MJWHM

It is 18 months since this question was originally asked. The footnotes and endnotes were a feature of Pageplus and allowed me to publish several items, including one tome of nearly 600 pages. This is pretty fundamental stuff for publishing anything remotely academic. How much longer must we wait?

Thanks Werner. That seems to have worked. Madness! I hope this is all worth it. I really valued the Serif products, especially Publisher which is so good.

Like a fool I thought I should update when told an update was available. I have been unable to do so, having 'setup failed' notices, and now I don't even have the old A/p available. I have tried installing both the 1.6.1.35 and 1.7.1.404 versions both normally and using run as administrator.

December now, and still apparently unable to scan. The same scanners work happily with other 64-bit programs. Not impressed at all.

Thanks. That is how I normally do it, but I hoped that it might be possible to interlink the first and final pages in a similar wy to the other facing pages. Perhaps one day.

I am trying to design books with an image that carries over from the front to the back pages - possibly also including a spine. How is it done, please?

I wonder whether you edited or altered it in any way, or simply accepted the pdf as was?

Not quite true. I would like an importer to allow me to open existing hard-created documents in your bright shiny new program. Then, if the new program works as well as PP for my purposes (which are not hugely complicated) I can safely and happily move across to using that. .

Because they have said so?

Patrick, this may or may not be true, but whereas I have frequently recommended Serif as a company in the past, I now will only do so if trust can be rebuilt. You forget the truism that says that every complainant tells ten people, whereas the same is far from true for satisfied customers. You also overlook the fact that at some point in the future we now know that PP will cease to function with Serif's deliberate policies and external influences. What would be the point of creating new documents? At present AP is NOT as good by a country mile, and I have tried to import a PDF file to recreate a document. The text turns out, if I transfer to a word processor, to be in single line paragraphs, which is not helpful, and formatted (ie lengths) as in the pdf file. It cannot be a good or probably workable way to import anything more complicated than a leaflet with four pages - if that. Serif has made a decision. It may have been for good commercial or technical reasons, but it is a decision that is alienating a significant user base.

Hahah!

Suspected this might be the case, but too busy with other programs at present so it will have to wait.

Which kind of proves the point we are making. If AP is so brilliant, then why use PP to create the workbook? You are simply underlining the fact that a lot of us have created templates which are completely useless in AP. Sorry, but whatever the positives of AP for you and the programming team, I don't see how it can work well for the users who have become wedded to the very sophistication that has made PP so good. We shall just have to agree to differ on the future magical qualities of AP if all our previous work will at some time prove worthless.

This is techy-speak to me. What do you mean by the first sentence in plain English? And how can you have 100+ programming years? Are you saying that ten people spent ten years on it (in which case it is only 10 years, not 100) or are you trying to say that Serif predated Turing and his people? However you slice the particular cake, it does not seem to me to be such a giant leap to find a way to import older files. If that is too much effort, then don't be surprised by anger from existing (and possibly also new) users. I only recommended Serif to someone a few days back. I would think long and hard about doing so now.

No problem. I cannot install either, but I am unable to devote much time to exploring this for a while so there is no great rush, thanks.

Thank you. This clarifies things much better. What you are saying is that whatever operating system happens to come along, the Affinity range will be independent and work. That does sound good. That said, why not offer open access to the PagePlus and other legacy software, so that it can be developed alongside or independently? It is hardly likelt to affect sales of Affinity products because they are clearly going to be much better sooner or later.

I am not saying that other packages would make the situation different, but they might actually do some of the publishing stuff you seem to be lacking and disinterested in at this stage. I am thinking I want to buy a pig, but not one in a poke bonnet. The whizzo idea that you can cross platforms is all well and good, but ultimately you are in hock to the owners of those platform systems, and that can alter overnight. I used to have Sinclair computers, Texas Instruments Computes, and various other systems all of which have gone the way of all flesh. Frankly, I couldn't care less about Apple compatibility. I don't have one and will almost certainly never bother to buy one. I am probably not unique - in either direction. Reading between the lines I suspect this is as much to do with internal challenges and self-driven ideas as it is about providing a functioning worthwhile package. It may work, but I won't hold my breath, even though I wish you luck. I have liked Serif for longer than perhaps some of its staff have been around, and don't like feeling the way I do at present.

I downloaded 58, and it failed, Then when I tried to open 57 it wasn't there, so I tried to reinstall with the same result.... Beginning to wish I hadn't started.

And, to quote someone, there's the rub..... At least Ben is clear and honest about why, although my guess is that he is only right about the user base numbers if existing Serif program users have also been thrown out with their packages. I will continue to try AP (at least, I will if I can either load the new beta or reload the first, neither of which is playing currently), but I shall start looking at other publishing programs as well, which is something I have at no time felt the slightest urge to do since joining PP way back when....

