MJWHM

I don't see the need for 'cross-platform'. I use different programs for different purposes. This is reinventing the wheel. Why try to pretend to the facilities of a word processing package when there are examples out there which do it well, and far better than AP? Why not stick to what is needed - a program that creates publications...?

Or look for a different supplier. If you have invested huge amounts of time an money in stuff only for it to become useless, it makes you think seriously about the reliability of new stuff from the same supplier. My 570-page (A4) book was admittedly in chunks, but I don't want to have to try to work from the somewhat odd pdfs that Pageplus provided to get new thing developed. .The more I see, the less I like. I have frequently used autoflow on PPX as I have edited text to suit the page, or fitted more stuff in. In Affinity it seems that you write your text in an external program and create an autoflow box. Firstly, I cannot see how to create such a box. Autoflow is in the Help files, but they don't say where to find it. Secondly, I want to ensure that I can insert a picture and adjust the text (or vice-versa) to improve the look of the books. It is useless having text boxes that do not interlink and reformat if you add some text, and worse than useless if your images cannot be included where you want them and at the size you want. I have just pasted some text into a text box - but it did not fit. It also does not want to autoflow like Pageplus. I did finally find the tiny little triangle that sets autoflow, but you have to draw each new text box on every page it seems. I realise this is a Beta, but I am truly not impressed positively. In addition, there is no obvious way to pin or anchor (say) an image to a specific bit of text.

It seems to me that this is spitting in the faces of loyal Serif supporters. If the users of PagePlus (and other original programs from Serif) are to remain loyal to Serif, Serif should reciprocate. I doubt if the effort involved in making ppps or other so-called legacy (not much of a legacy if it is worthless, is it?) files transferable is worth the potential loss of users to other more responsible programs. Why, for example, buy a Serif photo-imaging program when Photoshop stays consistent and has vastly more usable add-ons such as brushes? I I have only just realised I did not reinstall PhotoPlus when my computer crashed some time back. I don't know when I first bought a Serif product, but over the years I have bought many, many of them. If Serif wants me to stay loyal, they have to play fair.

I have been thinking in terms of small booklets that I produce and have done so in PP for several versions, but I had forgotten that I have produced a 570-page heavily-illustrated and indexed book using the program. If I were to have to mess about importing the pdfs for that and then explaining that the text (which seems to appear in numerous disconnected boxes) is continuous, I might just as well start again. I have been a seriously loyal Serif supported over the years and have only recently recommended PP9 on a forum, but I am not happy about these changes, especially if as people are saying, not all that is in PP9 is in the new (and I may say less intuitive) program. NOT good enough!

If Serif is going to do away with Serif products and introduce new ones, it seems only sensible to provide backwards compatibility. Importing from a pdf file does not provide the same manageability, such as automatically linking text boxes across pages. Not impressed, and have sworn by Serif products for many many years.