AFFINITY TEMPLATES: What is their purpose and advantage?

[Minus44]

The introduction of Affinity Templates in the version 1.8 suite of desktop and mobile products is obviously a fine feature to add.

But what are some advantages of the AFTEMPLATE compared with using AFPHOTO / AFDESIGN / AFPUB files? After all, these files are already interchangeable between applications and platforms.

 

[elk]

The main advantage is imho that a template opens independently of a normal document, means there is only »save as ...« available first so you don’t override any document.

[Joachim_L]

Plus you can organize the templates by adding folders holding the templates.

[Minus44]

I can't help but feel that the Templates feature is going to eventually grow to become more powerful. Maybe what we have right now is part of the underlying infrastructure for even better features down the road. 

Right now, most of us aren't overwriting our template-like AFPHOTO or AFDESIGN files. And many of us already have an existing structure for organizing these files. So I'm weighing whether or not I *need* to begin using the Templates feature. Maybe... maybe not? 🤔

Have many of you already begun using it? And how is it helping your workflow if you already had an organized system in place prior to v1.8?

[GMNZ]

Fairly new to the template side of things.

It would be nice to see a linking option on the template that links text boxes to files saved off the base template so that I change text in the template and then tell it to propagate to all saved files associated with the template. If this already a function please let me know.

 

Regards.

 

[walt.farrell]

26 minutes ago, GMNZ said:

Fairly new to the template side of things.

It would be nice to see a linking option on the template that links text boxes to files saved off the base template so that I change text in the template and then tell it to propagate to all saved files associated with the template. If this already a function please let me know.

 

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

That is not a function, and I do not think that it's one that Serif could implement. Too many technical problems.

However, you're certainly free to suggest it

Note, though, that suggestions for improvements need to be made in the appropriate Feature Requests & Suggestions forum, as that's where the Serif team that is planning the future looks for them.

[Old Bruce]

19 hours ago, GMNZ said:

Fairly new to the template side of things.

It would be nice to see a linking option on the template that links text boxes to files saved off the base template so that I change text in the template and then tell it to propagate to all saved files associated with the template. If this already a function please let me know.

 

Regards.

 

Once a template is opened as a new document, it becomes a completely separate document with no relationship to the original template.

You may be able to do some work with Publisher's Data Merge ability.