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Feature feedback one month after dropping Indesign CC for Publisher


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Dear Serif team,

after a decade solely with Adobe products, I switched to Publisher a month ago. I already tested the demo when it was first introduced and really wanted to get rid of Adobe for years, but I missed the IDML import feature that came with Publisher’s latest upgrade. I immediately batch converted all of my Indesign files with a script and dropped my CC subscription. With no regrets. I’m a freelance typographer and graphic designer focused on print media and I think Publisher is the better software here. Especially when considering it is not backed by a billion dollar company.

Yet there are still some bugs as well as features that I miss in my professional workflow. Here are some of them:

  • I miss integrated access to other spot color libraries such as HKS (not only Pantone) as HKS is a European standard
  • Starting every print document with the cmyk color palette, every web document with the RGB palette etc. And, of course, every saved document with its document color palette. I think the color register is overall missing some logical structure as it is not clear why there are document, system and program palettes. I made my own HKS palette, but only when I import it as a document palette I can use it throughout the software, not only in the current document. That’s confusing.
  • I miss that the pipette can copy styles.
  • I miss the option to rotate the page view of a single page. When I make a layout in portrait mode but have a page that is in landscape mode by design, I really don’t want to turn my head or my display.
  • I miss hotkeys to control how images are display within their containers (min-fit, max-fit etc.). There’s software like Capture One where I can apply a hotkey to literally every function. I am not sure why this shouldn’t be possible in Publisher, too.

Keep up the good work. I really appreciate how you treat us folks in this time of crisis.

Cheers,
Johannes

Edited by rumo
Bug report removed
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Hi Johannes,

I have never done a conversion of an Indesign file. I only need to convert one. I do not currently have access to Indesign as I was using it as a student with a free trial. Do you know how I can convert the file to IDML without having to open it in Adobe?

Thanks

Sarah

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8 minutes ago, Skaykay said:

I have never done a conversion of an Indesign file. I only need to convert one. I do not currently have access to Indesign as I was using it as a student with a free trial. Do you know how I can convert the file to IDML without having to open it in Adobe?

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums, Sarah.

You might find this useful:

 

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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3 minutes ago, Skaykay said:

I am out of emails to sign up for a trial. I was hoping there was a way to convert without having to make a dummy email. That will be my last resort.

If you happen to be a gmail user, you have as many "virtual" email addresses as you'd like.

You can:

  1. Add or remove "." characters anywhere before the @gmail.com
  2. Add + and a tag word immediately before the @gmail.com

If you're lucky, whatever site you're signing up with will only check the literal email address, and won't try to filter out the virtual gmail addresses :)

https://gizmodo.com/how-to-use-the-infinite-number-of-email-addresses-gmail-1609458192

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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@rumo 

you already have the hotkeys for zooming , look at the view menu/zoom. Also in the View-menu you'll find rotate view. I've made a HKS-palette by exporting them from photoshop and then importing it in publisher. You can copy a style from an object (with the style of choice) by right-clicking it and choose "make style" and then from the styles tab apply it to every object you want.

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6 hours ago, rumo said:

Last not least: A severe bug is happening when I apply a gradient to text. The text is then somewhat rendered as pixels, not as a vector. It is clearly visible in a low-res PDF export and still visible in print-res. See file attached (left: single color, right: gradient).

If that is a bug (and I am not sure that it is), this is the wrong place for a bug report. You would need to post that in Publisher Bugs found on (Windows or Macos), depending on your OS.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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1 hour ago, Ray S. said:

@Skaykay, maybe for you but I've answered to the OP.

I think what Skaykay meant was the OP wasn't asking about zooming features, but hot keys to fit images in their containers.

I agree about swatches. The current setup is confusing and needs to be rethought. It already been discussed many times before on this forum.

I only have InDesign CS6 so can't help with IDML conversion if you were using CC.

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On 4/22/2020 at 5:44 PM, Ray S. said:

Also in the View-menu you'll find rotate view.

In fact, what we are use to is being able to rotate only one page, so we can work on it, and that'll be the only page of the  document that'll have the rotation. And this will be save in the document.
You can close and open the document, each time this page will be displayed with the rotation.

But this rotation only appear in APub, when working: exporting a PDF or another file format dislpay all the pages without rotation.

I asked for this feature long ago too… since it's no problem, or less when you only need to rotate 1 page to insert crosswords solution, for example, but if you've got a book with +20 pages full of tables and you need to rotate the view, go back to normal, etc. a lot, it's not fun.

There are also  folded documents where this feature would be needed too, since some pages are head to tail.

