evidence of senility, or the inability to move with the times. I am not suggesting this is the view of Serif, but it is a view espoused apparently by some. Like Ralph, I dread some future update to Windows messing things up for PPX9 and nobody being willing to salvage one of the most brilliant programs I have ever used.

Garretm30 makes some reasonable points. However.... I don't think I was suggesting that Serif is not willing to listen. What I was suggesting is that maybe they did not ask the right questions. I may have ignored them, but I do not recall being invited to comment on what should be any replacement for tried and tested apps I was already happily using. I can also see the point of having items solved in one app leading to them being solved in others. What this overlooks, of course, is whether the problem is relevant in the other apps. If, to use an analogy, I have three vehicles and want them all to run on electricity, there are clearly many areas of overarching similarity. But if I want one to tow a caravan, one to nip into town, and one to carry several tons of hardcore, the areas of difference are significant. This is, I think, what people may be failing to see. I don't need the springs on my car to take me shopping anywhere near as resilient as those I need for my lorry. I don't need the toque on my shopping car to be as powerful as on my towing car, and so on. Yes, where a feature is needed on all three, incorporate it - in my example some form of power inlet point, and some form of steering mechanism might be examples. I suppose one might argue that the footnote facility could be used to provide a caption for a picture done in the photo app, but it is a bit of a sledgehammer for that particular nut.

I gave up the struggle and reverted to PagePlus X9. I am astounded by just how good it is (was). I am adding footnotes, and index, a table of contents, etc. I can insert bits and with minimal fuss amend subsequent changes, and importantly (I use hundreds of images) to change the resolution of an image I simply change its properties. Not sure if it is a genuine change, but it works for creating printed PDFs, is easy, and can hugely reduce the file size. My new book is coming on nicely. Is it possible that insufficient consultation has taken place, and that perhaps the programmers do not get what the end-users want or need? It may be useful to be able to open an image from my document in Affinity Photo, but generally it is not necessary. On the other hand, I can foresee no reason to import a document from APub into Aphot except perhaps comics? But there are dedicated comic programs for that. I really, really, like Serif and have always found it an excellent company to deal with, whether with new programs, problems or purchases, but this new world has a lot to learn and much evolution is essential. Currently, there is hardly anything image-wise that I can think of that I cannot do as well or better in Photoshop Express or Corel Photopaint. The exception is the multiple 'spotlights' I can apply, which is superb. I don't do much design. All of my books and booklets have been created in PagePlus of various iterations. (I do think perhaps APub is easier for indexing, but have not really tried because other elements are not available. I hope things improve, because the firm deserves to maintain its first-class reputation as an inexpensive and responsive company.

Is there such a thing as a 'simple' degree thesis? 🤔🙂

Unless you are using Apple, you could have accomplished it with PagePlus X9 probably, or is there something that I don't see?

I wonder to what extent the undoubtedly clever programmers are aware of the necessary functionality of the programs they are designing, or to what extent the needs of the end-users have been solicited? The old Serif programs were genuinely superb, but somewhere things have gone awry. Did the team change before the move to woo Apple users? Don't Apple users need the same essentials, so are they concerned, or have they never had the better experience?

Not entirely sure how this helps, other than perhaps enabling one to enter numbers as superscript and then use them as notes at the end. Problem arises if you want to add or subtract notes in the middle. A proper system simply resorts. It is an idea though, although I we can set the superscript in normal text editing - not easily, I admit. Thanks Pyanepsion.

Also, of course, needs book-making facility (linking chapter files sequentially and ensuring numbering and indexing across all.)

You live and learn.

Interesting. I just tested this, using a thread on chapters (also a pretty fundamental requirement for serious publications) by replying to a suggestion that the experts are concentrating on Apple at the moment. The thread has not moved, so you are right. Thanks.

If this is true, rather than simple speculation, it does suggest that the loyal Windows users who have come forward from PagePlus are being overlooked.

I suspect the reason is nothing to do with any sort of human intent, but is down to an algorithm placing threads in activity and time order.🤔

And now, because of the risk of forward compatibility, I am trying Microsoft Publisher....

Spot on. I think there was some mention about not being allowed to reverse engineer, but to be frank I have no idea when or where. Someone suggested making PP available as open source, but I can't see that happening as long as it works more effectively than the new kid on the block. Like you, I would have thought backwards compatibility would be a fairly obvious start point, but I was told ages ago to go whistle on that. People complain about Microsoft, but on the whole they do not pull the rig from under the feet of loyal users.

And that, surely, is the point If you are going to build a better mousetrap, then be sure what a mouse looks like, how big it is, and how it behaves. Having a series of programs that inter-mesh is all well and good, but if they individually fail to provide significant basics they are neither one thing nor the other. My overwhelming sense is one of considerable disappointment that a company in which I have had a lot of confidence for probably decades can so completely miss the point. There probably is little point in continuing to discuss this at present. Either the Powers that be are aware of the (urgent) need for some of their user base and are addressing the problem or they are not. If the former we can hope they act with expediency. If the latter, well, what? And for the record, I have now returned to attempting to create this book using PagePlus. In a couple of hours last night on my laptop I moved on as far as it took me several days with AP, although to be fair I am less confident on AP, which has huge potential, but will fall by the wayside unless it is careful.

I completely get the need for a degree of security about what is in the pipeline, and I am reminded of the anecdote about a company in which one team was proudly pushing a brand new design and another team was saying there was a new one just down the line. That is not quite the case here. My gripe is not that there is a conspiracy of silence (not my thought at all) but rather an apparent lack of concern about the needs of the end-users.

Perhaps this is the issue. The software may not be intended for professional results, but given the launch comments, and even the enthusiasm meted out by such respectable organs as Compute Actuve for Affinity Photos, they must know the user base and its requirements. The daft thing is that to get on the Apple bandwagon they seem to have abandoned or ignored the needs of longstanding users. I have been a Serif devotees for more years than I can remember.

Thanks dominik. Glad you did not take offence. I still think that something so fundamental should have been resolved by now.

Not the most constructive reply, but possibly not intended to be. If it is possible to generate index entries, then it should be a simple procedure to generate some sort of cross-reference system, as it was in PP. If dominik is presumably content with something that is not suitable for serious book-publishing beyond simple chapter-headings and the like, will need to address this sort of question in a constructive and timely fashion AP is to break into that genre for those who want a more powerful product. AP was brought in in a blaze of enthusiasm, and I have all of the Affinity products in hopes of improvement, but it is almost as if the company has given up on addressing fairly basic stuff. I simply do not understand the apparent complacency. I would like to hear from the company rather than someone who is apparently content with a lesser product than was replaced. There are good points about AP, but they need to be extended.

Having spent many hours working with AP on my new book, which will easily be several hundred pages, I find myself dusting off PagePlus and seeing whether I can do what I actually want to do. Also looking at MS Publisher.