HTML Export much needed

[Stefos]

I am surprised that we do not have an HTML export option, this is a much needed option as it would mean that your publisher software could be used also as a webpage designer. Having PDF is good but is limited and much of the rest of the exp[ort options are picture file formats.

Thanks for your time

Stefos

[garrettm30]

8 hours ago, Stefos said:

your publisher software could be used also as a webpage designer

Here comes an opinion, so take it how you will: I think some simple yet powerful HTML export could have its uses**, but speaking in as one who does both layout and web programming professionally as part of a small organization (and as my attention is split between the two, I am a true expert in neither field), I will be surprised if Publisher ever comes to the point where it can double as a "webpage designer". The process of making any WYSIWYG program to output faithful HTML (and of course CSS and perhaps Javascript) that performs reliably along multiple browsers, especially in the day of responsive design, is a task that is as big as the whole of Affinity Publisher itself. It would take a massive amount of work, and despite all the effort in development, its output would still often fail to be satisfactory. I say this just to temper expectations—I will not objet if Serif proves me wrong.

**Though I do not think I could expect full "webpage design" capabilities, I do not mean to say that HTML export is out of reach. I think some sort of HTML output is a worthy goal for Publisher once Serif gets some more of the hotly requested layout features nailed down. Just these past two weeks, I have used the HTML export of InDesign to output a very large document (1500 pages in print) in such a way that I could write a script to process the exported HTML to grab the text and semantic markup for the purposes of uploading the content to a database. I could not have done that project without some kind of HTML, XML, or similar.

My guess is that some kind of HTML export will eventually come, but later, certainly not in the 1.x development. And once some effort is made, then we can see how far it would be reasonable to take it.

[Old Bruce]

22 minutes ago, garrettm30 said:

My guess is that some kind of HTML export will eventually come, but later, certainly not in the 1.x development. And once some effort is made, then we can see how far it would be reasonable to take it.

I would prefer XML but I agree that whichever is done it won't be for a long (long) while. (happy to be proved wrong about the time)

[dsweetje]

Yes please some html output will be very useful!

+1 for me