 

On 4/22/2020 at 5:44 PM, Ray S. said:

You can copy a style from an object

For objects only, you can't paste text parameters this way. And each time we paste a style, there's a unknow parameter that scale the style: you'll hardly have the same effect/style on a second object.
But here, the OP ask, IMO, a pipette able to copy different options (for example text styles like paragraph, character, and local formating), and past it to each text you click on. That's not possible with text in APub.
The available options you can copy (ID's pipette has options):

2020-04-22_195946.png.7985c76af0f228dc85a3d1b31b368485.png

 

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 Thanks for the replies. As some of them are completely off topic (no offense here) I like to address only those who deal with my initial feedback.

15 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

If that is a bug (and I am not sure that it is), this is the wrong place for a bug report. You would need to post that in Publisher Bugs found on (Windows or Macos), depending on your OS.

 Thank you Walt. I moved the bug part to that section. It really is severe because vector text is crucial for print production. My printer would most likely call me nuts if I’d send him prerasterized text of this kind. And he would be right.

14 hours ago, Jeremy Bohn said:

I think what Skaykay meant was the OP wasn't asking about zooming features, but hot keys to fit images in their containers.

I agree about swatches. The current setup is confusing and needs to be rethought. It already been discussed many times before on this forum.

  Indeed I wasn’t asking about zooming features. The hotkeys are too restricted in my opinion, with no reason for that.

I’m glad that swatches have already been discussed (didn’t spot it) as it really messes up a professional workflow.

13 hours ago, Wosven said:

In fact, what we are use to is being able to rotate only one page, so we can work on it, and that'll be the only page of the  document that'll have the rotation. And this will be save in the document.
You can close and open the document, each time this page will be displayed with the rotation.

But this rotation only appear in APub, when working: exporting a PDF or another file format dislpay all the pages without rotation.

I asked for this feature long ago too… since it's no problem, or less when you only need to rotate 1 page to insert crosswords solution, for example, but if you've got a book with +20 pages full of tables and you need to rotate the view, go back to normal, etc. a lot, it's not fun.

Perfect description, thanks.

15 hours ago, Ray S. said:

@rumo 

You can copy a style from an object (with the style of choice) by right-clicking it and choose "make style" and then from the styles tab apply it to every object you want.

My question is not about copying the style from an object but from text. Like marking the text to be altered and then copy the style from another paragraph or single word just by clicking on it with the pipette tool. This is one of Indesign most basic features. Publisher instead has a dedicated pipette tool and an additional one in the swatches register, so there are basically two tools that just to the same (picking colours) while it could be a much more versatile tool.

Again, @Wosven got better words than me. Thanks for the screenshots from Indesign. They tell how powerful this simple tool can be.

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9 hours ago, rumo said:

  Indeed I wasn’t asking about zooming features. The hotkeys are too restricted in my opinion, with no reason for that.

Ya, if it's not in the Keyboard Shortcuts section then you can't add a shortcut. I'm still InDesign at work and I use the keyboard shortcut for image fitting all the time. I would definitely submit that as a feature request.

As for text attributes, the feature is already sort of there to copy and paste them, but it's on a per-box basis. Click to select the text box - not the text, the entire box - and copy it. Select the unformatted text box and go Edit > Paste Style.

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On 4/23/2020 at 9:46 AM, Ray S. said:

Ah ok, I'm missunderstood some of the topics as I'm not a "heavy user" of DTP-software, sorry for that. For my "here-and-there"-layout-tasks it works fine.

No problem. Affinity is more than sufficient for here-and-there-tasks. But because it is especially aimed at Indesign users tired of subscription models like me it still needs some polishing.

15 hours ago, Jeremy Bohn said:

Ya, if it's not in the Keyboard Shortcuts section then you can't add a shortcut. I'm still InDesign at work and I use the keyboard shortcut for image fitting all the time. I would definitely submit that as a feature request.

As for text attributes, the feature is already sort of there to copy and paste them, but it's on a per-box basis. Click to select the text box - not the text, the entire box - and copy it. Select the unformatted text box and go Edit > Paste Style.

Glad we are already two here! I already spotted that paste style feature, which (for me) is rather useless as it won’t work with long copy of applying styles to single words or paragraphs.

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On 4/24/2020 at 5:41 PM, Jeremy Bohn said:

I didn't copy and paste text styles very often so it's not a deal breaker to me. But don't get me started on Swatches and Layers. They are 2 of the biggest shortcomings in the Affinity Suite, have been talked to death, and acknowledged by Serif.

I agree, layers are basically useless in the Publisher. The amount of unnecessary sub-layers that each object creates leads to a complete visual mess. I'm also not sure if a checkbox is the appropriate UI element to toggle visibility, or if this causes further confusion. Indesign uses an eye symbol here, which (for me) is much more self-explanatory. Might be somewhat over-the-top, but UX design is a big part of the workflow.

Swatches may work up to a certain point, but not in a professional workflow. I am glad Serif has already acknowledged this because it really bothers me.

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