Again, you misrepresent me. I am quite happy to follow changes as long as they are sensible. If this were a completely new supplier, there qould be an argument in your thoughts, but it is a supplier introducing new programs before the old ones are bust, and STILL treating them as dead. I need no lessons in business management, but I would recommend that a good business does not simply abandon a functioning product to go off and create something else which may or may not work. By the same token, any business or individual 'future-proofing' can only do so if the methods available are going to mesh sensibly with the current product. It is rather like emojis. In theory everyone can use them and create literature, but in practice good old-fashioned words are more flexible and reliable. And I can still read 16th- and 17th-century books because the type is much the same as today. As I have said, importing pdfs does not work well. It does not work well in PP to be fair, but one might reasonably expect new products to be improvements. I use programs which are best for their job - whether that is word-processing, photo-editing, or publication-creation. At present Serif works better than any reasonably-priced alternative for the latter, but it does not compete with other programs in the earlier categories. I want a publishing program that allows me to insert a text file into a text box that autoflows onto subsequent pages, and adapts across them as I change the text or the box. I want the facility to introduce images and set their surrounds so the text flows around them in a reasonable fashion, and continues to do so if something is changed. I want the mages to be able to be be connected in a particular relationship to the page (eg edge or centre) and anchor to a specific piece of text, so that if that text moves, so does the image. I want to be able to create multi-page documents from cards to books in different formats and with different fonts. I want to be able to auto-generate indexes and tables-of-contents. I want to be able to import text and images created elsewhere and know that it will mesh; I really don't care if the maker wants to make 'own-products' mesh, because I may not use those. Show me the range of brushes in PhotoPaint that I have acquired for Photoshop - you will be hard-pressed. I have always been impressed by Serif and its relationship to me as a user and buyer of products, but I reiterate that creating an entirely new program should not need to be done at the expense of files created in the program it is seeking to replace. Do all of these, and the new program may just about be as good as the one we are being told to leave. Heck, it may even be better.... But to return to the insulting comments, I have always been a change manager, and have instituted many more changes than most. Change must be shown to be worthwhile and provide something better for those affected. So far this does not seem to be happening. Far from me burying my head in the sand, all those who are saying how wonderful the brave new world is going to be are doing so. As I said elsewhere, jam tomorrow. A rather more telling argument for change is that the people capable of dealing with PP transferability may have gone to pastures new. Perhaps the new programmers cannot manage the task of making the program's files compatible. That seems unlikely, but it may be the case. Someone who was taught Latin and Greek at school may be able to converse well enough in those languages, but such people are becoming rarer. My argument would be to find people willing to learn Latin and Greek rather than simply assuming that the works of Ovid, Homer, etc are not going to be readable. (Yes, I know translations exist - it is metaphor.)

Fails to install on my Desktop

Not especially. PagePlus users are apparently being treated no differently to anyone holding a pdf file.......

I don't believe you have understood my concerns. I will include an image if I can do so to show why I think this is not just a backward step, but a step back to the stone age - and I speak as an archaeologist! Of course I wrote the text in an external word processing package - if you look, you will see that I specifically argued that Affinity is reinventing a wheel. I then imported it into PagePlus (as early as 5 I think) and over time expanded and changed it. For example, a new piece of information is learned and can be added easily. That has a knock-on effect for every page and for every anchored image thereafter (I can't see how to anchor images, either). So, in a 500 page book the power of PP was that it coped! And so did the Index. It seems this is not even considered worth bothering with in AP because (and I quote AP Help) "AutoFlow is a "one-off" operation. If you add more text to a story while editing, or have reduced the size of a frame, you may find that an overflow condition crops up. In this case you can decide whether to initiate an autoflow again or use a text sizing option. If you reduce the amount of text in the story, empty frames will remain on the page." To produce my text I linked images to the entries and therefore changing anything meant changing everything afterwards - which happens fairly well in PP. Just imagine the pleasure you would have reformatting every page by hand. As for living in the present not the past, I can only say that you are doomed to repeat the past if you do not study it, and furthermore that the past affects everything in the present.

In effect, what you are saying is that you are abandoning the ability to run and returning to the ability to crawl, because crawling can be done anywhere. In time you hope that you will have found a way for everyone to walk, but it may or may not be as well as they can now. Seems cock-eyed to me. Jam tomorrow.

Then what is the point of AP? If it is not going to do what PPX9 does, it is not worth the bother. If AP does not perform as an excellent publishing program it is simply missing the point of why we bought PP in its different forms previously.